Set like a gem in the centre of this snow-rimmed crown of the continent, is the loveliest body of fresh water on the globe, its dark-blue surface at an elevation greater than that of the highest clouds that fleck the azure sky of a summer's day, over the tops of the loftiest mountains of the East. Its waters teem with trout, and the primeval forests that cover the surrounding country are crowded with game. But these are the least of its attractions. It is the wildness and grandeur of the enclosing mountain scenery, and still more the curious, beautiful, wonderful and stupendous natural phenomena which characterize the region, that have raised it to sudden fame, and caused it to be set apart by our national government as a grand national play-ground and museum of unparalleled, indeed incomparable, marvels, free to all men for all time.
Evidences of ancient volcanic action on the grandest scale are so abundant and striking throughout the lake basin, that it has been looked upon as the remains of a mammoth crater, forty miles across. It seems, however, to have been rather the focus of a multitude of craters. "It is probable," says the United States geologist, Dr. Hayden, with his usual caution, "that during the Pliocene period the entire country drained by the sources of the Yellowstone and the Columbia was the scene of volcanic activity as great as that of any portion of the globe. It might be called one vast crater, made up of a thousand smaller volcanic vents and fissures, out of which the fluid interior of the earth, fragments of rock and volcanic dust, were poured in unlimited quantities. Hundreds of the nuclei or cones of these volcanic vents are now remaining, some of them rising to a height of 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea. Mounts Doane, Longford, Stevenson, and more than a hundred other peaks, may be seen from any high point on either side of the basin, each of which formed a centre of effusion."
All that is left of the terrific forces which threw up these lofty mountains and elevated the entire region to its present altitude, now finds issue in occasional earthquake shocks, and in the innumerable hot springs and geysers, whose description makes up so large a portion of this book of wonders. Nowhere else in the world can the last-named phenomena be witnessed on so grand a scale, in such limitless variety, or amid scenes so marvellous in beauty, so wild and unearthly in savage grandeur, so fascinating in all that awes or attracts the lover of the curious, the wonderful, the magnificent in nature.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST EXPLORATIONS.
In their exploration of the headwaters of the Missouri in the summer of 1805, the heroic Captains Lewis and Clarke discovered and named the three terminal branches of that river—the Jefferson, the Madison, and the Gallatin; then ascending the first named to its springs among the Rocky Mountains, they crossed the lofty ridge of the divide and pursued their investigations along the Columbia to the sea. The following summer they returned, separately exploring the two main branches of the Great River of the Northwest, each perpetuating the name and fame of his brother explorer by calling a river after him. Ascending the southern, or Lewis Fork, Captain Clarke recrossed the mountains to Wisdom River, (a branch of the Jefferson,) then traversed the country of the Jefferson, the Madison and the Gallatin to the Rochejaune, or Yellowstone, which he followed to its junction with the Missouri, where he rejoined Captain Lewis. The map of the country explored by these brave men, makes the source of the Yellowstone a large lake, doubtless from information received from the Indians, but they seem to have heard nothing of the marvels along the upper reaches of the river and around the lake from which it flows.
In later years—especially after the discovery of the Montana gold-mines had drawn to the upper valleys of the Missouri an adventurous, gold-seeking population, who scoured the mountains in all directions—rumors of burning plains, spouting springs, great lakes and other natural wonders, came down from the unknown regions up the Yellowstone. And not content with these, the imagination was freely drawn on, and the treasure valleys of the Arabian Nights were rivalled, if not reproduced. Our over-venturous party, hotly pursued by Indians, escaped, report said, by travelling night after night by the brilliant light of a huge diamond providentially exposed on a mountain. A lost trapper turned up after protracted wandering in this mysterious region, his pockets stuffed with nuggets of gold gathered in a stream which he could never find again. More astounding still was a valley which instantly petrified whatever entered it. Rabbits and sage-hens, even Indians were standing about there, like statuary, among thickets of petrified sage-brush, whose stony branches bore diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gems by the thousand, as large as walnuts. "I tell you, sir," said one who had been there, to Colonel Raynolds, "it is true, for I gathered a quart myself and sent them down the country."
The first earnest attempt to explore the valley of the upper Yellowstone was made in 1859, by Colonel Raynolds, of the Corps of Engineers. His expedition passed entirely around the Yellowstone basin, but could not penetrate it. In his report to the War Department, he says: