The keenest interest of the newly arrived tourist, however, usually centres in those constantly recurring evidences of tremendous force, the geysers. With few and unimportant exceptions, these are found within the limits of certain distinctly marked areas, known as the upper, middle, lower and Norris basins, to which one or two days' time is devoted, according to circumstances. The most celebrated of the geysers—those with whose names the world has been made familiar by the pen, brush or camera of author or artist—are in the upper basin. Here are found the Giant and Giantess, the Castle and Grotto, the Bee Hive, the Splendid and the Grand. Here, too, is Old Faithful, the constancy of whose hourly eruption makes it impossible for even the most hurried visitor to the upper basin to leave without witnessing at least one display of its tremendous energy.
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS HOTEL—YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.
The reader, who, not having visited the National Park, has yet gazed into some of the profound gorges to be found in the great mountain ranges of the far West, will read with astonishment, if not with incredulity, that there is but one cañon in the world,—the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone. Perhaps slightly exceeded in depth, as it certainly is in gloom, it is yet made to stand pre-eminent among the natural wonders of the world by the majesty of its cataract and the gorgeous blazonry of its walls. To say that the former—no mere silver ribbon of spray, but a fall of great volume—is a little more than twice the height of Niagara, would, by means of a familiar comparison, enable almost any one to form a not altogether inadequate conception of its grandeur. But for the matchless adornment of its walls, we have no available comparison; naught but itself can be its parallel. One great writer describes it as being hung with rainbows, like glorious banners. Another, borrowing from Mr. Ruskin, likens it to a great cathedral, with painted windows, and full of treasures of illuminated manuscript. But, as we take our stand on the brink of the Falls, with twelve miles of sculptured rock spread out before us, rising from 1,500 to 2,000 feet in height, and all aflame with glowing color, we have to acknowledge, with a distinguished writer and a no less celebrated artist, that, neither by the most cunningly wrought fabric of language, nor the most skillful manipulation of color, is it possible to create in the mind a conception answering to this sublime reality. For countless ages, frost and snow, heat and vapor, lightning and rain, torrent and glacier, have wrought upon that mysterious rock, evolving from its iron, its sulphur, its arsenic, its lime and its lava, the glorious apparel in which it stands arrayed. And the wondrous fabrication is still going on. The bewildered traveler would scarcely be surprised to see the gorgeous spectacle fade from his vision like a dream: but its texture is continually being renewed; the giant forces are ever at work; still do they—
“Sit at the busy loom of time and ply,
Weaving for God the garment thou seest Him by.”
For the minor wonders of this world of marvels, the formations of geyserite and the petrified forests, Tower and Gibbon Falls and the cliffs of volcanic glass, the caldrons of boiling mud and transparent pools of sapphire blue, the reader is referred to special guides to the Park.
It only remains to be stated that there is regularly established transportation daily between all the principal points, that the distances are not fatiguing, that the charges are reasonable, and the equipment everything that could be desired.
The angler need scarcely be reminded that this is the far-famed region where the juxtaposition of streams of hot and cold water enables him to cook his fish as fast as he can catch them, without moving from his seat or taking them off the hook!
WESTWARD STILL.
Resuming his westward journey at Livingston, the traveler finds himself ascending the first of the two great mountain barriers that had to be surmounted by the engineers of the Northern Pacific Railroad. By a grade of 116 feet to the mile, the line reaches, twelve miles from Livingston, an elevation of 5,565 feet above sea-level. Here it is carried under the crest of the range by a tunnel 3,610 feet in length, from which it emerges into a fine, rocky cañon, at the western portal of which is the military post of Fort Ellis. A few minutes more, and the train runs into Bozeman, a beautifully situated and flourishing little city of twenty years' growth. Few cities can boast of more magnificent scenery, majestic snow-capped ranges standing out against the sky on every side.