It is not in singling out each crag and pinnacle, or in separating each bright streak of colour from its neighbour and admiring it alone, that one comes to the fullest appreciation of the grandeur and beauty of the canyon. It is rather in being gradually taken possession of by the spirit of the place, an influence that lasts long after you have ceased to look, a feeling far deeper than the mere transient delight of gazing on a beautiful picture.
Yesterday's thaw must have raised the water in the Lake. The river is much higher today, and the snow-bridges above the falls, as well as the heaped-in drifts below, are breaking away in huge masses. The snow-cap on the brink, with the water gushing forth from under it, has much the appearance of a gigantic alabaster gargoyle. The river shoots down under the snow and leaps out over the chasm in a clean compact stream of bottle-green. Half-way down the resistance of the air has whitened the jet, and as it disappears behind the great pile at its foot it is dashed to a spray so snowy that, from a distance, the line between water and drift defies the eye to fix.
| J. E. Haynes, St. Paul THE FALLS IN WINTER FROM POINT LOOKOUT |
Lake Station, April 12.
As we edged our way out to a better position the sun rose and threw a series of three rainbows in the mist clouds as they floated up out of the shadowed depths. The lowest and clearest of these semi-circles of irised spray seemed to spring from a patch of bright saffron sand, where it was laid bare by the melting snow. Now I know where the story of the gold at the end of the rainbow came from.
Carr and I tried to come through from the Canyon by moonlight last night and had rather a bad time of it. First a fog obscured the moon. Then we tried to take a short cut by following the telephone line, got lost in the dark, and staid lost till the moon set and made it darker still. In cutting across the hills to get back into Hayden Valley, Carr fell over a snow-bank and landed right in the middle of the road, where it had been laid bare by the heat of hot springs. Starting again, we came to the top of a hill and coasted down at a smart gait. As we sped to the bottom I became aware of a dark blur beyond the white of the snow. Then there was a sudden stoppage, and I seemed to see a re-risen moon, with a whole cortège of comets in its wake, dancing about the sky. I came to at the touch of a handful of snow on my face, to learn that I had coasted right onto a bare spot in the road and stopped in half a ski-length. My heavily loaded knapsack, shooting along the line of least resistance up my spine, had come into violent contact with the back of my head, producing the astronomical pyrotechnic illusion.
After a while we were lost again, this time in a level space bounded on four sides by a winding creek. I know it was on four sides of the place, for we carefully walked off toward each point of the compass in rotation, and each time landed in the creek. We finally escaped by wading. How we got in without wading will always be a mystery. Carr said the stream was called Trout Creek. Doubtless he is right; but if there were any trout over six inches long there last night they must have been permanently disjointed at more than one vertebral connection by having to conform to those confounded bends.
We passed the famous and only Mud Geyser an hour before daybreak. Things were in a bad way with him, judging from the noise. The mutterings of the old mud-slinger in his quieter moments reminds me very much of a Chilkat Mission Indian reciting the Lord's Prayer in his native tongue—just a rapid succession of deep gutturals. But when some particularly indigestible concoction—served, possibly by subterranean dumb-waiter from the adjacent Devil's Kitchen—interferes with the gastronomies of the old epicure, his voice is anything but prayerful. Carr said it reminded him of something between a mad bull buffalo and a boat load of seasick tourists when the summer wind stirs up the Lake. But Carr was too tired and disgusted to be elegant. Indeed, we were both pretty well played out. Personally, I felt just about like the Mud Geyser sounded.