Our National Parks - Chapters I-II



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CHAPTER I
THE WILD PARKS AND FOREST RESERVATIONS OF THE WEST

"Keep not standing fix'd and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun does visit
We are gay, whate'er betide:
To give room for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide."

The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. 
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to 
find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a 
necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as 
fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. 
Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the 
deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and 
enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of 
rust and disease. Briskly venturing and 

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roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil's 
spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or 
in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting 
sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch 
with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock, feeling the 
life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled 
exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness. This 
is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is the growing interest 
in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general, and in 
the half wild parks and gardens of towns. Even the scenery habit in its 
most artificial forms, mixed with spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its 
devotees arrayed more gorgeously than scarlet tanagers, frightening the 
wild game with red umbrellas, --even this is encouraging, and may well be 
regarded as a hopeful sign of the times.

All the Western mountains are still rich in wildness, and by means of good 
roads are being brought nearer civilization every year. To the sane and 
free it will hardly seem necessary to cross the continent in search of 
wild beauty, however easy the way, for they find it in abundance wherever 
they chance to be. Like Thoreau they see forests in orchards and patches 
of huckleberry brush, and oceans in ponds and 

[image caption: Map showing LOCATION AND EXTENT OF THE FOREST RESERVES &
NATIONAL PARKS IN WESTERN UNITED STATES to 3rd, August, 1901.]

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drops of dew. Few in these hot, dim, strenuous times are quite sane or 
free; choked with care like clocks full of dust, laboriously doing so much 
good and making so much money,--or so little,--they are no longer good for 
themselves.

When, like a merchant taking a list of his goods, we take stock of our 
wildness, we are glad to see how much of even the most destructible kind 
is still unspoiled. Looking at our continent as scenery when it was all 
wild, lying between beautiful seas, the starry sky above it, the starry 
rocks beneath it, to compare its sides, the East and the West, would be 
like comparing the sides of a rainbow. But it is no longer equally 
beautiful. The rainbows of to-day are, I suppose, as bright as those that 
first spanned the sky; and some of our landscapes are growing more 
beautiful from year to year, notwithstanding the clearing, trampling work 
of civilization. New plants and animals are enriching woods and gardens, 
and many landscapes wholly new, with divine sculpture and architecture, 
are just now coming to the light of day as the mantling folds of creative 
glaciers are being withdrawn, and life in a thousand cheerful, beautiful 
forms is pushing into them, and new-born rivers are beginning to sing and 
shine in them. The old rivers, too, are growing longer, like healthy 
trees, gaining new branches and lakes as the residual glaciers at their 
highest sources on the 

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mountains recede, while the rootlike branches in the flat deltas are at 
same time spreading farther and wider into the seas and making new lands.

Under the control of the vast mysterious forces of the interior of the 
earth all the continents and islands are slowly rising or sinking. Most of 
the mountains are diminishing in size under the wearing action of the 
weather, though a few are increasing in height and girth, especially the 
volcanic ones, as fresh floods of molten rocks are piled on their summits 
and spread in successive layers, like the wood-rings of trees, on their 
sides. New mountains, also, are being created from time to time as islands 
in lakes and seas, or as subordinate cones on the slopes of old ones, thus 
in some measure balancing the waste of old beauty with new. Man, too, is 
making many far-reaching changes. This most influential half animal, half 
angel is rapidly multiplying and spreading, covering the seas and lakes 
with ships, the land with huts, hotels, cathedrals, and clustered city 
shops and homes, so that soon, it would seem, we may have to go farther 
than Nansen to find a good sound solitude. None of Nature's landscape are 
ugly so long as they are wild; and much, we can say comfortingly, must 
always be in great part wild, particularly the sea and the sky, the floods 
of light from the stars, and the warm, unspoilable heart of the earth, 

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infinitely beautiful, though only dimly visible to the eye of imagination. 
The geysers, too, spouting from the hot underworld; the steady, long-
lasting glaciers on the mountains, obedient only to the sun; Yosemite 
domes and the tremendous grandeur of rocky cañons and mountains in 
general,--these must always be wild, for man can change them and mar them 
hardly more than can the butterflies that hover above them. But the 
continent's outer beauty is fast passing away, especially the plant part 
of it, the most destructible and most universally charming of all.

Only thirty years ago, the great Central Valley of California, five 
hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, was one bed of golden and purple 
flowers. Now it is ploughed and pastured out of existence, gone forever,--
scarce a memory of it left in fence corners and along the bluffs of the 
streams. The gardens of the Sierra, also, and the noble forests in both 
the reserved and unreserved portions are sadly hacked and trampled, 
notwithstanding, the ruggedness of the topography,--all excepting those of 
the parks guarded by a few soldiers. In the noblest forests of the world, 
the ground, once divinely beautiful, is desolate and repulsive, like a 
face ravaged by disease. This is true also of many other Pacific Coast and 
Rocky Mountain valleys and forests. The same fate, sooner or later, is 

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awaiting them all, unless awakening public opinion comes forward to stop 
it. Even the great deserts in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico, which 
offer so little to attract settlers, and which a few years ago pioneers 
were afraid of, as places of desolation and death, are now taken as 
pastures at the rate of one or two square miles per cow, and of course 
their plant treasures are passing away,--the delicate abronias, phloxes, 
gilias, etc. Only a few of the bitter, thorny, unbitable shrubs are left, 
and the sturdy cactuses that defend themselves with bayonets and spears.

Most of the wild plant wealth of the East also has vanished,--gone into 
dusty history. Only vestiges of its glorious prairie and woodland wealth 
remain to bless humanity in boggy, rocky, unploughable places. 
Fortunately, some of these are purely wild, and go far to keep Nature's 
love visible. White water-lilies, with rootstocks deep and safe in mud, 
still send up every summer a Milky Way of starry, fragrant flowers around 
a thousand lakes, and many a tuft of wild grass waves its panicles on 
mossy rocks, beyond reach of trampling feet, in company with saxifrages, 
bluebells, and ferns. Even in the midst of farmers' fields, precious 
sphagnum bogs, too soft for the feet of cattle, are preserved with their 
charming plants unchanged,--chiogenes, Andromeda, Kalmia, Linnæa, 
Arethusa, etc. Calypso 

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borealis still hides in the arbor vitæ swamps of Canada, and away to the 
southward there are a few unspoiled swamps, big ones, where miasma, 
snakes, and alligators, like guardian angels, defend their treasures and 
keep them as pure as paradise. And beside a' that and a' that, the East is 
blessed with good winters and blossoming clouds that shed white flowers 
over all the land, covering every scar and making the saddest landscape 
divine at least once a year.

The most extensive, least spoiled, and most unspoilable of the gardens of 
the continent are the vast tundras of Alaska. In summer they extend 
smooth, even, undulating, continuous beds of flowers and leaves from about 
lat. 62° to the shores of the Arctic Ocean; and in winter sheets of 
snowflowers make all the country shine, one mass of white radiance like a 
star. Nor are these Arctic plant people the pitiful frost-pinched 
unfortunates they are guessed to be by those who have never seen them. 
Though lowly in stature, keeping near the frozen ground as if loving it, 
they are bright and cheery, and speak Nature's love as plainly as their 
big relatives of the South. Tenderly happed and tucked in beneath downy 
snow to sleep through the long, white winter, they make haste to bloom in 
the spring without trying to grow tall, though some rise high enough to 
ripple and wave in the wind, and display masses of color,--yellow, purple, 
and blue, --so 

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rich that they look like beds of rainbows, and are visible miles and miles 
away.

As early as June one may find the showy Geum glaciale in flower, and the 
dwarf willows putting forth myriads of fuzzy catkins, to be followed 
quickly, especially on the dryer ground, by mertensia, eritrichium, 
polemonium, oxytropis, astragalus, lathyrus, lupinus, myosotis, 
dodecatheon, arnica, chrysanthemum, nardosmia, saussurea, senecio, 
erigeron, matrecaria, caltha, valeriana, stellaria, Tofieldia, polygonum, 
papaver, phlox, lychnis, cheiranthus, Linnæa, and a host of drabas, 
saxifrages, and heathworts, with bright stars and bells in glorious 
profusion, particularly Cassiope, Andromeda, ledum, pyrola, and 
vaccinium, --Cassiope the most abundant and beautiful of them all. Many 
grasses also grow here, and wave fine purple spikes and panicles over the 
other flowers,--poa, aira, calamagrostis, alopecurus, trisetum, elymus, 
festuca, glyceria, etc. Even ferns are found thus far north, carefully and 
comfortably unrolling their precious fronds, --aspidium, cystopteris, and 
woodsia, all growing on a sumptuous bed of mosses and lichens; not the 
scaly lichens seen on rails and trees and fallen logs to the southward, 
but massive, roundheaded, finely colored plants like corals, wonderfully 
beautiful, worth going round the world to see. I should like to mention 
all the plant friends I found in a summer's wanderings in 

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this cool reserve, but I fear few would care to read their names, although 
everybody, I am sure, would love them could they see them blooming and 
rejoicing at home.

On my last visit to the region about Kotzebue sound, near the middle of 
September, 1881, the weather was so fine and mellow that it suggested the 
Indian summer of the Eastern States. The winds were hushed, the tundra 
glowed in creamy golden sunshine, and the colors of the ripe foliage of 
the heathworts, willows, and birch--red, purple, and yellow, in pure 
bright tones--were enriched with those of berries which were scattered 
everywhere, as if they had been showered from the clouds like hail. When I 
was back a mile or two from the shore, reveling in this color-glory, and 
thinking how fine it would be could I cut a square of the tundra sod of 
conventional picture size, frame it, and hang it among the paintings on my 
study walls at home, saying to myself, "Such a Nature painting taken at 
random from any part of the thousand-mile bog would make the other 
pictures look dim and coarse," I heard merry shouting, and, looking round, 
saw a band of Eskimos--men, women, and children, loose and hairy like wild 
animals --running towards me. I could not guess at first what they were 
seeking, for they seldom leave the shore; but soon they told me, as they 
threw themselves down, sprawling and laughing, 

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on the mellow bog, and began to feast on the berries. A lively picture 
they made, and a pleasant one, as they frightened the whirring ptarmigans, 
and surprised their oily stomachs with the beautiful acid berries of many 
kinds, and filled sealskin bags with them to carry away for festive days 
in winter.

Nowhere else on my travels have I seen so much warm-blooded, rejoicing 
life as in this grand Arctic reservation, by so many regarded as desolate. 
Not only are there whales in abundance along the shores, and innumerable 
seals, walruses, and white bears, but on the tundras great herds of fat 
reindeer and wild sheep, foxes, hares, mice, piping marmots, and birds. 
Perhaps more birds are born here than in any other region of equal extent 
on the continent. Not only do strong-winged hawks, eagles, and water-fowl, 
to whom the length of the continent is merely a pleasant excursion, come 
up here every summer in great numbers, but also many short-winged 
warblers, thrushes, and finches, repairing hither to rear their young in 
safety, reinforce the plant bloom with their plumage, and sweeten the 
wilderness with song; flying all the way, some of them, from Florida, 
Mexico, and Central America. In coming north they are coming home, for 
they were born here, and they go south only to spend the winter months, as 
New Englanders go to Florida. Sweet-voiced troubadours, they 

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sing in orange groves and vine-clad magnolia woods in winter, in thickets 
of dwarf birch and alder in summer, and sing and chatter more or less all 
the way back and forth, keeping the whole country glad. Oftentimes, in New 
England, just as the last snow-patches are melting and the sap in the 
maples begins to flow, the blessed wanderers may be heard about orchards 
and the edges of fields where they have stopped to glean a scanty meal, 
not tarrying long, knowing they have far to go. Tracing the footsteps of 
spring, they arrive in their tundra homes in June or July, and set out on 
their return journey in September, or as soon as their families are able 
to fly well.

This is Nature's own reservation, and every lover of wildness will rejoice 
with me that by kindly frost it is so well defended. The discovery lately 
made that it is sprinkled with gold may cause some alarm; for the 
strangely exciting stuff makes the timid bold enough for anything, and the 
lazy destructively industrious. Thousands at least half insane are now 
pushing their way into it, some by the southern passes over the mountains, 
perchance the first mountains they have ever seen,--sprawling, struggling, 
gasping for breath, as, laden with awkward, merciless burdens of 
provisions and tools, they climb over rough-angled boulders and cross thin 
miry bogs. Some are going by the mountains 

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and rivers to the eastward through Canada, tracing the old romantic ways 
of the Hudson Bay traders; others by Bering Sea and the Yukon, sailing all 
the way, getting glimpses perhaps of the famous fur-seals, the ice-floes, 
and the innumerable islands and bars of the great Alaska river. In spite 
of frowning hardships and the frozen ground, the Klondike gold will 
increase the crusading crowds for years to come, but comparatively little 
harm will be done. Holes will be burned and dug into the hard ground here 
and there, and into the quartz-ribbed mountains and hills; ragged towns 
like beaver and muskrat villages will be built, and mills and locomotives 
will make rumbling, screeching, disenchanting noises; but the miner's pick 
will not be followed far by the plough, at least not until Nature is ready 
to unlock the frozen soil-beds with her slow-turning climate key. On the 
other hand, the roads of the pioneer miners will lead many a lover of 
wildness into the heart of the reserve, who without them would never see 
it.

In the meantime, the wildest health and pleasure grounds accessible and 
available to tourists seeking escape from care and dust and early death 
are the parks and reservations of the West. There are four national parks,
(1)--the Yellowstone, Yosemite, General Grant, and Sequoia,--all within 
easy reach, and thirty forest reservations,

(1. There are now five parks and thirty-eight reservations.)

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a magnificent realm of woods, most of which, by railroads and trails and 
open ridges, is also fairly accessible, not only to the determined 
traveler rejoicing in difficulties, but to those (may their tribe 
increase) who, not tired, not sick, just naturally take wing every summer 
in search of wildness. The forty million acres of these reserves are in 
the main unspoiled as yet, though sadly wasted and threatened on their 
more open margins by the axe and fire of the lumberman and prospector, and 
by hoofed locusts, which, like the winged ones, devour every leaf within 
reach, while the shepherds and owners set fires with the intention of 
making a blade of grass grow in the place of every tree, but with the 
result of killing both the grass and the trees.

In the million acre Black Hills Reserve of South Dakota, the easternmost 
of the great forest reserves, made for the sake of the farmers and miners, 
there are delightful, reviving sauntering-grounds in open parks of yellow 
pine, planted well apart, allowing plenty of sunshine to warm the ground. 
This tree is one of the most variable and most widely distributed of 
American pines. It grows sturdily on all kinds of soil and rocks, and, 
protected by a mail of thick bark, defies frost and fire and disease 
alike, daring every danger in firm, calm beauty and strength. It occurs 
here mostly on the outer hills and slopes where no other tree can grow. 
The ground beneath it 

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is yellow most of the summer with showy Wythia, arnica, applopappus, 
solidago, and other sun-loving plants, which, though they form no heavy 
entangling growth, yet give abundance of color and make all the woods a 
garden. Beyond the yellow pine woods there lies a world of rocks of 
wildest architecture, broken, splintery, and spiky, not very high, but the 
strangest in form and style of grouping imaginable. Countless towers and 
spires, pinnacles and slender domed columns, are crowded together, and 
feathered with sharp-pointed Engelmann spruces, making curiously mixed 
forests,--half trees, half rocks. Level gardens here and there in the 
midst of them offer charming surprises, and so do the many small lakes 
with lilies on their meadowy borders, and bluebells, anemones, daises, 
castilleias, comandras, etc., together forming landscapes delightfully 
novel, and made still wilder by many interesting animals,--elk, deer, 
beavers, wolves squirrels, and birds. Not very long ago this was the 
richest of all the red man's hunting-grounds hereabout. After the season's 
buffalo hunts were over,--as described by Parkman, who, with a picturesque 
cavalcade of Sioux savages, passed through these famous hills in 1846, --
every winter deficiency was here made good, and hunger was unknown until, 
in spite of most determined, fighting, killing opposition, the white gold-
hunters entered the fat game reserve 

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and spoiled it. The Indians are dead now, and so are most of the hardly 
less striking free trappers of the early romantic Rocky Mountain times. 
Arrows, bullets, scalping-knives, need no longer be feared; and all the 
wilderness is peacefully open.

The Rocky Mountain reserves are the Teton, Yellowstone, Lewis and Clark, 
Bitter Root, Priest River and Flathead, comprehending more than twelve 
million acres of mostly unclaimed, rough, forest-covered mountains in 
which the great rivers of the country take their rise. The commonest tree 
in most of them is the brave, indomitable, and altogether admirable Pinus 
contorta, widely distributed in all kinds of climate and soil, growing 
cheerily in frosty Alaska, breathing the damp salt air of the sea as well 
as the dry biting blasts of the Arctic interior, and making itself at home 
on the most dangerous flame-swept slopes and bridges of the Rocky 
Mountains in immeasurable abundance and variety of forms. Thousands of 
acres of this species are destroyed by running fires nearly every summer, 
but a new growth springs quickly from the ashes. It is generally small, 
and yields few sawlogs of commercial value, but is of incalculable 
importance to the farmer and miner; supplying fencing, mine timbers, and 
firewood, holding the porous soil on steep slopes, preventing landslips 
and avalanches, and giving kindly, nourishing shelter to 

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animals and the widely outspread sources of the life-giving rivers. The 
other trees are mostly spruce, mountain pine, cedar, juniper, larch, and 
balsam fir; some of them, especially on the western slopes of the 
mountains, attaining grand size and furnishing abundance of fine timber.

Perhaps the least known of all this grand group of reserves is the Bitter 
Root, of more than four million acres. It is the wildest, shaggiest block 
of forest wildness in the Rocky Mountains, full of happy, healthy, storm-
loving trees, full of streams that dance and sing in glorious array, and 
full of Nature's animals,-- elk, deer, wild sheep, bears, cats, and 
innumerable smaller people.

In calm Indian summer, when the heavy winds are hushed, the vast forests 
covering hill and dale, rising and falling over the rough topography and 
vanishing in the distance, seem lifeless. No moving thing is seen as we 
climb the peaks, and only the low, mellow murmur of falling water is 
heard, which seems to thicken the silence. Nevertheless, how many hearts 
with warm red blood in them are beating under cover of the woods, and how 
many teeth and eyes are shining! A multitude of animal people, intimately 
related to us, but of whose lives we know almost nothing, are as busy 
about their own affairs as we are about ours: beavers are building and 
mending dams and huts for winter, and 

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storing them with food; bears are studying winter quarters as they stand 
thoughtful in open spaces, while the gentle breeze ruffles the long hair 
on their backs; elk and deer, assembling on the heights, are considering 
cold pastures where they will be farthest away from the wolves; squirrels 
and marmots are busily laying up provisions and lining their nests against 
coming frost and snow foreseen; and countless thousands of birds are 
forming parties and gathering their young about them for flight to the 
southlands; while butterflies and bees, apparently with no thought of hard 
times to come, are hovering above the late-blooming goldenrods, and, with 
countless other insect folk, are dancing and humming right merrily in the 
sunbeams and shaking all the air into music.

Wander here a whole summer, if you can. Thousands of God's wild blessings 
will search you and soak you as if you were sponge, and the big days will 
go by uncounted. If you are business-tangled, and so burdened with duty 
that only weeks can be get out of the heavy-laden year, then go to the 
Flathead Reserve; for it is easily and quickly reached by the Great 
Northern Railroad. Get off the track at Belton Station, and in a few 
minutes you will find yourself in the midst of what you are sure to say is 
the best care-killing scenery on the continent,--beautiful lakes derived 
straight from glaciers, 

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lofty mountains steeped in lovely nemophila-blue skies and clad with 
forests and glaciers, mossy, ferny waterfalls in their hollows, nameless 
and numberless, and meadowy gardens abounding in the best of everything. 
When you are calm enough for discriminating observation, you will find the 
king of the larches, one of the best of the Western giants, beautiful, 
picturesque, and regal in port, easily the grandest of all the larches in 
the world. It grows to a height of one hundred and fifty to two hundred 
feet, with a diameter at the ground of five to eight feet, throwing out 
its branches into the light as no other tree does. To those who before 
have seen only the European larch or the Lyall species of the eastern 
Rocky Mountains, or the little tamarack or hackmatack of the Eastern 
States and Canada, this Western king must be a revelation.

Associated with this grand tree in the making of the Flathead forests is 
the large and beautiful mountain pine, or Western white pine (Pinus 
monticola), the invincible contorta or lodge-pole pine, and spruce and 
cedar. The forest floor is covered with the richest beds of Linnæa 
borealis I ever saw, thick fragrant carpets, enriched with shining mosses 
here and there, and with Clintonia, pyrola, moneses, and vaccinium, 
weaving hundred-mile beds of bloom that would have made blessed old Linnæa 
weep for joy.

Lake McDonald, full of brisk trout, is in the 

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heart of this forest, and Avalanche Lake is ten miles above McDonald, at 
the feet of a group of glacier-laden mountains. Give a month at least to 
this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your 
life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you 
truly immortal. Nevermore will time seem short or long, and cares will 
never again fall heavily on you, but gently and kindly as gifts from 
heaven.

The vast Pacific Coast reserves in Washington and Oregon--the Cascade, 
Washington, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Bull Run, and Ashland, named in order 
of size--include more than 12,500,000 acres of magnificent forests of 
beautiful and gigantic trees. They extend over the wild, unexplored 
Olympic Mountains and both flanks of the Cascade Range, the wet and the 
dry. On the east side of the Cascades the woods are sunny and open, and 
contain principally yellow pine, of moderate size, but of great value as a 
cover for the irrigating streams that flow into the dry interior, where 
agriculture on a grand scale is being carried on. Along the moist, balmy, 
foggy, west flank of the mountains, facing the sea, the woods reach their 
highest development, and, excepting the California redwoods, are the 
heaviest on the continent. They are made up mostly of the Douglas spruce 
(Pseudotsuga taxifolia), with the giant arbor vitæ, or cedar, and several 
species 

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of fir and hemlock in varying abundance, forming a forest kingdom unlike 
any other, in which limb meets limb, touching and overlapping in bright, 
lively, triumphant exuberance, two hundred and fifty, three hundred, and 
even four hundred feet above the shady, mossy ground. Over all the other 
species the Douglas spruce reigns supreme. It is not only a large tree, 
the tallest in America next to the redwood, but a very beautiful one, with 
bright green drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft 
exquisitely straight and round and regular. Forming extensive forests by 
itself in many places, it lifts its spiry tops into the sky close together 
with as even a growth as a well-tilled field of grain. No ground has been 
better tilled for wheat than these Cascade Mountains for trees: They were 
ploughed by mighty glaciers, and harrowed and mellowed and outspread by 
the broad streams that flowed from the ice-ploughs as they were withdrawn 
at the close of the glacial period.

In proportion to its weight when dry, Douglas spruce timber is perhaps 
stronger than that of any other large conifer in the country, and being 
tough, durable, and elastic, it is admirably suited for ship-building, 
piles, and heavy timbers in general; but its hardness and liability to 
warp when it is cut into boards render it unfit for fine work. In the 
lumber markets of California it is 

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called "Oregon pine." When lumbering is going on in the best Douglas 
woods, especially about Puget Sound, many of the long, slender boles are 
saved for spars; and so superior is their quality that they are called for 
in almost every shipyard in the world, and it is interesting to follow 
their fortunes. Felled and peeled and dragged to tide-water, they are 
raised again as yards and masts for ships, given iron roots and canvas 
foliage, decorated with flags, and sent to sea, where in glad motion they 
go cheerily over the ocean prairie in every latitude and longitude, 
singing and bowing responsive to the same winds that waved them when they 
were in the woods. After standing in one place for centuries they thus go 
round the world like tourists, meeting many a friend from the old home 
forest; some traveling like themselves, some standing head downward in 
muddy harbors, holding up the platforms of wharves, and others doing all 
kinds of hard timber work, showy or hidden.

This wonderful tree also grows far northward in British Columbia, and 
southward along the coast and middle regions of Oregon and California; 
flourishing with the redwood wherever it can find an opening, and with the 
sugar pine, yellow pine, and libocedrus in the Sierra. It extends into the 
San Gabriel, San Bernardino, and San Jacinto Mountains of southern 
California. It also grows well on the Wasatch Mountains, 

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where it is called "red pine," and on many parts of the Rocky Mountains 
and short interior ranges of the Great Basin. But though thus widely 
distributed, only in Oregon, Washington, and some parts of British 
Columbia does it reach perfect development.

To one who looks from some high standpoint over its vast breadth, the 
forest on the west side of the Cascades seems all one dim, dark, 
monotonous field, broken only by the white volcanic cones along the summit 
of the range. Back in the untrodden wilderness a deep furred carpet of 
brown and yellow mosses covers the ground like a garment, pressing about 
the feet of the trees, and rising in rich bosses softly and kindly over 
every rock and mouldering trunk, leaving no spot uncared for; and dotting 
small prairies, and fringing the meadows and the banks of streams not seem 
in general views, we find, besides the great conifers, a considerable 
number of hard-wood trees,--oak, ash, maple, alder, wild apple, cherry, 
arbutus, Nuttall's flowering dogwood, and in some places chestnuts. In a 
few favored spots the broad-leaved maple grows to a height of a hundred 
feet in forests by itself, sending out large limbs in magnificent 
interlacing arches covered with mosses and ferns, thus forming lofty sky-
gardens, and rendering the underwoods delightfully cool. No finer forest 
ceiling is to be found than these maple arches, while the floor, 

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ornamented with tall ferns and rubus vines, and cast into hillocks by the 
bulging, moss-covered roots of the trees, matches it well.

Passing from beneath the heavy shadows of the woods, almost anywhere one 
steps into lovely gardens of lilies, orchids, heathworts, and wild roses. 
Along the lower slopes, especially in Oregon, where the woods are less 
dense, there are miles of rhododendron, making glorious masses of purple 
in the spring, while all about the streams and the lakes and the beaver 
meadows there is a rich tangle of hazel, plum, cherry, crab-apple, cornel, 
gaultheria, and rubus, with myriads of flowers and abundance of other more 
delicate bloomers, such as erythronium,brodiæa, fritillaria, calochortus, 
Clintonia, and the lovely hider of the north, Calypso. Beside all these 
bloomers there are wonderful ferneries about the many misty waterfalls, 
some of the fronds ten feet high, others the most delicate of their tribe, 
the maidenhair fringing the rocks within reach of the lightest dust of the 
spray, while the shading trees on the cliffs above them, leaning over, 
look like eager listeners anxious to catch every tone of the restless 
waters. In the autumn berries of every color and flavor abound, enough for 
birds, bears, and everybody, particularly about the stream-sides and 
meadows where sunshine reaches the ground: huckleberries, red, blue, and 
black, some growing close to the ground others on 

Page 24

bushes ten feet high; gaultheria berries, called "sal-al" by the Indians; 
salmon berries, an inch in diameter, growing in dense prickly tangles, the 
flowers, like wild roses, still more beautiful than the fruit; 
raspberries, gooseberries, currants, blackberries, and strawberries. The 
underbrush and meadow fringes are in great part made up of these berry 
bushes and vines; but in the depths of the woods there is not much 
underbrush of any kind,--only a thin growth of rubus, huckleberry, and 
vine-maple.

Notwithstanding the outcry against the reservations last winter in 
Washington, that uncounted farms, towns, and villages were included in 
them, and that all business was threatened or blocked, nearly all the 
mountains in which the reserves lie are still covered with virgin forests. 
Though lumbering has long been carried on with tremendous energy along 
their boundaries, and home-seekers have explored the woods for openings 
available for farms, however small, one may wander in the heart of the 
reserves for weeks without meeting a human being, Indian or white man, or 
any conspicuous trace of one. Indians used to ascend the main streams on 
their way to the mountains for wild goats, whose wool furnished them 
clothing. But with food in abundance on the coast there was little to draw 
them into the woods, and the monuments they have left there are scarcely 
more conspicuous than 

Page 25

those of birds and squirrels; far less so than those of the beavers, which 
have dammed streams and made clearings that will endure for centuries. Nor 
is there much in these woods to attract cattle-keepers. Some of the first 
settlers made farms on the small bits of prairie and in the comparatively 
open Cowlitz and Chehalis valleys of Washington; but before the gold 
period most of the immigrants from the Eastern States settled in the 
fertile and open Willamette Valley of Oregon. Even now, when the search 
for tillable land is so keen, excepting the bottom-lands of the rivers 
around Puget Sound, there are few cleared spots in all western Washington. 
On every meadow or opening of any sort some one will be found keeping 
cattle, raising hops, or cultivating patches of grain, but these spots are 
few and far between. All the larger spaces were taken long ago; therefore 
most of the newcomers build their cabins where the beavers built theirs. 
They keep a few cows, laboriously widen their little meadow openings by 
hacking, girdling, and burning the rim of the close-pressing forest, and 
scratch and plant among the huge blackened logs and stamps, girdling and 
killing themselves in killing the trees.

Most of the farm lands of Washington and Oregon, excepting the valleys of 
the Willamette and Rogue rivers, lie on the east side of the mountains. 
The forests on the eastern slopes 

Page 26

of the Cascades fail altogether ere the foot of the range is reached, 
stayed by drought as suddenly as on the west side they are stopped by the 
sea; showing strikingly how dependent are these forest giants on the 
generous rains and fogs so often complained of in the coast climate. The 
lower portions of the reserves are solemnly soaked and poulticed in rain 
and fog during the winter months, and there is a sad dearth of sunshine, 
but with a little knowledge of woodcraft any one may enjoy an excursion 
into these woods even in the rainy season. The big, gray days are 
exhilarating, and the colors of leaf and branch and mossy bole are then at 
their best. The mighty trees getting their food are seen to be wide-awake, 
every needle thrilling in the welcome nourishing storms, chanting and 
bowing low in glorious harmony, while every raindrop and snowflake is seen 
as a beneficent messenger from the sky. The snow that falls on the lower 
woods is mostly soft, coming through the trees in downy tufts, loading 
their branches, and bending them down against the trunks until they look 
like arrows, while a strange muffled silence prevails, making everything 
impressively solemn. But these lowland snowstorms and their effects 
quickly vanish. The snow melts in a day or two, sometimes in a few hours, 
the bent branches spring up again, and all the forest work is left to the 
fog and the rain. At the same time, dry 

Page 27

snow is falling on the upper forests and mountain tops. Day after day, 
often for weeks, the big clouds give their flowers without ceasing, as if 
knowing how important is the work they have to do. The glinting, swirling 
swarms thicken the blast, and the trees and rocks are covered to a depth 
of ten to twenty feet. Then the mountaineer, snug in a grove with bread 
and fire, has nothing to do but gaze and listen and enjoy. Ever and anon 
the deep, low roar of the storm is broken by the booming of avalanches, as 
the snow slips from the overladen heights and crushes down the long white 
slopes to fill the fountain hollows. All the smaller streams are crushed 
and buried, and the young groves of spruce and fir near the edge of the 
timber-line are gently bowed to the ground and put to sleep, not again to 
see the light of day or stir branch or leaf until the spring.

These grand reservations should draw thousands of admiring visitors at 
least in summer, yet they are neglected as if of no account, and spoilers 
are allowed to ruin them as fast as they like.(1) A few peeled spars cut 
here were set up in London, Philadelphia, and Chicago, where they

(1. The outlook over forest affairs is now encouraging. Popular interest, 
more practical than sentimental in whatever touches the welfare of the 
country's forests, is growing rapidly, and a hopeful beginning has been 
made by the Government in real protection for the reservations as well as 
for the parks. From July 1, 1900, there have been 9 superintendents, 39 
supervisors, and from 330 to 445 rangers of reservations.)

Page 28

excited wondering attention; but the countless hosts of living trees 
rejoicing at home on the mountains are scarce considered at all. Most 
travelers here are content with what they can see from car windows or the 
verandas of hotels, and in going from place to place cling to their 
precious trains and stages like wrecked sailors to rafts. When an 
excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of dangers are imagined,--
snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far safer to wander in God's woods than 
to travel on black highways or to stay at home. The snake danger is so 
slight it is hardly worth mentioning. Bears are a peaceable people, and 
mind their own business, instead of going about like the devil seeking 
whom they may devour. Poor fellows, they have been poisoned, trapped, and 
shot at until they have lost confidence in brother man, and it is not now 
easy to make their acquaintance. As to Indians, most of them are dead or 
civilized into useless innocence. No American wilderness that I know of is 
so dangerous as a city home "with all the modern improvements." One should 
go to the woods for safety, if for nothing else. Lewis and Clark, in their 
famous trip across the continent in 1804-1805, did not lose a single man 
by Indians or animals, though all the West was then wild. Captain Clark 
was bitten on the hand as he lay asleep. That was one bite among more than 
a hundred men while traveling nine thousand 

Page 29

sand miles. Loggers are far more likely to be met than Indians or bears in 
the reserves or about their boundaries, brown weather-tanned men with 
faces furrowed like bark, tired-looking, moving slowly, swaying like the 
trees they chop. A little of everything in the woods is fastened to their 
clothing, rosiny and smeared with balsam, and rubbed into it, so that 
their scanty outer garments grow thicker with use and never wear out. Many 
a forest giant have these old woodmen felled, but, round-shouldered and 
stooping, they too are leaning over and tottering to their fall. Others, 
however, stand ready to take their places, stout young fellows, erect as 
saplings; and always the foes of trees outnumber their friends. Far up the 
white peaks one can hardly fail to meet the wild goat, or American 
chamois,--an admirable mountaineer, familiar with woods and glaciers as 
well as rocks,--and in leafy thickets deer will be found; while gliding 
about unseen there are many sleek furred animals enjoying their beautiful 
lives, and birds also, notwithstanding few are noticed in hasty walks. The 
ousel sweetens the glens and gorges where the streams flow fastest, and 
every grove has its singers, however silent it seems,--thrushes, linnets, 
warblers; humming-birds glint about the fringing bloom of the meadows and 
peaks, and the lakes are stirred into lively pictures by water-fowl.

The Mount Rainier Forest Reserve should be 

Page 30

made a national park and guarded while yet its bloom is on;(1) for if in 
the making of the West Nature had what we call parks in mind,--places for 
rest, inspiration, and prayers,--this Rainier region must surely be one of 
them. In the centre of it there is a lonely mountain capped with ice; from 
the ice-cap glaciers radiate in every direction, and young rivers from the 
glaciers; while its flanks, sweeping down in beautiful curves, are clad 
with forests and gardens, and filled with birds and animals. Specimens of 
the best of Nature's treasures have been lovingly gathered here and 
arranged in simple symmetrical beauty within regular bounds.

Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the 
Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest in form, has the most 
interesting forest cover, and, with perhaps the exception of Shasta, is 
the highest and most flowery. Its massive white dome rises out of its 
forests, like a world by itself, to a height of fourteen thousand to 
fifteen thousand feet. The forests reach to a height of a little over six 
thousand feet, and above the forests there is a zone of the loveliest 
flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly 

(1. This was done shortly after the above was written. "One of the most 
important measures taken during the past year in connection with forest 
reservations was the action of Congress in withdrawing from the Mount 
Rainier Forest Reserve a portion of the region immediately surrounding 
Mount Rainier and setting it apart as a national park." (Report of 
Commissioner of General Land Office, for the year ended June, 1899.) But 
the park as it now stands is far too small.)

Page 31

two miles wide, so closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if 
Nature, glad to make an open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, 
were economizing the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her 
darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath,--daisies, anemones, 
geraniums, columbines, erythroniums, larkspurs, etc., among which we wade 
knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to 
petal. Picturesque detached groups of the spiry Abies lasiocarpa stand 
like islands along the lower margin of the garden zone, while on the upper 
margin there are extensive beds of bryanthus, Cassiope, Kalmia, and other 
heathworts, and higher still saxifrages and drabas, more and more lowly, 
reach up to the edge of the ice. Altogether this is the richest subalpine 
garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium. The icy dome needs none of 
man's care, but unless the reserve is guarded the flower bloom will soon 
be killed, and nothing of the forests will be left but black stump 
monuments.

The Sierra of California is the most openly beautiful and useful of all 
the forest reserves, and the largest excepting the Cascade Reserve of 
Oregon and the Bitter Root of Montana and Idaho. It embraces over four 
million acres of the grandest scenery and grandest trees on the continent, 
and its forests are planted just where they do the most good, not only for 
beauty, but 

Page 32

for farming in the great San Joaquin Valley beneath them. It extends 
southward from the Yosemite National Park to the end of the range, a 
distance of nearly two hundred miles. No other coniferous forest in the 
world contains so many species or so many large and beautiful trees,--
Sequoia gigantea, king of conifers, "the noblest of a noble race," as Sir 
Joseph Hooker well says; the sugar pine, king of all the world's pines, 
living or extinct; the yellow pine, next in rank, which here reaches most 
perfect development, forming noble towers of verdure two hundred feet 
high; the mountain pine, which braves the coldest blasts far up the 
mountains on grim, rocky slopes; and five others, flourishing each in its 
place, making eight species of pine in one forest, which is still further 
enriched by the great Douglas spruce, libocedrus, two species of silver 
fir, large trees and exquisitely beautiful, the Paton hemlock, the most 
graceful of evergreens, the curious tumion, oaks of many species, maples, 
alders, poplars, and flowering dogwood, all fringed with flowery 
underbrush, manzanita, ceanothus, wild rose, cherry, chestnut, and 
rhododendron. Wandering at random through these friendly, approachable 
woods, one comes here and there to the loveliest lily gardens, some of the 
lilies ten feet high, and the smoothest gentian meadows, and Yosemite 
valleys known only to mountaineers. Once I spent a night by 

Page 33

a camp-fire on Mount Shasta with Asa Gray and Sir Joseph Hooker, and, 
knowing that they were acquainted with all the great forests of the world, 
I asked whether they knew any coniferous forest that rivaled that of the 
Sierra. They unhesitatingly said: "No. In the beauty and grandeur of 
individual trees, and in number and variety of species, the Sierra forests 
surpass all others."

This Sierra Reserve, proclaimed by the President of the United States in 
September, 1893, is worth the most thoughtful care of the government for 
its own sake, without considering its value as the fountain of the rivers 
on which the fertility of the great San Joaquin Valley depends. Yet it 
gets no care at all. In the fog of tariff, silver, and annexation politics 
it is left wholly unguarded, though the management of the adjacent 
national parks by a few soldiers shows how well and how easily it can be 
preserved. In the meantime, lumbermen are allowed to spoil it at their 
will, and sheep in uncountable ravenous hordes to trample it and devour 
every green leaf within reach; while the shepherds, like destroying 
angels, set innumerable fires, which burn not only the undergrowth of 
seedlings on which the permanence of the forest depends, but countless 
thousands of the venerable giants. If every citizen could take one walk 
through this reserve, there would be 

Page 34

no more trouble about its care; for only in darkness does vandalism 
flourish.(1)

The reserves of southern California,--the San Gabriel, San Bernardino, San 
Jacinto, and Trabuco,--though not large, only about two million acres 
together, are perhaps the best appreciated. Their slopes are covered with 
a close, almost impenetrable growth of flowery bushes, beginning on the 
sides of the fertile coast valleys and the dry interior plains. Their 
higher ridges, however, and mountains are open, and fairly well forested 
with sugar pine, yellow pine, Douglas spruce, libocedrus, and white fir. 
As timber fountains they amount to little, but as bird and bee pastures, 
cover for the precious streams that irrigate the lowlands, and quickly 
available retreats from dust and heat and care, their value is 
incalculable. Good roads have been graded into them, by which in a few 
hours lowlanders can get well up into the sky and find refuge in 
hospitable camps and club-houses, where, while breathing reviving ozone, 
they may absorb the beauty about them, and look comfortably down on the 
busy towns and the most beautiful orange groves ever planted since 
gardening began.

The Grand Cañon Reserve of Arizona, of nearly two million acres, or the 
most interesting part of it, as well as the Rainier region, should 

(1. See note, p. 27.)

Page 35

be made into a national park, on account of their supreme grandeur and 
beauty. Setting out from Flagstaff, a station on the Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fé Railroad, on the way to the cañon you pass through beautiful 
forests of yellow pine,--like those of the Black Hills, but more 
extensive,--and curious dwarf forests of nut pine and juniper, the spaces 
between the miniature trees planted with many interesting species of 
eriogonum, yucca, and cactus. After riding or walking seventy-five miles 
through these pleasure-grounds, the San Francisco and other mountains, 
abounding in flowery parklike openings and smooth shallow valleys with 
long vistas which in fineness of finish and arrangement suggest the work 
of a consummate landscape artist, watching you all the way, you come to 
the most tremendous cañon in the world. It is abruptly countersunk in the 
forest plateau, so that you see nothing of it until you are suddenly 
stopped on its brink, with its immeasurable wealth of divinely colored and 
sculptured buildings before you and beneath you. No matter how far you 
have wandered hitherto, or how many famous gorges and valleys you have 
seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, will seem as novel to 
you, as unearthly in the color and grandeur and quantity of its 
architecture, as if you had found it after death, on some other star; so 
incomparably lovely and grand and 

Page 36

supreme is it above all the other cañons in our fire-moulded, earthquake-
shaken, rain-washed, wave-washed, river and glacier sculptured world. It 
is about six thousand feet deep where you first see it, and from rim to 
rim ten to fifteen miles wide. Instead of being dependent for interest 
upon waterfalls, depth, wall sculpture, and beauty of parklike floor, like 
most other great cañons, it has not waterfalls in sight, and no 
appreciable floor spaces. The big river has just room enough to flow and 
roar obscurely, here and there groping its way as best it can, like a 
weary, murmuring, overladen traveler trying to escape from the tremendous, 
bewildering labyrinthic abyss, while its roar serves only to deepen the 
silence. Instead of being filled with air, the vast space between the 
walls is crowded with Nature's grandest buildings,--a sublime city of 
them, painted in every color, and adorned with richly fretted cornice and 
battlement spire and tower in endless variety of style and architecture. 
Every architectural invention of man has been anticipated, and far more, 
in this grandest of God's terrestrial cities.



CHAPTER II
THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Of the four national parks of the West, the Yellowstone is far the 
largest. It is a big, wholesome wilderness on the broad summit of the 
Rocky Mountains, favored with abundance of rain and snow,--a place of 
fountains where the greatest of the American rivers take their rise. The 
central portion is a densely forested and comparatively level volcanic 
plateau with an average elevation of about eight thousand feet above the 
sea, surrounded by an imposing host of mountains belonging to the 
subordinate Gallatin, Wind River, Teton, Absaroka, and snowy ranges. 
Unnumbered lakes shine in it, united by a famous band of streams that rush 
up out of hot lava beds, or fall from the frosty peaks in channels rocky 
and bare, mossy and bosky, to the main rivers, singing cheerily on through 
every difficulty, cunningly dividing and finding their way east and went 
to the two far-off seas.

Glacier meadows and beaver meadows are out-spread with charming effect 
along the banks of the streams, parklike expanses in the woods, and 

Page 38

innumerable small gardens in rocky recesses of the mountains, some of them 
containing more petals than leaves, while the whole wilderness is 
enlivened with happy animals.

Beside the treasures common to most mountain regions that are wild and 
blessed with a kind climate, the park is full of exciting wonders. The 
wildest geysers in the world, in bright, triumphant bands, are dancing and 
singing in it amid thousands of boiling springs, beautiful and awful, 
their basins arrayed in gorgeous colors like gigantic flowers; and hot 
paint-pots, mud springs, mud volcanoes, mush and broth caldrons whose 
contents are of every color and consistency, plash and heave and roar in 
bewildering abundance. In the adjacent mountains, beneath the living trees 
the edges of petrified forests are exposed to view, like specimens on the 
shelves of a museum, standing on ledges tier above tier where they grew, 
solemnly silent in rigid crystalline beauty after swaying in the winds 
thousands of centuries ago, opening marvelous views back into the years 
and climates and life of the past. Here, too, are hills of sparkling 
crystals, hills of sulphur, hills of glass, hills of cinders and ashes, 
mountains of every style of architecture, icy or forested, mountains 
covered with honey-bloom sweet as Hymettus, mountains boiled soft like 
potatoes and colored like a sunset sky. A' that and a' that, and twice as 
muckle's a' that, 

Page 39

Nature has on show in the Yellowstone Park. Therefore it is called 
Wonderland, and thousands of tourists and travelers stream into it every 
summer, and wander about in it enchanted.

Fortunately, almost as soon as it was discovered it was dedicated and set 
apart for the benefit of the people, a piece of legislation that shines 
benignly amid the common dust-and-ashes history of the public domain, for 
which the world must thank Professor Hayden above all others; for he led 
the first scientific exploring party into it, described it, and with 
admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to preserve it. As delineated in the 
year 1872, the park, contained about 3344 square miles. On March 30, 1891 
it was to all intents and purposes enlarged by the Yellowstone National 
Park Timber Reserve, and in December, 1897, by the Teton Forest Reserve; 
thus nearly doubling its original area, and extending the southern 
boundary far enough to take in the sublime Teton range and the famous 
pasture-lands of the big Rocky Mountain game animals. The withdrawal of 
this large tract from the public domain did not harm to any one; for its 
height, 6000 to over 13,000 feet above the sea, and its thick mantle of 
volcanic rocks, prevent its ever being available for agriculture or 
mining, while on the other hand its geographical position, reviving 
climate, and wonderful scenery combine to make it a grand health, 
pleasure, and study 

Page 40

resort,--a gathering-place for travelers from all the world.

The national parks are not only withdrawn from sale and entry like the 
forest reservations, but are efficiently managed and guarded by small 
troops of United States cavalry, directed by the Secretary of the 
Interior. Under this care the forests are flourishing, protected from both 
axe and fire; and so, of course, are the shaggy beds of underbrush and the 
herbaceous vegetation. The so-called curiosities, also, are preserved, and 
the furred and feathered tribes, many of which, in danger of extinction a 
short time ago, are now increasing in numbers,--a refreshing thing to see 
amid the blind, ruthless destruction that is going on in the adjacent 
regions. In pleasing contrast to the noisy, ever changing management, or 
mismanagement, of blundering, plundering, money-making vote-sellers who 
receive their places from boss politicians as purchased goods, the 
soldiers do their duty so quietly that the traveler is scarce aware of 
their presence.

This is the coolest and highest of the parks. Frosts occur every month of 
the year. Nevertheless, the tenderest tourist finds it warm enough in 
summer. The air is electric and full of ozone, healing, reviving, 
exhilarating, kept pure by frost and fire, while the scenery is wild 
enough to awaken the dead. It is a glorious place to grow in and rest in; 
camping on the shores of the 

Page 41

lakes, in the warm openings of the woods golden with sunflowers, on the 
banks of the streams, by the snowy waterfalls, beside the exciting wonders 
or away from them in the scallops of the mountain walls sheltered from 
every wind, on smooth silky lawns enameled with gentians, up in the 
fountain hollows of the ancient glaciers between the peaks, where cool 
pools and brooks and gardens of precious plants charmingly embowered are 
never wanting, and good rough rocks with every variety of cliff and scaur 
are invitingly near for outlooks and exercise.

From these lovely dens you may make excursions whenever you like into the 
middle of the park, where the geysers and hot springs are reeking and 
spouting in their beautiful basins, displaying an exuberance of color and 
strange motion and energy admirably calculated to surprise and frighten, 
charm and shake up the least sensitive out of apathy into newness of life.

However orderly your excursions or aimless, again and again amid the 
calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed and 
awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge 
deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them, are 
plashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce furnace 
fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white 
torrents of boiling water and steam, 

Page 42

like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, 
black underworld. Some of these ponderous geyser columns are as large as 
sequoias,--five to sixty feel in diameter, one hundred and fifty to three 
hundred feet high, --and are sustained at this great height with 
tremendous energy for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly an hour, standing 
rigid and erect, hissing, throbbing, booming, as if thunderstorms were 
raging beneath their roots, their sides roughened or fluted like the 
furrowed boles of trees, their tops dissolving in feathery branches, while 
the irised spray, like misty bloom is at times blown aside, revealing the 
massive shafts shining against a background of pine-covered hills. Some of 
them lean more or less, as if storm-bent, and instead of being round are 
flat or fan-shaped, issuing from irregular slits in silex pavements with 
radiate structure, the sunbeams sifting through them in ravishing 
splendor. Some are broad and round-headed like oaks; others are low and 
bunchy, branching near the ground like bushes; and a few are hollow in the 
centre like big daisies or water-lilies. No frost cools them, snow never 
covers them nor lodges in their branches; winter and summer they welcome 
alike; all of them, of whatever form or size, faithfully rising and 
sinking in fairy rhythmic dance night and day, in all sorts of weather, at 
varying periods of minutes, hours, or weeks, growing up rapidly, 

Page 43

uncontrollable as fate, tossing their pearly branches in the wind, 
bursting into bloom and vanishing like the frailest flowers,--plants of 
which Nature raises hundreds or thousands of crops a year with no apparent 
exhaustion of the fiery soil.

The so-called geyser basins, in which this rare sort of vegetation is 
growing, are mostly open valleys on the central plateau that were eroded 
by glaciers after the greater volcanic fires had ceased to burn. Looking 
down over the forests as you approach them from the surrounding heights, 
you see a multitude of white columns, broad, reeking masses, and irregular 
jets and puffs of misty vapor ascending from the bottom of the valley, or 
entangled like smoke among the neighboring trees, suggesting the factories 
of some busy town or the camp-fires of an army. These mark the position of 
each mush-pot, paint-pot, hot spring, and geyser, or gusher, as the 
Icelandic words mean. And when you saunter into the midst of them over the 
bright sinter pavements, and see how pure and white and pearly gray they 
are in the shade of the mountains, and how radiant in the sunshine, you 
are fairly enchanted. So numerous they are and varied, Nature seems to 
have gathered them from all the world as specimens of her rarest 
fountains, to show in one place what she can do. Over four thousand hot 
springs have been counted 

Page 44

in the park, and a hundred geysers; how many more there are nobody knows.

These valleys at the heads of the great rivers may be regarded as 
laboratories and kitchens, in which, amid a thousand retorts and pots, we 
may see Nature at work as chemist or cook, cunningly compounding an 
infinite variety of mineral messes; cooking whole mountains; boiling and 
steaming flinty rocks to smooth paste and mush,--yellow, brown, red, pink, 
lavender, gray, and creamy white,--making the most beautiful mud in the 
world; and distilling the most ethereal essences. Many of these pots and 
caldrons have been boiling thousands of years. Pots of sulphurous mush, 
stringy and lumpy, and pots of broth as black as ink, are tossed and 
stirred with constant care, and thin transparent essences, too pure and 
fine to be called water, are kept simmering gently in beautiful sinter 
cups and bowls that grow ever more beautiful the longer they are used. In 
some of the spring basins, the waters, though still warm, are perfectly 
calm, and shine blandly in a sod of overleaning grass and flowers, as if 
they were thoroughly cooked at last, and set aside to settle and cool. 
Others are wildly boiling over as if running to waste, thousands of tons 
of the precious liquids being thrown into the air to fall in scalding 
floods on the clean coral floor of the establishment, keeping onlookers at 
a distance. Instead of holding limpid pale 

Page 45

green or azure water, other pots and craters are filled with scalding mud, 
which is tossed up from three or four feet to thirty feet, in sticky, rank-
smelling masses, with gasping, belching, thudding sounds, plastering the 
branches of neighboring trees; every flask, retort, hot spring, and geyser 
has something special in it, no two being the same in temperature, color, 
or composition.

In these natural laboratories one needs stout faith to feel at ease. The 
ground sounds hollow underfoot, and the awful subterranean thunder shakes 
one's mind as the ground is shaken, especially at night in the pale 
moonlight, or when the sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the solemn 
gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous dancing ghosts, and 
their wild songs and the earthquake thunder replying to the storms 
overhead seem doubly terrible, as if divine government were at an end. But 
the frembling hills keep their places. The sky clears, the rosy dawn is 
reassuring, and up comes the sun like a god, pouring his faithful beams 
across the mountains and forest, lighting each peak and tree and ghastly 
geyser alike, and shining into the eyes of the reeking springs, clothing 
them with rainbow light, and dissolving the seeming chaos of darkness into 
varied forms of harmony. The ordinary work of the world goes on. Gladly we 
see the flies dancing in the sun-beams, birds feeding their young, 
squirrels gathering 

Page 46

nuts, and hear the blessed ouzel singing confidingly in the shallows of 
the river,--most faithful evangel, calming every fear, reducing everything 
to love.

The variously tinted sinter and travertine formations, outspread like 
pavements over large areas of the geyser valleys, lining the spring basins 
and throats of the craters, and forming beautiful coral-like rims and 
curbs about them, always excite admiring attention; so also does the play 
of the waters from which they are deposited. The various minerals in them 
are rich in colors, and these are greatly heightened by a smooth, silky 
growth of brilliantly colored confervæ which lines many of the pools and 
channels and terraces. No be of flower-bloom is more exquisite than these 
myriads of minute plants, visible only in mass, growing in the hot waters. 
Most of the spring borders are low and daintily scalloped, crenelated, and 
beaded with sinter pearls. Some of the geyser craters are massive and 
picturesque, like ruined castles or old burned-out sequoia stumps, and are 
adorned on a grand scale with outbulging, cauliflower-like formations. 
From these as centres the silex pavements slope gently away in thin, 
crusty, overlapping layers, slightly interrupted in some places by low 
terraces. Or, as in the case of the Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end 
of the park, where the building waters issue from the 

Page 47

side of a steep hill, the deposits form a succession of higher and broader 
terraces of white travertine tinged with purple, like the famous Pink 
Terrace at Rotomahana, New Zealand, draped in front with clustering 
stalactites, each terrace having a pool of indescribably beautiful water 
upon it in a basin with a raised rim that glistens with confervæ--the 
whole, when viewed at a distance of a mile or two, looking like a broad, 
massive cascade pouring over shelving rocks in snowy purpled foam.

The stones of this divine masonry, invisible particles of lime or silex, 
mined in quarries no eye has seen, go to their appointed places in gentle, 
tinkling, transparent currents or through the dashing turmoil of floods, 
as surely guided as the sap of plants streaming into bole and branch, leaf 
and flower. And thus from century to century this beauty-work has gone on 
and is going on.

Passing through many a mile of pine and spruce woods, toward the centre of 
the park you come to the famous Yellowstone Lake. It is about twenty miles 
long and fifteen wide, and lies at a height of nearly 8000 feet above the 
level of the sea, amid dense black forests and snowy mountains. Around its 
winding, wavering shores, closely forested and picturesquely varied with 
promontories and bays, the distance is more than 100 miles. It is not very 
deep, 

Page 48

only from 200 to 300 feet, and contains less water than the celebrated 
Lake Tahoe of the California Sierra, which is nearly the same size, lies 
at a height of 6400 feet, and is over 1600 feet deep. But no other lake in 
North America of equal area lies so high as the Yellowstone, or gives 
birth to so noble a river. The terraces around its shores show that at the 
close of the glacial period its surface was about 160 feet higher than it 
is now, and its area nearly twice as great.

It is full of trout, and a vast multitude of birds--swans, pelicans, 
geese, ducks, cranes, herons, curlews, plovers, snipe--feed in it and upon 
its shores; and many forest animals come out of the woods, and wade a 
little way in shallow, sandy places to drink and look about them, and cool 
themselves in the free flowing breezes.

In calm weather it is a magnificent mirror for the woods and mountains and 
sky, now pattered with hail and rain, now roughened with sudden storms 
that send waves to fringe the shores and wash its border of gravel and 
sand. The Absaroka Mountains and the Wind River Plateau on the east and 
south pour their gathered waters into it, and the river issues from the 
north side in a broad, smooth, stately current, silently gliding with such 
serene majesty that one fancies it knows the vast journey of four thousand 
miles that lies before it, and the work it has to do. 

Page 49

For the first twenty miles its course is in a level, sunny valley lightly 
fringed with trees, through which it flows in silvery reaches stirred into 
spangles here and there by ducks and leaping trout, making no sound save a 
low whispering among the pebbles and the dipping willows and sedges of its 
banks. Then suddenly, as if preparing for hard work; it rushes eagerly, 
impetuously forward rejoicing in its strength, breaks into foam-bloom, and 
goes thundering down into the Grand Cañon in two magnificent falls, one 
hundred and three hundred feet high.

The cañon is so tremendously wild and impressive that even these great 
falls cannot hold your attention. It is about twenty miles long and a 
thousand feet deep,--a weird, unearthly-looking gorge of jagged, fantastic 
architecture, and most brilliantly colored. Here the Washburn range, 
forming the northern rim of the Yellowstone basin, made up mostly of beds 
of rhyolite decomposed by the action of thermal waters, has been cut 
through and laid open to view by the river; and a famous section it has 
made. It is not the depth or the shape of the cañon nor the waterfall, nor 
the green and gray river chanting its brave song as it goes foaming on its 
way, that most impresses the observer, but the colors of the decomposed 
volcanic rocks. With few exceptions, the traveler in strange lands finds 
that, however much the scenery and 

Page 50

vegetation in different countries may change, Mother Earth is ever 
familiar and the same. But here the very ground is changed, as if 
belonging to some other world. The walls of the cañon from top to bottom 
burn in a perfect glory of color, confounding and dazzling when the sun is 
shining,--white, yellow, green, blue, vermilion, and various other shades 
of red indefinitely blending. All the earth hereabouts seems to be paint. 
Millions of tons of it lie in sight, exposed to wind and weather as if of 
no account, yet marvelously fresh and bright, fast colors not to be washed 
out or bleached out by either sunshine or storms. The effect is so novel 
and awful, we imagine that even a river might be afraid to enter such a 
place. But the rich and gentle beauty of the vegetation is reassuring. The 
lovely Linnæa borealis hangs her twin bells over the brink of the cliffs, 
forests and gardens extend their treasures in smiling confidence on either 
side, nuts and berries ripen well whatever may be going on below; blind 
fears varnish, and the grand gorge seems a kindly, beautiful part of the 
general harmony, full of peace and joy and good will.

The park is easy of access. Locomotives drag you to its northern boundary 
at Cinnabar, and horses and guides do the rest. From Cinnabar you will be 
whirled in coaches along the foaming Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot 
Springs; 

Page 51

thence through woods and meadows, gulches and ravines along branches of 
the Upper Gallatin, Madison, and Firehole rivers to the main geyser 
basins; thence over the Continental Divide and back again, up and down 
through dense pine, spruce, and fir woods to the magnificent Yellowstone 
Lake, along its northern shore to the outlet, down the river to the falls 
and Grand Cañnon, and thence back through the woods to Mammoth Hot Springs 
and Cinnabar; stopping here and there at the so-called points of interest 
among the geysers, springs, paint-pots, mud volcanoes, etc., where you 
will be allowed a few minutes or hours to saunter over the sinter 
pavements, watch the play of a few of the geysers, and peer into some of 
the most beautiful and terrible of the craters and pools. These wonders 
you will enjoy, and also the views of the mountains, especially the 
Gallatin and Absaroka ranges, the long, willowy glacier and beaver 
meadows, the beds of violets, gentians, phloxes, asters, phacelias, 
goldenrods, eriogonums, and many other flowers, some species giving color 
to whole meadows and hillsides. And you will enjoy your short views of the 
great lake and river and cañon. No scalping Indians will you see. The 
Blackfeet and Bannocks that once roamed here are gone; so are the old 
beaver-catchers, the Coulters and Bridgers, with all their attractive 
buckskin and romance. There are several bands 

Page 52

of buffaloes in the park, but you will not thus cheaply in tourist fashion 
see them nor many of the other large animals hidden in the wilderness. The 
song-birds, too, keep mostly out of sight of the rushing tourist, though 
off the roads thrushes, warblers, orioles, grosbeaks, etc., keep the air 
sweet and merry. Perhaps in passing rapids and falls you may catch 
glimpses of the water-ouzel, but in the whirling noise you will not hear 
his song. Fortunately, no road noise frightens the Douglas squirrel, and 
his merry play and gossip will amuse you all through the woods. Here and 
there a deer may be seen crossing the road, or a bear. Most likely, 
however, the only bears you will see are the half tame ones that go to the 
hotels every night for dinner-table scraps,-- yeast-powder biscuit, 
Chicago canned stuff, mixed pickles, and beefsteaks that have proved too 
tough for the tourists.

Among the gains of a coach trip are the acquaintances made and the fresh 
views into human nature; for the wilderness is a shrewd touchstone, even 
thus lightly approached, and brings many a curious trait to view. Setting 
out, the driver cracks his whip, and the four horses go off at half 
gallop, half trot, in trained, showy style, until out of sight of the 
hotel. The coach is crowded, old and young side by side, blooming and 
fading, full of hope and fun and care. Some look at the scenery or the 
horses, 

Page 53

and all ask questions, an odd mixed lot of them: "Where is the umbrella? 
What is the name of that blue flower over there? Are you sure the little 
bag is aboard? Is that hollow yonder a crater? How is your throat this 
morning? How high did you say the geysers spout? How does the elevation 
affect your head? Is that a geyser reeking over there in the rocks, or 
only a hot spring?" A long ascent is made, the solemn mountains come to 
view, small cares are quenched, and all become natural and silent, save 
perhaps some unfortunate expounder who has been reading guidebook geology, 
and rumbles forth foggy subsidences and upheavals until he is danger of 
being heaved overboard. The driver will give you the names of the peaks 
and meadows and streams as you come to them, call attention to the glass 
road, tell how hard it was to build,--how the obsidian cliffs naturally 
pushed the surveyor's lines to the right, and the industrious beavers, by 
flooding the valley in front of the cliff, pushed them to the left.

Geysers, however, are the main objects, and as soon as they come in sight 
other wonders are forgotten. All gather around the crater of the one that 
is expected to play first. During the eruptions of the smaller geysers, 
such as the Beehive and Old Faithful, though a little frightened at first, 
all welcome the glorious show with enthusiasm, and shout, "Oh, how 
wonderful, beautiful, 

Page 54

splendid. majestic!" Some venture near enough to stroke the column with a 
stick, as if it were a stone pillar or a tree, so firm and substantial and 
permanent it seems. While tourists wait around a large geyser, such as the 
Castle or the Giant, there is a chatter of small talk in anything but 
solemn mood; and during the intervals between the preliminary splashes and 
upheavals some adventurer occasionally looks down the throat of the 
crater, admiring the silex formations and wondering whether Hades is as 
beautiful. But when, with awful uproar as if avalanches were falling and 
storms thundering in the depths, the tremendous outburst begins, all run 
away to a safe distance, and look on, awe-stricken and silent, in devout, 
worshiping wonder.

The largest and one of the most wonderfully beautiful of the springs is 
the Prismatic, which the guide will be sure to show you. With a 
circumference of 300 yards, it is more like a lake than a spring. The 
water is pure deep blue in the centre, fading to green on the edges, and 
its basin and the slightly terraced pavement about it are astonishingly 
bright and varied in color. This one of the multitude of Yellowstone 
fountains is of itself object enough for a trip across the continent. No 
wonder that so many fine myths have originated in springs; that so many 
fountains were held sacred in the youth of the 

Page 55

world, and had miraculous virtues ascribed to them. Even in these cold, 
doubting, questioning, scientific times many of the Yellowstone fountains 
seem able to work miracles. Near the Prismatic Spring is the great 
Excelsior Geyser, which is said to throw a column of boiling water 60 to 
70 feet in diameter to a height of from 50 to 300 feet, at irregular 
periods. This is the greatest of all the geysers yet discovered anywhere. 
The Firehole River, which sweeps past it, is, at ordinary states, a stream 
about 100 yards wide and 3 feet deep; but when the geyser is in eruption, 
so great is the quantity of water discharged that the volume of the river 
is doubled, and it is rendered too hot and rapid to be forded.

Geysers are found in many other volcanic regions,--in Iceland, New 
Zealand, Japan, the Himalayas, the Eastern Archipelago, South America, the 
Azores, and elsewhere; but only in Iceland, New Zealand, and this Rocky 
Mountain park do they display their grandest forms, and of these three 
famous regions the Yellowstone is easily first, both in the number and in 
the size of its geysers. The greatest height of the column of the Great 
Geyser of Iceland actually measured was 212 feet, and of the Strokhr 162 
feet.

In New Zealand, the Te Pueia at Lake Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and 
two others are said to life their waters occasionally to a height of 100 
feet, while the celebrated Te Tarata at Rotomahana 

Page 56

sometimes lifts a boiling column 20 feet in diameter to a height of 60 
feet. But all these are far surpassed by the Excelsior. Few tourists, 
however, will see the Excelsior in action, or a thousand other interesting 
features of the park that lie beyond the wagon-roads and the hotels. The 
regular trips--from three to five days--are too short. Nothing can be done 
well at a speed of forty miles a day. The multitude of mixed, novel 
impressions rapidly piled on one another make only a dreamy, bewildering, 
swirling blur, most of which is unrememberable. Far more time should be 
taken. Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the 
mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in 
craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get 
their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows 
into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the 
storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age 
comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's 
sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here brimming cups in 
endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the 
mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with 
bands of music ever playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward 
guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly 

Page 57

forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one 
is fairly free in the wilderness.

Most of the dangers that haunt the unseasoned citizen are imaginary; the 
real ones are perhaps too few rather than too many for his good. The bears 
that always seem to spring up thick as trees, in fighting, devouring 
attitudes before the frightened tourist whenever a camping trip is 
proposed, are gentle now, finding they are no longer likely to be shot; 
and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational dread of over-civilized people, 
are scarce here, for most of the park lies above the snake-line. Poor 
creatures, loved only by their Maker, they are timid and bashful, as 
mountaineers know; and though perhaps not possessed of much of that 
charity that suffers long and is kind, seldom, either by mistake or by 
mishap, do harm to any one. Certainly they cause not the hundredth part of 
the pain and death that follow the footsteps of the admired Rocky Mountain 
trapper. Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the 
question comes up, "What are rattlesnakes good for?" As if nothing that 
does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as 
if our ways were God's ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a French traveler 
put this old question replied that their tails were good for toothache, 
and their heads for fever. 

Page 58

Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not 
begrudge them their share of life.

Fear nothing. No town park you have been accustomed to saunter in is so 
free from danger as the Yellowstone. It is a hard place to leave. Even its 
names in your guidebook are attractive, and should draw you far from wagon-
roads,--all save the early ones, derived from the infernal regions: Hell 
Roaring River, Hell Broth Springs, The Devil's Caldron, etc. Indeed, the 
whole region was at first called Coulter's Hell, from the fiery brimstone 
stories told by trapper Coulter, who left the Lewis and Clark expedition 
and wandered through the park, in the year 1807, with a bank of Bannock 
Indians. The later names, many of which we owe to Mr. Arnold Hague of the 
U. S. Geological Survey, are so telling and exhilarating that they set our 
pulses dancing and make us begin to enjoy the pleasures of excursions ere 
they are commenced. Three River Peak, Two Ocean Pass, Continental Divide, 
are capital geographical descriptions, suggesting thousands of miles of 
rejoicing streams and all that belongs to them. Big Horn Pass, Bison Peak, 
Big Game Ridge, bring brave mountain animals to mind. Birch Hills, Garnet 
Hills, Amethyst Mountain, Storm Peak, Electric Peak, Roaring Mountain, are 
bright, bracing names. Wapiti, Beaver, Tern, and Swan lakes, conjure 

Page 59

up fine pictures, and so also do Osprey and Ouzel falls. Antelope Creek, 
Otter, Mink, and Grayling creeks, Geode, Jasper, Opal, Carnelian, and 
Chalcedony creeks, are lively and sparkling names that help the streams to 
shine; and Azalea, Stellaria, Arnica, Aster, and Phlox creeks, what 
pictures these bring up! Violet, Morning Mist, Hygeia, Beryl, Vermilion, 
and Indigo springs, and many beside, give us visions of fountains more 
beautifully arrayed than Solomon in all his purple and golden glory. All 
these and a host of others call you to camp. You may be a little cold some 
nights, on mountain tops above the timber-line, but you will see the 
stars, and by and by you can sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in 
your grave. Keep awake while you may in mountain mansions so rare.

If you are not very strong, try to climb Electric Peak when a big bossy, 
well-charged thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe the ozone set free, and 
get yourself kindly shaken and shocked. You are sure to be lost in wonder 
and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up and hum and sing 
like an enthusiastic congregation.

After this reviving experience, you should take a look into a few of the 
tertiary volumes of the grand geological library of the park, and see how 
God writes history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day 
and a calm mind. Perhaps nowhere else in the Rocky Mountains have 

Page 60

the volcanic forces been so busy. More than ten thousand square miles 
hereabouts have been covered to a depth of at least five thousand feet 
with material spouted from chasms and craters during the tertiary period, 
forming broad sheets of basalt, andesite, rhyolite, etc., and marvelous 
masses of ashes, sand, cinders, and stones now consolidated into 
conglomerates, charged with the remains of plants and animals that lived 
in the calm, genial periods that separated the volcanic outbursts.

Perhaps the most interesting and telling of these rocks' to the hasty 
tourist, are those that make up the mass of Amethyst Mountain. On its 
north side it presents a section two thousand feet high of roughly 
stratified beds of sand, ashes, and conglomerates coarse and fine, forming 
the untrimmed edges of a wonderful set of volumes lying on their sides,--
books a million years old, well bound, miles in size, with full-page 
illustrations. On the ledges of this one section we see trunks and stumps 
of fifteen or twenty ancient forests ranged one above another, standing 
where they grew, or prostrate and broken like the pillars of ruined 
temples in desert sands,--a forest fifteen or twenty stories high, the 
roots of each spread above the tops of the next beneath it, telling 
wonderful tales of the bygone centuries, with their winters and summers, 
growth and death, fire, ice, and flood.

Page 61

There were giants in those days. The largest of the standing opal and 
agate stumps and prostrate sections of the trunks are from two or three to 
fifty feet in height or length, and from five to ten feet in diameter; and 
so perfect is the petrifaction that the annual rings and ducts are clearer 
and more easily counted than those of living trees, centuries of burial 
having brightened the records instead of blurring them. They show that the 
winters of the tertiary period gave as decided a check to vegetable growth 
as do those of the present time. Some trees favorably located grew 
rapidly, increasing twenty inches in diameter in as many years, while 
others of the some species, on poorer soil or overshadowed, increased only 
two or three inches in the same time.

Among the roots and stumps on the old forest floors we find the remains of 
ferns and bushes, and the seeds and leaves of trees like those now growing 
on the southern Alleghanies,--such as magnolia, sassafras, laurel, linden, 
persimmon, ash, alder, dogwood. Studying the lowest of these forests, the 
soil it grew on and the deposits it is buried in, we see that it was rich 
in species, and flourished in a genial, sunny climate. When its stately 
trees were in their glory, volcanic fires broke forth from chasms and 
craters, like larger geysers, spouting ashes, cinders, stones and mud, 
which fell on the doomed forest like hail and 

Page 62

snow; sifting, hurtling through the leaves and branches, choking the 
streams, covering the ground, crushing bushes and ferns, rapidly 
deepening, packing around the trees and breaking them, rising higher until 
the topmost boughs of the giants were buried, leaving not a leaf or twig 
in sight, so complete was the desolation. At last the volcanic storm began 
to abate, the fiery soil settled; mud floods and boulder floods passed 
over it, enriching it, cooling it; rains fell and mellow sunshine, and it 
became fertile and ready for another crop. Birds, and the winds, and 
roaming animals brought seeds from more fortunate woods, and a new forest 
grew up on the top of the buried one. Centuries of genial growing seasons 
passed. The seedling trees became giants, and with strong outreaching 
branches spread a leafy canopy over the gray land.

The sleeping subterranean fires again awake and shake the mountains, and 
every leaf trembles. The old craters, with perhaps new ones, are opened, 
and immense quantities of ashes, pumice, and cinders are again thrown into 
the sky. The sun, and shorn of his beams, glows like a dull red ball, 
until hidden in sulphurous clouds. Volcanic snow, hail, and floods fall on 
the new forest, burying it alive, like the one beneath its roots. Then 
come another noisy band of mud floods and boulder floods, mixing, 
settling, enriching the new ground, more seeds, quickening sunshine 

Page 63

and showers; and a third noble magnolia forest is carefully raised on the 
top of the second. And so on. Forest was planted above forest and 
destroyed, as if Nature were ever repenting, undoing the work she had so 
industriously done, and burying it.

Of course this destruction was creation, progress in the march of beauty 
through death. How quickly these old monuments excite and hold the 
imagination! We see the old stone stumps budding and blossoming and waving 
in the wind as magnificent trees, standing shoulder to shoulder, branches 
interlacing in grand varied round-headed forests; see the sunshine of 
morning and evening gilding their mossy trunks, and at high noon spangling 
on the thick glossy leaves of the magnolia, filtering through translucent 
canopies of linden and ash, and falling in mellow patches on the ferny 
floor; see the shining after rain, breathe the exhaling fragrance, and 
hear the winds and birds and the murmur of brooks and insects. We watch 
them from season to season; see the swelling buds when the sap begins to 
flow in the spring, the opening leaves and blossoms, the ripening of 
summer fruits, the colors of autumn, and the maze of leafless branches and 
sprays in winter; and we see the sudden oncome of the storms that 
overwhelmed them.

One calm morning at sunrise I saw the oaks 

Page 64

and pines in Yosemite Valley shaken by an earthquake, their tops swishing 
back and forth, and every branch and needle shuddering as if in distress 
like the frightened screaming birds. One may imagine the trembling, 
rocking, tumultuous waving of those ancient Yellowstone woods, and the 
terror of their inhabitants when the first foreboding shocks were felt, 
the sky grew dark, and rock-laden floods began to roar. But though they 
were close pressed and buried, cut off from sun and wind, all their happy 
leaf-fluttering and waving done, other currents coursed through them, 
fondling and thrilling every fibre, and beautiful wood was replaced by 
beautiful stone. Now their rocky sepulchres are partly open, and show 
forth the natural beauty of death.

After the forest times and fire times had passed away, and the volcanic 
furnaces were banked and held in abeyance, another great change occurred. 
The glacial winter came on. The sky was again darkened, not with dust and 
ashes, but with snow which fell in glorious abundance, piling deeper, 
deeper, slipping from the overladen heights in booming avalanches, 
compacting into glaciers, that flowed over all the landscape, wiping off 
forests, grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the comparatively featureless 
lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill and dale and ranges of 
mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for lakes, channels for 
streams, 

Page 65

few soils for forests, gardens, and meadows. While this ice-work was going 
on, the slumbering volcanic fires were boiling the subterranean waters, 
and with curious chemistry decomposing the rocks, making beauty in the 
darkness; these forces, seemingly antagonistic, working harmoniously 
together. How wild their meetings on the surface were we may imagine. When 
the glacier period began, geysers and hot springs were playing in grander 
volume, it may be, than those of to-day. The glaciers flowed over them 
while they spouted and thundered, carrying away their fine sinter and 
travertine structures, and shortening their mysterious channels.

The soils made in the down-grinding required to bring the present features 
of the landscape into relief are possibly no better than were some of the 
old volcanic soils that were carried away, and which, as we have seen, 
nourished magnificent forests, but the glacial landscapes are incomparably 
more beautiful than the old volcanic ones were. The glacial winter has 
passed away, like the ancient summers and fire periods, though in the 
chronology of the geologist all these times are recent. Only small 
residual glaciers on the cool northern slopes of the highest mountains are 
left of the vast all-embracing ice-mantle, as solfataras and geysers are 
all that are left of the ancient volcanoes.

Now the post-glacial agents are at work on the 

Page 66

grand old palimpsest of the park region, inscribing new characters; but 
still in its main telling features it remains distinctly glacial. The 
moraine soils are being leveled, sorted, refined, re-formed, and covered 
with vegetation; the polished pavements and scoring and other superficial 
glacial inscriptions on the crumbling lavas are being rapidly obliterated; 
gorges are being cut in the decomposed rhyolites and loose conglomerates, 
and turrets and pinnacles seem to be springing up like growing trees; 
while the geysers are depositing miles of sinter and travertine. 
Nevertheless, the ice-work is scarce blurred as yet. These later effects 
are only spots and wrinkles on the grand glacial countenance of the park.

Perhaps you have already said that you have seen enough for a lifetime. 
But before you go away you should spend at least one day and a night on a 
mountain top, for a last general, calming, settling view. Mount Washburn 
is a good one for the purpose, because it stands in the middle of the 
park, is unencumbered with other peaks, and is so easy of access that the 
climb to its summit is only a saunter. First your eye goes roving around 
the mountain rim amid the hundreds of peaks; some with plain flowing 
skirts, others abruptly precipitous and defended by sheer battlemented 
escarpments; flat-topped or round; heaving like sea-waves or spired and 

Page 67

turreted like Gothic cathedrals; streaked with snow in the ravines, and 
darkened with files of adventurous trees climbing the ridges. The nearer 
peaks are perchance clad in sapphire blue, others far off in creamy white. 
In the broad glare of noon they seem to shrink and crouch to less than 
half their real stature, and grow dull and uncommunicative,--mere dead, 
draggled heaps of waste ashes and stone, giving no hint of the multitude 
of animals enjoying life in their fastnesses, or of the bright bloom-
bordered streams and lakes. But when storms blow they awake and arise, 
wearing robes of cloud and mist in majestic speaking attitudes like gods. 
In the color glory of morning and evening they become still more 
impressive; steeped in the divine light of the alpenglow their earthiness 
disappears, and, blending with the heavens, they seem neither high nor low.

Over all the central plateau, which from here seems level, and over the 
foothills and lower slopes of the mountains, the forests extends like a 
black uniform bed of weeds, interrupted only by lakes and meadows and 
small burned spots called parks,--all of them, except the Yellowstone 
Lake, being mere dots and spangles in general views, made conspicuous by 
their color and brightness. About eighty-five per cent of the entire area 
of the park is covered with trees, mostly the indomitable lodge-pole pine 

Page 68

(Pinus contoria, var. Murrayana), with a few patches and sprinklings of 
Douglas spruce, Engelmann spruce, silver fir (Abies lasiocarpa), Pinus 
flexilis, and a few alders, aspens, and birches. The Douglas spruce is 
found only on the lowest portions, the silver fir on the highest, and the 
Engelmann spruce on the dampest places, best defended from fire. Some fine 
specimens of the flexilis pine are growing on the margins of openings,--
wide-branching, sturdy trees, as broad as high, with trunks five feet in 
diameter, leafy and shady, laden with purple cones and rose-colored 
flowers. The Engelmann spruce and sub-alpine silver fir are beautiful and 
notable trees,-- tall, spiry, hardy, frost and snow defying, and widely 
distributed over the West, wherever there is a mountain to climb or a cold 
moraine slope to cover. But neither of these is a good fire-fighter. With 
rather thin bark, and scattering their seeds every year as soon as they 
are ripe, they are quickly driven out of fire-swept regions. When the 
glaciers were melting, these hardy mountaineering trees were probably 
among the first to arrive on the new moraine soil beds; but as the plateau 
became drier and fires began to run, they were driven up the mountains, 
and into the wet spots and islands where we now find them, leaving nearly 
all the park to the lodge-pole pine, which, though as thin-skinned as they 
and as easily killed by fire, takes pains to store 

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up its seeds in firmly closed cones, and holds them from three to nine 
years, so that, let the fire come when it may, it is ready to die and 
ready to live again in a new generation. For when the killing fires have 
devoured the leaves and thin resinous bark, many of the cones, only 
scorched, open as soon as the smoke clears away; the hoarded store of 
seeds is sown broadcast on the cleared ground, and a new growth 
immediately springs up triumphant out of the ashes. Therefore, this tree 
not only holds its ground, but extends its conquests farther after every 
fire. Thus the evenness and closeness of its growth are accounted for. In 
one part of the forest that I examined, the growth was about as close as a 
cane-brake. The trees were from four to eight inches in diameter, one 
hundred feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five years old. The lower 
limbs die young and drop off for want of light. Life with these close-
planted trees is a race for light, more light, and so they push straight 
for the sky. Mowing off ten feet from the top of the forest would make it 
look like a crowded mass of telegraph-poles; for only the sunny tops are 
leafy. A sapling ten years old, growing in the sunshine, has as many 
leaves as a crowded tree one or two hundred years old. As fires are 
multiplied and the mountains become drier, this wonderful lodge-pole pine 
bids fair to obtain possession of nearly all the forest ground in the West.

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How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden 
animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and 
play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush, climbing 
the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the lakes and 
streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the 
ground, diving, swimming,--a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's joy. The 
plants are as busy as the animals, every cell in a swirl of enjoyment, 
humming like a hive, singing the old new song of creation. A few columns 
and puffs of steam are seen rising above the treetops, some near, but most 
of them far off, indicating geysers and hot springs, gentle-looking and 
noiseless as noiseless as downy clouds, softly hinting the reaction going 
on between the surface and the hot interior. From here you see them better 
than when you are standing beside them, frightened and confused, regarding 
them as lawless cataclysms. The shocks and out-bursts of earthquakes, 
volcanoes, geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in 
plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's heart.

Turning to the eastward, you have the Grand Cañon and reaches of the river 
in full view; and yonder to the southward lies the great lake, the largest 
and most important of all the high fountains of the Missouri-Mississippi, 
and the last to be discovered.

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In the year 1541, when De Soto, with a romantic band of adventurers, was 
seeking gold and glory and the fountain of youth, he found the Mississippi 
a few hundred miles above its mouth, and made his grave beneath its 
floods. La Salle, in 1682, after discovering the Ohio, one of the largest 
and most beautiful branches of the Mississippi, traced the latter to the 
sea from the mouth of the Illinois, through adventures and privations not 
easily realized now. About the same time Joliet and Father Marquette 
reached the "Father of Waters" by way of the Wisconsin, but more than a 
century passed ere its highest sources in these mountains were seen. The 
advancing stream of civilization has ever followed its guidance toward the 
west, but none of the thousand tribes of Indians living on its banks could 
tell the explorer whence it came. From those romantic De Soto and La Salle 
days to these times of locomotives and tourists, how much has the great 
river seen and done! Great as it now is, and still growing longer through 
the ground of its delta and the basins of receding glaciers at its head, 
it was immensely broader toward the close of the glacial period, when the 
ice-mantle of the mountains was melting: then with its three hundred 
thousand miles of branches out-spread over the plains and valleys of the 
continent, laden with fertile mud, it made the biggest and most generous 
bed of soil in the world.

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Think of this mighty stream springing in the first place in vapor from the 
sea, flying on the wind, alighting on the mountains in hail and snow and 
rain, lingering in many a fountain feeding the trees and grass; then 
gathering its scattered waters, gliding from its noble lake, and going 
back home to the sea, singing all the way! On it sweeps, through the gates 
of the mountains, across the vast prairies and plains, through many a 
wild, gloomy forest, cane-brake, and sunny savanna; from glaciers and 
snowbanks and pine woods to warm groves of magnolia and palm; geysers 
dancing at its head keeping time with the sea-waves at its mouth; roaring 
and gray in rapids, booming in broad, bossy falls, murmuring, gleaming in 
long, silvery reaches, swaying now hither, now thither, whirling, bending 
in huge doubling, eddying folds, serene, majestic, ungovernable, 
overflowing all its metes and bounds, frightening the dwellers upon its 
banks; building, wasting, uprooting, planting; engulfing old islands and 
making new ones, taking away fields and towns as if in sport, carrying 
canoes and ships of commerce in the midst of its spoils and drift, 
fertilizing the continent as one vast farm. Then, its work done, it gladly 
vanishes in its ocean home, welcomed by the waiting waves.

Thus naturally, standing here in the midst of its fountains, we trace the 
fortunes of the great river. And how much more comes to mind as 

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we overlook this wonderful wilderness! Fountains of the Columbia and 
Colorado lie before us, interlaced with those of the Yellowstone and 
Missouri, and fine it would be to go with them to the Pacific; but the sun 
is already in the west, and soon our day will be done.

Yonder is Amethyst Mountain, and other mountains hardly less rich in old 
forests, which now seem to spring up again in their glory; and you see the 
storms that buried them,--the ashes and torrents laden with boulders and 
mud, the centuries of sunshine, and the dark, lurid nights. You see again 
the vast floods of lava, red-hot and white-hot, pouring out from gigantic 
geysers, usurping the basins of lakes and streams, absorbing or driving 
away their hissing, screaming waters, flowing around hills and ridges, 
submerging every subordinate feature. Then you see the snow and glaciers 
taking possession of the land, making new landscapes. How admirable it is 
that, after passing through so many vicissitudes of frost and fire and 
flood, the physiognomy and even the complexion of the landscape should 
still be so divinely fine!

Thus reviewing the eventful past, we see Nature working with enthusiasm 
like a man, blowing her volcanic forges like a blacksmith blowing his 
smithy fires, shoving glaciers over the landscapes like a carpenter 
shoving his planes, clearing, ploughing, harrowing, irrigating, planting, 

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and sowing broadcast like a farmer and gardener, doing rough work and fine 
work, planting sequoias and pines, rosebushes and daisies; working in 
gems, filling every crack and hollow with them; distilling fine essences; 
painting plants and shells, clouds, mountains, all the earth and heavens, 
like an artist,--ever working toward beauty higher and higher. Where may 
the mind find more stimulating, quickening pasturage? A thousand 
Yellowstone wonders are calling, "Look up and down and round about you.!" 
And a multitude of still, small voices may be heard directing you to look 
through all this transient, shifting show of things called "substantial" 
into the truly substantial, spiritual world whose forms flesh and wood, 
rock and water, air and sunshine, only veil and conceal, and to learn that 
here is heaven and the dwelling-place of the angles.

The sun is setting; long, violet shadows are growing out over the woods 
from the mountains along the western rim of the park; the Absaroka range 
is baptized in the divine light of the alpenglow, and its rocks and trees 
are transfigured. Next to the light of the dawn on high mountain tops, the 
alpenglow is the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of 
God.

Now comes the gloaming. The alpenglow is fading into earthy, murky gloom, 
but do not let your town habits draw you away to the hotel. 

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Stay on this good fire-mountain and spend the night among the stars. Watch 
their glorious bloom until the dawn, and get one more baptism of light. 
Then, with fresh heart, go down to your work, and whatever your fate, 
under whatever ignorance or knowledge you may afterward chance to suffer, 
you will remember these fine, wild views, and look back with joy to your 
wanderings in the blessed old Yellowstone Wonderland.