The Riverside Geyser is among the favourites. Standing on the right bank of the Firehole River, it throws its spray into the air in a beautiful, graceful arch across the waters of the river, playing every 7 hours and lasting about seven minutes, and almost invariably displaying wonderful rainbow colours.
There is a plateau a quarter of a mile in extent, covered with hot pools, each of the most marvellously brilliant colours—reds, greens, yellows, etc.—perhaps the most beautiful of all being the one known as Morning-Glory Pool, so named from its curious shape resembling this well-known flower.
This park is a famous animal preserve. Elk deer, buffalo and bear thrive here. The bears cause great entertainment, coming down near some of the hotels to feed upon whatever may be offered them; having been protected so long, they have no fear.
Of all of our national parks the Yellowstone is the largest. It is also the highest and coolest. We are told that frosts occur there every month of the year. Mr. Muir says of it: “The air is electric and full of ozone; healing, reviving, exhilarating, kept pure by frost and fire, while the scenery is wild enough to awaken the dead.
“It is a glorious place to grow in and rest in. Camping on the shores of the lakes in the warm openings of the woods, golden with sunflowers, on the banks of the streams, by the snowy waterfalls, beside the exciting wonders or away from them in the scallops of the mountain walls sheltered from every wind, on smooth, silky lawns enamelled with gentians, up in the fountain hollows of the ancient glaciers between the peaks, where cool pools and brooks and gardens of precious plants charmingly embowered are never wanting....
“Again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill, hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge, deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them are splashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black underworld.
“Some of these ponderous geyser columns are as large as sequoias—5 to 60 feet in diameter, 150 to 300 feet high—and are sustained at this great height with tremendous energy for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly an hour, standing rigid and erect, hissing, throbbing, booming, as if thunderstorms were raging beneath their roots.... No frost cools them, snow never covers them ... winter and summer they welcome alike ... faithfully rising and sinking in fairy, rhythmic dance night and day, in all sorts of weather, at varying periods of minutes, hours, or weeks.... The largest and one of the most beautiful of the springs is the Prismatic, which the guide will be sure to show you. With a circumference of three hundred yards, it is more like a lake than a spring. The water is pure deep, blue in the centre, fading to green on the edges, and its basin and the slightly terraced pavement about it are astonishingly bright and varied in colour. This one of the Yellowstone fountains is of itself object enough for a trip across the continent....
“Near the Prismatic Spring is the great Excelsior Geyser, which is said to throw a column of boiling water 60 to 70 feet in diameter to a height of from 50 to 300 feet at irregular periods....”
But I could quote this great nature lover indefinitely. He is absolutely fascinating on any of these subjects. See for yourself “Our National Parks,” by John Muir, and if you are going west, as he would have you go, quietly, with time to draw near to nature, to read and to think, take a copy of his book with you.
Mr. Muir used his pen as a great artist uses his brush, his descriptions are the most exquisite of pictures.