The Yellowstone National Park
by John Muir
The Atlantic Monthly
– A Magazine of Literature,
Science, Art, and Politics; April 1898; Houghton,
Mifflin, and Company; New York and Boston
OF the four national parks of
the West, the Yellowstone is far the largest. It is a big,
wholesome wilderness on the broad summit of the Rocky Mountains,
favored with abundance of rain and snow, — a place of fountains
where the greatest of the American rivers take their rise. The
central portion is a densely forested and comparatively level
volcanic plateau with an average elevation of about 8000 feet
above the sea, surrounded by an imposing host of mountains
belonging to the subordinate Gallatin, Wind River, Teton,
Absaroka, and Snowy ranges. Unnumbered lakes shine in it, united
by a famous band of streams that rush up out of hot lava beds,
or fall from the frosty peaks in channels rocky and bare, mossy
and bosky, to the main rivers, singing cheerily on through every
difficulty, cunningly dividing and finding their way east and
west to the two far-off seas.
Glacier meadows and beaver meadows are
outspread with charming effect along the banks of the streams,
parklike expanses in the woods, and innumerable small gardens in
rocky recesses of the mountains, some of them containing more
petals than leaves, while the whole wilderness is enlivened with
happy animals.
Beside the treasures common to
most mountain regions that are wild and blessed with a kind
climate, the park is full of exciting wonders. The wildest
geysers in the world, in bright, triumphant bands, are dancing
and singing in it amid thousands of boiling springs, beautiful
and awful, their basins arrayed in gorgeous colors like gigantic
flowers; and hot paint-pots, mud springs, mud volcanoes, mush
and broth caldrons whose contents are of every color and
consistency, plashing, heaving, roaring, in bewildering
abundance. In the adjacent mountains, beneath the living trees
the edges of petrified forests are exposed to view, like
specimens on the shelves of a museum, standing on ledges tier
above tier where they grew, solemnly silent in rigid crystalline
beauty after swaying in the winds thousands of centuries ago,
opening marvelous views back into the years and climates and
life of the past. Here, too, are hills of sparkling crystals,
hills of sulphur, hills of glass, hills of cinders and ashes,
mountains of every style of architecture, icy or forested,
mountains covered with honey-bloom sweet as Hymettus, mountains
boiled soft like potatoes and colored like a sunset sky. A' that
and a' that, and twice as muckle's a' that, Nature has on show
in the Yellowstone Park. Therefore it is called Wonderland, and
thousands of tourists and travelers stream into it every summer,
and wander about in it enchanted.
Fortunately, almost as soon as
it was discovered it was dedicated and set apart for the benefit
of the people, a piece of legislation that shrines benignly amid
the common dust-and-ashes history of the public domain, for
which the world must thank Professor Hayden above all others;
for he led the first scientific exploring party into it,
described it, and with admirable enthusiasm urged Congress to
preserve it. As delineated in the year 1872, the park contained
about 3344 square miles. On March 30, 1891, it was enlarged by
the Yellowstone National Park Timber Reserve, and in December,
1897, by the Teton Forest Reserve ; thus nearly doubling its
original area, and extending the southern boundary far enough to
take in the sublime Teton range and the famous pasture-lands of
the big Rocky Mountain game animals. The withdrawal of this
large tract from the public domain did no harm to any one; for
its height, 6000 to over 13,000 feet above the sea, and its
thick mantle of volcanic rocks, prevent its ever being available
for agriculture or mining, while on the other hand its
geographical position, reviving climate, and wonderful scenery
combine to make it a grand health, pleasure, and study resort, —
a gathering - place for travelers from all the world.
The national parks are not only
withdrawn from sale and entry like the forest reservations, but
are efficiently managed and guarded by small troops of United
States cavalry, directed by the Secretary of the Interior. Under
this care the forests are flourishing, protected from both axe
and fire; and so, of course, are the shaggy beds of underbrush
and the herbaceous vegetation. The so-called curiosities, also,
are preserved, and the furred and feathered tribes, many of
which, in danger of extinction a short time ago, are now
increasing in numbers, — a refreshing thing to see amid the
blind, ruthless destruction that is going on in the adjacent
regions. In pleasing contrast to the noisy, ever changing
management, or mismanagement, of blundering, plundering,
money-making vote-sellers who receive their places from boss
politicians as purchased goods, the soldiers do their duty so
quietly that the traveler is scarce aware of their presence.
This is the coolest and highest
of the parks. Frosts occur every month of the year.
Nevertheless, the tenderest tourist finds it warm enough in
summer. The air is electric and full of ozone, healing,
reviving, exhilarating, kept pure by frost and fire, while the
scenery is wild enough to awaken the dead. It is a glorious
place to grow in and rest in ; camping on the shores of the
lakes, in the warm openings of the woods golden with sunflowers,
on the banks of the streams, by the snowy waterfalls, beside the
exciting wonders or away from them in the scallops of the
mountain walls sheltered from every wind, on smooth silky lawns
enameled with gentians, up in the fountain hollows of the
ancient glaciers between the peaks, where cool pools and brooks
and gardens of precious plants charmingly embowered are never
wanting, and good rough rocks with every variety of cliff and
scour are invitingly near for outlooks and exercise.
From these lovely dens you may
make excursions whenever you like into the middle of the park,
where the geysers and hot springs are reeking and spouting in
their beautiful basins, displaying an exuberance of color and
strange motion and energy admirably calculated to surprise and
frighten, charm and shake up, the least sensitive out of apathy
into newness of life.
However orderly your excursions
or aimless, again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery
you will be brought to a standstill, hushed and awe-stricken,
before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge
deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them,
are plashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains, as if a
fierce furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a
hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like
inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the
hot, black underworld. Some of these ponderous geyser columns
are as large as sequoias, — five to sixty feet in diameter, 150
to 300 feet high, — and are sustained at this great height with
tremendous energy for a few minutes, or perhaps nearly an hour,
standing rigid and erect, hissing, throbbing, booming, as if
thunder-storms were raging beneath their roots, their sides
roughened or fluted like the furrowed boles of trees, their tops
dissolving in feathery branches, while the irised spray, like
misty bloom, is at times blown aside, revealing the massive
shafts shining against a background of pine-covered hills. Some
of them lean more or less, as if storm-bent, and instead of
being round are flat or fan-shaped, issuing from irregular slits
in silex pavements with radiate structure, the sunbeams sifting
through them in ravishing splendor. Some are broad and
round-headed like oaks; others are low and bunchy, branching
near the ground like bushes; and a few are hollow in the centre
like big daisies or water-lilies. No frost cools them, snow
never covers them nor lodges in their branches; winter and
summer they welcome alike; all of them, of whatever form or
size, faithfully rising and sinking in fairy rhythmic dance
night and day, in all sorts of weather, at varying periods of
minutes, hours, or weeks, growing up rapidly, uncontrollable as
fate, tossing their pearly branches in the wind, bursting into
bloom and vanishing like the frailest flowers, — plants of which
Nature raises hundreds or thousands of crops a year with no
apparent exhaustion of the fiery soil.
The so-called geyser basins, in
which this rare sort of vegetation is growing, are mostly open
valleys on the central plateau that were eroded by glaciers
after the greater volcanic fires had ceased to burn. Looking
down over the forests as you approach them from the surrounding
heights, you see a multitude of white columns, broad, reeking
masses, and irregular jets and puffs of misty vapor ascending
from the bottom of the valley, or entangled like smoke among the
neighboring trees, suggesting the factories of some busy town or
the camp-fires of an army. These mark the position of each
mush-pot, paint-pot, hot spring, and geyser, or gusher, as the
Icelandic word means. And when you saunter into the midst of
them over the bright sinter pavements, and see how pure and
white and pearly gray they are in the shade of the mountains,
and how radiant in the sunshine, you are fairly enchanted. So
numerous they are and varied, Nature seems to have gathered them
from all the world as specimens of her rarest fountains, to show
in one place what she can do. Over four thousand hot springs
have been counted in the park, and a hundred geysers; how many
more there are nobody knows.
These valleys at the heads of
the great rivers may be regarded as laboratories and kitchens,
in which, amid a thousand retorts and pots, we may see Nature at
work as chemist or cook, cunningly compounding an infinite
variety of mineral messes; cooking whole mountains; boiling and
steaming flinty rocks to smooth paste and mush, — yellow, brown,
red, pink, lavender, gray, and creamy white, — making the most
beautiful mud in the world; and distilling the most ethereal
essences. Many of these pots and caldrons have been boiling
thousands of years. Pots of sulphurous mush, stringy and lumpy,
and pots of broth as black as ink, are tossed and stirred with
constant care, and thin transparent essences, too pure and fine
to be called water, are kept simmering gently in beautiful
sinter cups and bowls that grow ever more beautiful the longer
they are used. In some of the spring basins, the waters, though
still warm, are perfectly calm, and shine blandly in a sod of
overleaning grass and flowers, as if they were thoroughly cooked
at last, and set aside to settle and cool. Others are wildly
boiling over as if running to waste, thousands of tons of the
precious liquids being thrown into the air to fall in scalding
floods on the clean coral floor of the establishment, keeping
onlookers at a distance. Instead of holding limpid pale green or
azure water, other pots and craters are filled with scalding
mud, which is tossed up from three or four feet to thirty feet,
in sticky, rank-smelling masses, with gasping, belching,
thudding sounds, plastering the branches of neighboring trees;
every flask, retort, hot spring, and geyser has something
special in it, no two being the same in temperature, color, or
composition.
In these natural laboratories
one needs stout faith to feel at ease. The ground sounds hollow
underfoot, and the awful subterranean thunder shakes one's mind
as the ground is shaken, especially at night in the pale
moonlight, or when the sky is overcast with storm-clouds. In the
solemn gloom, the geysers, dimly visible, look like monstrous
dancing ghosts, and their wild songs and the earthquake thunder
replying to the storms overhead seem doubly terrible, as if
divine government were at an end. But the trembling hills keep
their places. The sky clears, the rosy dawn is reassuring, and
up comes the sun like a god, pouring his faithful beams across
the mountains and forest, lighting each peak and tree and
ghastly geyser alike, and shining into the eyes of the reeking
springs, clothing them with rainbow light, and dissolving the
seeming chaos of darkness into varied forms of harmony. The
ordinary work of the world goes on. Gladly we see the flies
dancing in the sunbeams, birds feeding their young, squirrels
gathering nuts ; and hear the blessed ouzel singing confidingly
in the shallows of the river, — most faithful evangel, calming
every fear, reducing everything to love.
The variously tinted sinter and
travertine formations, outspread like pavements over large areas
of the geyser valleys, lining the spring basins and throats of
the craters, and forming beautiful coral-like rims and curbs
about them, always excite admiring attention; so also does the
play of the waters from which they are deposited. The various
minerals in them are rich in fine colors, and these are greatly
heightened by a smooth, silky growth of brilliantly colored
confervæ which lines many of the pools and channels and
terraces. No bed of flower-bloom is more exquisite than these
myriads of minute plants, visible only in mass, growing in the
hot waters. Most of the spring borders are low and daintily
scalloped, crenelated, and beaded with sinter pearls; but some
of the geyser craters are massive and picturesque, like ruined
castles or old burned-out sequoia stumps, and are adorned on a
grand scale with outbulging, cauliflower-like formations. From
these as centres the silex pavements slope gently away in thin,
crusty, overlapping layers, slightly interrupted in some places
by low terraces. Or, as in the case of the Mammoth Hot Springs,
at the north end of the park, where the building waters issue
from the side of a steep hill, the deposits form a succession of
higher and broader terraces of white travertine tinged with
purple, like the famous Pink Terrace at Rotomahana, New Zealand,
draped in front with clustering stalactites, each terrace having
a pool of indescribably beautiful water upon it in a basin with
a raised rim that glistens with confervæ, — the whole, when
viewed at a distance of a mile or two, looking like a broad,
massive cascade pouring over shelving rocks in snowy purpled
foam.
The stones of this divine
masonry, invisible particles of lime or silex, mined in quarries
no eye has seen, go to their appointed places in gentle,
tinkling, transparent currents or through the dashing turmoil of
floods, as surely guided as the sap of plants streaming into
bole and branch, leaf and flower. And thus from century to
century this beauty-work has gone on and is going on.
Passing through many a mile of
pine and spruce woods, toward the centre of the park you come to
the famous Yellowstone Lake. It is about twenty miles long and
fifteen wide, and lies at a height of nearly 8000 feet above the
level of the sea, amid dense black forests and snowy mountains.
Around its winding, wavering shores, closely forested and
picturesquely varied with promontories and bays, the distance is
more than 100 miles. It is not very deep, only from 200 to 300
feet, and contains less water than the celebrated Lake Tahoe of
the California Sierra, which is nearly the same size, lies at a
height of 6400 feet, and is over 1600 feet deep. But no other
lake in North America of equal area lies so high as the
Yellowstone, or gives birth to so noble a river. The terraces
around its shores show that at the close of the glacial period
its surface was about 160 feet higher than it is now, and its
area nearly twice as great.
It is full of trout, and a vast
multitude of birds — swans, pelicans, geese, ducks, cranes,
herons, curlews, plovers, snipe — feed in it and upon its
shores; and many forest animals come out of the woods, and wade
a little way in shallow, sandy places to drink and look about
them, and cool themselves in the free flowing breezes.
In calm weather it is a
magnificent mirror for the woods and mountains and sky, now
pattered with hail and rain, now roughened with sudden storms
that send waves to fringe the shores and wash its border of
gravel and sand. The Absaroka Mountains and the Wind River
Plateau on the east and south pour their gathered waters into
it, and the river issues from the north side in a broad, smooth,
stately current, silently gliding with such serene majesty that
one fancies it knows the vast journey of four thousand miles
that lies before it, and the work it has to do. For the first
twenty miles its course is in a level, sunny valley lightly
fringed with trees, through whirls it flows in silvery reaches
stirred into spangles here and there by ducks and leaping trout,
making no sound save a low whispering among the pebbles and the
dipping willows and sedges of its banks. Then suddenly, as if
preparing for hard work, it rushes eagerly, impetuously forward,
rejoicing in its strength, breaks into foam-bloom, and goes
thundering down into the Grand Cañon in two magnificent falls,
100 and 300 feet high.
The cañon is so tremendously
wild and impressive that even these great falls cannot hold your
attention. It is about twenty miles long and a thousand feet
deep, — a weird, unearthly-looking gorge of jagged, fantastic
architecture, and most brilliantly colored. Here the Washburn
range, forming the northern rim of the Yellowstone basin, made
up mostly of beds of rhyolite decomposed by the action of
thermal waters, has been cut through and laid open to view by
the river; and a famous section it has made. It is not the depth
or the shape of the cañon, nor the waterfall, nor the green and
gray river chanting its brave song as it goes foaming on its
way, that most impresses the observer, but the colors of the
decomposed volcanic rocks. With few exceptions, the traveler in
strange lands finds that, however much the scenery and
vegetation in different countries may change, Mother Earth is
ever familiar and the same. But here the very ground is changed,
as if belonging to some other world. The walls of the cañon from
top to bottom burn in a perfect glory of color, confounding and
dazzling when the sun is shining, — white, yellow, green, blue,
vermilion, and various other shades of red indefinitely
blending. All the earth hereabouts seems to be paint. Millions
of tons of it lie in sight, exposed to wind and weather as if of
no account, yet marvelously fresh and bright, fast colors not to
be washed out or bleached out by either sunshine or storms. The
effect is so novel and awful, we imagine that even a river might
be afraid to enter such a place. But the rich and gentle beauty
of the vegetation is reassuring. The lovely Linncæa borealis
hangs her twin bells over the brink of the cliffs, forests and
gardens extend their treasures in smiling confidence on either
side, nuts and berries ripen well, whatever may be going on
below; and soon blind fears vanish, and the grand gorge seems a
kindly, beautiful part of the general harmony, full of peace and
joy and good will.
The park is easy of access.
Locomotives drag you to its northern boundary at Cinnabar, and
horses and guides do the rest. From Cinnabar you will be whirled
in coaches along the foaming Gardiner River to Mammoth Hot
Springs; thence through woods and meadows, gulches and ravines
along branches of the Upper Gallatin, Madison, and Firehole
rivers to the main geyser basins; thence over the Continental
Divide and back again, up and down through dense pine, spruce,
and fir woods to the magnificent Yellowstone Lake, along its
northern shore to the outlet, down the river to the falls and
Grand Cañon, and thence back through the woods to Mammoth Hot
Springs and Cinnabar; stopping here and there at the so-called
points of interest among the geysers, springs, paint-pots, mud
volcanoes, etc., where you will be allowed a few minutes or
hours to saunter over the sinter pavements, watch the play of a
few of the geysers, and peer into some of the most beautiful and
terrible of the craters and pools. These wonders you will enjoy,
and also the views of the mountains, especially the Gallatin and
Absaroka ranges, the long, willowy glacier and beaver meadows,
the beds of violets, gentians, phloxes, asters, phacelias,
goldenrods, eriogonums, and many other flowers, some species
giving color to whole meadows and hillsides. And you will enjoy
your short views of the great lake and river and cañon. No
scalping Indians will you see. The Blackfeet and Bannocks that
once roamed here are gone; so are the old beaver-catchers, the
Coulters and Bridgers, with all their attractive buckskin and
romance. There are several bands of buffaloes in the park, but
you will not thus cheaply in tourist fashion see them nor many
of the other large animals hidden in the wilderness. The
song-birds, too, keep mostly out of sight of the rushing
tourist, though off the roads thrushes, warblers, orioles,
grosbeaks, etc., keep the air sweet and merry. Perhaps in
passing rapids and falls you may catch glimpses of the water
ouzel, but in the whirling noise you will not hear his song.
Fortunately, no road noise frightens the Douglas squirrel, and
his merry play and gossip will amuse you all through the woods.
Here and there a deer may be seen crossing the road, or a bear.
Most likely, however, the only bears you will see are the
half-tame ones that go to the hotels every night for
dinner-table scraps, — yeast-powder biscuit, Chicago canned
stuff, mixed pickles, and beefsteaks that have proved too tough
for porcelain teeth.
Among the gains of a coach trip
are the acquaintances made and the fresh views into human
nature; for the wilderness is a shrewd touchstone, even thus
lightly approached, and brings many a curious trait to view.
Setting out, the driver cracks his whip, and the four horses go
off at half gallop, half trot, in trained, showy style, until
out of sight of the hotel. The coach is crowded, old and young
side by side, blooming and fading, full of hope and fun and
care. Some look at the scenery or the horses, and all ask
questions, an odd mixed lot of them: Where is the umbrella? What
is the name of that blue flower over there? Are you sure the
little bag is aboard? Is that hollow yonder a crater? How is
your throat this morning? How high did you say the geysers
spout? How does the elevation affect your head? Is that a geyser
reeking over there in the rocks, or only a hot spring? A long
ascent is made, the solemn mountains come to view, small cares
are quenched, and all become natural and silent, save perhaps
some unfortunate expounder who has been reading guidebook
geology, and rumbles forth foggy subsidences and upheavals until
he is in danger of being heaved overboard. The driver will give
you the names of the peaks and meadows and streams as you come
to them, call attention to the glass road, tell how hard it was
to build, — how the obsidian cliffs naturally pushed the
surveyor's lines to the right, and the industrious beavers, by
flooding the valley in front of the cliff, pushed them to the
left.
Geysers, however, are the main
objects, and as soon as they came in sight other wonders are
forgotten. All gather around the crater of the one that is
expected to play first. During the eruptions of the smaller
geysers, such as the Beehive and Old Faithful, though a little
frightened at first, all welcome the glorious show with
enthusiasm, and shout, Oh, how wonderful, beautiful, splendid,
majestic! Some venture near enough to stroke the column with a
stick, as if it were a stone pillar or a tree, so firm and
substantial and permanent it seems. While tourists wait around a
large geyser, such as the Castle or the Giant, there is a
chatter of small talk in anything but solemn mood; and during
the intervals between the preliminary splashes and upheavals
some adventurer occasionally looks down the throat of the
crater, admiring the silex formations and wondering whether
Hades is as beautiful. But when, with awful uproar as if
avalanches were falling and storms thundering in the depths, the
tremendous outburst begins, all run away to a safe distance, and
look on, awe-stricken and silent, in devout, worshiping wonder.
The largest and one of the most
wonderfully beautiful of the springs is the Prismatic, which the
guide will be sure to show you. With a circumference of 300
yards, it is more like a lake than a spring. The water is pure
deep blue in the centre, fading to green on the edges, and its
basin and the slightly terraced pavement about it are
astonishingly bright and varied in color. This one of the
multitude of Yellowstone fountains is of itself object enough
for a trip across the continent. No wonder that so many fine
myths have originated in springs; that so many fountains were
held sacred in the youth of the world, and had miraculous
virtues ascribed to them. Even in these cold, doubting,
questioning, scientific times many of the Yellowstone fountains
seem able to work miracles. Near the Prismatic Spring is the
great Excelsior Geyser, which is said to throw a column of
boiling water 60 to 70 feet in diameter to a height of from 50
to 300 feet, at irregular periods. This is the greatest of all
the geysers yet discovered anywhere. The Firehole River, which
sweeps past it, is, at ordinary stages, a stream about 100 yards
wide and three feet deep; but when the geyser is in eruption, so
great is the quantity of water discharged that the volume of the
river is doubled, and it is rendered too hot and rapid to be
forded.
Geysers are found in many other
volcanic regions, — in Iceland, New Zealand, Japan, the
Himalayas, the Eastern Archipelago, South America, the Azores,
and elsewhere; but only in Iceland, New Zealand, and this Rocky
Mountain park do they display their grandest forms, and of these
three famous regions the Yellowstone is easily first, both in
the number and in the size of its geysers. The greatest height
of the column of the Great Geyser of Iceland actually measured
was 212 feet, and of the Strokhr 162 feet.
In New Zealand, the Te Pueia at
Lake Taupo, the Waikite at Rotorna, and two others are said to
lift their waters occasionally to a height of 100 feet, while
the celebrated Te Tarata at Retomahana sometimes lifts a boiling
column 20 feet in diameter to a height of 60 feet. But all these
are far surpassed by the Excelsior. Few tourists, however, will
see the Excelsior in action, or a thousand other interesting
features of the park that lie beyond the wagon-roads and hotels.
The regular trips — from three to five days — are too short.
Nothing can be done well at a speed of forty miles a day. The
multitude of mixed, novel impressions rapidly piled on one
another make only a dreamy, bewildering, swirling blur, most of
which is unrememberable. Far more time should be taken. Walk
away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the
mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier
meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb
the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will
flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow
their own freshness into you, and. the storms their energy,
while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on,
one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's
sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers here
brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the
sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with
glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever
playing. The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the
unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is
precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in
the wilderness.
Most of the dangers that haunt
the unseasoned citizen are imaginary; the real ones are perhaps
too few rather than too many for his good. The bears that always
seem to spring up thick as trees, in fighting, devouring
attitudes before the frightened tourist, whenever a camping trip
is proposed, are gentle now, finding they are no longer likely
to be shot; and rattlesnakes, the other big irrational dread of
over-civilized people, are scarce here, for most of the park
lies above the snake-line. Poor creatures, loved only by their
Maker, they are timid and bashful, as mountaineers know; and
though perhaps not possessed of much of that charity that
suffers long and is kind, seldom, either by mistake or by
mishap, do harm to any one. Certainly they cause not the
hundredth part of the pain and death that follow the footsteps
of the admired Rocky Mountain trapper. Nevertheless, again and
again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, “What
are rattlesnakes good for?" As if nothing that does not
obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as
if our ways were God's ways. Long ago, an Indian to whom a
French traveler put this old question replied that their tails
were good for toothache, and their heads for fever. Anyhow, they
are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not
begrudge them their share of life.
Fear nothing. No town park you
have been accustomed to saunter in is so free from danger as the
Yellowstone. It is a hard place to leave. Even its names in your
guidebook are attractive, and should draw you far from
wagon-roads, — all save the early ones, derived from the
infernal regions: Hell Roaring River, Hell Broth Springs, The
Devil's Caldron, etc. Indeed, the whole region was at first
called Coulter's Hell, from the fiery brimstone stories told by
trapper Coulter, who left the Lewis and Clark expedition, and
wandered through the park, in the year 1807, with a band of
Bannock Indians. The later names of the Hayden Geological
Surveys are so telling and exhilarating that they set our pulses
dancing, and make us begin to enjoy the pleasures of excursions
ere they are commenced. Three River Peak, Two Ocean Pass,
Continental Divide, are capital geographical descriptions,
suggesting thousands of miles of rejoicing streams and all that
belongs to them. Big Horn Pass, Bison Peak, Big Game Ridge,
bring brave mountain animals to mind. Birch Hills, Garnet Hills,
Amethyst Mountain, Storm Peak, Electric Peak, Roaring Mountain,
are bright, bracing names. Wapiti, Beaver, Tern, and Swan lakes
conjure up fine pictures, and so also do Osprey and Ouzel falls.
Antelope Creek, Otter, Mink, and Grayling creeks, Geode, Jasper,
Opal, Carnelian, and Chalcedony creeks, are lively and sparkling
names that help the streams to shine; and Azalea, Stellaria,
Arnica, Aster, and Phlox creeks, what pictures these bring up!
Violet, Morning Mist, Hygeia, Beryl, Vermilion, and Indigo
springs, and many beside, give us visions of fountains more
beautifully arrayed than Solomon in all his purple and golden
glory. All these and a host of others call you to camp. You may
be a little cold some nights, on mountain tops above the
timber-line, but you will see the stars, and by and by you can
sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in your grave. Keep
awake while you may in mountain mansions so rare.
If you are not very strong, try
to climb Electric Peak when a big, bossy, well-charged
thunder-cloud is on it, to breathe the ozone set free, and get
yourself kindly shaken and shocked. You are sure to be lost in
wonder and praise, and every hair of your head will stand up and
hum and sing like an enthusiastic congregation.
After this reviving experience,
you should take a look into a few of the tertiary volumes of the
grand geological library of the park, and see how God writes
history. No technical knowledge is required; only a calm day and
a calm mind. Nowhere else in the Rocky Mountains have the
volcanic forces been so fiercely busy. More than 10,000 square
miles hereabouts have been covered to a depth of at least 5000
feet with material spouted from chasms and craters during the
tertiary period, forming broad sheets of basalt, andesite,
rhyolite, etc., and marvelous masses of ashes, sand, cinders,
and stones now consolidated into conglomerates, charged with the
remains of plants and animals that lived in the calm, genial
periods that separated the volcanic outbursts.
Perhaps the most interesting
and telling of these rocks, to the hasty tourist, are those that
make up the mass of Amethyst Mountain. On its north side it
presents a section 2000 feet high of roughly stratified beds of
sand, ashes, and conglomerates coarse and fine, forming the
untrimmed edges of a wonderful set of volumes lying on their
sides, — books a million years old, well bound, miles in size,
with full-page illustrations. On the ledges of this one section
we see trunks and stumps of fifteen or twenty ancient forests
ranged one above another, standing where they grew, or prostrate
and broken like the pillars of ruined temples in desert sands,
—a forest fifteen or twenty stories high, the roots of each
spread above the tops of the next beneath it, telling wonderful
tales of the bygone centuries, with their winters and summers,
growth and death, fire, ice, and flood.
There were giants in those
days. The largest of the standing opal and agate stumps and
prostrate sections of the trunks are from two or three to fifty
feet in height or length, and from five to ten feet in diameter;
and so perfect is the petrifaction that the annual rings and
ducts are clearer and more easily counted than those of living
trees, countless centuries of burial having brightened the
records instead of blurring them. They show that the winters of
the tertiary period gave as decided a check to vegetable growth
as do those of the present time. Some trees favorably located
grew rapidly, increasing twenty inches in diameter in as many
years, while others of the same species, on poorer soil or
overshadowed, increased only two or three inches in the same
time.
Among the roots and stumps on
the old forest floors we find the remains of ferns and bushes,
and the seeds and leaves of trees like those now growing on the
southern Alleghanies, — such as magnolia, sassafras, laurel,
linden, persimmon, ash, alder, dogwood. Studying the lowest of
these forests, the soil it grew on and the deposits it is buried
in, we see that it was rich in species, and flourished in a
genial, sunny climate. When its stately trees were in their
glory, volcanic fires broke forth from chasms and craters, like
larger geysers, spouting ashes, cinders, stones, and mud, which
fell on the doomed forest in tremendous floods, and like heavy
hail and snow; sifting, hurtling through the leaves and
branches, choking the streams, covering the ground, crushing
bushes and ferns, rapidly deepening, packing around the trees
and breaking them, rising higher until the topmost boughs of the
giants were buried, leaving not a leaf or twig in sight, so
complete was the desolation. At last the volcanic storm began to
abate, the fiery soil settled; mud floods and boulder floods
passed over it, enriching it, cooling it; rains fell and mellow
sunshine, and it became fertile and ready for another crop.
Birds, and the winds, and roaming animals brought seeds from
more fortunate woods, and a new forest grew up on the top of the
buried one. Centuries of genial growing seasons passed. The
seedling trees with strong outreaching branches became giants,
and spread a broad leafy canopy over the gray land.
The sleeping subterranean fires
again awake and shake the mountains, and every leaf trembles.
The old craters with perhaps new ones are opened, and immense
quantities of ashes, pumice, and cinders are again thrown into
the sky. The sun, shorn of his beams, glows like a dull red
ball, until hidden in sulphurous clouds. Volcanic snow, hail,
and floods fall on the new forest, burying it alive, like the
one beneath its roots. Then come another noisy band of mud
floods and boulder floods, mixing, settling, enriching the new
ground, more seeds, quickening sunshine and showers, and a third
noble magnolia forest is carefully raised on the top of the
second. And so on. Forest was planted above forest and
destroyed, as if Nature were ever repenting and undoing the work
she had so industriously done; as if every lovely fern and tree
she had planted had in turn become a Sodomite sinner to be
utterly destroyed and put out of sight.
But of course this destruction
was creation, progress in the march of beauty through death. Few
of the old world monuments hereabouts so quickly excite and hold
the imagination. We see these old stone stumps budding and
blossoming and waving in the wind as magnificent trees, standing
shoulder to shoulder, branches interlacing in grand varied
round-headed forests; see the sunshine of morning and evening
gilding their mossy trunks, and at high noon spangling on the
thick glossy leaves of the magnolia, filtering through the
translucent canopies of linden and ash, and falling in mellow
patches on the ferny floor; see the shining after rain, breathe
the exhaling fragrance, and hear the, winds and birds and the
murmur of brooks and insects. We watch them from season to
season; we see the swelling buds when the sap begins to flow in
the spring, the opening leaves and blossoms, the ripening of
summer fruits, the colors of autumn, and the maze of leafless
branches and sprays in winter; and we see the sudden oncome of
the storms that overwhelmed them.
One calm morning at sunrise I
saw the oaks and pines in Yosemite Valley shaken by an
earthquake, their tops swishing back and forth, and every branch
and needle shuddering as if in distress, like the birds that
flew frightened and screaming, from their snug hiding-places.
One may imagine the trembling, rocking, tumultuous waving of
those ancient Yellowstone woods, and the terror of their
inhabitants, when the first foreboding shocks were felt, the sky
grew dark, and rock-laden floods began to roar. But though they
were close-pressed and buried, cut off from sun and wind, all
their happy leaf fluttering and waving done, other currents
coursed through them, fondling and thrilling every fibre, and
beautiful wood was replaced by beautiful stone. Now their rocky
sepulchres are broken open, and they are marching back into the
light singing a new song, — shining examples of the natural
beauty of death. In these forest Herculaneums Old Mortality is
truly an angel of light.
After the forest times and fire
times had passed away, and the volcanic furnaces were banked and
held in abeyance, another great change occurred in the history
of the park. The glacial winter came on. The sky was again
darkened, not with dust and ashes, but with snow flowers which
fell in glorious abundance, piling deeper, deeper, slipping from
the overladen heights in booming avalanches suggestive of their
growing power. Compacting into glaciers, they flowed forth,
meeting and welding into a ponderous ice - mantle that covered
all the landscape perhaps a mile deep; wiping off forests,
grinding, sculpturing, fashioning the comparatively featureless
lava beds into the beautiful rhythm of hill and dale and ranges
of mountains we behold to-day; forming basins for lakes,
channels for streams, new soils for forests, gardens, and
meadows. While this ice-work was going on, the slumbering
volcanic fires were boiling the subterranean waters, and with
curious chemistry decomposing the rocks, making beauty in the
darkness; these forces, seemingly antagonistic, working
harmoniously together. How wild their meetings on the surface
were we may imagine. When the glacier period began, geysers and
hot springs were playing in grander volume, it may be, than
those of to-day. The glaciers flossed over them while they
spouted and thundered, carrying away their fine sinter and
travertine structures, and shortening their mysterious channels.
The soils made in the
down-grinding required to bring the present features of the
landscape into relief are possibly no better than were some of
the old volcanic soils that were carried away, and which, as we
have seen, nourished magnificent forests, but the glacial
landscapes are incomparably more beautiful than the old volcanic
ones were. The glacial winter has passed away like the ancient
summers and fire periods, though in the chronology of the
geologist all these times are recent. Only small residual
glaciers on the cool northern slopes of the highest mountains
are left of the vast all-embracing ice-mantle, as solfataras and
geysers are all that are left of the ancient volcanoes.
Now the post-glacial agents are
at work on the grand old palimpsest of the park, inscribing new
characters; but still in its main telling features it remains
distinctly glacial. The moraine soils are being leveled, sorted,
refined, and re-formed, and covered with vegetation; the
polished pavements and scoring and other superficial glacial
inscriptions on the crumbling lavas are being rapidly
obliterated; gorges are being cut in the decomposed rhyolites
and loose conglomerates, and turrets and pinnacles seem to be
springing up like growing trees; while the geysers are
depositing miles of sinter and travertine. Nevertheless, the
ice-work is scarce blurred as yet. These later effects are only
spots and wrinkles on the grand glacial countenance of the park.
Perhaps you have already said
that you have seen enough for a lifetime. But before you go away
you should spend at least one day and a night on a mountain top,
for a last general calming, settling view. Mount Washburn is a
good one for the purpose, because it stands in the middle of the
park, is unencumbered with other peaks, and is so easy of access
that the climb to its summit is only a saunter. First your eye
goes roving around the mountain rim amid the hundreds of peaks:
some with plain flowing skirts, others abruptly precipitous and
defended by sheer battlemented escarpments, flat topped or
round; heaving like sea-waves, or spired and turreted like
Gothic cathedrals; streaked with snow in the ravines, and
darkened with files of adventurous trees climbing the ridges.
The nearer peaks are perchance clad in sapphire blue, others far
off in creamy white. In the broad glare of noon they seem to
shrink and crouch to less than half their real stature, and grow
dull and uncommunicative, — mere dead, draggled heaps of waste
ashes and stone, giving no hint of the multitude of animals
enjoying life in their fastnesses, or of the bright
bloom-bordered streams and lakes. But when storms blow they
awake and arise, wearing robes of cloud and mist in majestic
speaking attitudes like gods. In the color glory of morning and
evening they become still more impressive; steeped in the divine
light of the alpenglow their earthiness disappears, and,
blending with the heavens, they seem neither high nor low.
Over all the central plateau,
which from here seems level, and over the foothills and lower
slopes of the mountains, the forest extends like a black uniform
, bed of weeds, interrupted only by lakes and meadows and small
burned spots called parks, — all of them, except the Yellowstone
Lake, being mere dots and spangles in general views, made
conspicuous by their color and brightness. About eighty-five per
cent of the entire area of the park is covered with trees,
mostly the indomitable lodge-pole pine (Pinus contorta,
var. Murrayana), with a few patches and sprinklings of
Douglas spruce, Engelmann spruce, silver fir (Abies
lasiocarpa), P. flexis, and a few alders, aspens, and
birches. The Douglas spruce is found only on the lowest
portions, the silver fir on the highest, and the Engelmann
spruce on the dampest places, best defended from fire. Some fine
specimens of the flexilis pine are growing on the margins of
openings, wide-branching, sturdy trees, as broad as high, with
trunks five feet in diameter, leafy and shady, laden with purple
cones and rose-colored flowers. The Engelmann spruce and
sub-alpine silver fir also are beautiful and notable trees,
—tall, spiny, hardy, frost and snow defying, and widely
distributed over the West, wherever there is a mountain to climb
or a cold moraine slope to cover. But neither of these is a good
fire-fighter. With rather thin bark, and scattering their seeds
every year as soon as they are ripe, they are quickly driven out
of fire-swept regions. When the glaciers were melting, these
hardy mountaineering trees were probably among the first to
arrive on the new moraine soil beds; but as the plateau became
drier and fires began to run, they were driven up the mountains,
and into the wet spots and islands where we now find them,
leaving nearly all the park to the lodge-pole pine, which,
though as thin-skinned as they and as easily killed by fire,
takes pains to store up its seeds in firmly closed cones, and
holds them from three to nine years, so that, let the fire come
when it may, it is ready to die and ready to live again in a new
generation. For when the killing fires have devoured the leaves
and thin resinous bark, many of the cones, only scorched, open
as soon as the smoke clears away-, the hoarded store of seeds is
sown broadcast on the cleared ground, and a new growth
immediately springs up triumphant out of the ashes. Therefore,
this tree not only holds its ground, but extends its conquests
farther after every fire. Thus the evenness and closeness of its
growth are accounted for. In one part of the forest that I
examined, the growth was about as close as a cane-brake. The
trees were from four to eight inches in diameter, one hundred
feet high, and one hundred and seventy-five years old. The lower
limbs die young and drop off for want of light. Life with these
close-planted trees is a race for light, more light, and so they
push straight for the sky. Hewing off ten feet from the top of
the forest would make it look like a crowded mass of
telegraph-poles; for only the sunny tops are leafy. A sapling
ten years old, growing in the sunshine, has as many leaves as a
crowded tree one or two hundred years old. As fires are
multiplied and the mountains become drier, this wonderful
lodge-pole pine bids fair to obtain possession of nearly all the
forest ground in the West.
How still the woods seem from
here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making;
digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and play,
getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush,
climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks
of the lakes and streams. Insect swarms are dancing in the
sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming, — a cloud
of witnesses telling Nature's joy. The plants are as busy as the
animals, every cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming like a
hive, singing the old new song of creation. A few columns and
puffs of steam are seen rising above the treetops, some near,
but most of them far off, indicating geysers and hot springs,
gentle-looking and noiseless as downy clouds, softly hinting at
the reaction going on between the surface and the hot interior.
From here you see them better than when you are standing beside
them, frightened and confused, regarding them as lawless
cataclysms. The shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes,
geysers, storms, the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in
plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of Nature's
heart.
Turning to the eastward, you
have the Grand Cañon and reaches of the river in full view; and
yonder to the southward lies the great lake, the largest and
most important of all the high fountains of the
Missouri-Mississippi, and the last to be discovered.
In the year 1341, when De Soto,
with a romantic band of adventurers, was seeking gold and glory
and the fountain of youth, he found the Mississippi a few
hundred miles above its mouth, and made his grave beneath its
floods. La Salle, in 1682, after discovering the Ohio, one of
the largest and most beautiful branches of the Mississippi,
traced the latter to the sea from the mouth of the Illinois,
through adventures and privations not easily realized now. About
the same time Joliet and Father Marquette reached the “Father of
Waters" by way of the Wisconsin, but more than a century passed
ere its highest sources in these mountains were seen. The
advancing stream of civilization has ever followed its guidance
toward the west, but none of the thousand tribes of Indians
living on its banks could tell the explorer whence it came. From
those romantic De Soto and La Salle days to these times of
locomotives and tourists, how much has the great river seen and
done! Great as it now is, and still growing longer through the
ground of its delta and the basins of receding glaciers at its
head, it was immensely broader toward the close of the glacial
period, when the ice-mantle of the mountains was melting: then,
with its 300,000 miles of branches outspread over the plains and
valleys of the continent, laden with fertile mud, it made the
biggest and most generous bed of soil in the world.
Think of this mighty stream
springing in the first place in vapor from the sea, flying on
the wind, alighting on the mountains in hail and snow and rain,
lingering in many a fountain feeding the trees and grass; then
gathering its scattered waters, gliding from its noble lake, and
going back home to the sea, singing all the way. On it sweeps
through the gates of the mountains, across the vast prairies and
plains, through many a wild, gloomy forest, cane-brake, and
sunny savanna, from glaciers and snowbanks and pine woods to
warm groves of magnolia and palm, geysers dancing at its head,
keeping time with the sea-waves at its mouth; roaring and gray
in rapids, booming in broad, bossy falls, murmuring, gleaming in
long, silvery reaches, swaying now hither, now thither,
whirling, bending in huge doubling, eddying folds; serene,
majestic, ungovernable; overflowing all its metes and bounds,
frightening the dwellers upon its banks; wasting, uprooting,
planting; engulfing old islands and making new ones, taking away
fields and towns as if in sport, carrying canoes and ships of
commerce in the midst of its spoils and drift, fertilizing the
continent as one vast farm. Then, its work done, it gladly
vanishes in its ocean home, welcomed by the waiting waves.
Thus naturally, standing here
in the midst of its fountains, we trace the fortunes of the
great river. And how much more comes to mind as we overlook this
wonderful wilderness! Fountains of the Columbia and Colorado lie
before us interlaced with those of the Yellowstone and Missouri,
and fine it would be to go with them to the Pacific; but the sun
is already in the west, and soon our day will be done.
Yonder is Amethyst Mountain,
and other mountains hardly less rich in old forests which now
seem to spring up again in their glory; and you see the storms
that buried them, — the ashes and torrents laden with boulders
and mud, the centuries of sunshine, and the dark, lurid nights.
You see again the vast floods of lava, red-hot and white-hot,
pouring out from gigantic geysers, usurping the basins of lakes
and streams, absorbing or driving away their hissing, screaming
waters, flowing around hills and ridges. submerging every
subordinate feature. Then you see the snow and glaciers taking
possession of the land, making new landscapes. How admirable it
is that, after passing through so many vicissitudes of frost and
fire and flood, the physiognomy and even the complexion of the
landscape should still be so divinely fine!
Thus reviewing the eventful
past, we see Nature working with enthusiasm like a man, blowing
her volcanic forges like a blacksmith blowing his smithy fires,
shoving glaciers over the landscapes like a carpenter shoving
his planes, clearing, ploughing, harrowing, irrigating,
planting, and sowing broadcast like a farmer and gardener doing
rough work and finework, planting sequoias and pines, rosebushes
and daisies; working in gems, filling every crack and hollow
with them; distilling tine essences; painting plants and shells,
clouds, mountains, all the earth and heavens, like an artist, —
ever working toward beauty higher and higher. Where may the mind
find more stimulating, quickening pasturage? A thousand
Yellowstone wonders are calling, "Look up and down and round
about you!" And a multitude of still, small voices may be heard
directing you to look through all this transient, shifting show
of things called "substantial" into the truly substantial,
spiritual world whose forms flesh and wood, rock and water, air
and sunshine, only veil and conceal, and to learn that here is
heaven and the dwelling-place of the angels.
The sun is setting; long,
violet shadows are growing out over the woods from the mountains
along the western rim of the park; the Absaroka range is
baptized in the divine light of the alpenglow, and its rocks and
trees are transfigured. Next to the light of the dawn on high
mountain tops, the alpenglow is the most impressive of all the
terrestrial manifestations of God.
Now comes the gloaming. The
alpenglow is fading into earthy, murky gloom, but do not let
your town habits draw you away to the hotel. Stay on this good
fire-mountain and spend the night among the stars. Watch their
glorious bloom until the dawn, and get one more baptism of
light. Then, with fresh heart, go down to your work, and
whatever your fate, under whatever ignorance or knowledge you
may afterward chance to suffer, you will remember these fine,
wild views, and look back with joy to your wanderings in the
blessed old Yellowstone Wonderland.
John Muir. |