“Captain Anderson—he’s the superintendent, you know—started to-day for the south of the Park; some trouble, I believe, down there. A scout thought the buffalo were being disturbed,” said Lieutenant Lindsley to me at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, near the entrance to the Park.

“That’s unfortunate. Can I overtake him?”

“It’s nearly four o’clock, but as I am going down to our camp at the Lower Geyser Basin, we can start now, and by travelling at night we can catch him before he pulls out in the morning, I think,” said the yellow-leg.

So putting our belongings into a double surry, we started hot-foot through the Wonderland, leaving a band of Dakota chicken-shooters standing on the steps waving their adieux. It verified all my predictions—men who shoot chickens belong in a stage-coach—they are a “scrubby wagon outfit,” as the cowboys say.

Posed on the trestled road, I looked back at the Golden Gate Pass. It is one of those marvellous vistas of mountain scenery utterly beyond the pen or brush of any man. Paint cannot touch it, and words are wasted. War, storms at sea, and mountain scenery are bigger than any expression little man has ever developed. Mr. Thomas Moran made a famous stagger at this pass in his painting; and great as is the painting, when I contemplated the pass itself I marvelled at the courage of the man who dared the deed. But as the stages of the Park Company run over this road, every tourist sees its grandeur, and bangs away with his kodak.

As we pulled up in front of the tents of the rest camp, one of those mountain thunder-storms set in, and it was as though the New York fire department had concentrated its nozzles on the earth. The place was presided over by a classic Irishman by the name of Larry, who speedily got a roaring-hot beefsteak and some coffee on the table, and then busied himself conducting growing pools of rain-water out of the tent. Larry is justly famous on the road for his bonhomie and Celtic wit.

At an early hour we arose and departed—the pale moon shining through the mist of the valley, while around us rose the ghostly pines. We cowered under our great-coats, chilled through, and saddened at remembrances of the warm blankets which we had been compelled to roll out of at this unseemly hour. At 7.30 we broke into one of those beautiful natural parks, the Lower Geyser Basin, with the sun shining on the river and the grass, and spotting the row of tents belonging to D Troop, Sixth United States Cavalry. Captain Scott met us at the door, a bluff old trooper in field rig and a welcoming smile. After breakfast a soldier brought up Pat Rooney. Pat was a horse from the ground up; he came from Missouri, but he was a true Irishman nevertheless, as one could tell from his ragged hips, long drooping quarters, and a liberal show of white in his eye, which seemed to say to me, “Aisy, now, and I’m a dray-horse; but spare the brad, or I’ll put ye on yer back in the bloomin’ dust, I will.” The saddle was put on, and I waited, until presently along came the superintendent, with his scout Burgess, three soldiers, and nine pack-mules with their creaking aparejos, and their general air of malicious mischief.

Pointing to a range of formidable-looking hills, the captain said, “We will pull in about there,” and we mounted and trotted off down the road. What a man really needs when he does the back stretches of the Yellowstone Park is a boat and a balloon, but cavalrymen ride horses in deference to traditions. My mount, Pat, was as big as a stable door, and as light as a puff-ball on his pins. As Mr. Buckram said, “The ’eight of a ’oss as nothing to do with ’is size,” but Patrick was a horse a man needed two legs for. Besides, he had a mouth like a bull, as does every other animal that wears that impossible bit which Uncle Sam gives his cavalry. We got along swimmingly, and, indeed, I feel considerable gratitude to Pat for the two or three thousand times he saved my life on the trip by his agility and sureness of foot.

Burgess, the scout, was a fine little piece of a man, who had served the government with credit for over thirty years. He had breasted the high divide in a dozen places, had Apache bullets whistle around and through him, and withal was modest about it. He was a quiet person, with his instinct of locality as well developed as an Indian’s, and contented with life, since he only wanted one thing—a war. I think he travelled by scent, since it would have been simple enough to have gone over easier places; but Burgess despised ease, and where the fallen timber was thickest and the slopes 60°, there you would find Burgess and his tight little pony picking along.

Both Captains Anderson and Scott have a pronounced weakness for geysers, and were always stopping at every little steam-jet to examine it. I suppose they feel a personal responsibility in having them go regularly; one can almost imagine a telegram to “turn on more steam.” They rode recklessly over the geyser formation, to my discomfort, because it is very thin and hazardous, and to break through is to be boiled. One instinctively objects to that form of cooking. The most gorgeous colors are observed in this geyser formation; in fact, I have never seen nature so generous in this respect elsewhere. I wondered that the pack-mules did not walk into the sissing holes, but I suspect a mule is a bit of a geologist in his way, and as most of them have been in the government service for thirty or forty years, they have learned how to conserve their well-being. There is a tradition that one was considerably overdone once in a geyser-hole, so they may have taken warning. Who can understand a mule? The packer leads the old bell-mare off to a feeding-ground, and the whole bunch of mules go racing after her, and chains wouldn’t hold them. The old bell-mare takes across a nasty chasm or a dirty slough-hole, and as the tinkle of the little cow-bell is losing itself in the timber beyond, one after another they put their ears forward and follow on.

We passed up a cleft in the hills, and were swallowed up in the pine and cedar forest. Presently the cleft ended, and nothing but good honest climbing was in front. There began my first experience in riding over the fallen timber, which obstructs all the northwestern Rocky Mountains. Once up in British Columbia I did it, but had trails, and I childishly imagined that there must also be trails wherever men wanted to go. Crisscross and all about lay the great peeled logs, and travel was slow, toilsome, and with anything but horses trained to it would have been impossible.

A good horse or mule, once accustomed, makes little of it, but on the steep down grades the situation is complicated by fallen logs, which it is necessary to “bucket” over, and then stop dead on an incline of 50°, with a couple of miles of tumble if he fails. The timber grew thicker, and when Burgess would get us in a hopeless sort of place, Captain A. would sing out to Captain S., “Burgess is on the trail now”; and when it was fairly good going, “Now he is off.” But nothing could rattle Mr. Burgess, and he continued calmly on his journey, the destination of which, it seemed, could be nothing short of the moon. Finally we found ourselves seemingly so inextricably tangled up that even Burgess had to scratch his head. One mule was hung up hopelessly, while the rest crowded around us into the chevaux-de-frise of logs, and merrily wound through the labyrinth the old Sixth Cavalry “gag,” “Here’s where we trot.”

To complete the effect of this passage it began to rain, and shortly to pelt us with hailstones, so we stopped under some trees to let it pass, and two people who should know better dismounted and got their saddles wet, while another, more wise in his generation, sat tight, and was rewarded later for his display of intelligence. By-and-by, wet and tired of fallen timber, we came into the Little Fire-hole Basin, and found buffalo signs in abundance. We were in great hopes of seeing some of these animals, but I may as well add that only one was seen on the trip, though there was fresh spoor, and they were undoubtedly about. We found no pony tracks either, which was more to the soldiers’ liking, since they are intrusted with the protection of the Park against poachers.

In this way squads are sent over the Park, and instructed not to follow the regular trails, but to go to the most unfrequented places, so that they may at any time happen on a malicious person, and perhaps be able to do as one scout did—photograph the miscreant with his own camera.

After a good day’s march we made camp by a little lake, and picketed our horses, while the mules ran loose around the bell-mare. Our appetites had been sharpened by a nine hours’ fast, when a soldier called us to the “commissaries” which were spread out on a pack canvas. It was the usual military “grub,” and no hungry man can find fault with that.

“Any man who can’t eat bacon can’t fight,” as Captain Scott said; so if any reader wants to be a soldier he must have a mania for bacon, it seems. “This is the stuff that makes soldiers brave,” he added, as the coffee-pot came around, and we fell to, and left a dreary waste of empty tins for the cook to pick up. We lighted our pipes after the banquet on the grass, and walked down to the shore of the beautiful pond, which seemed so strangely situated up there on the very crest of the continental divide. There are only three seasons in these altitudes, which the boys divide into July, August, and Winter, and the nights are always chilly. An inch or two of snow may fall even in mid-summer. In winter the snow covers the ground to a great depth, as we can tell by the trees. Nothing grows but rather stunted fir and pine and a little grass of the most hardy variety. The rounds of the Park are then made by mounting the cavalry on the ski, or Norwegian snow-shoe, and with its aid men travel the desolate snow-clad wilderness from one “shack” to another. Small squads of three or four men are quartered in these remote recesses of the savage mountains, and remain for [181]
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[183]eight months on a stretch. The camps are provisioned for the arctic siege, and what is stranger yet is that soldiers rather like it, and freely apply for this detached service. There is little of the “pomp and vanity” in this soldiering, and it shows good spirit on the part of the enlisted men. They are dressed in fur caps, California blanket coats, leggings, and moccasins—a strange uniform for a cavalryman, and also quite a commentary on what are commonly called the vicissitudes of the service.

In the early morning our tent was pulled down, and our bedding packed off almost before we had disentangled ourselves from its sheltering folds. The well-trained troopers went about their task of breaking camp with method and address. Burgess and a young soldier pulled a reluctant strawberry-blond mule out of the line of pack-animals, and throwing a blind over his face, proceeded to lay the blanket and adjust the aparejo. With a heave the cincha is hauled tight, and the load laid on, while the expert throws the “diamond hitch,” and the mule and pack are integral parts. This packing of nine mules was accomplished with great rapidity, and laying our saddles carefully, we mounted and followed the scouts off down the trail in single file on a toilsome march which would probably not end until three or four o’clock in the afternoon. We wound around the spurs of hills, and then across a marsh, with its yielding treacherous bottom, where the horses floundered, and one mule went down and made the mud and water fly in his struggles, while my apprehensions rose to fever-pitch as I recognized my grip-sack on his load, and not likely to be benefited by the operation. At the head-waters of these rivers—and it may be said that this little purling brook is really the source of the Missouri itself, although not so described—there is abundance of soggy marsh, which makes travel extremely difficult. In one place Captain Anderson’s horse went belly-deep on a concealed quag made by a stream coming out of the side of the hill, and rolling back, fell heavily on the captain, and for a time it was rather a question whether the horse would get out or not; but by dint of exertion he regained firm ground. When a big strong horse gets into a slough the dorsal action is terrific, and it is often necessary to dismount quickly to aid him out. We crossed the great divide of the continent at a place where the slope was astonishingly steep and the fallen timber thickly strewn. It was [185]
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[187]as thoroughly experimental travelling as I have ever seen, unless possibly over a lava-rock formation which I essayed last winter on the western slope of the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua; and yet there is a fascination about being balanced on those balloonlike heights, where a misstep means the end of horse and rider. I was glad enough, though, when we struck the parklike levels of the Pitchstone plateau as the scene of our further progression. If one has never travelled horseback over the Rocky Mountains there is a new and distinct sensation before him quite as vigorous as his first six-barred gate, or his first yacht-race with the quarter-rail awash.

All through the Park were seen hundreds of wild-geese, so tame that they would hardly fly from us. It was a great temptation to shoot, but the doughty captain said he would run me off the reservation at a turkey-trot if I did shoot, and since I believed him I could restrain myself. The streams and marshes were full of beaver-dams, and the little mud-and-stick houses rose from the pools, while here and there we saw the purl of the quiet water as they glided about. This part is exactly as primitive as when the lonely trapper Coulter made his famous journey through it, and one cannot but wonder what must have been his astonishment at the unnatural steaming and boiling of the geysers, which made the Park known from his descriptions as “Coulter’s Hell.”

From the breast of the mountains overlooking the great Shoshonee Lake there opened up the most tremendous sight as the waters stretched away in their blue placidity to the timbered hills. The way down to the shores was the steepest place I have ever seen horses and mules attempt. In one place, where the two steep sides of the caÑon dipped together, it was cut by a nasty seam some six feet deep, which we had to “bucket over” and maintain a footing on the other side. After finding myself safely over, I watched the shower of pack-mules come sliding down and take the jump. One mule was so far overbalanced that for a moment I thought he would lose his centre of gravity, which had been in his front feet, but he sprang across to the opposite slope and was safe. Horses trained to this work do marvels, and old Pat was a “topper” at the business. I gave him his head, and he justified my trust by negotiating all the details without a miss. On a sandy “siding” he spread his feet and slid with an avalanche of detached hill-side. Old Pat’s ears stuck out in front in an anxious way, as if to say, “If we hit anything solid, I’ll stop”; while from behind came the cheery voice of Captain Scott, “Here’s where we trot.”

On the shores of the Shoshonee we camped, and walked over to the famous Union Geysers, which began to boil and sputter, apparently for our especial benefit. In a few minutes two jets of boiling water shot a hundred feet in air, and came down in rain on the other side, while a rainbow formed across it. The roar of the great geysers was awe-inspiring; it was like the exhaust of a thousand locomotives, and Mr. Burgess nudged me and remarked, “Hell’s right under here.”

Near the geysers, hidden away in a depression, we found a pool of water of a beautiful and curious green, while not twenty feet from it was one of a sulphur yellow. There was a big elk track in the soft mud leading into it, but no counter track coming out. There had been a woodland tragedy there.

The utility of a geyser-hole is not its least attraction to a traveller who has a day’s accumulation of dust and sweat on him. I found one near the camp which ran into a little mountain stream, and made a tepid bath, of which I availed myself, and also got a cup of hot water, by the [189]
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[191]aid of which I “policed my face,” as the soldiers call shaving.

The next day we encountered one of those great spongy mountain meadows, which we were forced to skirt on the rocky timber-strewn hill-sides, until finally we ventured into it. We curved and zigzagged through its treacherous mazes, fording and recrossing the stream in search of solid ground. Burgess’s little gray pony put his foot forward in a gingerly way, and when satisfied, plunged in and floundered through. The pony had a positive genius for morasses. We followed him into the mud, or plunged off the steep sides into the roaring river, and, to my intense satisfaction, at last struck a good pony trail. “Now Burgess is off the trail!” we cried, whereat the modest little scout grinned cheerfully. From here on it was “fair and easy,” until we came to the regular stage-road, to travel on which it seemed to us a luxury.

This expedition is typical of the manner of policing the Park, and it is generally monotonous, toilsome, and uneventful work; and the usefulness of such a chevau-chÉe is that it leaves the track of the cavalry horse-shoe in the most remote parts of the preserve, where the poacher or interloper can see it, and become apprehensive in consequence of the dangers which attend his operations. That an old trapper might work quietly there for a long time I do not doubt, if he only visited his line of traps in the early morning or late evening and was careful of his trail, but such damage as he could do would be trivial. Two regiments could not entirely prevent poaching in the mountain wastes of the great reservation, but two troops are successful enough at the task. It is a great game-preserve and breeding-ground, and, if not disturbed, must always give an overflow into Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, which will make big game shooting there for years to come. The unreasoning antipathy or malicious disregard of the American pioneer for game-laws and game-preservation is somewhat excusable, but the lines of the pioneer are now cast in new places, and his days of lawless abandon are done. The regulation for the punishment of Park offenders is inadequate, and should be made more severe. The Park is also full of beasts of prey, the bear being very numerous. A fine grizzly was trapped by some of the superintendent’s men and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution while I was there. Near the Fountain Hotel one evening a young army surgeon and myself walked up to within one hundred and fifty yards of a big grizzly, who was not disposed to run off. Being unarmed, we concluded that our point of view was close enough, and as the bear seemed to feel the same way about it, we parted.

Americans have a national treasure in the Yellowstone Park, and they should guard it jealously. Nature has made her wildest patterns here, has brought the boiling waters from her greatest depths to the peaks which bear eternal snow, and set her masterpiece with pools like jewels. Let us respect her moods, and let the beasts she nurtures in her bosom live, and when the man from Oshkosh writes his name with a blue pencil on her sacred face, let him spend six months where the scenery is circumscribed and entirely artificial.