And city lots are staked for sale
Above old Indian graves."
The frontier army post of Fort Lincoln on the bluff alongside the river testifies to the time not yet remote when the Sioux and Crow Indians of the Dakotas needed a good deal of military control. The deer, buffalo and antelope then roamed these boundless prairies, but they have all disappeared. Beyond the Missouri River is the region of the Dakota "Bad Lands." The surface rises into sharp conical elevations known as "buttes," and soon this curious district of pyramidal hills known as Pyramid Park is entered, fire and water having had a remarkable effect upon them. Their red sides are furrowed by the rains, and smoke issues from some of the crevices. The lignite and coal deposits underlying this country have produced subterranean fires that burnt the clays above until they became brittle and red. There are ashes and scoriæ in patches, and cinders looking much like the outcast of an iron furnace. The buttes are at times isolated and sometimes in rows, many being of large size. Their sides are often terraced regularly, and frequently into fantastic shapes, occasionally appearing as the sloping ramparts of a fort. There are frequent pot-like holes among them, filled with reddish, brackish water, and sometimes excavated in the ground with regularly square-cut edges. When the railway route cuts into a butte, its interior is disclosed as a pile of red-burnt clay fragments mixed with ashes and sand. Little prairie dogs dodge in and out of their holes, but there is not much else of life. The boundary is crossed into Montana, and the "Bad Lands" gradually give place to a grazing section. Here stands up the great Sentinel Butte, with its reddish-yellow sides, near the Montana border, and the railway route then descends from the higher region to the valley of the Yellowstone.
The Yellowstone River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri, rises in the National Park, and its fertile valley is among the leading pasturages of Montana. Cattle and sheep abound, and the cowboys are universal, galloping about on energetic little bronchos, with lariats hanging from the saddle. The Big Horn River flows in, and an extensive region to the southward is the Crow Indian reservation, about three thousand living there. It was here, near Fort Custer, at a point forty-five miles south of the railroad, that the terrible massacre took place in June, 1876, by which General Custer and his command of over two hundred and fifty men were annihilated by the Sioux. There is now a national cemetery at the place. We gradually enter the mountain ranges which are the outposts of the Rockies, and passing between the Yellowstone range and the Belt Mountains, reach Livingston, a town of several thousand people, and a great centre for hunting and fishing, at the entrance to the Yellowstone National Park. From here a branch railway turns southward, ascending the valley of the Yellowstone, going through its first canyon, known as the "Gate of the Mountain," an impressive rocky gorge, and ascending a steep grade, so that the floor of the valley rises within the Park to an elevation of over six thousand feet above the sea. A second canyon is passed, and on its western side is a huge peak whose upheaved red rocks have named it the Cinnabar Mountain. These red rocks are in strata streaked down its sides with intervening granite and limestone. One of these, the Devil's Slide, is conspicuous, its quartzite walls rising high above the lower strata and making a veritable slide of great proportions down the mountain. The railroad ends at Cinnabar, and stages cover the remaining distance up the Yellowstone to its confluence with Gardiner River at the Park entrance, and thence to the Mammoth Hot Springs within the Park, the tourist headquarters.
THE AMERICAN WONDERLAND.
The Yellowstone National Park has been set apart by Congress as a public reservation and pleasure-ground, and covers a surface of about fifty-five hundred square miles within the Rocky Mountains. Most of the Park is in the northwestern corner of Wyoming, but there are also small portions in Montana to the north and Idaho to the west. It is a tract more remarkable for natural curiosities than an equal area in any other part of the world, and within it are the sources of some of the greatest rivers of North America. The Yellowstone, Gardiner and Madison Rivers, which are the headwaters of the Missouri, flow out of the northern and western sides, while on the southern side originates the Snake River, one of the sources of the Columbia River of Oregon, and also the Green River, a branch of the Colorado, flowing into the Gulf of California. The central portion of the Park is a broad volcanic plateau, elevated, on an average, eight thousand feet above the sea, and surrounded by mountain ridges and peaks, rising to nearly twelve thousand feet, and covered with snow. The air is pure and bracing, little rain falls, and the whole district gives evidence of remarkable volcanic activity at a comparatively late geological epoch. It contains the most elevated lake in the world, Yellowstone Lake. The Yellowstone River flows into this lake, and then northward through a magnificent canyon out of the Park. Its most remarkable tributary within the Park is Tower Creek, flowing through a narrow and gloomy pass for two miles, called the Devil's Den, and just before reaching the Yellowstone having a fall of one hundred and fifty-six feet, which is surrounded by columns of breccia resembling towers. There is frost in the Park every month in the year, owing to the peculiar atmospheric conditions. The traces of recent volcanic activity are seen in the geysers, craters and terrace constructions, boiling springs, deep canyons, petrified trees, obsidian cliffs, sulphur deposits and similar formations. These geysers and springs surpass in number and magnitude those of the rest of the world. There are some five thousand hot springs, depositing mainly lime and silica, and over a hundred large geysers, many of them throwing water columns to heights of from fifty to two hundred and fifty feet. The most elaborate colors and ornamentation are formed by the deposits of the springs and geysers, these curiosities being mainly in and near the valleys of the Madison and Gardiner Rivers. An attempt has been made under Government auspices to have in the Park a huge game preserve, and within its recesses large numbers of wild animals are sheltered, including deer, elk, bears, big-horn sheep, and the last herd of buffalo in the country. Troops of cavalry and other Government forces patrol and govern the Park.
THE MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS.
This extraordinary region was first made known in a way in 1807. A hunter named Coulter visited it, and getting safely back to civilization, he told such wonderful stories of the hot springs and geysers that the unbelieving borderers, in derision, called it "Coulter's Hell." Others visited it subsequently, but their remarkable tales were generally regarded as romances. The first thorough exploration was made by Prof. Hayden's scientific party for the Government in 1871, and his report led Congress to reserve it as a public Park. The visitor generally first enters the Park at the Mammoth Hot Springs, which are near the northern verge of the broad central plateau. Here are the wonderful terraces built up by the earlier calcareous deposits of these Springs, covering an area of several square miles, and in the present active operations about two hundred acres, with a dozen or more terraces, and some seventy flowing springs, the temperature of the water rising to 165°. The lower terrace extends to the edge of the gorge of Gardiner River, with high mountain peaks beyond. The hotel is built on one of the terraces, with yawning caves and the craters of extinct geysers at several places in front. The higher terraces rise in white, streaked with brown and other tints, as the overflowing, trickling waters may have colored them. The best idea that can be got of this place is by conjuring up the popular impression of the infernal regions with an ample stock of heat and brimstone. For a long distance, rising from the top of the gorge of Gardiner River westward in successive terraces to a height of a thousand feet above the stream, the entire surface is underlaid with sulphur, subterranean fires, boiling water and steam, which make their way out in many places. The earth has been cracked by the heat into fissures, within which the waters can be heard boiling and running down below, and everything on the surface which can be, is burnt up. Almost every crevice exudes steam and hot water; sulphur hangs in stalactites from the caves; and in some places the odors are nearly overpowering. It is no wonder the Indians avoided this forbidding region, and that the tales told by the early explorers were disbelieved. Yet it is as attractive as it is startling. The hot springs form shallow pools, where the waters run daintily over their rim-like edges, trickling down upon terrace after terrace, forming the most beautiful shapes of columns, towers and coral decorations from the lime deposits, and painting them with delicious coloring in red, brown, green, yellow, blue and pink. So long as the waters run, this decoration continues, but when the flow ceases, the atmosphere turns everything white, and the more delicate formations crumble. The whole of this massive structure has been built up by ages of the steady though minute deposits of the waters, the rate being estimated at about one-sixteenth of an inch in four days. The rocks upon which these calcareous deposits are made belong to the middle and lower Cretaceous and Jurassic formations, with probably carboniferous limestones beneath that put the deposits in the waters. A dozen different terraces can be traced successively upward from the river bank to the highest part of the formation. Two cones of extinct geysers rise from the deposits, near the hotel,—the Liberty Cap, forty-five feet high, and the Giant's Thumb, somewhat smaller,—both having been built up by the deposits from orifices still seen in their tops, whence the waters have ceased flowing. All these springs, as deposits are made, shift their locality, so that the scene gradually changes as the ages pass.
In climbing about this remarkable formation, some of the most beautiful bits of construction and coloring nature has ever produced are disclosed. The Orange Geyser has its sides streaked with orange, yellow and red from the little wavelets slowly trickling out of the steaming spring at the top, which goes off at quick intervals like the exhaust of a steam-engine. At the Stalactite Cave the flowing waters add green to the other colors, and also scale the rocks in places like the back of a fish, while below hang stalactites with water dropping from them. The roof of the cave is full of beautiful formations. The water is very hot when it starts from the top, but becomes quite cold when it has finished its journey down. One of the finest formations is Cleopatra's Bath, with Cupid's Cave beneath, the way to them being through Antony's Gate, all built up of the deposits. Here rich coloring is painted on the rocks, with hot water and steam amply supplied to the bath, which has 154° temperature at the outer verge. All the springs form flat basins with turned-up edges, over which the waters flow, and trickling down the front of the terrace, paint it. When the flow ceases, and the surface has been made snowy white by the atmosphere, it becomes a spongy and beautiful coral, crumbling when touched, and into which the foot sinks when walked upon. The aggregation of the currents run in streams over terrace after terrace, spread out to the width of hundreds of feet, painting them all, and then seeking the Gardiner River, flowing through a deep gorge in front of the formation. Everything subjected to the overflow of these currents gets coated by the deposits, so that visitors have many small articles coated to carry away as curiosities.
Among the many beautiful formations made by these Hot Springs, the most elaborate and ornamental are the Pulpit Terraces. These are a succession of magnificent terraces, fifty feet high, with beautifully colored columnar supports. There is a large pulpit, and in front, on a lower level, the font, with the water running over its edges. The pulpit, having been formed by a spring that has ceased action, is white, while the font is streaked in red and brown. Finely carved vases filled with water stand below, and alongside the pulpit there is an inclined surface, whitened and spread in wrinkles like the drifted snow, which requires very little imagination to picture as a magnificent curtain. Beyond is a blackened border like a second curtain, the coloring being made by a spring impregnated with arsenic. In front of this gorgeous display the surface is hot and cracked into fissures, with bubbling streams of steaming water running through it, and great pools fuming into new basins with turned-up edges, over which the hot water runs. Upon one of these pools seems to be a deposit of transparent gelatine, looking like the albumen of an egg, streaked into fantastic shapes by elongated bubbles. Everywhere are surfaces, over which the water runs, that are covered with regular formations like fish scales. It is impossible to adequately describe this extraordinary place, combining the supposed peculiarities and terrors of the infernal regions with the most beautiful forms and colors in decoration. The great hill made by these Hot Springs was, from its prevailing color, named the White Mountain by Hayden. The springs extend all the way down to the river bank, and there are some even in the river bed. It is a common experiment of the angler to hook a small fish in the cold water of the river, and then, without changing position, to swing him on the hook over into the basin of one of these hot springs to cook him. The formation of the terraces is wedge-shaped, and runs up into a gulch between the higher mountains, which have pines scattered over them, and also grow some grass in sheltered nooks. It is said that the volume of the springs is gradually diminishing.