A Summer's Outing, and The Old Man's Story

by Carter H. Harrison

I said there are no domestic animals, except a few about the hotels. The result is, the grasses are fine and the flowers in great profusion and very beautiful—patches of larkspur as blue as indigo, acres of lupin of various tints, generally blue and lilac with eyes of white; gentians so rich and purple that one feels that they have been dipped in Tyrian dyes; sunflowers and buttercups, making acres look as if they had been sprinkled with gold; and many other beautiful flowers, whose names I know not. But one thistle I must not forget to mention. It is short and heavy from the ground, not unlike the edible thistle of Japan, with leaves and stalks of flesh colored pink, bleached into a sort of mixture of white, green and rose, with clustered flowers in compact head of exquisite rose and pink. It is a rarely beautiful flower. One flower of delicate lavender, thickly strewn along branching spikes, was wholly unknown to all of our party and is acknowledged of great beauty. Its leaf and small flowers lead me to think it a wild hollyhock.

STUPENDOUS SOUNDS OF FALLING FLOODS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

In some localities in the Yellowstone, and especially in and about the great lake, parasites so infest the fish as to unfit them for the table. The infected fish, however, are easily known and may be discarded, while the good are retained. A gentleman who has fished throughout the park informed me, that as a rule, the fish were good. Like the trout in all the Rocky mountains and Pacific regions, the fish caught here lack the delicate flavour of the brook trout taken in the Adirondacks and throughout the New England States.

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