Part 17 (1/2)

_Preliminary._

In the following description there will be mentioned in succinct outline all the notable features of interest in the Yellowstone National Park. For more detailed information, the reader is referred to the list of names in ”Appendix A.”

The necessary limit of s.p.a.ce forbids any thing like extended description, even if the inherent difficulties of such a task would permit. Captain Ludlow has well stated the nature of these difficulties:

”The Park scenery, as a whole,” he says, ”is too grand, its scope too immense, its details too varied and minute, to admit of adequate description, save by some great writer, who, with mind and pen equally trained, can seize upon the salient points, and, with just discrimination, throw into proper relief the varied features of mingled grandeur, wonder, and beauty.”

Of the many who have attempted, with pen or pencil, to reproduce the wonders of the Yellowstone, no one has yet completely satisfied these important requirements. The writer, for his part, will modestly decline any such undertaking, and, like that pioneer explorer, Folsom, will confine his descriptions ”to the bare facts.” He will, however, occasionally call to aid those who have seen and written of these wonders. To the early explorers, in particular, who entered this region before it became generally known, its strange phenomena appealed with an imaginative force which the guide-book tourist of to-day can hardly realize. This may account for the fact that some of these explorers, who have never, before or since, put pen to paper with any literary purpose in view, have left in their narratives strokes of word painting which the most gifted writer would find it difficult to excel.

The season selected for the tour will be the early days of July. The rain and snow and chilly air, not uncommon in June, are gone. The drought and smoke of August and September are still remote. Even mosquitoes, so amazingly plentiful at certain seasons (Langford found them on the very summit of the Grand Teton), have not yet made their appearance. It is late enough, however, to call forth in their richest glory the magnificent profusion of flowers which every-where abound in the Park. The air is at its best, full of life and energy, and so clear that it confounds distances and gives to objects, though far away, a distinctness quite unknown in lower alt.i.tudes. The skies, as they appear at this season, surpa.s.s the sunny skies of Italy, and the tourist will find in their empyreal depths a beauty and fascination forever lacking in the dingy air of civilization. In short, the open air stage trips through that rich mountain atmosphere will form one of the most attractive and invigorating features of the tour.

Without further preliminary, the role of guide will now be a.s.sumed, and the tourist will be conducted through the wonders of this celebrated country, following, over most of the distance, the present general route.

CHAPTER XIII.

A TOUR OF THE PARK.

_North Boundary to Mammoth Hot Springs._

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Terry Engr. Co._ _Gandy._

Gardiner River.]

Distance five miles. The road for most of the way lies in the valley of the Gardiner. The princ.i.p.al points of interest en route are:

_The Junction of the Yellowstone and Gardiner Rivers_ which determines the north boundary of the Park. It lies in the State of Montana, the state line being two miles further south. The old prospector's route bore off at this point and kept up the valley of the Yellowstone.

Folsom took this route in 1869; so did the Wasburn party in 1870.

Hayden and Barlow in 1871 kept along the Gardiner and thus saw the Mammoth Hot Springs.

_The Gardiner Canon_ is a precipitous valley of loose gray walls suggestive of danger from falling rocks. The nests of fish-hawks here and there crown detached pinnacles. The most striking feature of the canon is the river, a typical mountain torrent of such rapid fall over its rocky bed that it is a continuous succession of foaming cascades.

Some four miles up the river, at the point where the road leaves it, the tourist gets his first sight of any indication of subterranean heat. This is a large stream of hot water, in early times called the _Boiling River_, issuing from an opening in the rocks and emptying directly into the river. It is formed of the collected waters of Mammoth Hot Springs which find their way to this point through underground pa.s.sages. It was here that ”numbers of invalids” were encamped when Hayden and Barlow saw the spot in 1871.

From the last crossing of the Gardiner a winding road, which rises 600 feet in its length of one mile, brings the tourist to the world-renowned _Mammoth Hot Springs_, and to the administrative and business headquarters of the Park.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Terry Engr. Co._ _U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._

Mammoth Hot Springs.

Bunsen Peak in the distance.]

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories._