One is surprised to find how quickly he becomes fatigued by a short climb, until his lungs become accustomed to the rare medium he is taking in. One old man, I need not name, stepped jauntily by the side of a pretty schoolmarm and swore he was 32, but the climb of a mile made him, with blushes which tinged the cuticle of his bald head, acknowledge he was past 65. He was somewhat relieved, when he saw how the sweet innocent was panting at his side.
There is here what I am told exists nowhere else in the world—a mountain of glass—volcanic obsidian—monster masses resembling the molten opaque blocks left by the Chicago great fire in the ruins of a glass warehouse. We drove along a road of shivered glass. The engineers built fires over great obsidian bowlders, and then threw cold water from the stream close by over the heated mass, breaking it into glass gravel. Chipmunks of several varieties, gray pine squirrels, hop about barking within a few feet of one; robins are almost as gentle as sparrows, and bears come down near to one of the hotels nightly to be fed for the amusement of the tourists. Beavers have their dams close by our hotel and can at dusk be seen swimming about and feeding. A small herd of buffalos, since we have been here, rushed across the road just in front of an excursion party, giving the stage horses a fright and nearly creating a panic. No gun is allowed in the park, except to the military and scouts, and no one can kill an animal, except when driven to it for want of necessary food. Two companies of soldiers patrol the regular routes to enforce the regulations and to serve as voluntary guides for the ladies of the daily parties. They forbid the smallest specimen to be carried off. I had even to hide the little dabs of mud I took from a paint-pot. Uncle Sam is cultivating good nature among men and beasts within this, his unique domain. Even the devil may grow good-natured, and may cut up his didos and antics after a while only for the people's amusement.
THE CLIMAX OF GRANDEUR AND BEAUTY.
Having told you of the freaks and sports of nature which make the more striking marvels of this wonderland; and having spoken of the softer and sweeter characteristics of the Park, I now come to what the majority of the travelers consider its gem.
A Soudanese wise man is said to have swallowed the tale of Jonah and the whale without making a wry face, but grew fighting mad when asked to believe the story of snow and ice in northern lands. The genii might easily send a man through a whale's belly, but Allah himself could not make water hard and dry. So it is easy to tell of the monstrosities of the park, and hope for credence. They are simply monstrosities—the work of demoniac power, and are credible. But who can make another believe that huge precipices, one and two thousand feet high, have been painted with all the colors of the setting sun; that the rainbow has settled upon miles of rocks and left its sweet tints upon their rugged sides? And yet this and these are true of the Yellowstone canyon.
We approached it from the South on a road running near the river. On a pretty grassy bank we rode along the stream, here over a hundred yards wide, rolling swiftly yet smoothly along in green depths, preparing to make its two plunges into the chasm below. Swift and swifter it hurried onward in quickened dignity. Presently the rock walls on either side grew contracted to a hundred or so feet, and then the green stream rushed in smooth slope to a gateway of eighty feet in width, through which, with parabolic swoop, it leaps 112 feet with such depth on its brink, that the deep-emerald green is not lost till it strikes a ledge at the bottom, where a large part of the falling sheet is shot off at an angle into the air, half as high up as the fall itself. The two sides of the river at the brink of the fall rush against precipitous walls and are bent and curled upwards into a veil six or eight feet high over the green center—a veil of countless millions of crystal drops—over the main stream of emerald more than half hidden in a mighty shower of diamonds. Standing immediately on the edge, one can imagine how Niagara's Horseshoe would look if one could get within a few feet of it. This fall is not very lofty nor wide, but is one of the most beautiful in the world. The river after the first fall rushes in foamy swirl a half mile further, between cliffs which on either side lift 1,500 feet high, and growing higher and higher, and then with one wild leap plunges 300 feet into the rocky gorge below.
As it drops the emerald and the diamond struggle for supremacy, but the brighter crystal gains the ascendency before all is lost in the lace-like mist which envelopes the depths. The whole when seen from a little distance looks as light as a gem-decked veil of lace, but so vast is the body of the water which makes the leap, and so great the fall, that to one standing a mile away, with a point of land intervening between him and the fall, shutting off the noise of the splashing water, there comes a deep and mellow bass, richer than any I ever heard before made by a water fall. It is not an angry tone like Niagara's roar, but is as deep and mellow as distant rolling thunder when heard in a mountain gorge.
These falls are beautiful in the extreme, but the beholder soon forgets them in wonder of the canyon which bends between the towering cliffs for four miles. Far under him, at least 1500 feet down, the river leaps and tears, now in green, and then in snowy foam, between precipices at whose feet no human foot ever did or can safely tread. The rocks lift on either side in mighty buttresses like giant cathedral walls. Standing out before the walls are towers and pointed spires of most artistic form, all painted in exquisite tints. The upper walls are of yellow and orange hue, with here and there towers and bulwarks of chalky white or of black lava over which is a film of venetian red. The upper yellow walls, sink and contract between the lifting buttresses, which at their base are of lava black, running first into dark umber, and then into chocolate bordered with black and stained with red, often so bright as to be vermillion. In some places the main walls are broken down, where some long-ago slide has carried their steepness into the river below, but with slopes far too steep for human tread. Some of these slopes are orange and yellow as if coated with sulphur; others are painted in vertical bands of brown and red, with between them narrow stripes of pearl gray and yellow, and of orange stretching for hundreds of feet, and at one point for a half mile in extent; one of these slopes look as if a banner with these several colors, had been spread over it, and then being removed, the colors of the drapery had been left upon the soft velvety rock. The buttresses and spires lift now fifteen to a hundred feet apart, and then they are spread so that the golden wall between shows 150 to 200 feet. All of the colors except the yellow seem to be in and of the rock. The yellow looks as if made by blowing thousands of tons of flowers of sulphur upon the walls, the flowers having clung when the wall had some incline, but having dropped off from the vertical rock.
These painted rocks extend along the canyon for about four miles; then the gorge grows more somber and dark, and so continues some twenty miles. This lower part seems to be of a harder rock. It was cut through myriads of ages ago and has grown darkly gray, while the painted part is of a much later period and is of soft rocks—so soft that they seem to be composed of somewhat indurated volcanic ash, sulphur being the predominating mass. The red coloring is from oxide of iron. These blending together make other tints. Burnt Umber, often deepened into a rich chocolate is the dominating one. The buttresses are of a harder yet still a rather soft lava, of a yellowish brown tint near the summits, red and brown below, and finally towards their bases almost black. Sometimes there are slopes of white lime and several towers, nearly 2,000 feet high sheer up from the river, are so white that one could think them chalk. Half way down the heights are great points, like the sharpened spires of a cathedral, colored as if a mighty pot of venetian red had been emptied over them and had run in streaks down the rocky sides. Had an artist tried to sell me a picture of these cliffs, before I had seen them, in no way exaggerated in coloring, I would have called him a fraud, and would have thought he had taken me for a fool. I have seen now and then pictures which I considered daubs, which I now know did not in the least overdo Nature in its freak of rock-painting. I quit the park glad that I came, but feel that the rush and labor of going through it would hardly repay a second hasty visit, at least for several years. Yet I can recall no excursion of the same length in any part of the world half so full of surprises. Could we have made it leisurely, our enjoyment would have been greatly enhanced. We have met some tourists who think the labor and annoyance of the thing over-balance the profit and pleasure. Burns says "Man was made to mourn." In my weary round, I have frequently been convinced that about half of the travelers of the world were made to growl, or at least half think they fail to show their "raisin" unless they do growl.
Equanimity of temper is the most valuable of all human characteristics for happiness. It is absolutely necessary to the traveler, who desires to learn much, and to enjoy what he sees. A plain traveling suit on one's back, a resolution to make the most of every thing in one's mind, and the least possible luggage to carry, are the three indispensables for a good traveler. The park people may not do all they should for the public; indeed, I fear they have many short-comings, but I for one, am very glad they are here, and that they do as much as they do.