Fountain Station, April 17.
This morning it was colder again, and we were witness of a most wonderful sight when a snow squall chanced along while the Fountain Geyser was in full eruption. The storm swooped down with sudden fury while we were watching the steam jets in the Mammoth Paint Pot throw evanescent lilies and roses in the coloured mud. We were waiting for the Great Fountain, most beautiful of all the geysers of the Park, to get over her fit of coyness and burst into action. The Fountain, by the way, is one of the few geysers always spoken of in the feminine gender. I asked if this was on account of her beauty, but Carr, who had a wife once, thinks her uncertainty of temper had more to do with it.
The imperious advance of the Storm King seemed still further to intimidate the bashful beauty, and at first she only shrank the deeper into her subterranean bower. But when the little snowflakes, like gentle but persistent caresses, began to shower softly upon the bosom of the pool the silver bubbles came surging up with a rush. In a moment more, as a maid overcome with the fervour of her love springs to the arms of her lover, the queenly geyser leaped forth in all her splendour, eight feet of beaming, bubbling green and white thrown with precipitate eagerness upon the bosom of the Storm King. Whereupon the latter threw all restraint to the winds and responded with a gust of bold, blustering, ungovernable passion. Roaring in his triumph, beating and winding her in sheets of driven snow, he grappled her in his might and bent her back and down until the great steam-clouds from her crest, like coils of flowing hair, were blown in curling masses along the earth.
For a full half hour they struggled in reckless abandon, granting full play to the ardour of their elemental passions, reeling and swaying in advance and retreat, as the mighty forces controlling them alternated in mastery. When the gusts fell light the geyser played to her full height, melting a wide circle in the snow that had been driven up to her very mouth. When the wind came again she bent, quivering to his will, but only to spring back erect as the gust weakened and died down.
Presently the storm passed, the sun came out and the north wind ceased to blow. Full of the gladness of her love, the queenly geyser reared, rippling, to her full height, held for a moment, a coruscating tower of brilliants, and then, with little sobs and gasps of happiness and contentment, sank back into her crystal chamber to dream and await the next coming of her impetuous northern lover. Or so I fancied, at any rate, as we watched the water sink away into the beryline depths of its crater. But I failed to reckon with the sex of the beauty. This afternoon, returning from a visit to Fairy Falls, we passed over the formation. An indolent young breeze, just awakened from his siesta among the southern hills, came picking his way up the valley of the Madison, and the fickle Fountain was fairly choking in her eagerness to tell how glad she was to see him. But her faithlessness had its proper reward. The blasé blade passed the flirtatious jade by without deigning even to ruffle her steam-cloud hair. The soldiers said he had probably gone on to keep an engagement at the Punch Bowl, where he has been in the habit of stirring things up a bit with a giddy young zephyr who blows in to meet him there from down Snake River way.
Norris Station, April 18.
This has been a memorable day, for in the course of it I have seen two of the most famous manifestations of the Yellowstone in action—the Giant Geyser erupting and Bill Wade swearing. The Giant is the biggest geyser in America, and Bill Wade is reputed to have the largest vocabulary of one-language profanity in the North-west. True, there is said to be a chap over in the legislature at Helena that can out-cuss Wade under certain conditions, but he is college bred, speaks four languages and has to be under the influence of liquor to do consistent work. Wade requires no artificial stimulants, but he does have to get mad before he can do himself full justice. Today something happened to make him sizzling mad. The eruption of the Giant is startling and beautiful, the river, as it takes its three-hundred-foot leap to the depths of the Grand Canyon, is sublime and awe-inspiring, but for sheer fearsomeness Wade's swearing—viewed dispassionately and with no consideration of its ethical bearing—is the real wonder of the Yellowstone.
| J. E. Haynes, St. Paul THE GIANT IS THE BIGGEST GEYSER IN NORTH AMERICA |
We were climbing the hill back of the Fountain Hotel—Wade, two troopers and myself. Wade, who is the winter keeper of the hotel and not too skilled with ski, tried to push straight up the steep slope. Half-way to the top he slipped, fell over a stump, gained fresh impetus and came bounding to the bottom over the hard crust, a wildly waving pin-wheel of arms, legs and clattering ski. He was torn, bruised and scratched from the brush and trees, and one of his long "hickories" was snapped at the instep. For the moment he uttered no word, but the soldiers, who knew what was coming, held their breath and waited in trembling anticipation. The air was charged as before a thunder-storm. A hush fell upon us all, a hush like the silence that settles upon a ring of tourists around Old Faithful as the boiling water, sinking back with gurgling growls, heralds the imminent eruption.