YELLOWSTONE Early History of Yellowstone National Park and Its Relation to National Park Policies

Accounts of travel are often rather uninteresting, partly because of the lack of interest in the places visited and partly through the defective way in which they are described. A poetic imagination may, however, invest the dreariest spots with attraction, and the loveliest nooks of earth may seem poor and arid if sketched with a dullard's pencil. But perhaps the most graphic and effective descriptions of actual scenery come from those "plain people," as Mr. Lincoln would have called them, who, aiming at no graces of rhetoric, are unconsciously eloquent by the force of simplicity.

A record of the Yellowstone exploring expedition, which has just happened to reach us, is distinguished by this graphic directness and unpretending eloquence. It is partial and fragmentary, but it reads like the realization of a child's fairy tale. We mean no disparagement, but the reverse, of the notes of the surveyor general of Montana, in saying this. No unstudied description that we have read of the internal scenery of the American continent surpasses his notes in any particular. The country he had to describe certainly offers great advantages. But it is much to his credit that he has performed the task in so unpretending a manner. Where temptation to fall into the besetting sins of tourists is great, the merit of avoiding them is equally great. The Yellowstone expedition left Fort Ellis on the 22d of August. Through the Bozeman Pass it made its way to Trail Creek, from which a view was had of the mountains beyond the Yellowstone. Soon after it reached the mouth of Gardiner River, which enters the Yellowstone just below what is called the Grand Canyon. Here the explorers pitched their camp amid magnificent scenery. They found abundance of game and trout, hot springs of five or six different kinds, including sulphur and iron, and basaltic columns of enormous size, that constantly suggested some mighty effort at human architecture. But finer and more imposing still they found the river—the Gardiner, just before reaching the Yellowstone—running between a procession of sharp pinnacles, looking like some noble old castle, dismantled and shivered with years, but still erect and defiant. Suddenly, and between two of these turrets, the river makes a sheer leap into the air—a leap of 110 measured feet—and then flows peacefully into the Yellowstone. This cataract, which has been named the Tower Fall, must be in form, color, and surroundings one of the most glorious objects on the American continent.

Beyond this from an elevated peak a panorama was obtained of vast extent and beauty. Far in the distance were seen the Yellowstone Lake, the jagged summits of the Wind River, Big Horn, and Lower Yellowstone Ranges of mountains, while still farther could be discerned the tops of the Tetons. Soon the party came upon huge boiling springs giving forth volumes of steam and their sides encrusted with sulphur. These, with questionable taste, were named "Hell-broth Springs," and a gorge hard by where a mountain stream had ages back torn its way through a rock of lava, was naturally called the "Devil's Den." More picturesque cascades were afterwards found, several of them exceeding 100 feet in height, and the water possessing a beautiful emerald green tint, to which Mr. Washburne often refers. But beautiful is hardly the word for the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. Here the height more than doubles Niagara. The water of the river is flung in one sheet down a perpendicular wall of 350 feet; and the mingling of green water and white spray with the rainbow tints above is spoken of as gorgeous beyond description. Not far away there is something more amazing still. There is a canyon or ravine which, a thousand feet deep at the Lower Falls, becomes nearly double that depth farther on. Jutting obliquely over this canyon frowns a rock, itself 200 feet high, on the top of which is an eagle's nest. Close by a little rivulet comes chasing down past this rock and leaps squarely into the canyon. It is dashed into mist long before it can reach the bottom.

There are many other strange things in the Yellowstone Basin which would take much space to describe. There are extinct volcanoes and hills made of solid brimstone; there is a large sulphuric spring, 20 feet by 12, filled with boiling water, which is constantly thrown up by the effervescence high into the air; there is a spot covered with springs of nearly every color—yellow, green, blue, and pink; there is another spring of alum water, not in solution only, but crystallized, and there are geysers of mud and steam ceaselessly active that must exceed in size and power those of Iceland. One of the number, according to Mr. Washburne, throws mud 300 feet high, and another spouts only at intervals, becoming perfectly still, and anon throwing up a volume of boiling rubbish to a great altitude. We have said that this record reads like a fairy tale, and readers will by this time agree with us. Its official character, however, may be added to the evidence of that simplicity of style already commended as earnest of the trustworthiness of the narrative. Rarely do descriptions of nature come to our hands so unaffectedly expressed and yet so gilded with true romance.— (New York Times, Editorial, October 14, 1870.)