  Carter H. Harrison A Summer's Outing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| INTRODUCTION. | |
| The Writer Indulges in Fancies | 9 |
| LETTER I. | |
| A Run Through Pretty Wisconsin and Minnesota — Beautiful St. Paul — Jealousy Between Twin Cities — An Indignant St. Paul Democrat and a Careless Seattle Man — Dakota and the Dirty Missouri River — A Dissertation on Waste of Land and Destruction of Trees — The Bad Lands — The Yellowstone River — Gateway to National Park and its Guardian Eagle | 15 |
| LETTER II. | |
| The National Park, "The Wonderland of the Globe" — The Home of the Evil One — Steam Vents — Geysers — The Grotto — The Giant — The Bee-Hive — The Castle and Old Faithful in the Upper Geyser Basin | 27 |
| LETTER III. | |
| Mammoth Hot Springs — A Wonderful Formation — The White Elephant — A Theory Accounting for the Hot Springs and Geysers — Mud Geysers — Marvelous Colorings of Some Pools | 45 |
| LETTER IV. | |
| How to do the Park — Hotels and Vehicles — My Innocents — Charming Scenery — Natural Meadows — Wild Animals — Beautiful Flowers — Debts to the Devil — Camp Life and Fishing — Wonderful Canyon — Painted Rocks — Glorious Waterfalls — Nature Grotesque and Beautiful | 59 |
| LETTER V. | |
| We Leave the Park Satisfied — Helena — Its Gold Bearing Foundations — Broadwater — A Magnificent Natatorium — A Wild Ride Through Town — Crossing the Rockies — Spokane — A Busy Town — Midnight Picnic — Fine Agricultural Country — Sage Bush a Blessing — Picturesque Run Over the Cascades — Acres of Malt Liquors — Tacoma — A Startling Vision of Mt. Renier (Tacoma) — Washington, a Great State | 82 |
| LETTER VI. | |
| Thriving and Picturesque Seattle — Two Curious Meetings — Victoria and its Flowers — Esquimault and the Warspite — Two Broken Hearted Girls — Charming Sail on the Island Sea — Picturesque Mountains — Growth of Alaska — Whales and their Sports — Native Alaskans — Their Homes, Habits, Food, Feasts and Wild Music — Baskets and Blankets — Salmon Fisheries — Mines and Dogs | 102 |
| LETTER VII. | |
| Steaming up the Ice-Packed Fiords and Channels of the Arctic Country owned by Uncle Sam — Salmon Canneries — Canoe Building by Natives — Ascent of the "Muir" Glacier, an Ice Cliff 300 Feet High — Fantastic Ice Formations at Takou — Summer and Winter Climates — Impudent Crows and Oratorical Ravens | 134 |
| LETTER VIII. | |
| Vancouver — A Picturesque, Growing City — A Run over the Canadian Pacific — Magnificent Scenery met with from the Start — A Glorious Ride — Fraser River Glutted with Salmon — A Never-Tiring View from Glacier House, Four Thousand Feet above the Sea — Rugged, Precipitous Grandeur of the Selkirks and Rockies — Natural Beauties of Banff — Reflections at the "Soo." | 162 |
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| The St. Mary's River — Charming Scenery — The Locality for Summer Homes — An Episode — Mackinaw — Grand Rapids, a Beautiful City | 196 |
| PART II. | |
| "THE OLD MAN'S STORY." | |
| The Secret of the Big Rock | 203 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
| Carter H. Harrison, (Frontispiece.) | ||
| Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs | Page | 16 |
| The Giant, Upper Geyser Basin | " | 32 |
| Jupiter Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs | " | 48 |
| Map Illustrating Geyser Actions | " | 54 |
| The Grotto, Upper Geyser Basin | " | 64 |
| The Biscuit Bowl, Upper Basin | " | 80 |
| Old Faithful | " | 90 |
| Grand Canyon | " | 112 |
INTRODUCTION.
THE WRITER INDULGES IN FANCIES.
The summer outing is a fad—a necessity of fashion. Reigning beauty bares its brow on ocean waves and climbs mountain heights, courting sun-kisses. Jaunty sailor hats and narrow visored caps are donned, that the amber burning of the summer's excursion may be displayed at early assemblies of heraldic Four Hundred. Anglo-mania has taught at least one good lesson—that the russet cheek of romping health is more kiss-tempting than the rose-in-cream of beauty lolling on downy cushions. Elite closes its massive doors and draws down front window shades; Paterfamilias sweats in his struggle to force a balance to the credit side, and mothers and daughters sit at back windows in glare of sunlight, wooing sun-beams, while notices of "Out of town" are already placarded on front stoops.
The summer outing is urged by honest doctors, with the admission that change of air and scene is oftentimes worth more than all the nostrums doled out over apothecaries' counters. Motion is nature's first inexorable law. A tiny drop of water is pressed between two plates of glass, apparently rendering the slightest motion impossible. The microscope fills it with scores or hundreds of beings full of life and energy, disporting in pleasure or waging deadly battle. Around us and about us nothing is still. The grasses grow in refreshing green and spring beneath the feet, but ere the wane of day, wither and crackle under the tread. Flowers bloom in beauty and within the hour fade in ugliness. The rock ribs of earth expand and contract under tidal commands of sun and moon, and continents lift from, or are sinking beneath briny oceans.
The gleaming sun, so rounded in glowing calmness as he gently circles across the vaulted sky, is a raging mass of countless millions boiling, dashing, burning jets, in any one of which fiery Vesuvius would be lost as a dim spark. Myriads of starry spheres flecking the midnight sky, are mighty suns tortured by inconceivable convulsions. Far off beyond them the telescopic lens dips up from limitless space countless suns, all boiling, roaring and raging in unending, monstrous motion.
Motion evolves change. Change goes on everywhere, declares science! Change, cries orthodoxy, is universal save in One—the everlasting, unchangeable maker of all things! Orthodoxy tells us that man—man the soul—, was made in God's image and was by him pronounced good. The "good" in God's eye must be perfect. We know that man—the soul man—grows—the perfect therefore grows and perfection becomes more perfect. A Paradox! So is that mathematical truth that two parallel lines drawn towards infinity, meet.
The deathless soul emanates from God. Is the question irreverent? May not the Eternal who started then and keeps all things moving and growing—may not He grow in perfection? May not the Omnipotent become more potent, the Omniscient wiser? Being given to digression, I give this in advance to save the reader one later on.
In obedience to fashion's and nature's law, I would put myself in motion and would seek change. I will take an "outing" in this summer of A.D. 1890.
My daughter, a school girl, will go with me. The old and those growing old, should attach to themselves the young. Old tree trunks in tropical climes wrap themselves in thrifty growing vines. The green mantle wards off the sun's hot rays, and prevents to some extent too rapid evaporation. Gray-haired grandfathers oftentimes delight to promenade with toddling grandchildren. This is good for momentary divertissement, but for steady regimen it is a mistake. Callow childhood furnishes not to the old, proper companionship. The unfledged but intense vitality of the one may sap the slow-running current of the other, and reduce it to the lower level—to second childhood. Age should tie to itself ripening youth. Then heart and springtide is absorbed by the older, and ripe experience given to the younger in exchange.
We resolve to do the Yellowstone National Park, by way of the Northern Pacific Railroad, thence onward to Puget Sound and Alaska to return by the Canadian Pacific. We hope for health, pleasure and brain food. I shall write of our goings and comings, that my friends at home may through our eyes feel that they are voyaging with us.
A beautiful or grand scene is doubly enjoyed when one feels he may through a letter have hundreds see what he sees and as he sees. They become his companions and hold sweet communion with him, though thousands of miles may lie between them. This is sympathy, and sympathy makes the joy of life. The tete-a-tete between lovers "beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," is delicious. But not more sweet than the communion between the orator and the mighty audience which he sways and bends at will. He holds a tete-a-tete with each of his listeners.
Byron swore he "loved not the world, nor the world him." The bard was self-deceived. He wrote that he might win the sympathy of millions. Bayard Taylor told the writer once that he wrote from an irresistible impulse. His warm, generous nature yearned for the sympathy of a reading world. I shall write that a few hundred may see through my eyes—may feel when my heart beats, and for a few brief hours may be in sympathy with me. Some one possibly may sneer "Cacoethes Scribendi." Catch the retort, "Honi soit qui Mal-y-pense."
LETTER I.
A RUN THROUGH PRETTY WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. BEAUTIFUL ST. PAUL. JEALOUSY BETWEEN TWIN CITIES. AN INDIGNANT ST. PAUL DEMOCRAT AND A CARELESS SEATTLE MAN. DAKOTA AND THE DIRTY MISSOURI RIVER. A DISSERTATION ON WASTE OF LAND AND DESTRUCTION OF TREES. THE BAD LANDS. THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER. GATEWAY TO NATIONAL PARK AND ITS GUARDIAN EAGLE.
Mammoth Hot Springs, July 17, 1890.
We left Chicago by the Wisconsin Central Railroad for St. Paul. From the beginning the run was interesting, especially to one who remembers what the country was thirty-five years ago—an almost flat prairie of tangled grass, in which the water was held as in a morass, promising but little to the ambitious earth-tiller. I recall a remark of Senator Douglas when the future of our flat prairies was being discussed in my presence thirty-five years ago: "People do not realize that the drainage problem is being now daily solved. The leader of a herd of cattle browsing the prairies, is an engineer, and his followers faithful laborers in making ditches. When going to and from their grazing grounds, they march in line and tread down paths which make no mean drains. The cattle of Illinois are annually lifting millions of acres out of the swamp into good arable lands."
As soon as the Des Plaines was crossed, good farms began, and comfortable farm houses were always in sight; oats bent and waved in light green, and corn stood sturdy in emerald, where a third of a century ago, even in July, a pedestrian was compelled to step from ant-hill to ant-hill to keep his ankles dry. Copses of young wood relieved the monotony of too much flatness, and in a few hours after our start, pretty lakes shimmered in the sinking sun light, and sweetly homelike villas were ever in view. We crossed the Wisconsin line, and hill and vale or gentle undulations with wooded heights and flowing streams, and villages and saw mills enlivened the journey.
TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 16.)
In the distant future when population shall become abundant, and tasteful homesteads shall replace somewhat speculative shanties, few countries of the world will be more pleasingly rural than southern and middle Wisconsin.
Books should be carried by the tourist in his trunk, and newspapers should be religiously discarded throughout the run to St. Paul. The country traversed opens many a pleasing page during the summer months, and glowing pictures are spread before him on nature's living canvass. He unfortunately loses much when the curtain of night is drawn over God's own impartial book: the book which never misleads if carefully read and studiously digested.
At St. Paul we had some hours to ride about the pretty town, before boarding the Northern Pacific railroad for our long journey to Puget's Sound. This great road has the singular characteristic of having double termini at each end, and between each of the twins there exists a feud rarely found except between cities engaged in actual war with each other.
Athens and Sparta hated each other not as do St. Paul and Minneapolis. Just now, owing to the taking of the census, there is blood in the eye of every St. Paulite. An elderly gentleman introduced himself to me the other day at the station. After a while he said: "It is a —— shame the way the United States is treating St. Paul. I am a Democrat, sir, and can stand a little stuffing of the ballot-box, but I draw the line there. I can't stand the stuffing of the census. We are willing to concede to Minneapolis 10,000 more population than we have, but Harrison ought to be turned out of office for running it up to 40,000. It is a fraud, sir—a miserable Republican fraud. We will be revenged, sir, and will show our teeth next fall and don't you forget it." I sympathized with him and felt like marching to Washington at once to send my cousin Ben back to Hoosierdom.
In the National Park I saw at four different hotels the names of Mr. —— Mrs. —— and two little blanks. There was a bracket after the names, but the writer had evidently forgotten to write in the address. The name preceding his on the first book was from Boston. At the next place the preceding person was from New York, and again from some other city. The fourth day at dinner I was introduced to the head of the family. He was from Seattle. I asked him why it was he had not put in his address, declaring I would tell it on him at Tacoma. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "have I done that?" He rushed back to the register and wrote "Seattle" as big as a John Hancock. The next time we met in a crowd, I twitted him about the thing. He then declared he must have left out the address instinctively from a natural aversion to being known to come from any spot so close to Tacoma. Considerable jealousy of St. Paul on the part of her twin city is natural, for it is a beautiful town. Its residences on the hills are very fine, and their locations lovely beyond those of all but few cities. The entire town was very clean, and in the hill portion bright and cheerful. The residences are generally surrounded by considerable grounds, filled with trees and shrubbery, in much variety and in luxuriant growth. The young girl with me fell so completely in love with the clean, pretty place, that she declared, if she ever got married it would be to a St. Paul man.
The run through Minnesota is as if through a great park. Everything is green and bright. Copse, meadow and field are as fresh as a May morning. The natural location of frequent wooded clumps, of prairie openings and of lakes, could hardly be improved by a landscape engineer. We passed the great wheat fields of Dakota at night, but I thought there was far less of barren plain and alkali patches as we approached the Missouri river, than I saw there seven years ago.
How different the feelings with which we approached the Missouri from those experienced as we drew near the Mississippi! One cannot get up a feeling of respect for the tortuous, treacherous, muddy, long and snake-like ditch. One takes off his hat to the Father of Waters, but feels like kicking, if he had a place to kick, this lengthy, nasty thing. No one can see any real use for it, except as a tributary to and feeder of the Mississippi. It has not and never had a placid infancy. Several of its upper feeders are beautiful, clear, rapid, purling streams. But some of them apparently without rhyme or reason suddenly become flowing mud. One dashes on a train along one and wishes he could alight to cast a fly for a speckled beauty. The road takes a turn around a mountain spur, and lo! the crystal stream has become liquid mud, to prepare itself, I suppose, for the mucky thing it will soon join. Possibly and probably, these transformations are owing to a miner's camp and a placer washing on the other side of the spur.
North Dakota has not become settled along the railroad, after quitting the great wheat belt, as I expected. Farms are very scattered, and when seen are small and wear an air of neglect. Yet the native plains are cheerful looking and roll off in green undulations. The Forest Commissioners, if there be any, must find some more hardy species of trees than those now used to enable them to grow brakes for warding off the winds and blizzards. The railroad people have planted many trees, but they do not thrive. They seem alive about the roots, but dead after reaching one or two feet. Possibly a blanket of snow lies about the roots in winter and protects them; but the alternation of cold and hot winds apparently kills the sap as it rises higher up. Government should inaugurate a thorough system of arboriculture, inviting and encouraging a real science.
The Socialists say the Nation should own the land. To a certain degree the Socialists are right. The fountain of land ownership is in the Government. It should maintain such ownership to a certain extent throughout all time. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Government is and should be the lord of the domain, and should never part with such control as may prevent private owners from destroying the land which is to be the heritage of the people to the latest generation. It should forbid and prevent a waste of land. To this end it should force the husbanding of all resources for the improvement of that which is to support the people for all time. No private owner should be allowed to destroy wantonly that which comes from mother earth. What comes from the bosom of the land, and is not essential to feed and maintain the cultivator, should be given back to it. A man should be fined who burns manure. Man should not cut timber to such an extent as to reduce a necessary rainfall. Commissioners should determine from scientific data, how much of forest is necessary in fixed districts of the country, and when so determined no one should be permitted to cut a tree without replacing it by a young one. In the Old World millions of acres are now worthless which once supported teeming populations; all because they have been denuded of trees. Nearly all European countries as well as India are now, and have been for some years, earnestly endeavoring to check this evil. Commissioners of Forestry, earnest and educated men, have been appointed. Schools of Forestry are fostered by the state. The betterment has been so marked, that the ordinary pleasure seeking traveler sees a wonderful change between visits separated by twenty or thirty years. America has countless millions of acres scarcely capable of supporting a human being, which could be made to wave in cereals or grow fat in edible roots, if only trees were grown to induce a somewhat regular rainfall.
The arid plains of the Great West have the richest of known soils, if a little human sweat mixed with water in sufficient quantity could be kneaded into it. Government as the lord paramount of its domain, should force the growing of trees and should prevent the destruction of timber wherever the same is necessary to keep up or improve the land. It has parted with the title to the soil, but still retains the power to use it for its own support. It levies and collects taxes from lands as the paramount owner. The same power exists to prevent the waste of that from which its taxes spring or through which its people may live.
"No one is a man," says the Arab maxim, "until he has planted a tree, dug a well, and grown a boy." The nation is an aggregation of men and should follow the maxim. The statesman who devises a good system of taxation is entitled to the praises of all men, but he is but a pigmy to the man who turns sterile deserts into places of plenty, or who make many blades of grass grow where now only one springs up. I am ready to bow down before the man who will maintain and improve the soil of our Eastern States, or will shower over the West a copious rainfall.
Bismark was disappointing. It has not improved as could have been expected since we helped to lay the corner-stone of its Capitol seven years ago.
BAD LANDS OR "MAUVAISES TERRES."
The "bad lands" are as God-forsaken in appearance as they were years since. There the very earth has been burned and the Evil One seems to have set his foot-print on every rod. Men do live in them, but more blessed is he who dies in genial surroundings! What a hold upon us has the love of life! So short and such a bauble! How worthless when robbed, as it must be in this bleak tract, of every concomitant of the joyful! Only the All-powerful can reclaim the soil of the "bad lands," and not until a cataclysm has carried it 1,000 fathoms beneath the sea, will it be fitted for sunlight and ready to support life. It has been burned up with the coals and lignites which underlaid the surface. After striking the Yellowstone Valley the ride westward becomes pretty. The mountains are bold, with fine outlines, often lifting in picturesque precipices from the water's edge. Great strata of coal are frequently seen stretching in level parallel lines for considerable distances. Snow appears in seams and gorges on the loftiest heights. While not offering as grand displays as are seen in one or two points of other across-the-continent roads, the Northern Pacific presents more varied scenery, and far more that is pleasing and restful to the eye, than any other except the Canadian Pacific.
To most travelers much of the scenery of the Northern Pacific until Helena is reached is monotonous. But to one disposed to be a student of nature and a lover of its varied forms, many instructive lessons can be conned from the car window, and many pleasing pictures hastily enjoyed. The Yellowstone, along whose banks the road runs for three hundred and fifty miles, is a cheerful stream. When first reached it is muddy, but after the mouths of one or two large affluents have been passed it becomes clear and limpid. Its flow is almost constantly rapid and turbulent. But few still reaches are seen, and these are rarely over a mile or so in length. On one or the other bank considerable mountains lift from the water's edge, in lofty, clear-cut precipices. The upper slopes have but few trees and rarely any clumps or masses, but offer much variety in earth coloring. Light brown, sometimes deepening into chocolate, is the dominant tone. There are frequent stretches of yellow, here and there flecked with patches or bands of venetian red. This latter sometimes takes a tint so bright as to merit being called vermilion.
At Livingston, a thousand and odd miles from St. Paul, we left the Northern Pacific, and by a narrow-gauge road continued up the Yellowstone, fifty-one miles to Cinnabar; thence by Park coaches, wagonettes and surreys, eight miles along the wildly rushing Gardner river, and through a narrow defile hemmed in by lofty precipices beneath frowning crags—the gateway to the park—to the "Mammoth Hot Springs." Near the gateway on a lofty pinnacled rock, so slender as at first to be mistaken for the trunk of a huge tree, sat an eagle upon its eyrie, keeping watch and ward over the entrance to the people's pleasure ground. The bird's nest is built of loose sticks laid upon the rocky point, which is not broader than a good-sized tree stump. How it withstands the dash of storms, which often rage through the narrow pass, is a marvel. Yet it has been there for many years, and each year sends forth its young brood. I regret to say this eagle is not the genuine American screamer, which so grandly spreads its wings upon the daddy's dollar, but is the great white-headed fish-hawk. He is easily mistaken for the bald eagle, but is smaller and a somewhat sociable bird, building his home near by those of others of his species. The true eagle is sullen and solitary, and chooses his eyrie many miles removed from his fellows. Indeed he spurns all fellowship with his kind.
All tourists delight to look at the "Devils Slide" in the Gardner canyon. It is from five to six hundred feet high, a few feet broad, between thin slate dykes, and as smooth as a toboggan way. As there is no record that the father of lies was acquainted with sand paper, there is a peculiar pleasure in imagining the grinding away of the seat of his trousers, while he was polishing down his coaching slide. In spite of what the preachers say, there is no doubt that man, woman and child hate the devil, and are delighted by any evidence of annoyance to him.
LETTER II.
THE NATIONAL PARK, "THE WONDERLAND OF THE GLOBE." THE HOME OF THE EVIL ONE. STEAM VENTS. GEYSERS. THE GROTTO. THE GIANT. THE BEE HIVE. THE CASTLE AND OLD FAITHFUL IN THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN.
Grand Canyon,
Yellowstone National Park, July 22.
American dudes of both sexes wandering about the world have been sorely perplexed because Uncle Sam has had no huge ships of war with which to display his grandeur in foreign ports, and no embassadorial residences in which Yankee heels may air themselves to advantage. When foreigners have made allusion to our poverty in this regard, and their own wealth of splendor, we have been forced to fall back upon the Yankee's retort, "Yes; but you hain't got no Niagary." Luckily but few of those who taunted us were aware that Niagara was simply located in the United States but did not belong to it. But now we can throw back at the effete denizens of other lands "the wonderland of the globe,"—The Yellowstone National Park—in which there is more of the marvelous sports of nature than exists in the entire outer world besides. We can tell them of these wonders, and can then say that these marvels are the Nation's, and that this park of over 3,500 square miles is maintained by the Nation for the people, for their amusement and recreation. It is to be regretted that more of the surplus which has been lying idle in the treasury vaults has not been expended to enable the people to better enjoy their wealth of wonders. The people may read of their treasures; they may see folios of illustrations, but no one can comprehend them without seeing them; no pen pictures can bring them before the eye of one who has not been here; no photograph can display their forms and then dye them in their wondrous colors; no painter can spread them upon canvas, for he would at once be put down as an artistic liar. The simple truth is an exaggeration, and a precise copy is a distortion of nature's molds.
THE EVIL SPIRIT'S ABODE.
No wonder the Indians have given this section of the country a wide berth, for well might they believe it the home of the evil spirit. One of them straying here might wander for days and never mount an elevated point without being able to count scores of columns of white steam lifting above the trees from different points of the forest, telling him of the wigwams of the evil one. If he stole along the valleys, he would come upon pools of water of crystal clearness tempting in appearance to the thirsty; some of them not larger than the blanket which covered his shoulders, others so large that the tepees of half his tribe would not cover their area; some mere jagged holes in the rock, others with rims a foot or so in height, and as regular as his pipe of peace. Here are some a few inches or a few feet in depth, with bottoms and sides painted in rainbow tints; there are others with deep sunken walls embossed and tufted, and dyed with the colors of the setting sun, and with dark throats so deep that they seem to be yawning from fathomless depths. Here they are as placid as the eye of the papoose hanging at the squaw mother's back. Our Indian pauses at the painted brink of one, dips his hand into the tempting fluid—jerks it back quickly, but perhaps not before it is scalded. There they boil up one, two, three or more feet and appear as though they would pour out a flood from below, but not a drop passes over the rim of the pool. The boiling motion is from volumes of steam working its way through the waters from the bowels of the earth and spreading upon the breeze. Boiling water elsewhere wastes itself away, but these pools boil and boil from year to year, and scarcely vary perceptibly in height. Our untutored tourist turns his eye upon the mountain bordering the valley, whose sides are so encrusted with geyserite deposit that it appears to have been formed of this material, and to have been erected by boiling springs; along its whitened side and far up on its crest are springs or vents, from which arise columns of lifting steam and the mountain seems to roar; startled, he hears close to his feet, a gurgling sound such as comes from an animal whose throat is newly cut. His eye seeks the spot whence comes this sound of death. He sees an orifice in the ground not large enough to take in his body, but from it comes the death rattle a hundred times louder than the largest buffalo could make when pierced about its heart. The Evil Spirit is slaying an animal so huge that if he were on the ground its tread would shake the earth.
A WONDERFUL PLATEAU.
He climbs over a mountain spur and sees spread before him a white plateau of several hundred acres. Jets of steam are pouring from a thousand points of its surface, some rising only a few feet, others lifting 500 feet into the air; here from fountains boiling merely, or spouting up to one, two, or more feet; there from simple vent holes in the nearly level surface of the plain. Some pour from fantastic forms—great stumps of trees with one side torn away; from piles of downy cushions; from great platters of biscuit, a part as white as dough, others crisp and brown; from ruined castles; from orifices bordered by mighty, parted, Ethiopian lips of whitish gray tone or painted red and brown. One is fashioned like an old time conical straw bee-hive. So well is the model copied, that no great stretch of imagination would be required to enable one to hear the buzz of busy honey makers swarming about it. Another is a rude cabin chimney with steam lifting from its top, in lieu of smoke curling from a woodman's fire.
He approaches one which might once have been a grotto, with stalagmites and stalactites forming its ribs and roof, but the superincumbent earth having been removed, the stony skeleton is laid bare, partly a dozen or more feet above the ground and partly sunken below. From its hollow pit comes a roaring sound not unlike the growl of a lion when feeding, only of a king of beasts many fold enlarged. He hears close by it a noise he takes to be the call of a familiar bird. There is no bird in sight, but near his feet in the rocky platform is a small vent he could close with his thumb; it is breathing, but its breath is high heated steam; its inspiration is a gentle gurgle, its expiration is the blue jay's call.
Its breath comes from deep below, from the lungs of the monster whose stertorous breathing is an indication that he is turning over in his hidden lair; and as he turns he belches forth a mouthful of steam and water through the grotto. He has evidently eaten something disagreeable and is sick in the regions of the maw, for up comes another and a larger mouthful; and then another and more, until he pours out his very insides in tons of boiling water. Through every opening of the grotto's frame, water and steam rush forth in mighty volume. Thousands of gallons to the minute lift in jets ten to thirty feet through each opening, and run in great streams to the crystal river a little way below. The monster bellows, the vents about the grotto's base whistle, the water splashes, and the steam rushes, scalding hot. After a while—perhaps in twenty or thirty minutes—all flowing ceases, and a column of steam pours out for perhaps an hour and lifts several hundred feet into the air.
"THE GIANT" IN ACTION.
While this strange action is being seen, close by, a rumbling noise is heard in the depths of "The Giant," 200 or 300 yards away. The noise increases, not unlike that of an approaching railroad train, and is soon accompanied by a discharge of water three or more feet in diameter at the geyser nozzle, lifted in an almost vertical column 150 to 200 feet high, all enveloped in a veil of steam. This pours through the top of a geyserite formation some ten feet high, and a dozen or fifteen from out to out—a monster stump, broken and jagged as if a monarch of the forest had been snapped off by a mighty storm blast.
THE GIANT, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 33.)
The flood drops all about in spray, veiling the lifted column, and is of such quantity that the river nearly seventy-five feet wide, is doubled in depth when the monster is in action.
Our accidental red tourist has lost his Indian stoicism, and wishes to see something more of the Devil's doings. The "Giant" having become silent, he steals along the white formation a few hundred yards, when, from a small hole in the ground, without any warning, up shoots a beautiful little geyser about twenty feet high, a perfect spreading jet d'eau, accompanied by no steam and lasting only perhaps a quarter of a minute. The action of this little jet over, every drop of its lifted water flows back into its mouth and disappears down its throat; but not for long, for it again shoots up in four minutes, and is so regular in its action, that it has been christened "Young Faithful."
The plateau here spoken of—"The upper geyser basin"—is two or more miles long and of irregular width, probably averaging a third of a mile. It is all white with encrusted geyserite deposit often giving out a hollow sound to the tread. This deposit varies in thickness from a few inches to several feet. It is grayish white, resembling tarnished frozen snow.
THE SPLENDID—200 FEET HIGH.
But see that noble column spouting 200 feet high in a somewhat slanting stream not far from a quarter of a mile away. Close by a smaller jet shoots obliquely, mingling its spray with the larger one. The tourist is too far removed to see the brilliant rainbow formed in the mingling spray. But let him wait some hours and he may visit it again to witness another active eruption from the "Splendid Geyser," which pours four times a day from a simple hole in the rock, and has as yet builded himself no geyserite nozzle. A short walk brings one to the "Devil's Punch Bowl," where the old Fiend takes his nocturnal nip, from a basin a few feet in diameter, inclosed by an embossed rim a foot high and as regular as the raised edge of a Dresden punch bowl, and always boiling and seething to keep the tipple hot and ready.
In this plateau are hundreds of pools of exquisite colorings, and scores of geysers lifting more or less regularly and at shorter or longer intervals; some of the intervals being of hours, others of days and others still measured only by minutes. The geysers are all named in accordance with a supposed resemblance of their formation to some known thing, or to the character, size or quality of their eruptions; "The Queen," "The King," "The Bee-hive," "The Castle," "The Princess," "Old Faithful," "The Excelsior," "The Splendid" and so on. The pools take their names generally from the colorings of their rims or sides, or of the water held in them, as "The Emerald," "The Amethyst," "The Sunset," "The Rainbow" and "The Morning Glory." Some of the pools are named from the nature of their boilings, others from the rock formation in their throats and about their sides; "The Biscuit Bowl," "The Snow-ball," "The Spouter." Many of the names are by no means far fetched. The "Biscuit Bowl," for example, resembles a mass of well formed monster breakfast rolls, some in whitened dough, others in all stages of brown from the half done to the well baked.
The tourist approaches a flattened cone, with a base 600 or 800 feet in circumference, and fifty feet high, surmounted by the ruins of an old castle. The owner of the "Castle" has been growling all day and emitting an unusual amount of steam. He is evidently preparing to erupt, which he does at intervals of several days. His terrific growlings increase as the day wears on, and angry spurts of boiling water accompanied by steam show he is getting his temper up to white heat. He has been quiet for an unusual time of late and when aroused, like Othello, he will be fearfully moved. He makes a few angry premonitory belches and bellows. The noise is accompanied by a trembling of the earth for hundreds of yards. A mass of water is then ejected from 50 to 100 feet up, mixed with steam in dense mass. The flow of water is of short duration; but is of thousands of tons, and is followed by an emission of steam large enough to run an ocean steamer. This steam escape can be heard for a mile or more, and sounds like the roar made by a Long Island Sound steamer blowing salt from its boilers. The noise is continuous for an hour; it gradually lessens, however, until it ceases entirely. Steam is then lazily emitted continuously, and a loud gurgling noise is constant deep down in the Geyser throat. This is more or less the case with nearly all of the geysers. A few, however, become so quiet, that very close attention is necessary to catch any boiling noise. The "Castle" geyser blows off for hours before his steam generators are cleaned.
IT SCARES THE WHITE MAN.
Our red cheeked tourist has stoicism, but he cannot stay over this Devil's kitchen long enough to see half of the mighty vents in action. One, which but rarely plays, shakes the very earth. A good white man, who flatters himself that he is a child of God and believes in sovereign reigning grace, is struck by it with awe akin to terror.
But there is one geyser which becomes familiar to the civilized tourist and seems to win from him a sort of affection, because of his conscientious behavior. His very regularity, however, would strike the more terror into the heart of the untutored red man. He has built his home under a mound 300 yards in circumference and twenty or so feet high at its apex, upon which he has cast a geyserite chimney ten to fifteen feet high and six or eight in diameter. This chimney he has ornamented within and without with huge tufted beads, and painted those within with rose and white, orange and brown, red and grey. These adjuncts, however, do not compare to those of many others, for some of them seem to have wrapped their throats in great pillows, hard as gypsum, but looking as soft and tufty as if made of swans down, while others have painted their inside linings with all the tints of the rainbow; and their crystal clear water seems to have caught the cerulean blue from the heavens and are holding it in solution.
But to return to this geyser; for nearly an hour he has been as quiet as a lamb, just enough of steam arising from his throat to show he is gently breathing. The steam breath gradually grows and is exhaled with more vigor. Presently he belches up a barrel or so of water which falls back into his throat. Then in a minute come two or three such little spasms, when up lifts a rounded column two or three feet in diameter, rising higher and higher in exact perpendicularity 150 feet high. The jet breaks more or less as it rises into pointed sprays, which, when there is no wind blowing, fall with almost precise regularity about the up going column.
WATCHES ARE SET BY IT.
In about five minutes the jet of water ceases, but is followed by considerable steam emissions for a quarter of an hour, when one can look down into his throat and see the crystal water ten to fifteen feet below the apex, and all quiet and still. So regular is the action of this geyser that one could, by watching it, almost dispense with a watch. He never plays in less than sixty-three minutes, and never delays action longer than seventy. Indeed, some of his most constant admirers declare these variations are the fault of watches, not of "Old Faithful." Thus he is named, and as such is known far and near. There are several of these geyser-basins scattered over the park from ten to twenty-five miles apart, the principal ones being the "Norris," the "Lower Geyser Basin" and the "Upper Geyser Basin." These are reached in succession on the tourist road from "Mammoth Hot Springs."
The regular tourist, starting from Mammoth Hotel, dines at the "Norris" and sleeps at the "Lower Basin." The next day, if he prefers to go on with his coach, he passes the "Excelsior," which is the hugest of all the geysers, and has been for two or three years nearly quiet, but this year is in tolerable eruption. It is a vast pool, possibly over two hundred feet in diameter. When quiet, water about twenty feet below the pool rim boils, seethes and tosses in horrible motion. It erupted just as our party reached it, but not in one of its grand actions. A mass of water possibly many feet in diameter was lifted fifty or more feet in the air. It is said that when in full eruption the height of the column is from two to three hundred feet. This I doubt. The mass of steam enveloping the jet is so great that the water column is entirely hidden, and has given rise to exaggeration on the part of those who have seen it at its best. The basin of the Excelsior is called "Hell's half acre," and it is by no means a misnomer, for the earth trembles, and the roar when the geyser is in action is that of an earthquake, while great stones are scattered about for several hundred feet. Close by it are the "Prismatic Springs" and the "Turquoise." The first is two or more hundred feet in diameter and is a placid mass of scalding water. It has various depths; in the center where very deep, it is of an indigo blue which shades off into a bluish green; then where very shallow, it runs off into yellow, orange, red and brown, while some circles are white. It is a marvel of beauty. The color of the Turquoise is precisely described by its name.
The whole park plateau is filled with hot springs, which are building up elevations with their deposit and mounting them as they build. The water is all clear as crystal, but holds in solution lime, iron, sulphur and other minerals, which it deposits sufficiently fast to encrust a key, horseshoe, or other piece of metal in three or four days with a solid enamel—say the sixteenth of an inch in thickness—and of the appearance of second-class white sugar.
The geysers eject, when in action, large quantities of water, but the springs, though boiling and spouting, and appearing to be lifting much water, flow over their rims in very small streams. As they flow they build up their margins, which are thus made almost exactly level. This gentle flow runs off in wavy ripples generally; not in little rivulets, but in thin sheets, depositing the solid matter they have held in solution while below, which is freed by the action of the atmosphere. In this way the springs lift themselves, and build lofty hills. The deposit when fresh is hard, but when dry becomes generally friable, though there are cases where it maintains great hardness. These deposits often times wear beautiful colors, and nearly always do so when being made or while under water. Some of the quiet pools are over 100 feet in diameter. The outer edges when shallow are of a deep brown, followed by a lighter brown or red, then blending into a yellow and followed by a yellow olive, and deepening as they sink into dark olive, while in the deep throats they are almost black. The water before it makes the deepest point, in some is of emerald greenness, in others of exquisite blue; along the steep sloping walls assuming a rich amethyst or tinted in exquisite sapphire.
All deposits take either a wavy or a tufted form, whether on gentle slopes or on perpendicular walls. Some steep walls are not unlike slightly tufted fleeces of wool. The tufts are of all sizes, from that of an orange up to others as large as a bushel basket. One can scarcely realize that these tufts are hard. They appear beneath the water to be as light and soft as newly fallen snow upon an evergreen bush. Some of them are creamy white, others yellow, orange and all shades of brown. In one of the Geyser basins is a large pool actually used by the hotel people as a laundry tub. If you will promise not to mention it I will confess two evidences on my part of weakness. I always shed tears at the theatres, and I washed some handkerchiefs in this boiling pool and they came out nicely white.
NATURE'S PAINT-POTS.
To many, the paint-pots at the "Lower Basin" are the most curious things seen in the park. Imagine somewhat rounded pits of all sizes from those a few inches in diameter to others of forty and even sixty feet across, filled with fine white mud or mortar, such as plasterers call putty, and used by them for hard finish. This is boiling and plopping (I coin this word) like mush in huge pots, or thick soap in mighty caldrons. In boiling, the big bubbles lazily lift several inches high, and more lazily burst with a muffled noise, and sputter dabs of thick paste several feet into the air. Falling upon the rim of the pool, these erect a wall—now smooth as a plastered wall—and then in rough grotesque finish. No mortar made up for a first-class plaster finish was ever tempered as is this natural paste. When dry and pulverized it is an almost impalpable powder. The paste is sometimes white, but more often is of a pale scotch gray. One large pool is half white or whitish grey, the other half of a delicate peach blow. In one pot the putty was a pretty pink salmon. Putting these three colors on a cardboard to dry, I found that much of the coloring disappeared after exposure to the atmosphere. At one basin between the Yellowstone canyon and the great Yellowstone Lake, the mortar is of dark mud, pure and simple, and is lifted many feet in the air, and falling, is sucked back into a monster throat with horrible gurgling sound. Go to a slaughter house to see a stuck pig breathing his last. Multiply his agonizing throes several hundred fold and a good idea can be had of the struggle of these hidden monsters. One of the mud geysers is said at times to be so violent in its action, that the earth trembles for a very considerable distance, when the monster is in full eruption. Curiously there will sometimes be found a pool of crystal pure water boiling or spouting not many feet away, and in one instance, close to a mud boiling pool is a large spring of pure cold water. One is tempted to wish to turn one of these into the mouth of the mud geyser to wash down its throat and ease its agony. Neither the mud nor the white mortar in these craters overflow, but bubble, sputter, and plop year after year. The particles are as impalpable as the fine ground paint upon an artist's easel.
All kinds of pools, geysers and paint-pots are heated more or less highly, all of them nearly up to, and some much above boiling point. The heating is not from the visible water being near to any fire or heated surface, but from super-heated steam, generated far below, being forced through the surface water. Sometimes only steam escapes through the surface orifices. These are called vents. The steam coming from some of these is so hot that the skin would be taken from the hand by a single instantaneous application. They seem to be a sort of safety valves from the great steam generators in the bowels of the earth. No wonder the Indian gives this country a clear berth, or that a good schoolmarm tourist constantly had on her lips Hades! Hades!! Hades!!! To be candid, I think she used the old fashioned word.
LETTER III.
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. A WONDERFUL FORMATION. THE WHITE ELEPHANT. A THEORY ACCOUNTING FOR THE HOT SPRINGS AND GEYSERS. MUD GEYSERS. MARVELOUS COLORINGS OF SOME POOLS.
The tourist entering the National Park by way of Livingston through the Gardner Canyon, and rocky Gateway, at about sixty miles reaches the "Mammoth Hot Springs". Here he sees a surprising formation. Before him rises in terraces each from twenty to thirty feet high, a great white cataract looking mass, several hundred feet high, bulging out into the valley. The center projects with rounded contour far beyond the wings, which recede on either side, and to be seen must be skirted. The entire bent crest is not far from three miles in length. When first approached, it strikes the eye as a succession of water falls tumbling from terrace to terrace. To a second glance it appears a system of falls one above the other hardened into dirty ice. To one who has visited lofty snow clad mountains, an act of deliberation is required to prevent him believing that the terraces are a part of a glacier of more or less purity.
The crests of the different terraces are almost level—some of them apparently exactly so. They are built by water, and, water here levels as it builds, for if there be a depression it seeks it, and depositing the solid matter held in solution, levels it up with the rest. From the crest of the upper terrace runs back a plateau of silicious incrustation covering 300 to 400 acres. Scattered over this, are shallow pools of hot water of a bluish white tinge. About their shallow sides these pools have concentric, tinted borders, some a few inches wide, others of one or two feet. These are bent to conform to the irregular shape of the pools, one within the other, and are several deep. The borders differ from each other in color, being red, orange, yellow and brown and of intermediate shades.
Near the front bulge of the upper terrace, lifts the principal spring or pool on its individual terrace, high above the main plateau. It looks like a turret when seen from below. Flowing in thin sheets over the margin, sometimes a simple ooze, the water from each pool makes a deposit as it spreads over the surrounding surface. At the foot and in front of the great precipice, stand two isolated slender pillars of geyserite, one of them about forty feet high. They are hollow and are the cones or nozzles of extinct geysers. One is called the "Liberty Cap" the other the "Devil's Thumb." They lift sheer up from the level in front of the great formation, and are a sort of sentinels keeping watch and ward over the wonderful picture. A large part of the precipitous projection of each terrace is moist from slowly trickling water.
At the rear of the great plateau half hidden among scattered trees, is a long fissure in the solid rock foundation of the mountain slope. Through this has poured up hot water from below, building, as it flowed, a huge white formation two to three hundred feet long, ten to fifteen feet high, and about as broad, rounded and smooth on its crest. This is supposed to resemble an elephant in recumbent position and has been aptly named "The White Elephant." If one pauses to listen, he will hear a gurgling of running water down in the leviathan's inside, not unlike that made when its living namesake pours a draught of water from his trunk down into his throat. Here, as everywhere else in active spring formations, the sound of running water can be heard beneath the surface incrustation. In some instances the ear must be bent down to catch a gentle rippling; in others it deepens into a hoarse gurgle.
The silicious crest of all of the plateaux on which a person walks, gives out so hollow a sound, that one is apt to feel somewhat anxious lest it break beneath his weight. I suspect, however, if it should do so, the bottom would be found generally at only a few inches, and a crimped shoe would be the most injurious result. Occasionally, however, the crest may cover a deep pool, but not often. When a pool is very still a film of solid matter spreads over its margin as grease does over cool water. This attaches itself to the edge and spreads towards the center. Gentle ripples then overflow this but do not break it down, but thicken it by further deposits. Sometimes one sees these edges projecting well over a deep pool, and strong enough to bear up the weight of several men; some of these may at some time be the cause of very scalding accidents. The principal danger, however, to a moderately prudent tourist is to his shoe leather. One frequently steps into a little puddle after a geyser ceases to act, or walks into a thin sheet to see more closely the coloring of a pool. Either of such imprudences may cost a pair of good shoes. The safest course is to wear old ones for a ramble and to keep a good dry pair at the hotel.
THEORIES ABOUT THE FORMATIONS.
It may not be amiss to suggest some solution of the problems under which the silicious incrustations are produced and the active geysers act.