regular round trip by stage in five days are subjected, I concluded to
see the Park in a more leisurely manner, and hired a saddle-horse for a
week at the rate of two dollars and a half a day, to which one dollar
and a half a day was added for taking care of the horse at the several
stations; thus making the expense about the same as it would have been
if I had taken the regular forty-dollar coupon ticket, which includes
fare and hotels for five days. They seem to have great faith in human
nature in Wyoming; for I was allowed to take away my horse without
leaving a deposit, and even without being asked my name! On entering
the Park, an officer rode up and requested me to register, explaining
that all persons entering privately were asked to leave their names,
and state how long they intended to stay, as a precautionary measure
against violations of the laws relating to hunting and forest fires.
These regulations, with others, are printed on linen and conspicuously
posted along the road every few miles, so that no one can plead
ignorance of the law. Scattered throughout the Park are also hundreds
of signs reading “NO HUNTING,” “EXTINGUISH YOUR FIRES,” with others
indicating good places for camps. In the Geyser Basins the principal
springs and geysers are also marked by sign-boards, though not so
liberally as might be desired. There should be more of them near the
road to indicate the most remarkable spots. At present the “paint-pots”
and the Gibbon and Tower falls are very apt to be missed by tourists.
Some of the sign-boards of the Geyser Basins need renovating. At
Norris one of these attracted my attention; and after getting my eyes
within six inches to decipher the obscure inscription, I read the word
“DANGEROUS!” These danger signals ought to be much more frequent. The
very day when I was at Norris, a lady broke through the crust near one
of the springs and was badly injured.
[Illustration: MINERVA TERRACE—YELLOWSTONE PARK.]
Norris Geyser Basin is directly south of Mammoth Hot Springs, and
is the place where the tourist, if lucky, gets his first view of
a geyser. If the reader has never looked at a map of the National
Park, he may get an approximate idea of its topography by bearing
in mind that the principal curiosities are so placed as to form a
parallelogram. The road first leads south from Mammoth Springs to
the four geyser basins,—Norris, Lower, Midway, and Upper; then east
to the Lake; then north to the Falls and Grand Cañon, and over Mt.
Washburn, to Yancey’s; and thence back west to the Mammoth Springs. The
patrons of the stage line, however, miss the Lake and Mt. Washburn,
and are obliged to return by the same road a great part of the way.
This must be very fatiguing, as the road between Mammoth Springs and
Norris is most dreary and uninteresting, being generally lined on
both sides by melancholy wastes of blackened tree corpses—a veritable
forest cemetery. Now that fires are carefully guarded against, a
vigorous undergrowth of young trees is perceptible, which in time will
obliterate these and the many similar stretches of charred timber.
The hotel at Norris was destroyed by fire about the middle of July,
1887, and I arrived just in time to be the first occupant of a room
in the new hotel. In the ruins of the old hotel were still to be
found heaps of roast potatoes, hams, and other meats, and groups of
molten beer and wine bottles twisted into peculiar shapes. Beer and
wine, by the way, may be had at all these hotels, although no bars
are allowed within the limits of the Park. The water throughout this
part of the Park is strongly flavored with sulphur and other mineral
ingredients, and is apt to disagree with some people. After supper I
went up the road for a mile to see the Geyser Basin. The distinguishing
characteristic of the Norris Basin is the many steam-holes, which
send out uninterrupted columns of steam, with a deafening roar. I
have read of canary-birds who were silenced forever after hearing a
mocking-bird imitate and surpass their song. I wish all locomotive
engineers could be sent to the Norris Basin; perhaps that would make
them stop competing as to which of them can make night most hideous
with steam-whistles. Besides these steam-holes there are simple hot
springs, sizzling “frying-pans,” mud geysers, and “paint-pots,” in
which paste of various colors is boiling and blubbering. A bench has
been placed beside one geyser which every seven minutes sends up a
mass of liquid mud, splashing and spluttering, and darting out arms in
every direction, like a hideous polyp, until the frenzy has reached
its climax and forced some of the mud over the border; whereupon the
agitation subsides as gradually as it came on, and the liquid mass
disappears down a fathomless hole, where it compresses the steam until
it has gained sufficient volume to drive the nasty intruder once more
out of its hole.
While I was watching this ludicrous spectacle, some of the workmen who
were building the new hotel passed by and invited me to follow them and
see the “Monarch” geyser spout. We occupied a place on the hill-side
where there was no danger that the wind would drive the steam and hot
water into our faces, and waited. The liquid eruption was due at eight,
but the Monarch long refused to give us an audience. The workmen,
meanwhile, discussed the news of the day,—the accident to the lady,
already referred to, the moral character of the new dish-washer, and
the death of a popular saloon-keeper, “a splendid fellow, who never
refused a man a drink whether he had money or not.” The Monarch awaited
this opportunity to make the transition from the ridiculous to the
sublime, and, precisely at nine o’clock, with hardly any warning, he
shot up a hot stream into the air a hundred feet or more, and kept it
there for several minutes, the moon furnishing just enough light to see
the stream of water amid the steam. _Après nous le déluge_ appeared to
be his motto; for we found it difficult to reach the road again because
of the inundation he created during his brief activity. One of the
workmen told me he waited for the eruption every evening, and that he
had discovered some springs not known previously, including one sourer
than a lemon (probably sulphuric acid). The number of hot springs in
the Park seems, indeed, to be countless. Every day the tourist comes
across them repeatedly, often most unexpectedly, and it seems probable
that some of the greatest wonders of the Park remain to be discovered
on the forest-clad hill-sides.
Among the most curious of the springs are the groups of little ones,
with openings no larger than peas, lining the banks of the brooks and
roadside, and so hot that one has to exercise caution in riding across
them.
I should have stated that perhaps the prettiest sight on the road
from Mammoth Springs to Norris is the frequent patches of dense
grass, ordinarily of a pale yellowish green color, but if seen from
above, facing the sun, of the richest yellow, suggestive of lakes of
liquid gold. More beautiful still are the golden rivulets which form
the outlets of some of the hot springs in the Lower and Upper Geyser
Basins. As the “Fountain,” the principal geyser of the Lower Basin,
was at rest when I saw it, I devoted most of my time to admiring these
streamlets with their golden beds. All the gradations in color, from
red through blood-orange, and orange to pale yellow, are here to be
seen, the color fading out gradually with the distance from the spring.
Quite as beautiful as the colors themselves are the exquisite waving
golden lines and honey-comb figures which adorn the bottom of these
rills, the reflections of the wavelets and ripplets on the surface of
the water. In some places these dainty figures are replaced by rows
of silky yellow fibres gently undulating with the movement of the
water. The bottom of these rills is not hard, but consists of a soft
pulpy mass, in some places several inches deep. This is fortunate; for
otherwise some of those irrepressible idiots who write their names even
on the bottoms of the white basins into which the water flows from the
geyser craters would not hesitate to mar also the beauty of these fairy
brooks.
The hero of Midway Geyser Basin is the “Excelsior,” which, however,
has been quiescent for several years. It forms an immense pool,
which, with some others and their overflow, converts the Basin into a
place of most dismal, forbidding aspect. It is close by the Firehole
River, which is lined by hot springs, one of which has the aspect of
a pigmy water-fall, the spray being represented by the steam. When
one considers the number of these mineral springs, and the fact that
the Excelsior has been known to vomit sufficient hot water to convert
the Firehole River, a hundred yards wide, into “a foaming torrent
of steaming hot water,” one wonders no longer that this river, like
several others in the Park, notwithstanding that its water is usually
cool, rapid, and clear as a crystal, is destitute of fish. Were it not
for this occasional excess of hot mineral water, there would be scores
of places where a tourist might go through the unique performance of
catching a trout, and boiling it in an adjacent spring, without moving
from his place. As it is, those who wish to try this curious experiment
have to do so at the Gardiner River or the Yellowstone Lake.
Few of the unfortunate tourists who are hurried through the Park on the
Wakefield stages have an opportunity to see a geyser in activity till
they arrive at the Upper Geyser Basin. Here more than a dozen geysers
of the first magnitude are congregated; and although some are very
irregular, and others only play at long intervals, there are several
which every one who remains a few hours can see. A blackboard in the
hotel gives a list of the geysers and their intervals of performance,
and the hotel is so placed as to command a view of almost the whole
basin, so that, whenever one of the irregular geysers starts up, the
guests may be at once informed, and hasten to the scene. Fortunately,
one of the finest geysers in the basin is “Old Faithful,” only a
hundred yards from the hotel, and so-called because it spouts once in
sixty-five minutes, almost with the regularity of a clock. The “Grand,”
“Castle,” “Beehive,” and “Splendid” geysers are also certain to play
for the benefit of those who spend a day at the Upper Basin. But the
grandest of them all, the “Giant,” wakes up only once in a fortnight;
and unfortunately I arrived just eight hours too late to see it. But
there was no room for disappointment, as the other geysers afforded
more than enough excitement and wonder for a day.
Even if these geysers were extinct, it would be worth a visit to this
Basin to see the fanciful, lofty craters built up by the calcareous
deposits of the hot springs. No two geysers appear to be quite alike
in their style of playing. Some have more steam mixed with their water
than others; some shoot up a constant stream; others, an intermittent
one, somewhat like the various forms of rockets. The stream of the
Castle looks almost like a water-fall flowing upwards and vanishing in
mid air; and the Splendid afforded the spectacle of two lovely rainbows.
Besides these exciting geysers, which represent the sublime, the Upper
Geyser Basin has some of the loveliest pools or springs in the Park,
as representatives of pure, placid beauty. Chief among these are the
“Morning Glory” and the “Gem,”—pools of fathomless depth filled with
diamond of the purest water, lined inside with the richest, deepest
colors, and with a “horrid” black hole at the bottom, suggesting the
entrance to the nether regions. Into one of these pools a stupid boy
once threw a stick, and his poor dog jumped in after it and was boiled
to pulp in a few minutes. In another was found the bare skeleton of an
elk, possibly driven into it by pursuing wolves,—a fine subject for a
ballad.
From the Upper Basin I might have gone straight to the Lake; but as
the road is a mere trail on which a horse cannot run, and the distance
is therefore too great to cover in one day, I returned to the Lower
Basin, whence it was only about thirty-five miles to the hotel camp
at the Lake. With many tourists it seems to be a moot point whether
it is worth while to visit the Lake; and as few used to go there, the
accommodations until recently were of a most primitive kind. There were
two men at the camp, and three tents—one for cooking, one for eating,
and one to sleep in. An Englishman and his wife were the only guests
besides myself. The lady naturally desired the sleeping-tent to be
made up into two separate rooms, and the “landlord” finally submitted
to the extra trouble this involved, though afterwards he was overheard
commenting to his assistant on “them fussy English.” When the English
lady got up in the morning to wash, she found the towel had already
been used by her husband and myself, so she asked for another. The
assistant replied he had already put out a fresh towel for that date,
but after a moment’s hesitation he decided to make an exception in her
favor, and produced a second.
For the season of 1890, however, a new hotel was opened, and boats
placed on the Lake; and the tourist who omits it makes a great mistake.
Not only does it rank among the curiosities of the world, being the
only lake of its size at so great an altitude (7788 feet above the sea;
or, as the guide-book graphically puts it, if Mt. Washington could
be sunk in it with its base at sea-level, “its apex would be nearly
half a mile below the surface of the lake”); but its intrinsic beauty
would insure it renown at any altitude. Snow there was none on the
surrounding mountains when I saw them; but, like all mountains, they
gain immensely in picturesqueness and apparent loftiness by being seen
across a sheet of water. And a beautiful sheet of water the Lake is,
aside from its surroundings; but it is treacherous, and there is a
violent thunder or wind storm almost every morning at eleven. About six
o’clock in the morning I distinctly heard the mysterious rushing sounds
in the air referred to in the guide-book as unexplained. I suppose
they are due to the sound of the waters dashing against the beach and
borne on by the wind, gradually accumulating loudness. Or the sounds
may be due to the movements of the capricious and fitful wind among
the tree-tops. I repeatedly heard a gust of wind approaching in that
way with a magnificent _crescendo_ and climax which a modern orchestra
could hardly equal.
Everybody knows that the Yellowstone Lake is as brimful of trout as
the Columbia River is of salmon. But a general notion prevails—even
among those who dwell in the Park—that they are all unfit to eat, being
infested by worms. This is an error. About half the trout are as sound
as any other fish, and can be readily distinguished from the diseased
ones. In the middle of the Lake it is said that all are sound,—a
statement for the truth of which I cannot vouch. Our Englishman caught
a dozen in the river just after it leaves the Lake. The cook assorted
them, threw away the bad ones, and fried the others, which proved to
be as good fish as I ever ate. The next day, on the way to the Falls,
I stopped for a short time to catch a few of the numerous two-pounders
that I saw swimming near the shore. Further down the Yellowstone the
trout are smaller and less abundant than near the Lake, so that there
is some sport in catching them; but where I stopped it was very much
like fishing in a reservoir filled with hungry hatched fish. All I had
to do was to select my fish, place the bait before his nose, and pull
him in. I took along half-a-dozen which I knew to be sound, but at the
Falls hotel I was informed that their French cook refused to touch the
Lake trout. As the hotel itself furnished trout for supper caught below
the Falls, where they are admitted to be sound, I did not argue the
point with the cook, who was busy providing for an excursion party of
fifty.
If the Yellowstone region contained nothing but the two falls at this
place, and the Grand Cañon, it would have been worth while to reserve
it as a National Park for all time. The two falls, though only half
a mile apart, are utterly different in character; as the smaller,
upper one plunges into a quiet, small basin in a secluded idyllic
retreat, while the lower plunges three hundred and fifty feet down an
abyss which is formed by the stupendous walls of the Grand Cañon, of
which several miles lie before the eyes of the dazed spectator. The
best place to enjoy the grandeur of the Falls and the Cañon is not at
Lookout Point, as is generally believed, but at the edge of the Falls.
Seen from a distance above, these Falls present a unique sight. The
water flows on like any other rapid current until suddenly it appears
to vanish in the air. On approaching the edge of the Falls, this
illusion resolves itself into a scene which Niagara can hardly equal.
As the water plunges into the pool below, it is dissolved into clouds
of vapor that put to shame the steam columns of the biggest geysers.
The breakers which wildly dash against the sides of the pool indicate
the turbulence of the water beneath this spray and foam. Some of the
spray is carried by the wind to the abrupt walls of the Cañon, where it
nourishes mosses and lichens, which add one more color to the numerous
tints that adorn these rocks. These tints bewilder by their variety
and richness. The same strong mineral waters that have painted such
exquisite brook-bottoms in the Geyser Basins here undertook a kind of
fresco-painting on a scale of the most sublime grandeur.
Near the summits of some of the rocks may be seen some curious caves.
Other rocks terminate in turrets and pinnacles suggesting mediæval
architecture; and some of the rocky walls are adorned with a mosaic of
brown, red, yellow, and white, as elaborate as the floor of St. Mark’s
in Venice. Some of the turrets, when you climb up to them, appear so
woefully weather-beaten that it looks as if you could kick them over;
but you cannot. The torrent, at a dizzy depth below, in which the green
water struggles wildly for supremacy with the white foam, enlivens
the scene; and in one place a turn of the river-bed, near a streak of
painted rock, gives the impression of two water-falls side by side, one
green, the other red; one in motion, the other frozen.
From the Grand Cañon the coupon tourists return to the Mammoth Springs
and Livingston, while those who travel independently can enjoy the ride
over Mt. Washburn, with its extended views of the Rocky Mountains,
its fertile sides fairly crammed with flowers of the richest colors
and strangest varieties, and its solitary trail through the depths
of a primeval forest, frequently blocked by fallen trees, on which
one may not meet a human being in eight hours, nor hear any sound
but the melancholy moan of a poor tree against which a dead trunk
has fallen, and is wounding it with every movement of the wind. The
dismal delight of this ride is as indescribable as the exciting sport
of trouting that may be enjoyed at Yancey’s, whence it is but a short
distance back to our starting-point, the Mammoth Springs Hotel.
[Illustration: FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.]
After spending a week in the National Park on horseback, I came to the
conclusion that what the Park chiefly needs now is a railroad,—not
a steam railway, which would frighten the game and set fire to the
forests, but an electric railroad. Great as are the wonders of the
Yellowstone Park, the intervening distances are so great and the
scenery often so commonplace, that nothing would be lost, and very much
gained, by having an electric road. Dust and fatigue could be thus
avoided, and more time devoted to the wonders of the Park in three days
than at present in a week.
XVIII.
THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.
FROM LOS ANGELES TO PEACH SPRING—DESERT WIND—AN ARIZONA
VILLAGE—INDIANS—DESCENSUS AVERNO—EXTRAORDINARY MOUNTAIN
ARCHITECTURE—SILENCE AND DESOLATION—A BEWITCHED CREEK—UP THE
DIAMOND CAÑON—THE GRAND CAÑON AND THE RIVER—NEW MEXICO AND KANSAS.
It is unfortunate for travellers that the masterpieces of American
scenery are not all grouped along one or two of the transcontinental
railways. As it is, each line has its own lions, and to see them all
one has to cross the continent more than once. Some of the principal
features of the Canadian Pacific, Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and
Southern Pacific railways have been commented upon in preceding pages,
and it remains to notice the lion of the Atlantic and Pacific or Santa
Fé route, which is nothing less than the Grand Cañon of the Colorado
River, which Captain Dutton considers “the sublimest thing on earth.”
It is one of the sublimest things on earth, beyond a doubt; yet how
many readers of this book, all of whom are of course highly educated
persons, are able to tell, without consulting their geography, where
the Grand Cañon of the Colorado is? In Colorado, of course, nine out of
ten will say. But Colorado has only the honor of giving birth to the
smaller rivers which unite to form the mighty Colorado, and which are
fed by the snow of the Rocky Mountains. As Major Powell graphically
puts it: “When the summer sun comes, this snow melts, and tumbles
down the mountain sides in millions of cascades. Ten million cascade
brooks unite to form ten thousand torrent creeks; ten thousand torrent
creeks unite to form a hundred rivers beset with cataracts; a hundred
roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid
stream, into the Gulf of California,” about two thousand miles from its
sources. Only about six hundred miles of the lower part of the river
are navigable, on account of the earth fissures, or cañons, through
which it has eaten its way for five hundred miles. Some of these cañons
are in Utah, but the two largest and most famous—the Marble and the
Grand—are in Arizona. The longest of the cañons is two hundred and
seventeen and one-half miles long, and is separated from another one of
sixty-five and one-half miles only by a narrow valley.
Lieutenant Ives says of the Grand Cañon region: “The extent and
magnitude of the system of cañons in that direction is astounding. The
plateau is cut into shreds by these gigantic chasms, and resembles a
vast ruin. Belts of country, miles in width, have been swept away,
leaving only isolated mountains standing in the gap; fissures, so
profound that the naked eye cannot penetrate their depths, are
separated by walls whose thickness one can almost span, and slender
spires that seem tottering upon their base shoot up a thousand feet
from vaults below.” Or, as Major Powell puts it, the tributary streams,
like the Colorado, “have cut gorges of their own; and they all have
wet-weather affluents, that run in deep cañons. It is a cañon land.”
Previous to Major Powell’s bold expedition down this subterranean
river, about twenty years ago, it was practically a _terra_ (or rather
_aqua_) _incognita_. For a party of scientific men and artists to
venture in a few frail boats down this sun-forsaken river, shut in for
over five hundred miles by precipitous walls rising sometimes over
a mile and a half on both sides, not knowing how soon they would be
dashed to pieces on the rocks below a water-fall, or sucked into a
suffocating tunnel, or starved to death by losing their provisions, was
surely one of the most heroic deeds on record, comparable to Columbus’s
expedition on the unknown, illimitable ocean in search of a new world.
It was a Jules Verne novel realized; and I know of no romance more
fascinating in its narrative and more poetic in its descriptions of
scenery, than Major Powell’s account of this expedition, which is
unfortunately buried amidst the government reports of geological
surveys. At least four hundred rapids, eddies, whirlpools, falls, and
cascades were encountered, and many were the hair-breadth escapes. They
were chilled at night, and in the daytime the thermometer sometimes
rose to 115°, in this river dungeon, amidst a forest-like gloom; but
still they had to go on, for return was impossible, as they knew very
well before they started. Sometimes the water hurried along their
boats with the speed of railroad trains. The rocks on both sides would
roll the water into the centre in great waves, and the boats would
go leaping and bounding over these “like black-tail deer jumping the
logs” which strew the forests. Indians have come to grief here. In the
onomatopoetic description given by one of them, “The rocks h-e-a-p
high; the water go h-oo-woogh, h-oo-woogh; water-pony [boat] h-e-a-p
buck; water catch ’em; no see.”
[Illustration: THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.]