Part 2 (1/2)
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_The Mammoth Hot Springs_
The structural features are the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and the garrison of Fort Yellowstone, around which, and in the vicinity of the springs, the landscape gardener has produced many beautiful effects.
Here are found the most remarkable terrace-building hot springs in the world. The formation is calcareous, and the deposition by the waters has built up through the centuries cataracts in stone of indescribable beauty through which the paints from the earth have been mingled and blended with a vividness of coloring and a perfection of shading that none but the Master's hand could work.
The waters are of such extraordinary transparency that the eye can only guess at their depth. They are held steaming and pulsating in great over-hanging bowls, from which they gently flow down over the stony cataracts, carving and decorating as they go. Jupiter and Pulpit Terraces are the master-pieces of Nature here; but there are hundreds of other curious and beautiful things to see. The drive to and from Norris is alive with interest. It leads through the Golden Gate, and on the way can be seen Obsidian Cliff, Roaring Mountain, Beaver and Twin Lakes and other attractive and curious features of topography.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mammoth Hotel_]
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_The Tame Wild Animals_
The animals of the Park are objects of peculiar interest. No sound of gun or bark of dog is ever heard, and the animals, though wild, have become so tame that they give only curious notice to tourists as they pa.s.s. Deer, elk and bear roam at will throughout Geyserland. The red squirrel and the chipmunk scamper along the roadway, and those furry little bundles, the wood-chucks, flatten out on the rocks and take no heed of your pa.s.sing. It is an everyday sight to see deer and their young by the roadside, and now and then you get a glimpse of an antlered elk, with his family of cows, swimming the streams of the Park. So much has been accomplished by law in robbing man of his terrors to the wild, that all of the animals in the Park, except those that--like the mountain lion and sheep, frequent places inaccessible to travelers--have well-nigh lost their fears.
The bears, some of them wrapped in robes that would command a fancy price, come down in the evening from their homes in the hills to feed around the hotels. The after-dinner entertainment they afford to guests is an everyday pleasure.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Feeding the Bear_]
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Giant Geyser]
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[Ill.u.s.tration: _New Grand Canon Hotel_]
_The Inns_
They happen along at the end of each day's drive--great roomy structures alive with light and full of comfort and good cheer. And such inns they are--generous lobbies to lounge in before old-fas.h.i.+oned fire-places, with their blazing, snapping logs--beds to sleep in, clean and restful--prettily furnished rooms--and cookery and service almost too good to be true. To find all these things in a far-away wilderness is to wonder what magic was worked to bring them all about.
The great inn at Mammoth has in its foreground, three hundred feet high, the wonderful, many-colored, and beautifully-formed Hot Springs Terraces which belong in the list of the water-made wonders of the Park.
One of the inns--Old Faithful--cannot be matched anywhere in the world. It is a lofty, wide-spreading structure of logs, with a touch of Swiss about its gables and windows. Within, the logs are everywhere--part.i.tions, bal.u.s.trades, stair-steps, and newel posts--even the drinking fountain is a log. It must have been a mighty task to search the forests for all the queer forms of growth that enter into the construction of the curious, rustic interior. And the lobby, with its four great cheerful fireplaces--its huge corn popper--its clock and twenty-foot pendulum, and all the log-made galleries above it--that charms and comforts beyond the power of words to tell.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Old Faithful Inn_]
The inns are located nearby the greatest marvels of the Park and their sites have been selected to show them off with admirable skill.