THE BISCUIT BOWL POOL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 35.)
The hotels at Mammoth Hot Springs and at Yellowstone canyon are large, each capable of housing two or three hundred guests. The beds are clean and soft, the table fair and the attendance quite good. I have only one complaint to make. At the first named hotel they will insist on a brass band's tooting a good part of the time. The noise it made was execrable. There is no such thing as bad music, it is either music or it is noise. At Norris, the hotel is poor and the managers impolite. At the Lower and at the Upper Geyser Basin, the houses are unfinished, and the rooms not sufficient in number, but the people do their best to please. This endeavor should cover a multitude of sins.
LETTER V.
WE LEAVE THE PARK SATISFIED. HELENA. ITS GOLD BEARING FOUNDATIONS. BROADWATER. A MAGNIFICENT NATATORIUM. A WILD RIDE THROUGH TOWN. CROSSING THE ROCKIES. SPOKANE. A BUSY TOWN. MIDNIGHT PICNIC. FINE AGRICULTURAL COUNTRY. SAGE BUSH A BLESSING. PICTURESQUE RUN OVER THE CASCADES. ACRES OF MALT LIQUORS. TACOMA. A STARTLING VISION OF MT. RENIER (TACOMA). WASHINGTON, A GREAT STATE.
Tacoma, Washington, July 31, 1890.
Familiarity is said to breed contempt; certainly it robs strange things of much that at first seems marvelous. On our return from the excursion around the Park, the formation at Mammoth Hot Springs had lost much of that which on our first visit struck us as so wonderful and charming. We had seen other things greatly more wonderful with which to compare them. The encrustations seemed not so white and the colorings of the water had lost some of their prismatic variety and perfection.
The impressions made upon the mind by Niagara grow on succeeding visits. A storm at sea arouses no less awe because several have been before passed through. Niagara and the ocean are in eternal motion. Motion irresistably suggests change, and change precludes monotony. One does not lose his feeling of awe, after looking for many times upon the towering heights of the Yungfrau or of Kinchinjinga. Their inaccessible peaks and eternal snows repel every disposition to close communion. I doubt not, however, if a safe railroad could be run up to mighty Everest's loftiest pinnacle, that tourists would snap their fingers at the world's monarch when standing in warm furs 29,000 feet above the sea.
The still and apparently unchangeable incrustations at Mammoth Hot Springs, were looked upon on our final visit without awe or surprise. A large party of us left the hotel for Cinnabar closely packed in the coaches and surreys on a bright sunny afternoon, glad we had seen the wonderland, but quite satisfied to leave our labors behind us. As we dashed down the defile near the park line, we doffed our hats and bade adieu to the eagle sitting on its eyrie as we had seen him on our entrance. The downward ride was quite rapid, and some of us who had been drawn into somewhat close communion during the past week were almost sorry when we so soon reached Livingston—some to go eastward and others westward, all to part most probably forever.