Besides those who make the regular tours, there are many who hire carriages and wagons at Cinnabar for a leisurely excursion, which may be longer or shorter to suit disposable time and the fullness of purses. Parties too, besides hiring carriages and horses, frequently take tents and enjoy a regular roughing life. We encountered many of these. Some were of a man and his family, others of two or three young men, and still others of men and ladies by the dozen or two, and in one instance thirty or forty were in the party. The large parties have a number of attendants who generally go ahead to prepare the camps for the night, while the tourists loiter along the way to inspect the marvels or to botanize. The small parties we saw, pitched their tents when practicable, near a trout stream, several of which furnished fine sport. Throughout the Park we noticed that at and about localities usually chosen for camping ground, warnings were nailed upon the trees, "Put out the fires." Destructive forest fires have resulted from carelessness of campers. Soldiers in pairs ride along several of the roads daily to see that these regulations are observed, and to prevent injurious results from non-observance. Twice we saw blue coats extinguishing smouldering fires left by reckless people.
My personal stage party up to this point, has been my daughter and some intelligent schoolmarms from New York, one of them, however, resenting the appellation of "schoolmarm." She is a principal. Woman-like, they seemed glad when I assumed command of the party. Queer, how even the brightest and most independent woman takes to a sort of master. Show me one who will not submit to the yoke, and ten to one she is one few men desire to boss. I call my party, "my Innocents," and all move with alacrity when I cry out, "Come girls!"
Between us, it has been several years since the youngest of them wore short dresses. I mean this in good part, for girls just getting into long skirts are very like the rinsing fluid into which the wash-woman dips her clean laundry, and called "blue water"—rather thin!
THE GROTTO, UPPER GEYSER BASIN.(SEE PAGE 31.)
All my Innocents are good, but can stand a straight shot in sensible English. One quotes with a sigh the remark of a friend, who when in the park, had but one word—the word translated "sheol" in the revised version. Quotation marks are convenient when one wishes to say something a little naughty. The Rev. Thomas Beecher, who is one of our daily party, but not in our coach, and who by the way is something of a wag, and is not averse to having a learned theological discussion with one who, like himself, was intended for an Evangelist, speaking of the huge amount of solid matter brought here above ground, declares he must look up Bob Ingersoll to tell him the Devil is making some mighty big holes down below. For my part if the Devil is doing all this, I shall begin to cultivate high respect for him as an artist, and would only ask him not to let the bottom drop out until my friends to the third and fourth generation may come and see. After them it matters not. Let the deluge come. It is evident from the names given to many points about the park that the Devil's friends have done much of the christening in this region.
Now, having to some extent touched upon the marvelous antics of Nature in Uncle Sam's domain, I will say something of those things nearly as interesting, and which make this tour charming as a simple road excursion. The park is full of beauties. The drives are often through delightful pine forests. The trees are small, but straight as arrows, tall and lading the air with delicious perfumes. Many hundred, or rather hundreds of thousands of acres are dead: Some from forest fires, but in many cases apparently from a species of blight, possibly from a failure of nourishment in the thin soil on the mountain slopes for the trees after they have attained any size. Tracks of fierce mountain storms are frequently seen; miles upon miles of forests are thrown down, the trees all lying in one direction, showing that the devastation was done by straight running winds, and not by tornadoes.
There are noble mountains constantly towering above us, although we are ourselves sometimes nearly nine thousand feet above the sea, and never after leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, under 7000. Many of the mountains have bands of snow stretching far below their pinnacles, and some of them are properly entitled, snow-capped. The mountains and slopes are fairly well treed; and the small plains or plateaux show beautiful downs bordered with forest and cut by copses. These downs are green and so smooth in the distance that it is difficult to realize that man has had nothing to do with laying them out. Several level valleys are very pretty and when seen from eminences remind one of valleys over which people go into ecstasies in foreign lands. If there were here a church spire, and there a mill and a sprinkling of hamlets, they would be as happy valleys as the vaunted ones abroad.
The utter absence of habitations on the long drives is a striking peculiarity. The roads being tolerably good and entirely artificial, makes one expect to see hamlets, and he involuntarily finds himself looking for a farm house, when the coach emerges from a forest, and comes upon a broad stretch of clean looking well grassed native meadow land. A turn of a mountain spur along a crystal stream, which has deepened into a pool, suggests a mill pond, and that a water wheel will soon come into view. A grassy plain all sun-lighted causes one to look for a herd of cattle lazily lying in a wooded copse on its margin. But no habitation other than the regular hotels, are to be found within the wonder land.
The park is comparatively a free and safe home for many varieties of wild animals. Guns and pistols are forbidden, except to the soldiers and to the scouts who are a sort of a police corps, whose duty is to see that trespassers do not enter upon the Government preserve. Elk, deer, mountain sheep, bear black and cinnamon, buffalo and other animals indigenous to the Rocky mountains, range freely over the hills without molestation; and beaver build their dams close by the hotels. How many buffalo are yet denizens of the park, I could not definitely learn, but was told that there are from fifty to a hundred. Squirrels and chipmunks are very numerous in several varieties, and very gentle. The bear are becoming too numerous for the safety of such animals as they prey upon. On this account the scouts are destroying many of them.