"Wal, sir, I tell you that that thar Yellowstone Park and them geysers is jest indescribable—that's what they are, sure!" said all the packers, teamsters, and prospectors whom we consulted on the subject.

A greater measure of truth characterised this statement than is usually contained in eulogistic reports of scenery.

We were advised at Ogden that pack trains or waggons could be hired at various points on the "Utah Northern" branch of the Union Pacific Railway; in order to economise time, therefore, my companion preceded me to contract for transport, whilst I remained behind to conclude arrangements in connection with the commissariat department. These completed, I followed him. He met me at Dillon with a history of woe. No "outfits" were to be obtained elsewhere at so short a notice, and here the demands for them were exorbitant. No regard was taken of current rates; the teamsters seemed inclined to regard us as legitimate spoil. I ventured to expostulate with one man:

"What you ask would pay you in three weeks more than your 'outfit' cost."

"Oh, horses is dear in this country!" he remarked irrelevantly.

"Quite so; but we don't want to buy any."

"Wal, it ain't much for them as has the means and wants to 'go in.'"

I am afraid that, to use a miner's expression, we did not "pan out" as well as was anticipated. A little diplomacy eventually secured us the services of a Mormon freighter named Andrews, his boy, a waggon, and twelve mules and horses, upon reasonable terms. We engaged a cook, and with Dick (the guide we had brought from Ogden) the "outfit" was complete.

Dick was an old soldier, and a first-rate fellow. True, the Dillon whisky proved too much for him when we were starting, but ordinary poison had been a mild beverage by comparison with it, and we were so glad that it did not kill him outright that we excused his temporary indisposition. Besides, even beneath its influence he displayed the most charming urbanity, and the greatest anxiety to get under way.

"All I wants, Mr. Francis, is to make a start, to get away—beyond the pale of civilisation, as you may say—beyond (hic) the pale," he repeats meditatively.

"Beyond the pail or the cask, Dick?"

"Beyond the pale," replies he dubiously, after a thoughtful pause.

Dick was hearty in his endeavours to engage an "outfit."

"Say! you! look here, now!" he would explain to a native; "these here men don't want none of your —— —— snide outfits, but jest good bronchos, and a waggon, and strong harness."

"Wal, can't yer find no waggons?"

"Waggons! ——! waggons 'nough for a whole army! But, —— —— it, these fellows all propose to make independent fortunes out of us in a single day. Why, they want jest as much to hire out one broncho for a week as'll buy whole team."

Swearing is prevalent among these fellows. The reply given to us by a teamster that we met and consulted about the distance of a certain day's journey, concerning which it appeared that we had been misinformed, was by no means exceptional. "Thirty-five miles, —— —— it! Why —— —— it, it ain't a —— —— bit more than twenty-five —— —— no! ——!"

Our man, Andrews, was rather gifted in this line. He was to be heard at his best in the early morning, when engaged in catching the hobbled mules and horses. Amongst the more innocent titles conferred by him upon certain members of our stud were, "the yaller, one-eyed cuss," "the private curse," "the bandy-legged, hobbling, contrary son of——" etc., etc.; here following contumelious references to both the animal's remote ancestors and immediate progenitors. Frantic with rage, he usually concluded by hysterically imploring us to assist him in hanging them, or driving them into the river with a view of drowning them. Brown, our cook, one of the quietest, gentlest, and best old fellows in the world, rather enjoyed these scenes. His cooking, which really left nothing to be desired, so far as camp cookery was concerned, met with severe criticism at the hands of this unwashed Mormon. The meekest cook would have resented this.

"Yes," he said one day, as he turned the antelope steaks in the frying-pan, and listened to the voice of the teamster, softly swearing in the distance, "yes, Mormons always do swear ter'ble, and the women as well, and the children, too—and smoke. I guess they smokes more, and stands for the swearingest people as there is anywhere. And they're all alike."

We took no tent, but relied entirely on fine weather and buffalo robes. For the first few days the track lay through a gameless and uninteresting alkali country. The dryness of the atmosphere was remarkable. Moist sugar became as hard as rock; discharged powder left nothing but a little dry dust in the gun-barrels; our lips cracked, and our fingernails grew so brittle that it was impossible to pare without breaking them. As we proceeded, the scenery grew wild, and in places fine. On many slopes the pine forests had been swept by fire, and skeleton trunks, from which the bark had fallen away, stood out in ghostly array from the yellow, red, and russet undergrowth, or looked with ascetic asperity upon the bright belt of light-leaved willow bushes, whose boughs danced gaily in the sunlight on the foot-hills.

At length we surmounted a low divide at the head of the Centennial Valley, and caught our first glimpse of Henry's Lake. In the purple haze of an autumnal sunset it lay below us; and the ripples that dwelt there, waked from their midday slumbers by the evening breeze, sparkled, and glittered, and tossed, and laughed, whilst they restlessly compared their blue, and gold, and violet reflections, and chased each other to the shores of emerald islands out on the silver bosom of the waters. Time was when only the sun came up and looked in upon the solitude of this beautiful sheet of water, dreaming its time away in the still heart of the mountains. At most an occasional Indian wandered thither, to hunt antelope on its grassy shores, wild fowl in its reedy fringe, or spear, by torchlight, the noble trout that haunt its crystal depths. Now it is in a fair way to become a summer resort. Already a log hotel has been tried there, and jam-pots and empty meat-tins lie around it in profusion. Fortunately, for some reason it has been deserted. So the pelicans, the swans, and geese that dot the lake's wide surface, the ducks and flocks of teal that sail there in fleets, or skim in close order to and fro, the grouse in the willow thickets, and the wary regiments of antelope upon the slopes, have yet a respite of comparative security to enjoy before civilisation drives them from their patrimony.

We frequently camped near a trout stream. The trout, although proof against the persuasive influence of the artificial fly, were generally amenable to the seductions of the grasshopper, the butterfly, or grub. Dick's disgust at fly-fishing was amusing. One day B. lent him a rod, and I gave him some flies. He was absent about an hour, and then returned, with but little more than the winch and the butt of the rod.

"Well, Piscator, what luck?" inquired B.

"Why, these durned fish don't piscate worth a cent. Guess I'll go and catch some with a pole and a 'hopper, or there won't be any fish for supper."

The identification of trout was one of sundry points upon which the teamster and I agreed to differ. Trout vary considerably in their markings in these mountain streams; still, a trout is unmistakable.

"That's a pretty trout," I said one day.

"He ain't no trout. That thar's a chub."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"A chap told me so."

"I should call it a trout."

"Wal, they call it a chub down at the terminus,[2] and I reckon the boys there know something. Anyway, he's a chub in this country."

With this conclusive argument Andrews always crushed me. We were at issue upon several questions of this and other natures. Only one, however, threatened to result unpleasantly.

Andrews had a boy. He was a surly, flat-faced boy, with a nose like a red pill. His name was Bud, or Buddy. The father thought all the world of Bud. He was one of the many "smartest boys in the States." Naturally his proud spirit brooked no restraint. On all subjects he considered himself the best-informed person in the party. Although only twelve years old, his education was complete, and he possessed, together with great experience and implicit self-reliance, a shot-gun, a rifle, and a racing pony. Bud from the commencement had assumed command of the expedition; he seemed to labour under the impression that we had come from England on purpose to accompany him.

Whenever the trail was well travelled, he would drive our spare stock a few yards ahead of us, so that we were thoroughly annoyed by the dust. This amused him. Expostulation being without avail, I was forced to insist upon his taking his amusement in some other way. Bud declared that "he would be dog-durned if he was going to run his interior" (he called it by some other name) "out a-driving the stock any further ahead—durned if he would." However, he was induced to change his mind, and although the teamster expended a great deal of energy in bold talk and gesticulation, the moment an opportunity was offered him of displaying his prowess, he collapsed. The matter was, therefore, settled amicably. Thenceforward Bud was more circumspect. He used to overeat himself. When just retribution overtook him, his devoted parent, in an agony of fear, would declare his intention of returning to the terminus in quest of a doctor. On two occasions we hung for awhile in the greatest anxiety upon Bud's languid responses to inquiries concerning his health; and we questioned him as if we loved him—which we didn't. We all doctored him, too. Yet he lived! Evidently his constitution was strong. Once, in a fit of meddlesome benevolence, I restrained his father from giving him a powerful aperient for diarrhoea. Like most acts of officious good-nature, it was often a source of regret afterwards.

It is a fatal mistake to allow a boy to accompany a party of this kind, the more especially one of these ill-conditioned, never-corrected, western frontier cubs. They seem to think it incumbent upon them to air their smartness and impertinence at the expense of strangers. Dogs, in camp, are apt to lead to trouble, too, in the West. A dog is regarded there with somewhat the same feelings that he would excite in a Mussulman household. Our dog was the cause of annoyance on several occasions. Once the men mutinied in a body, because I collected some scraps after supper, and gave them to him on a plate.

Those who dwell in the neighbourhood of the Yellowstone National Park, love enthusiastically to term it Wonderland, and not without reason. Within its boundaries (one hundred miles square), there are over 10,000 active geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, solfataras, salses, and boiling pools. Of these, over 2,000 are found in the small area comprising the Upper, Middle, and Lower Geyser Basins. Sulphur mountains, an obsidian mountain, a mud volcano, a so-called blood geyser, and various other remarkable phenomena add to the interest of this extraordinary region, whilst there is scenery here that, for grandeur and grotesqueness, may challenge comparison with the world's most striking features. Proceeding at once towards the Upper Geyser Basin, we pass the Lower Basin with its so termed "paint pots," or "cream pots," boiling vats of a semi-silicious clay, which varies in colour from creamy white to pink or slate, some fine geysers, and the intermediate "Hell's half-acre," and adjoining pools. These are at once the most impressive and beautiful pools in the Park. I turned aside twice to them—once on my way to the Upper Basin, and once on my return; seeing them on these occasions under completely diverse aspects, for on the first day a thunderstorm darkened the wonted serenity of the sky.

They are situated in a desolate expanse of white, formed by deposits from the numerous springs that bubble up on all sides. The first pool is of comparative unimportance. The second (whence the locality derives its name) considerably exceeds half-an-acre in size. It has but recently assumed its present dimensions. These are daily increasing, apparently, and it bids fair, if its devouring energies continue unabated, to unite with its fellow pools, and form a lake some acres in extent. Numerous cracks and fissures scallop its edges, indicating the direction of future encroachments, and it is with feelings of some misapprehension that the stranger to these infernal regions cautiously approaches to windward of the stream, to gaze into the awesome gulf below him. The boiling hiss and roar of many waters issues unceasingly from its depths, but heavy clouds veil them from view, and the miniature cliffs that plunge precipitously down are speedily lost in steam. A breath of wind sweeps past, and through a rift in the swelling billows of vapour a glimpse of the seething surface is obtained. It is a sight that alone repays the labour of a journey thither. And seen as I first saw it, when thunder rolled overhead, and the heavens were rent from time to time with the flash of lightning, the wild character of the scene was enhanced.

Unlike "Hell's half-acre," the third and largest pool is brimful, and overflows its edges, forming, with the minerals that its waters contain in solution, a succession of steps and tiny ledges, which entirely surround it. It is impossible to conceive anything more beautiful than the colouring here presented. The water is of the purest, brightest cerulean hue, but near the shallow edges it takes its tone from the enclosing rocks, and the glorious azure is lost in yellow, pale green, or red, whilst chemical deposits, in exquisite arrangements, such as the genius of Nature alone can suggest, of Écru and ivory, lemon and orange, buff, chocolate, brown, pink, vermilion, bronze, and fawn encircle the pool, or paint with ribbon-like effect the tiny streams that trickle from its overflow. Nor is this all. In the transparent curtain of languid steam—an airy tissue of impossible delicacy, that is gently wafted across the pine-wood landscape—dim reflections of all these wondrous colours, slowly dissipating and fading from sight, are visible. Alas, that anything so lovely should ever fade! The sleepy stillness, the appearance of profound depth, and the moist brilliancy of colouring in this pool defy description. The brush of the greatest artist, the pen of the finest writer would alike be laid aside in despair, and the genius of man forced to bow before the power of Nature, were it tasked to convey a faithful picture of the fantastic beauty of this unearthly scene.

Passing on through a pine forest, seared and blackened by recent fires, and through the Middle Geyser Basin, with its columns of steam, its subterraneous rumblings, its hollow echoing of our horses' trampling, its hissing craters, and its bubbling springs (lying sometimes within a few feet of the track), we entered the Upper Basin towards evening. Imagine the head of a valley walled in by pine-clad hills, and threaded by a stream that rushes through a bottom of desert white, dotted by clumps of pine-trees, from amidst which dense columns of steam rise on all sides and tower into the heavens. All evidences of the storm had cleared, and sinking amidst gold and purple clouds, the sun shed a fiery glow through the trees upon the ridges, that caused each twig—almost I had said each pine-needle—to stand out clearly against the sky. As we crossed the stream and mounted the opposite bank, a vast body of steam, followed by a jet of water 160 feet high, shot up into the air at the further end of the basin.

"There goes 'Old Faithful'!" exclaimed Dick; "the only reliable geyser in the Park. You can always bet on seeing him every sixty-five minutes."

Already encamped here, we found a large party of ladies and gentlemen from Boston, who were travelling through the Park. They informed us that the "Giantess" (perhaps the finest, but certainly the most capricious geyser of all) was expected to play in the morning, and the "Castle" to perform the next evening. There are nine principal geysers, namely, the Giant, Giantess, Castle, Grand, Beehive, Comet, Fan, Grotto, and Old Faithful. With the exception of the Grotto (which simply churns and makes an uproar), one or other of these tremendous fountains may be expected to cast a stream of water from one to two or even three hundred feet high into the air at any moment.

All geysers have not the same action, and most of them, in style of action, in the duration of their eruptions, and in the intervals that elapse between them, are apt individually to vary. Some play with laboured pumping, others throw a steady jet, some wear themselves out in a single effort, others subside only to commence again repeatedly. Thus an eruption may extend from two to twenty minutes—the approximate time occupied by the Grand—or even to one hour and twenty minutes, a period that the Giant has been known to play.

The colours that tinge the edges of some craters, and stain the courses of the streams which they send forth, are indescribably beautiful. The snowy whiteness of the grounding is relieved by dainty buffs, pale pinks, and softest Écrus, deep yellows shot with brown, orange streaked with vermilion, or straying into crimson, chocolate merging into black, and interlined with lemon—by colours, in fact, run riot, and all glistening wet beneath the clearest crystal water, that in the centre of the crater deepens into a heavenly blue. From such brilliancy it is a relief to turn to the sullen pines upon the hills.

Extinct domes and craters overgrown by flourishing trees, or mounds still bare, and even steaming, with otherwise only their immense size to attest the mighty power that formed and has capriciously deserted them, are found here and there amongst those known still to be active. Some of the more modern craters are surrounded by the skeleton trunks of trees that their eruptions have killed, and which, under the action of their mineral waters, are rapidly becoming petrified; whilst in the conflict betwixt desolation and verdure, which, owing to the frequent variation of the centres of action, is constantly in progress, the lowly bunch-grass steals ground wherever it dared draw a blade.

Of the geysers whose eruptions we witnessed, the Grand was, I think, one of the most interesting. It played each evening at a regular hour. We were thus enabled to get comfortably into front seats, focus our glasses, and discuss the programme, as it were, before the performance commenced. This it did very abruptly, although the activity displayed at a small vent-hole, and the furious bubbling in another orifice connected with it, might be accepted as premonitory symptoms. Suddenly, with a single prefatory spurt, a vast column of water, over 200 feet high, was shot into the air. For a few minutes the pressure was maintained with unrelaxed vigour, then as suddenly it ceased, and the waters shrank back out of sight in the crater. Meanwhile the vent and cauldron were still furiously labouring, and subterraneous thunder shook the ground on which we stood. After a minute's cessation, the water burst forth again without warning, and with even greater violence. This continued until nine successive pulsations had occurred, the later efforts, however, perceptibly diminishing in grandeur.

It was a marvellous sight. The maddened rush of scalding water breaking free for a moment from its mysterious captivity, the gigantic columns of dense vapour, the showers of wreathed spray and crystal darts, forming, as they fell, screen upon screen of dazzling trellis-work, the lance-like jets pennoned with puffs of steam, the underground reports, the wondrous effects of the evening sun upon the silver spears that with lightning rapidity flashed forth and were shivered, broke and reformed again, the rainbow that shone through the slowly drifting masses of gauzy mist, the glitter and softness, passion and repose, formed a scene in which majestic fury was oddly mingled with the frailest loveliness. The packers and teamsters were right: "The Yellowstone Park and them geysers were jest indescribable." Over and over again was the admission forced from us, and not least heartily when, in the dim valley at night, the ghostly columns of vapour were seen winding from amidst impenetrable shadows and invading the silent heavens, whilst the rush and splashing of those mighty fountains from time to time broke the stillness of the breathless hours.

Slightly removed from the main group here is one of minor importance, containing, nevertheless, objects of considerable interest. Chief amongst these is the Golconda spring. In some respects this is one of the most striking features in the Upper Basin. It lies in the hollow of banks that form an exact representation of an inverted horse-hoof. By tiny terraces (the creation of deposits contained in its heavily charged waters) the stream issues from the frog of the hoof, and spreads over a large surface on its shallow course to the river. There is a strange fascination in striving to pierce the profound, pellucid, and brilliant depths of this extraordinary spring. Somewhat akin the feeling is to that which impels us to gaze and gaze into some deep ravine. One could stand for hours here, tracing the ivory cliffs bathed in what seems to be a pool of melted sapphires—down, down, down to where the gleaming waters grow black and awesome, and the creamy rocks contracting, lose their fantastic imagery, and mass in mystery to form the gloomy portals of a lower world.

As a game country the Yellowstone Park is a mistake. You may kill a few antelope, an occasional elk, or deer; it would not be impossible to happen on a stray bear or bison; but to go there merely for game is to court disappointment. Besides which, hunting is restricted in the Park. Beyond its boundaries, good game countries are easy of access; within them, summer tourists have scared away all the game.[3] Nevertheless, it is always possible to kill enough birds and antelope to vary the camp fare. It is a delightful climate there in summer, and a glorious country for gipsying. He must be hard to please who would tire soon of those cool, dim pine woods and grassy glades, where the chipmunk and squirrel curiously reconnoitre you, and the odour of pine-sap is heavy on the air; where the breeze from without penetrates only in softened and saddened murmurous tones, that, in rising and falling, seem to come from so far away, to linger so short a while near you, and to die so slowly away in the unexplored aisles of the forest.

On we used to ride silently over the thick carpet of pine-quills, smoking pipe after pipe whilst we chatted unrestrainedly, or travelled back lazily over the past and its scenes in thought. From time to time we would halt, till the waggon wheels were heard creaking in the distance, and then pass on again ahead of the men. Occasionally the scene changed for a stream-threaded valley, full of beaver-dams, near which a few ducks sailed idly, in security, to the intense excitement of the wise-looking retriever, "Shot," who would glance from them to us with unmistakable meaning. Here the pine yielded place to the aspen, and the chipmunk and squirrel were succeeded by gorgeous butterflies, and red-winged grasshoppers that sprang away with a noisy clapping of wings from every tuft of grass beneath our horses' hoofs. At night, round a blazing camp fire, Dick, old Brown, B., and I would sit talking through many a pleasant hour, till the flames waxed low and red, and the vociferous snoring of the teamster and his cub warned us to turn in. Brown then "got off" his last tale or joke, and with a hearty "good night" we sought our couches of springy pine-tops and buffalo robes, where we slept the calm sleep of a natural life. What silver-lit skies spread above us; what a marvellous blue their fathomless depths embosomed; and how exquisitely delicate was the tracery of pine-boughs betwixt us and the late-rising moon! "Good night, good night!" And with a lazy yawn "Shot" would coil himself up close to me, and make himself comfortable for the night also.