From the springs to the mouth of the creek we followed along the bank, the bed or bottom being too rough and precipitous for us to travel in it, the total fall in the creek for the three miles being about fifteen hundred feet. Standing upon the high point at the junction of the creek with the Yellowstone, one first gets some idea of the depth of the cañon through which the river runs. From this height the sound of the waters of the Yellowstone, tumbling over tremendous rocks and boulders, could not be heard. Everything around us—mountains, valleys, cañon and trees, heights and depths—all are in such keeping and proportion that all our estimates of distances are far below the real truth. To-day we passed the mouth of Hell-Roaring river on the opposite side of the Yellowstone.
It was again Jake Smith's turn for guard duty last night, but this morning Jake's countenance wore a peculiar expression, which indicated that he possessed some knowledge not shared by the rest of the party. He spoke never a word, and was as serene as a Methodist minister behind four aces. My interpretation of this self-satisfied serenity is that his guard duty did not deprive him of much sleep. When it comes to considering the question of danger in this Indian country, Jake thinks that he knows more than the veteran Jim Stuart, whom we expected to join us on this trip, and who has given us some salutary words of caution. In a matter in which the safety of our whole party is involved, it is unfortunate that there are no "articles of war" to aid in the enforcement of discipline, in faithful guard duty.
Tuesday, August 30.—We broke camp about 9 o'clock a.m., traveling in a southerly direction over the hills adjoining our camp, and then descended the ridge in a southwesterly direction, heading off several ravines, till we came into a small valley; thence we crossed over a succession of ridges of fallen timber to a creek, where we halted about ten miles from our morning camp and about a mile from the upper fall of the Yellowstone. Mr. Hedges gave the name "Cascade creek" to this stream.
When we left our camp this morning at Hell-Broth springs, I remarked to Mr. Hedges and General Washburn that the wonders of which we were in pursuit had not disappointed us in their first exhibitions, and that I was encouraged in the faith that greater curiosities lay before us. We believed that the great cataracts of the Yellowstone were within two days', or at most three days', travel. So when we reached Cascade creek, on which we are now encamped, after a short day of journeying, it was with much astonishment as well as delight that we found ourselves in the immediate presence of the falls. Their roar, smothered by the vast depth of the cañon into which they plunge, was not heard until they were before us. With remarkable deliberation we unsaddled and lariated our horses, and even refreshed ourselves with such creature comforts as our larder readily afforded, before we deigned a survey of these great wonders of nature. On our walk down the creek to the river, struck with the beauty of its cascades, we even neglected the greater, to admire the lesser wonders. Bushing with great celerity through a deep defile of lava and obsidian, worn into caverns and fissures, the stream, one-fourth of a mile from its debouchure, breaks into a continuous cascade of remarkable beauty, consisting of a fall of five feet, succeeded by another of fifteen into a grotto formed by proximate rocks imperfectly arching it, whence from a crystal pool of unfathomable depth at their base, it lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course, or as if to renew its power, and then glides gracefully over a descending, almost perpendicular, ledge, veiling the rocks for the distance of eighty feet. Mr. Hedges gave to this succession of cascades the name "Crystal fall." It is very beautiful; but the broken and cavernous gorge through which it passes, worn into a thousand fantastic shapes, bearing along its margin the tracks of grizzly bears and lesser wild animals, scattered throughout with huge masses of obsidian and other volcanic matter—the whole suggestive of nothing earthly nor heavenly—received at our hands, and not inaptly as I conceive, the name of "The Devil's Den."
I presume that many persons will question the taste evinced by our company in the selection of names for the various objects of interest we have thus far met with; but they are all so different from any of Nature's works that we have ever seen or heard of, so entirely out of range of human experience, and withal so full of exhibitions which can suggest no other fancy than that which our good grandmothers have painted on our boyish imaginations as a destined future abode, that we are likely, almost involuntarily, to pursue the system with which we have commenced, to the end of our journey. A similar imagination has possessed travelers and visitors to other volcanic regions.
We have decided to remain at this point through the entire day to-morrow, and examine the cañon and falls. From the brief survey of the cañon I was enabled to make before darkness set in, I am impressed with its awful grandeur, and I realize the impossibility of giving to any one who has not seen a gorge similar in character, any idea of it.
It is getting late, and it is already past our usual bedtime, and Jake Smith is calling to me to "turn in" and give him a chance to sleep. There is in what I have already seen so much of novelty to fill the mind and burden the memory, that unless I write down in detail the events of each day, and indeed almost of each hour as it passes, I shall not be able to prepare for publication on my return home any clear or satisfactory account of these wonders. So Jake may go to. I will write until my candle burns out. Jacob is indolent and fond of slumber, and I think that he resents my remark to him the other day, that he could burn more and gather less wood than any man I ever camped with. He has dubbed me "The Yellowstone sharp." Good! I am not ashamed to have the title. Lieutenant Doane has crawled out of his blankets, and is just outside the tent with his hand and fore-arm immersed in water nearly as cold as ice. I am afraid that lock-jaw will set in if he does not consent to have the felon lanced.