A Summer's Outing Part 3

The management very foolishly discourages individual stop-overs, but suggests a stage or surrey party to hold over the vehicle. This is expensive and parties are not always of one mind. I stopped and now stop over, taking my chances for a vacancy in a coach. This should be encouraged by the management, for a person can spend several days of pleasure and instruction at two, three or more points.

"Grand Canyon" from which this letter is started, would make a charming resort for parties for days, or even weeks, and two or three days should be taken to study the "Upper Geyser Basin." But the entire management is yet in an embryo state, and too great an endeavor is made to make both ends meet, with a profitable balance at the end of the season. Some travelers complain bitterly of the accommodations furnished at the hotels. They are, however, I suspect, of those who expect the comforts of home, or the luxuries of first-cla.s.s city hotels where ever they go. Those who are prepared to make the most of life, and to pick up pleasure wherever to be found, can spend several weeks in the Park, without loss of flesh and with instruction regarding the sports and freaks of nature to be found no where else. The wonders are unique and the marvels unequaled elsewhere in the world.

Some tourists are so unfortunate as to arrive at the park when very large excursion parties from the East make their entry. Then the hotels become necessarily crowded. No prudent provision can make preparation for an extra hundred pouring in on top of the regular travel. At such times one is compelled to take a bed in a room with several others and may even be forced to crowd two in a bed. That happened once to our party. But none of the travelers had the small pox or itch, so no great harm resulted. By hugging the outer rail of a bed, instead of the bed fellow, the necessity of tumbling two in a bed is not altogether a catastrophe.

Besides those who make the regular tours, there are many who hire carriages and wagons at Cinnabar for a leisurely excursion, which may be longer or shorter to suit disposable time and the fullness of purses. Parties too, besides hiring carriages and horses, frequently take tents and enjoy a regular roughing life. We encountered many of these. Some were of a man and his family, others of two or three young men, and still others of men and ladies by the dozen or two, and in one instance thirty or forty were in the party. The large parties have a number of attendants who generally go ahead to prepare the camps for the night, while the tourists loiter along the way to inspect the marvels or to botanize. The small parties we saw, pitched their tents when practicable, near a trout stream, several of which furnished fine sport. Throughout the Park we noticed that at and about localities usually chosen for camping ground, warnings were nailed upon the trees, "Put out the fires." Destructive forest fires have resulted from carelessness of campers. Soldiers in pairs ride along several of the roads daily to see that these regulations are observed, and to prevent injurious results from non-observance. Twice we saw blue coats extinguishing smouldering fires left by reckless people.

My personal stage party up to this point, has been my daughter and some intelligent schoolmarms from New York, one of them, however, resenting the appellation of "schoolmarm." She is a _princ.i.p.al_.

Woman-like, they seemed glad when I a.s.sumed command of the party.

Queer, how even the brightest and most independent woman takes to a sort of master. Show me one who will not submit to the yoke, and ten to one she is one few men desire to boss. I call my party, "my Innocents," and all move with alacrity when I cry out, "Come girls!"

Between us, it has been several years since the youngest of them wore short dresses. I mean this in good part, for girls just getting into long skirts are very like the rinsing fluid into which the wash-woman dips her clean laundry, and called "blue water"--rather thin!

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GROTTO, UPPER GEYSER BASIN.(SEE PAGE 31.)]

All my Innocents are good, but can stand a straight shot in sensible English. One quotes with a sigh the remark of a friend, who when in the park, had but one word--the word translated "sheol" in the revised version. Quotation marks are convenient when one wishes to say something a little naughty. The Rev. Thomas Beecher, who is one of our daily party, but not in our coach, and who by the way is something of a wag, and is not averse to having a learned theological discussion with one who, like himself, was intended for an Evangelist, speaking of the huge amount of solid matter brought here above ground, declares he must look up Bob Ingersoll to tell him the Devil is making some mighty big holes down below. For my part if the Devil is doing all this, I shall begin to cultivate high respect for him as an artist, and would only ask him not to let the bottom drop out until my friends to the third and fourth generation may come and see. After them it matters not. Let the deluge come. It is evident from the names given to many points about the park that the Devil's friends have done much of the christening in this region.

Now, having to some extent touched upon the marvelous antics of Nature in Uncle Sam's domain, I will say something of those things nearly as interesting, and which make this tour charming as a simple road excursion. The park is full of beauties. The drives are often through delightful pine forests. The trees are small, but straight as arrows, tall and lading the air with delicious perfumes. Many hundred, or rather hundreds of thousands of acres are dead: Some from forest fires, but in many cases apparently from a species of blight, possibly from a failure of nourishment in the thin soil on the mountain slopes for the trees after they have attained any size. Tracks of fierce mountain storms are frequently seen; miles upon miles of forests are thrown down, the trees all lying in one direction, showing that the devastation was done by straight running winds, and not by tornadoes.

There are n.o.ble mountains constantly towering above us, although we are ourselves sometimes nearly nine thousand feet above the sea, and never after leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, under 7000. Many of the mountains have bands of snow stretching far below their pinnacles, and some of them are properly ent.i.tled, snow-capped. The mountains and slopes are fairly well treed; and the small plains or plateaux show beautiful downs bordered with forest and cut by copses. These downs are green and so smooth in the distance that it is difficult to realize that man has had nothing to do with laying them out. Several level valleys are very pretty and when seen from eminences remind one of valleys over which people go into ecstasies in foreign lands. If there were here a church spire, and there a mill and a sprinkling of hamlets, they would be as happy valleys as the vaunted ones abroad.

The utter absence of habitations on the long drives is a striking peculiarity. The roads being tolerably good and entirely artificial, makes one expect to see hamlets, and he involuntarily finds himself looking for a farm house, when the coach emerges from a forest, and comes upon a broad stretch of clean looking well gra.s.sed native meadow land. A turn of a mountain spur along a crystal stream, which has deepened into a pool, suggests a mill pond, and that a water wheel will soon come into view. A gra.s.sy plain all sun-lighted causes one to look for a herd of cattle lazily lying in a wooded copse on its margin. But no habitation other than the regular hotels, are to be found within the wonder land.

The park is comparatively a free and safe home for many varieties of wild animals. Guns and pistols are forbidden, except to the soldiers and to the _scouts_ who are a sort of a police corps, whose duty is to see that trespa.s.sers do not enter upon the Government preserve.

Elk, deer, mountain sheep, bear black and cinnamon, buffalo and other animals indigenous to the Rocky mountains, range freely over the hills without molestation; and beaver build their dams close by the hotels.

How many buffalo are yet denizens of the park, I could not definitely learn, but was told that there are from fifty to a hundred. Squirrels and chipmunks are very numerous in several varieties, and very gentle.

The bear are becoming too numerous for the safety of such animals as they prey upon. On this account the scouts are destroying many of them.

I said there are no domestic animals, except a few about the hotels.

The result is, the gra.s.ses are fine and the flowers in great profusion and very beautiful--patches of larkspur as blue as indigo, acres of lupin of various tints, generally blue and lilac with eyes of white; gentians so rich and purple that one feels that they have been dipped in Tyrian dyes; sunflowers and b.u.t.tercups, making acres look as if they had been sprinkled with gold; and many other beautiful flowers, whose names I know not. But one thistle I must not forget to mention. It is short and heavy from the ground, not unlike the edible thistle of j.a.pan, with leaves and stalks of flesh colored pink, bleached into a sort of mixture of white, green and rose, with cl.u.s.tered flowers in compact head of exquisite rose and pink. It is a rarely beautiful flower. One flower of delicate lavender, thickly strewn along branching spikes, was wholly unknown to all of our party and is acknowledged of great beauty. Its leaf and small flowers lead me to think it a wild hollyhock.

STUPENDOUS SOUNDS OF FALLING FLOODS.

As I sit at my window the roar of the glorious Yellowstone falls filling my ear, I look out across the deep river canyon, to an upper plateau of several thousands of acres of beautiful meadow, some miles away, with here and there a copse of young pines, and all fringed by rich forest, and feel I should see a herd of fallow deer wandering over some ancient, lordly park. It is true that my gla.s.s shows that much of the velvety softness of the down is from green sagebush, which is so softened down by the distance that from here it resembles well cut gra.s.s. It is very beautiful.

Guide books tell us not to drink the water. I think their writers were in collusion with the hotel management to force guests to buy lager and apollinaris at 50 cents a bottle. By the way, there is on the first days drive an apollinaris spring. It seems to me the simon pure thing. We drank freely of it at the spring and afterwards from bottles carried for several hours. One of the bottles was tightly corked, and, when opened, popped as if well charged. At another spring--a little thing immediately on the edge of the road on the Beaver river and in the cool and beautiful Beaver canyon, we had soda water flavoured with lime juice. At least, it reminded me very distinctly of soda water with which the juice of the lime had been mingled in Ceylon. The bar-tenders in the "Flowery Isle" call it "lemon squoze." It was our favorite beverage in hot Colombo. Both of these springs are small, but from them could be bottled many cases a day. A gentleman in the party who has drank only Apollinaris since he came into the Park, tasted from my bottle and declared it quite equal to the pure stuff. Feeling the need of an alterative, I twice drank several gla.s.ses from a hot spring with decided benefits; and have partaken freely throughout the tour of the springs (except those whose brilliant green showed them largely impregnated with a.r.s.enic or copper,) and with no perceptible injurious effects. The hotel people are inclined to disparage the waters of the springs generally, and discourage their use, thereby and possibly for that purpose, largely increasing the consumption of lager and bottled waters, which sell at fifty cents a bottle. The enormous number of empty bottles along the road sides and at the hotels testify to the thirst and timidity of the traveling public. The coach drivers call the empty bottles along the road "dead soldiers." The "peg"

_i.e._ whisky soda is the bane of the European in India. The disposition to make "dead soldiers" in the National Park very probably does more harm to the tourist than the native waters would if judiciously used.

When the government does its duty--makes abundant roads and bridges about its marvelous domain here, and a.n.a.lyzes thoroughly its hot springs--I doubt not there will be found many of them of great hygienic value, and sanitariums will be established to make the park a blessing to the afflicted of the country.

One good housewife whom I met frequently at the different halting-places, sighed deeply at the enormous waste of hot water, declaring there was enough here to laundry all America, and to wash the poor of all our big cities. The good people tell us everything was made for man. I doubt it. He is not worth the good things lavished upon him. He is a part of the mighty plan and will be followed after the next cataclysm by beings as much above him as he is above the chimpanzee. But if the good people be correct, Congress ought to take immediate steps to enable the people more fully to utilize the mighty Hygea located within the bounds of this park.

Surrounded by bare and bleak mountains and hot and arid plains, here at this elevation rains are abundant, and dews are sufficient; trees clothe mountain top and slope; gra.s.s is green and fattening, and flowers deck the open downs and shade the forest land. And yet the air is dry and beneficial to all except those whose lungs require an atmosphere less light. We have seen several consumptives who have come here for their health. The rarified atmosphere makes their breathing very laborious and painful. Possibly in the early stages of the disease, benefits may be derived from a sojourn here, but in its later stages, the poor victims suffer fearfully. The majority of those whom we have seen here for health, are camping out and seem to be having a good time. They have their horses, and spend their time fishing and riding.

On the road from the lower Geyser basin to Grand Canyon we halted at a little rivulet to water our stock. The stream cut its way deep down in a gra.s.sy plain, and was so narrow that one could easily jump over it. A small camping party had just pitched its tents close by. While the tent lines were being stretched, the gentleman of the party came to the rivulet near us to angle for his supper. He cast his fly a few times, when there was a "rise" to it not twenty feet from our coach, and a two pound beauty, speckled and plump was landed. I envied the camper.

In some localities in the Yellowstone, and especially in and about the great lake, parasites so infest the fish as to unfit them for the table. The infected fish, however, are easily known and may be discarded, while the good are retained. A gentleman who has fished throughout the park informed me, that as a rule, the fish were good.

Like the trout in all the Rocky mountains and Pacific regions, the fish caught here lack the delicate flavour of the brook trout taken in the Adirondacks and throughout the New England States.

We regret we could not visit the Great Yellowstone Lake. The hotels there being unfinished, the regular stage route does not yet take it in. It is at an alt.i.tude of 7700 feet, and is over twenty miles long from the North-west to the South-east and fifteen from North-east to South-west, covering an area of 150 or more square miles. It is very irregular in its form and said to be a beautiful sheet. Excepting the lake in the Andes it is much the largest lake in the world at so great elevation. A large hotel is being erected on its margin. When finished it will make a very attractive addition to the Park tour, and will furnish a stop over for days or weeks to those who have time at their command.

One is surprised to find how quickly he becomes fatigued by a short climb, until his lungs become accustomed to the rare medium he is taking in. One old man, I need not name, stepped jauntily by the side of a pretty schoolmarm and swore he was 32, but the climb of a mile made him, with blushes which tinged the cuticle of his bald head, acknowledge he was past 65. He was somewhat relieved, when he saw how the sweet innocent was panting at his side.

There is here what I am told exists nowhere else in the world--a mountain of gla.s.s--volcanic obsidian--monster ma.s.ses resembling the molten opaque blocks left by the Chicago great fire in the ruins of a gla.s.s warehouse. We drove along a road of shivered gla.s.s. The engineers built fires over great obsidian bowlders, and then threw cold water from the stream close by over the heated ma.s.s, breaking it into gla.s.s gravel. Chipmunks of several varieties, gray pine squirrels, hop about barking within a few feet of one; robins are almost as gentle as sparrows, and bears come down near to one of the hotels nightly to be fed for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the tourists. Beavers have their dams close by our hotel and can at dusk be seen swimming about and feeding. A small herd of buffalos, since we have been here, rushed across the road just in front of an excursion party, giving the stage horses a fright and nearly creating a panic. No gun is allowed in the park, except to the military and scouts, and no one can kill an animal, except when driven to it for want of necessary food. Two companies of soldiers patrol the regular routes to enforce the regulations and to serve as voluntary guides for the ladies of the daily parties. They forbid the smallest specimen to be carried off. I had even to hide the little dabs of mud I took from a paint-pot. Uncle Sam is cultivating good nature among men and beasts within this, his unique domain. Even the devil may grow good-natured, and may cut up his didos and antics after a while only for the people's amus.e.m.e.nt.

THE CLIMAX OF GRANDEUR AND BEAUTY.

Having told you of the freaks and sports of nature which make the more striking marvels of this wonderland; and having spoken of the softer and sweeter characteristics of the Park, I now come to what the majority of the travelers consider its gem.

A Soudanese wise man is said to have swallowed the tale of Jonah and the whale without making a wry face, but grew fighting mad when asked to believe the story of snow and ice in northern lands. The genii might easily send a man through a whale's belly, but Allah himself could not make water hard and dry. So it is easy to tell of the monstrosities of the park, and hope for credence. They are simply monstrosities--the work of demoniac power, and are credible. But who can make another believe that huge precipices, one and two thousand feet high, have been painted with all the colors of the setting sun; that the rainbow has settled upon miles of rocks and left its sweet tints upon their rugged sides? And yet this and these are true of the Yellowstone canyon.

We approached it from the South on a road running near the river. On a pretty gra.s.sy bank we rode along the stream, here over a hundred yards wide, rolling swiftly yet smoothly along in green depths, preparing to make its two plunges into the chasm below. Swift and swifter it hurried onward in quickened dignity. Presently the rock walls on either side grew contracted to a hundred or so feet, and then the green stream rushed in smooth slope to a gateway of eighty feet in width, through which, with parabolic swoop, it leaps 112 feet with such depth on its brink, that the deep-emerald green is not lost till it strikes a ledge at the bottom, where a large part of the falling sheet is shot off at an angle into the air, half as high up as the fall itself. The two sides of the river at the brink of the fall rush against precipitous walls and are bent and curled upwards into a veil six or eight feet high over the green center--a veil of countless millions of crystal drops--over the main stream of emerald more than half hidden in a mighty shower of diamonds. Standing immediately on the edge, one can imagine how Niagara's Horseshoe would look if one could get within a few feet of it. This fall is not very lofty nor wide, but is one of the most beautiful in the world. The river after the first fall rushes in foamy swirl a half mile further, between cliffs which on either side lift 1,500 feet high, and growing higher and higher, and then with one wild leap plunges 300 feet into the rocky gorge below.

As it drops the emerald and the diamond struggle for supremacy, but the brighter crystal gains the ascendency before all is lost in the lace-like mist which envelopes the depths. The whole when seen from a little distance looks as light as a gem-decked veil of lace, but so vast is the body of the water which makes the leap, and so great the fall, that to one standing a mile away, with a point of land intervening between him and the fall, shutting off the noise of the splashing water, there comes a deep and mellow ba.s.s, richer than any I ever heard before made by a water fall. It is not an angry tone like Niagara's roar, but is as deep and mellow as distant rolling thunder when heard in a mountain gorge.

These falls are beautiful in the extreme, but the beholder soon forgets them in wonder of the canyon which bends between the towering cliffs for four miles. Far under him, at least 1500 feet down, the river leaps and tears, now in green, and then in snowy foam, between precipices at whose feet no human foot ever did or can safely tread. The rocks lift on either side in mighty b.u.t.tresses like giant cathedral walls.

Standing out before the walls are towers and pointed spires of most artistic form, all painted in exquisite tints. The upper walls are of yellow and orange hue, with here and there towers and bulwarks of chalky white or of black lava over which is a film of venetian red. The upper yellow walls, sink and contract between the lifting b.u.t.tresses, which at their base are of lava black, running first into dark umber, and then into chocolate bordered with black and stained with red, often so bright as to be vermillion. In some places the main walls are broken down, where some long-ago slide has carried their steepness into the river below, but with slopes far too steep for human tread. Some of these slopes are orange and yellow as if coated with sulphur; others are painted in vertical bands of brown and red, with between them narrow stripes of pearl gray and yellow, and of orange stretching for hundreds of feet, and at one point for a half mile in extent; one of these slopes look as if a banner with these several colors, had been spread over it, and then being removed, the colors of the drapery had been left upon the soft velvety rock. The b.u.t.tresses and spires lift now fifteen to a hundred feet apart, and then they are spread so that the golden wall between shows 150 to 200 feet. All of the colors except the yellow seem to be in and of the rock. The yellow looks as if made by blowing thousands of tons of flowers of sulphur upon the walls, the flowers having clung when the wall had some incline, but having dropped off from the vertical rock.

These painted rocks extend along the canyon for about four miles; then the gorge grows more somber and dark, and so continues some twenty miles. This lower part seems to be of a harder rock. It was cut through myriads of ages ago and has grown darkly gray, while the painted part is of a much later period and is of soft rocks--so soft that they seem to be composed of somewhat indurated volcanic ash, sulphur being the predominating ma.s.s. The red coloring is from oxide of iron. These blending together make other tints. Burnt Umber, often deepened into a rich chocolate is the dominating one. The b.u.t.tresses are of a harder yet still a rather soft lava, of a yellowish brown tint near the summits, red and brown below, and finally towards their bases almost black. Sometimes there are slopes of white lime and several towers, nearly 2,000 feet high sheer up from the river, are so white that one could think them chalk. Half way down the heights are great points, like the sharpened spires of a cathedral, colored as if a mighty pot of venetian red had been emptied over them and had run in streaks down the rocky sides. Had an artist tried to sell me a picture of these cliffs, before I had seen them, in no way exaggerated in coloring, I would have called him a fraud, and would have thought he had taken me for a fool.

I have seen now and then pictures which I considered daubs, which I now know did not in the least overdo Nature in its freak of rock-painting.

I quit the park glad that I came, but feel that the rush and labor of going through it would hardly repay a second hasty visit, at least for several years. Yet I can recall no excursion of the same length in any part of the world half so full of surprises. Could we have made it leisurely, our enjoyment would have been greatly enhanced. We have met some tourists who think the labor and annoyance of the thing over-balance the profit and pleasure. Burns says "Man was made to mourn." In my weary round, I have frequently been convinced that about half of the travelers of the world were made to growl, or at least half think they fail to show their "raisin" unless they do growl.

Equanimity of temper is the most valuable of all human characteristics for happiness. It is absolutely necessary to the traveler, who desires to learn much, and to enjoy what he sees. A plain traveling suit on one's back, a resolution to make the most of every thing in one's mind, and the least possible luggage to carry, are the three indispensables for a good traveler. The park people may not do all they should for the public; indeed, I fear they have many short-comings, but I for one, am very glad they are here, and that they do as much as they do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BISCUIT BOWL POOL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 35.)]

The hotels at Mammoth Hot Springs and at Yellowstone canyon are large, each capable of housing two or three hundred guests. The beds are clean and soft, the table fair and the attendance quite good. I have only one complaint to make. At the first named hotel they will insist on a bra.s.s band's tooting a good part of the time. The noise it made was execrable. There is no such thing as bad music, it is either music or it is noise. At Norris, the hotel is poor and the managers impolite. At the Lower and at the Upper Geyser Basin, the houses are unfinished, and the rooms not sufficient in number, but the people do their best to please. This endeavor should cover a mult.i.tude of sins.

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.

TACOMA, WASHINGTON, July 31, 1890.

Familiarity is said to breed contempt; certainly it robs strange things of much that at first seems marvelous. On our return from the excursion around the Park, the formation at Mammoth Hot Springs had lost much of that which on our first visit struck us as so wonderful and charming. We had seen other things greatly more wonderful with which to compare them. The encrustations seemed not so white and the colorings of the water had lost some of their prismatic variety and perfection.

The impressions made upon the mind by Niagara grow on succeeding visits. A storm at sea arouses no less awe because several have been before pa.s.sed through. Niagara and the ocean are in eternal motion.

Motion irresistably suggests change, and change precludes monotony.

One does not lose his feeling of awe, after looking for many times upon the towering heights of the Yungfrau or of Kinchinjinga. Their inaccessible peaks and eternal snows repel every disposition to close communion. I doubt not, however, if a safe railroad could be run up to mighty Everest's loftiest pinnacle, that tourists would snap their fingers at the world's monarch when standing in warm furs 29,000 feet above the sea.