Chapter XVIII: The Grand Cañon of the Colorado (10)

The Middle and Upper Sulphur Springs are farther up the same mountain—appropriately named Sulphur Mountain. The carriage road, three and one-half miles long, passes through a dense jungle of young pines, no thicker than birches, crowded like Chinese in a tenement house, and therefore looking lugubrious and unhealthy. Most of these will have to be smothered in the struggle for existence, before the strongest ones can get breathing-room enough to develop into full-grown trees. The silence of a mountain forest reigns here, rendered audible by the faint, distant babble of the Bow and Spray rivers. We pass by the road which leads off to the Middle Springs, and soon reach the Upper Springs, around which half-a-dozen bath-houses are grouped, whose favorite sign-board, or trade-mark, is a pair of crutches suspended from a tree, with this notice attached: “I came here with these, and left without them.” A few yards above these huts the water can be seen gushing out of the mountain side in a strong current, and so hot that one can hardly hold his hand in it—110 to 116°. These baths are supposed to be good for rheumatism and skin and blood diseases. I met an old miner here who has hunted gold on four continents, and who entertained me with stories of his adventures in Alaska, and how he “blew up” Mr. Muir for making such a fuss over Glacier Bay, where the glaciers were mere pygmies compared with some that he had come across on his prospecting tours in the interior. He had offered to guide Mr. Muir to these, but the professor seemed to be afraid of the hardships and perils, and refused to go; whereat our miner was still so indignant that he threatened that if he had more skill in using the pen, he would write to the Eastern papers and expose him as a fraud. He said that he was going back to Alaska as soon as cured, because he believes there is untold wealth in that country, and added that if any “literary feller” from New York wanted to accompany him, he would guarantee him material for a book that would make Eastern people’s hair curl.

From the Upper Springs the hotel can be reached by means of a short-cut footpath through the dense woods, following the flume which carries the sulphur water down to the hotel. It is used, of course, only for special bathing purposes; but all the water seems here, as in the Yellowstone Park, to be impregnated with traces of sulphur: for if you wash with soap and leave the water in the basin over night, curds will be found in it in the morning; and in the men’s wash-room there are yellow streaks in the marble basins, where the water runs into them. Sulphur water is supposed to be good for the stomach, but I have on several occasions found it to be just the opposite.

The Central Pacific Railroad Hotel has electric lights in every room, and is well managed, and its terms reasonable. For those who have to study economy, there are smaller inns and a sanitarium not far from the hotel, with a few stores and a row of tents.

Summing up on the Canadian National Park, we may say that it has not so many natural wonders as the Yellowstone Park,—no geysers, steam-holes, gold-bottomed rivulets, paint-pots, nor anything to place beside the Yellowstone Cañon and Falls. But the Minnewonka Lake may fairly challenge comparison with the Yellowstone Lake, and the mountain scenery is grander in the Canadian Park, and the snow and glaciers are nearer, though not so near as at the Glacier House, where the air is in consequence cooler and more bracing in summer than even at Banff. As the Canadian Park is only twenty-six miles long and ten wide, while the Yellowstone Park is about sixty-two by fifty-four miles, the former can be seen in much less time than it takes to do justice to the latter.

When we get ready to leave Banff we have to take the midnight train, so there is no chance to say good by to the mountains. But we have seen so much of them since leaving Vancouver, that we have felt almost tempted to cry out to Nature, “Hold, enough—less would be more!” Now we get ample opportunity to ruminate in peace over our crowded impressions. When we get up we are on the prairie; we go to bed in the prairie, after traversing a territory larger than a European kingdom; again we rise on the prairie, and again go to bed on it; and not till Lake Superior is approached does the scenery once more become interesting. There is little local traffic west of Winnipeg, towns being few and far between. A dining-car is attached to the train, and on the following day is replaced by another. The train makes a bee-line for Winnipeg, as there are no more “loops” to climb mountain sides on, no more puffing engines pulling in front and pushing behind, no more noisy bridges and trestle-works to cross. We are moving along at the rate of half a thousand miles a day, yet the view is always the same, varied only by the sight of buffalo tracks,—the autographs of departed herds,—a few coyotes, and some begging squaws with their pappooses at the stations—only this and nothing more, except the prairie itself, on which it is said a rider who sets out on a day’s journey can see before starting the place where he will be in the evening. The train stops a few hours at Winnipeg, where some of the passengers use this first opportunity to branch off to the United States; then on we speed again over the prairie. There is an occasional stretch of dark, ploughed soil in the distance, which causes you to look twice to make sure that it is not the ocean; and when finally the train suddenly plunges into a tunnel, you are almost as much startled, after all this prairie monotony, as if an Atlantic steamer on the way to Liverpool took you through a tunnel; in fact, you are at first disposed to fancy that this tunnel had been artificially created by the engineers as a practical joke on the passengers. It is only a prelude, however, to the Lake Shore scenery, which, with the wild rocks and cliffs on one side, and an occasional glimpse of the lake on the other, forms one of the most fascinating fifty miles of the whole road. Instead of going along this north shore of Lake Superior in a wide curve, passengers have the option of taking the steamer from Port Arthur to Sault Ste. Marie, and thence rejoining the transcontinental road.

As a general thing, it is no doubt wiser to take the Canadian Pacific Railway westward than eastward, as the scenic climax is on the western side. However, it is quite possible to avoid the feeling of anticlimax on going east, if we conclude the trip with the Thousand Islands and the Rapids of the St. Lawrence, together with Montreal; or with Niagara Falls and the Hudson River. The Pacific slope no doubt is scenically far more attractive than the Atlantic; still, there are some things in the East which even California would be proud to add to her attractions.

XVII.

THROUGH YELLOWSTONE PARK

AN INDEPENDENT JOURNEY ON HORSEBACK—GEYSERS AND
PAINT-POTS—WAITING FOR AN ERUPTION—YELLOWSTONE CAÑON AND
FALLS—THE LAKE AND ITS TROUT—A TENT HOTEL—MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS.

Like all the other transcontinental railroads, the Northern Pacific has its grandest scenery on the western half of its course. On the eastern section, between Livingston and St. Paul, the train traverses monotonous prairies, suggestive of the ocean, but less exhilarating, on account of the dust, and less uncertain and exciting, and with only a few prairie dogs, herds of cattle, grain-fields, and ugly little villages to vary the view from the car windows. But on its western section there is the magnificent scenery of the Cascade Division, with Mt. Tacoma, or, for those starting east from Portland, the romantic Columbia River route. As both of these have been described at length in preceding chapters, we can here pass at once to what is the climax of the Northern Pacific route—the Yellowstone Park, although reference must be made in passing to the rare beauty of Lake Pend D’Oreille, the shores of which the train skirts for hours. At Livingston the tourist leaves his comfortable Pullman and takes the branch road, which in a few hours lands him at Cinnabar, where stages have to be taken, as no railway is allowed within the limits of the Yellowstone Park.

This little branch railroad reminded me of some of the so-called “passenger trains” in Southern Europe. For slowness it would certainly get the first prize at a national exhibition of time-tables. “Gentlemen,” I once heard a conductor exclaim, as he entered the waiting-room of a railway station in Southern Germany,—“Meine Herren, hurry up with your beer; it is time to start.” But local color varies. On the Yellowstone Road the train was stopped for ten minutes in one place to leave a box of merchandise in the middle of a field, and to dispose of a bucketful of buttermilk which a nut-brown maiden had brought there for the trainmen and passengers; and shortly afterwards the train was again stopped, apparently because the engineer had espied a couple of prairie-chickens on the hill-side. He pursued them with his revolver, bagged one of them, and after that the train stubbornly proceeded to its destination, notwithstanding the polite request of one of the passengers to the conductor to stop until he had caught a string of trout in the adjacent Yellowstone River. A week later, when I returned over the same road, the train stopped for a quarter of an hour at one place while the conductor, engineer, and brakeman amused themselves with a game of base-ball.

The gateway through which the train enters the fertile Paradise Valley and the National Park is bounded east and west by lofty mountains, on which, however, only a few specks of snow remained in the first week of August. Indeed, throughout the Park I saw much less snow than the guide-book had led me to expect; but for this an uncommonly warm summer may have been responsible. Yet even without snowy summits the Yellowstone mountains are picturesque, and must appear sublime to those who have never been in Switzerland. In ruggedness and grotesqueness of outline they are unrivalled, and the colors are often unique, the rocks being sometimes so white that they present the appearance of slightly discolored snow, such as is seen in the lower portions of glaciers; and this partly atones for the absence of real snow.

After a dusty stage ride, lasting several hours, and very much uphill, the passengers are landed at the Mammoth Springs Hotel, where a fair supper and good beds await them. Although this hotel is conveniently located near the foot of the remarkable many-storied, snow-white terrace-mound, built by the calcareous deposits of the hot springs, and adorned with the most brilliant colors, its site is nevertheless badly chosen; for there is no view from either the front or back windows, or from the piazza; whereas, if the building had been erected only a few hundred yards to the front, visitors might have enjoyed an extensive and delightful mountain view on all sides. This error is possibly responsible, to a large extent, for the fact that fewer visitors than had been expected make this large hotel their home for a week or two. With the exception of that at the Upper Geyser Basin, all the Yellowstone Park hotels are placed in like manner, though in each case a picturesque situation might have been found within a short distance. Perhaps the builders calculated that visitors, after their wearisome stage ride of forty or fifty miles and a subsequent brief inspection of the geysers, would hardly look upon the hotels as anything else than a place for providing them with meals and beds.

Having been apprised of the disadvantages to which those who take the regular round trip by stage in five days are subjected, I concluded to see the Park in a more leisurely manner, and hired a saddle-horse for a week at the rate of two dollars and a half a day, to which one dollar and a half a day was added for taking care of the horse at the several stations; thus making the expense about the same as it would have been if I had taken the regular forty-dollar coupon ticket, which includes fare and hotels for five days. They seem to have great faith in human nature in Wyoming; for I was allowed to take away my horse without leaving a deposit, and even without being asked my name! On entering the Park, an officer rode up and requested me to register, explaining that all persons entering privately were asked to leave their names, and state how long they intended to stay, as a precautionary measure against violations of the laws relating to hunting and forest fires. These regulations, with others, are printed on linen and conspicuously posted along the road every few miles, so that no one can plead ignorance of the law. Scattered throughout the Park are also hundreds of signs reading “NO HUNTING,” “EXTINGUISH YOUR FIRES,” with others indicating good places for camps. In the Geyser Basins the principal springs and geysers are also marked by sign-boards, though not so liberally as might be desired. There should be more of them near the road to indicate the most remarkable spots. At present the “paint-pots” and the Gibbon and Tower falls are very apt to be missed by tourists. Some of the sign-boards of the Geyser Basins need renovating. At Norris one of these attracted my attention; and after getting my eyes within six inches to decipher the obscure inscription, I read the word “DANGEROUS!” These danger signals ought to be much more frequent. The very day when I was at Norris, a lady broke through the crust near one of the springs and was badly injured.

Norris Geyser Basin is directly south of Mammoth Hot Springs, and is the place where the tourist, if lucky, gets his first view of a geyser. If the reader has never looked at a map of the National Park, he may get an approximate idea of its topography by bearing in mind that the principal curiosities are so placed as to form a parallelogram. The road first leads south from Mammoth Springs to the four geyser basins,—Norris, Lower, Midway, and Upper; then east to the Lake; then north to the Falls and Grand Cañon, and over Mt. Washburn, to Yancey’s; and thence back west to the Mammoth Springs. The patrons of the stage line, however, miss the Lake and Mt. Washburn, and are obliged to return by the same road a great part of the way. This must be very fatiguing, as the road between Mammoth Springs and Norris is most dreary and uninteresting, being generally lined on both sides by melancholy wastes of blackened tree corpses—a veritable forest cemetery. Now that fires are carefully guarded against, a vigorous undergrowth of young trees is perceptible, which in time will obliterate these and the many similar stretches of charred timber.

The hotel at Norris was destroyed by fire about the middle of July, 1887, and I arrived just in time to be the first occupant of a room in the new hotel. In the ruins of the old hotel were still to be found heaps of roast potatoes, hams, and other meats, and groups of molten beer and wine bottles twisted into peculiar shapes. Beer and wine, by the way, may be had at all these hotels, although no bars are allowed within the limits of the Park. The water throughout this part of the Park is strongly flavored with sulphur and other mineral ingredients, and is apt to disagree with some people. After supper I went up the road for a mile to see the Geyser Basin. The distinguishing characteristic of the Norris Basin is the many steam-holes, which send out uninterrupted columns of steam, with a deafening roar. I have read of canary-birds who were silenced forever after hearing a mocking-bird imitate and surpass their song. I wish all locomotive engineers could be sent to the Norris Basin; perhaps that would make them stop competing as to which of them can make night most hideous with steam-whistles. Besides these steam-holes there are simple hot springs, sizzling “frying-pans,” mud geysers, and “paint-pots,” in which paste of various colors is boiling and blubbering. A bench has been placed beside one geyser which every seven minutes sends up a mass of liquid mud, splashing and spluttering, and darting out arms in every direction, like a hideous polyp, until the frenzy has reached its climax and forced some of the mud over the border; whereupon the agitation subsides as gradually as it came on, and the liquid mass disappears down a fathomless hole, where it compresses the steam until it has gained sufficient volume to drive the nasty intruder once more out of its hole.

While I was watching this ludicrous spectacle, some of the workmen who were building the new hotel passed by and invited me to follow them and see the “Monarch” geyser spout. We occupied a place on the hill-side where there was no danger that the wind would drive the steam and hot water into our faces, and waited. The liquid eruption was due at eight, but the Monarch long refused to give us an audience. The workmen, meanwhile, discussed the news of the day,—the accident to the lady, already referred to, the moral character of the new dish-washer, and the death of a popular saloon-keeper, “a splendid fellow, who never refused a man a drink whether he had money or not.” The Monarch awaited this opportunity to make the transition from the ridiculous to the sublime, and, precisely at nine o’clock, with hardly any warning, he shot up a hot stream into the air a hundred feet or more, and kept it there for several minutes, the moon furnishing just enough light to see the stream of water amid the steam. _Après nous le déluge_ appeared to be his motto; for we found it difficult to reach the road again because of the inundation he created during his brief activity. One of the workmen told me he waited for the eruption every evening, and that he had discovered some springs not known previously, including one sourer than a lemon (probably sulphuric acid). The number of hot springs in the Park seems, indeed, to be countless. Every day the tourist comes across them repeatedly, often most unexpectedly, and it seems probable that some of the greatest wonders of the Park remain to be discovered on the forest-clad hill-sides.

Among the most curious of the springs are the groups of little ones, with openings no larger than peas, lining the banks of the brooks and roadside, and so hot that one has to exercise caution in riding across them.

I should have stated that perhaps the prettiest sight on the road from Mammoth Springs to Norris is the frequent patches of dense grass, ordinarily of a pale yellowish green color, but if seen from above, facing the sun, of the richest yellow, suggestive of lakes of liquid gold. More beautiful still are the golden rivulets which form the outlets of some of the hot springs in the Lower and Upper Geyser Basins. As the “Fountain,” the principal geyser of the Lower Basin, was at rest when I saw it, I devoted most of my time to admiring these streamlets with their golden beds. All the gradations in color, from red through blood-orange, and orange to pale yellow, are here to be seen, the color fading out gradually with the distance from the spring. Quite as beautiful as the colors themselves are the exquisite waving golden lines and honey-comb figures which adorn the bottom of these rills, the reflections of the wavelets and ripplets on the surface of the water. In some places these dainty figures are replaced by rows of silky yellow fibres gently undulating with the movement of the water. The bottom of these rills is not hard, but consists of a soft pulpy mass, in some places several inches deep. This is fortunate; for otherwise some of those irrepressible idiots who write their names even on the bottoms of the white basins into which the water flows from the geyser craters would not hesitate to mar also the beauty of these fairy brooks.

The hero of Midway Geyser Basin is the “Excelsior,” which, however, has been quiescent for several years. It forms an immense pool, which, with some others and their overflow, converts the Basin into a place of most dismal, forbidding aspect. It is close by the Firehole River, which is lined by hot springs, one of which has the aspect of a pigmy water-fall, the spray being represented by the steam. When one considers the number of these mineral springs, and the fact that the Excelsior has been known to vomit sufficient hot water to convert the Firehole River, a hundred yards wide, into “a foaming torrent of steaming hot water,” one wonders no longer that this river, like several others in the Park, notwithstanding that its water is usually cool, rapid, and clear as a crystal, is destitute of fish. Were it not for this occasional excess of hot mineral water, there would be scores of places where a tourist might go through the unique performance of catching a trout, and boiling it in an adjacent spring, without moving from his place. As it is, those who wish to try this curious experiment have to do so at the Gardiner River or the Yellowstone Lake.

Few of the unfortunate tourists who are hurried through the Park on the Wakefield stages have an opportunity to see a geyser in activity till they arrive at the Upper Geyser Basin. Here more than a dozen geysers of the first magnitude are congregated; and although some are very irregular, and others only play at long intervals, there are several which every one who remains a few hours can see. A blackboard in the hotel gives a list of the geysers and their intervals of performance, and the hotel is so placed as to command a view of almost the whole basin, so that, whenever one of the irregular geysers starts up, the guests may be at once informed, and hasten to the scene. Fortunately, one of the finest geysers in the basin is “Old Faithful,” only a hundred yards from the hotel, and so-called because it spouts once in sixty-five minutes, almost with the regularity of a clock. The “Grand,” “Castle,” “Beehive,” and “Splendid” geysers are also certain to play for the benefit of those who spend a day at the Upper Basin. But the grandest of them all, the “Giant,” wakes up only once in a fortnight; and unfortunately I arrived just eight hours too late to see it. But there was no room for disappointment, as the other geysers afforded more than enough excitement and wonder for a day.

Even if these geysers were extinct, it would be worth a visit to this Basin to see the fanciful, lofty craters built up by the calcareous deposits of the hot springs. No two geysers appear to be quite alike in their style of playing. Some have more steam mixed with their water than others; some shoot up a constant stream; others, an intermittent one, somewhat like the various forms of rockets. The stream of the Castle looks almost like a water-fall flowing upwards and vanishing in mid air; and the Splendid afforded the spectacle of two lovely rainbows.

Besides these exciting geysers, which represent the sublime, the Upper Geyser Basin has some of the loveliest pools or springs in the Park, as representatives of pure, placid beauty. Chief among these are the “Morning Glory” and the “Gem,”—pools of fathomless depth filled with diamond of the purest water, lined inside with the richest, deepest colors, and with a “horrid” black hole at the bottom, suggesting the entrance to the nether regions. Into one of these pools a stupid boy once threw a stick, and his poor dog jumped in after it and was boiled to pulp in a few minutes. In another was found the bare skeleton of an elk, possibly driven into it by pursuing wolves,—a fine subject for a ballad.

From the Upper Basin I might have gone straight to the Lake; but as the road is a mere trail on which a horse cannot run, and the distance is therefore too great to cover in one day, I returned to the Lower Basin, whence it was only about thirty-five miles to the hotel camp at the Lake. With many tourists it seems to be a moot point whether it is worth while to visit the Lake; and as few used to go there, the accommodations until recently were of a most primitive kind. There were two men at the camp, and three tents—one for cooking, one for eating, and one to sleep in. An Englishman and his wife were the only guests besides myself. The lady naturally desired the sleeping-tent to be made up into two separate rooms, and the “landlord” finally submitted to the extra trouble this involved, though afterwards he was overheard commenting to his assistant on “them fussy English.” When the English lady got up in the morning to wash, she found the towel had already been used by her husband and myself, so she asked for another. The assistant replied he had already put out a fresh towel for that date, but after a moment’s hesitation he decided to make an exception in her favor, and produced a second.

For the season of 1890, however, a new hotel was opened, and boats placed on the Lake; and the tourist who omits it makes a great mistake. Not only does it rank among the curiosities of the world, being the only lake of its size at so great an altitude (7788 feet above the sea; or, as the guide-book graphically puts it, if Mt. Washington could be sunk in it with its base at sea-level, “its apex would be nearly half a mile below the surface of the lake”); but its intrinsic beauty would insure it renown at any altitude. Snow there was none on the surrounding mountains when I saw them; but, like all mountains, they gain immensely in picturesqueness and apparent loftiness by being seen across a sheet of water. And a beautiful sheet of water the Lake is, aside from its surroundings; but it is treacherous, and there is a violent thunder or wind storm almost every morning at eleven. About six o’clock in the morning I distinctly heard the mysterious rushing sounds in the air referred to in the guide-book as unexplained. I suppose they are due to the sound of the waters dashing against the beach and borne on by the wind, gradually accumulating loudness. Or the sounds may be due to the movements of the capricious and fitful wind among the tree-tops. I repeatedly heard a gust of wind approaching in that way with a magnificent _crescendo_ and climax which a modern orchestra could hardly equal.

Everybody knows that the Yellowstone Lake is as brimful of trout as the Columbia River is of salmon. But a general notion prevails—even among those who dwell in the Park—that they are all unfit to eat, being infested by worms. This is an error. About half the trout are as sound as any other fish, and can be readily distinguished from the diseased ones. In the middle of the Lake it is said that all are sound,—a statement for the truth of which I cannot vouch. Our Englishman caught a dozen in the river just after it leaves the Lake. The cook assorted them, threw away the bad ones, and fried the others, which proved to be as good fish as I ever ate. The next day, on the way to the Falls, I stopped for a short time to catch a few of the numerous two-pounders that I saw swimming near the shore. Further down the Yellowstone the trout are smaller and less abundant than near the Lake, so that there is some sport in catching them; but where I stopped it was very much like fishing in a reservoir filled with hungry hatched fish. All I had to do was to select my fish, place the bait before his nose, and pull him in. I took along half-a-dozen which I knew to be sound, but at the Falls hotel I was informed that their French cook refused to touch the Lake trout. As the hotel itself furnished trout for supper caught below the Falls, where they are admitted to be sound, I did not argue the point with the cook, who was busy providing for an excursion party of fifty.

If the Yellowstone region contained nothing but the two falls at this place, and the Grand Cañon, it would have been worth while to reserve it as a National Park for all time. The two falls, though only half a mile apart, are utterly different in character; as the smaller, upper one plunges into a quiet, small basin in a secluded idyllic retreat, while the lower plunges three hundred and fifty feet down an abyss which is formed by the stupendous walls of the Grand Cañon, of which several miles lie before the eyes of the dazed spectator. The best place to enjoy the grandeur of the Falls and the Cañon is not at Lookout Point, as is generally believed, but at the edge of the Falls. Seen from a distance above, these Falls present a unique sight. The water flows on like any other rapid current until suddenly it appears to vanish in the air. On approaching the edge of the Falls, this illusion resolves itself into a scene which Niagara can hardly equal. As the water plunges into the pool below, it is dissolved into clouds of vapor that put to shame the steam columns of the biggest geysers. The breakers which wildly dash against the sides of the pool indicate the turbulence of the water beneath this spray and foam. Some of the spray is carried by the wind to the abrupt walls of the Cañon, where it nourishes mosses and lichens, which add one more color to the numerous tints that adorn these rocks. These tints bewilder by their variety and richness. The same strong mineral waters that have painted such exquisite brook-bottoms in the Geyser Basins here undertook a kind of fresco-painting on a scale of the most sublime grandeur.

Near the summits of some of the rocks may be seen some curious caves. Other rocks terminate in turrets and pinnacles suggesting mediæval architecture; and some of the rocky walls are adorned with a mosaic of brown, red, yellow, and white, as elaborate as the floor of St. Mark’s in Venice. Some of the turrets, when you climb up to them, appear so woefully weather-beaten that it looks as if you could kick them over; but you cannot. The torrent, at a dizzy depth below, in which the green water struggles wildly for supremacy with the white foam, enlivens the scene; and in one place a turn of the river-bed, near a streak of painted rock, gives the impression of two water-falls side by side, one green, the other red; one in motion, the other frozen.

From the Grand Cañon the coupon tourists return to the Mammoth Springs and Livingston, while those who travel independently can enjoy the ride over Mt. Washburn, with its extended views of the Rocky Mountains, its fertile sides fairly crammed with flowers of the richest colors and strangest varieties, and its solitary trail through the depths of a primeval forest, frequently blocked by fallen trees, on which one may not meet a human being in eight hours, nor hear any sound but the melancholy moan of a poor tree against which a dead trunk has fallen, and is wounding it with every movement of the wind. The dismal delight of this ride is as indescribable as the exciting sport of trouting that may be enjoyed at Yancey’s, whence it is but a short distance back to our starting-point, the Mammoth Springs Hotel.

After spending a week in the National Park on horseback, I came to the conclusion that what the Park chiefly needs now is a railroad,—not a steam railway, which would frighten the game and set fire to the forests, but an electric railroad. Great as are the wonders of the Yellowstone Park, the intervening distances are so great and the scenery often so commonplace, that nothing would be lost, and very much gained, by having an electric road. Dust and fatigue could be thus avoided, and more time devoted to the wonders of the Park in three days than at present in a week.

XVIII.

THE GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.

FROM LOS ANGELES TO PEACH SPRING—DESERT WIND—AN ARIZONA
VILLAGE—INDIANS—DESCENSUS AVERNO—EXTRAORDINARY MOUNTAIN
ARCHITECTURE—SILENCE AND DESOLATION—A BEWITCHED CREEK—UP THE
DIAMOND CAÑON—THE GRAND CAÑON AND THE RIVER—NEW MEXICO AND KANSAS.

It is unfortunate for travellers that the masterpieces of American scenery are not all grouped along one or two of the transcontinental railways. As it is, each line has its own lions, and to see them all one has to cross the continent more than once. Some of the principal features of the Canadian Pacific, Northern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Southern Pacific railways have been commented upon in preceding pages, and it remains to notice the lion of the Atlantic and Pacific or Santa Fé route, which is nothing less than the Grand Cañon of the Colorado River, which Captain Dutton considers “the sublimest thing on earth.” It is one of the sublimest things on earth, beyond a doubt; yet how many readers of this book, all of whom are of course highly educated persons, are able to tell, without consulting their geography, where the Grand Cañon of the Colorado is? In Colorado, of course, nine out of ten will say. But Colorado has only the honor of giving birth to the smaller rivers which unite to form the mighty Colorado, and which are fed by the snow of the Rocky Mountains. As Major Powell graphically puts it: “When the summer sun comes, this snow melts, and tumbles down the mountain sides in millions of cascades. Ten million cascade brooks unite to form ten thousand torrent creeks; ten thousand torrent creeks unite to form a hundred rivers beset with cataracts; a hundred roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid stream, into the Gulf of California,” about two thousand miles from its sources. Only about six hundred miles of the lower part of the river are navigable, on account of the earth fissures, or cañons, through which it has eaten its way for five hundred miles. Some of these cañons are in Utah, but the two largest and most famous—the Marble and the Grand—are in Arizona. The longest of the cañons is two hundred and seventeen and one-half miles long, and is separated from another one of sixty-five and one-half miles only by a narrow valley.

Lieutenant Ives says of the Grand Cañon region: “The extent and magnitude of the system of cañons in that direction is astounding. The plateau is cut into shreds by these gigantic chasms, and resembles a vast ruin. Belts of country, miles in width, have been swept away, leaving only isolated mountains standing in the gap; fissures, so profound that the naked eye cannot penetrate their depths, are separated by walls whose thickness one can almost span, and slender spires that seem tottering upon their base shoot up a thousand feet from vaults below.” Or, as Major Powell puts it, the tributary streams, like the Colorado, “have cut gorges of their own; and they all have wet-weather affluents, that run in deep cañons. It is a cañon land.”

Previous to Major Powell’s bold expedition down this subterranean river, about twenty years ago, it was practically a _terra_ (or rather _aqua_) _incognita_. For a party of scientific men and artists to venture in a few frail boats down this sun-forsaken river, shut in for over five hundred miles by precipitous walls rising sometimes over a mile and a half on both sides, not knowing how soon they would be dashed to pieces on the rocks below a water-fall, or sucked into a suffocating tunnel, or starved to death by losing their provisions, was surely one of the most heroic deeds on record, comparable to Columbus’s expedition on the unknown, illimitable ocean in search of a new world. It was a Jules Verne novel realized; and I know of no romance more fascinating in its narrative and more poetic in its descriptions of scenery, than Major Powell’s account of this expedition, which is unfortunately buried amidst the government reports of geological surveys. At least four hundred rapids, eddies, whirlpools, falls, and cascades were encountered, and many were the hair-breadth escapes. They were chilled at night, and in the daytime the thermometer sometimes rose to 115°, in this river dungeon, amidst a forest-like gloom; but still they had to go on, for return was impossible, as they knew very well before they started. Sometimes the water hurried along their boats with the speed of railroad trains. The rocks on both sides would roll the water into the centre in great waves, and the boats would go leaping and bounding over these “like black-tail deer jumping the logs” which strew the forests. Indians have come to grief here. In the onomatopoetic description given by one of them, “The rocks h-e-a-p high; the water go h-oo-woogh, h-oo-woogh; water-pony [boat] h-e-a-p buck; water catch ’em; no see.”

I cannot resist the temptation to quote two more brief passages from Major Powell’s pages, describing portions of the Marble and Grand Cañons. “The walls of the Cañon, twenty-five hundred feet high, are of marble, of many beautiful colors, and often polished below by the waves, or far up the sides, where showers have washed the sands over the cliffs. At one place I have a walk, for more than a mile, on a marble pavement, all polished and fretted with strange devices and embossed in a thousand fantastic patterns. Through a cleft in the wall the sun shines on this pavement, which gleams in iridescent beauty.” “In other regions the rocks, when not covered with soil, or more vigorous vegetation, are at least lichened, or stained, and the rocks themselves are of sombre hue, but in this region they are naked, and many of them brightly colored, as if painted by artist-gods; not stained and daubed with inharmonious hues, but beautiful as flowers and gorgeous as the clouds. Such are the walls of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado where it divides the twin plateaus.”

No one can read even these few extracts without feeling convinced of the truth of Captain Dutton’s remark that the Colorado Cañon is “a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery, and in our conception of the grandeur, beauty, and power of nature”; and without wishing to see a portion at least of this Cañon. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad is at present the only one which brings tourists into its vicinity; and the station to get off at is Peach Spring, about eighteen hours’ ride from Los Angeles, and situated twenty-three miles south of the Grand Cañon. The region between Los Angeles and Peach Spring presents many attractive features. First comes the city of Pasadena, with its large hotel, charmingly situated near the foot of the mountains, the sides of which present a peculiar wavy appearance. In some places they are curiously furrowed and crevassed, as if the very mountains had split themselves up into town lots during “boom” times. The surface is bare in the autumn except for a few trees near the rocky summits; but in spring the lower slopes are covered by millions of fragrant flowers, springing as by magic from the dust. Other picturesquely situated villages follow, some of which are destined no doubt to become flourishing towns. At present they are a curious compound of unfinished buildings, tents, and Mexican mud or adobe houses.

As the train proceeds in a northeastern direction, towards Barstow, the region of alternative ocean and mountain breezes is gradually left behind, and an arid desert of cactus, sand, and rocks is traversed. The sun’s rays, no longer tempered by the ocean and mountain refrigerators, have it all their own way, and the wind is powerless in their clutches. For although a strong breeze is blowing, it feels like a blast from a hot furnace, so that one hesitates whether to keep the car windows open and desiccate, or closed and suffocate. Peach Spring I found to be an Arizona village consisting of five saloons, six dwelling-houses, a “stage” office, and an Indian camp in the background. It is so called, apparently, because no _peach_ grows within a hundred miles, and because the only _spring_ in the neighborhood is four miles from the depot, whence the water is pumped to the station with an engine fed with coal that is brought there from the station. Mr. Farlee, the man who has this coal contract, also undertakes to convey tourists to the Grand Cañon. He is an intelligent man, whose enterprise has built a fair road, twenty-three miles in length, generally along or in a dry river-bed, which, after every freshet, calls for extra labor in clearing away the rocks wildly strewn about by the strong current. As there is no possibility of missing this road, I secured a pony of Mr. Farlee, and started alone for the Cañon; and on the whole way I saw no soul except an Indian, who rather suspiciously went behind a tree near the road as I approached. Being weaponless, I met any possible scalp-hunting propensities on his part by a cordial “Good morning,” which he as cordially echoed. The Indians of this neighborhood are lazy, and, with few exceptions, refuse to do any work even for good pay. Their filthiness, also, is great; and no wonder, considering that the nearest spring is four miles away and monopolized by the railroad company.

A mile or two beyond this spring is another one, where the horse may be watered. During the remaining eighteen miles there is only one spring, and if the traveller misses that, he has to suffer agonies of thirst, unless he has wisely provided himself with a flask of tea or lemonade. The brisk, hot breeze which sometimes blows only aids the physiological desiccating process, and the result is a temporary dipsomania, in the frenzy of which one would gladly give a gold coin for a glass of lemonade. Nothing but forbidding cactus and a few similar tough and spiny plants can resist this heat; hence the whole region seems barren, and the few animals one may chance to see—a hawk, butterfly, rabbit, or catamount—but add to the desolation of the scene. There is not a sound in the air, and the silence is as absolute as on an Alpine snowfield, or in mid-ocean during a calm. The slightest sound made in urging on the weary horse is echoed by the hill-sides though they are several miles away.

The mountain scenery is unique and grand, and becomes more so the nearer we approach the Grand Cañon. For the road is a regular _descensus Averno_, taking us deeper and deeper down between the mountain walls; and when we reach the end of it we are almost a mile nearer the sea-level than we were at Peach Spring.

At a spot about a mile from the river Mr. Farlee intends to erect a large hotel. Sandstone, granite, and other fine building-material lie about in profusion, and only need to be hewn and piled up architecturally. At present there is nothing but a very primitive hut, with accommodations for about a dozen persons. The inn is run by one man, whose special duty it also is to keep his end of the road in order; and a lonely life he must lead in this solitary hut, twenty miles from any other human habitation. When there are no guests to take care of, he fills his canteen with water and starts up the valley, to roll the stones out of the road. In the evening he wraps himself in his blanket and goes to sleep, with the starry firmament for a roof, regardless of possible disagreeable neighbors, such as centipedes or rattlesnakes. He says he sleeps in the open air two-thirds of the time, and has not been ill for thirty-five years. Yet the heat in this part of the Cañon (which is so deep that stars are often visible in the daytime, and at night I saw a million more stars than ever before) must be a terrible strain on his system, as it sometimes rises to 120° in the shade, with not a breath of air.

I shall never forgive this man, or his employer, for having nothing sour in the house except a spoonful of very bad vinegar—no pickles, lemons, or even a grain of lemon sugar, which, by the way, every traveller in hot regions should always carry with him. So I had to content myself, on arrival, with tea and water. The water is good, although superstitious people might hesitate to drink it, as it comes from a brook—Diamond Creek—which seems to be bewitched. Just in front of the hotel a portion of this creek, about half a mile in length, disappears every day towards noon, although above and below this place it flows on merrily and abundantly. About ten o’clock at night the water suddenly returns to the deserted portion of its bed. Mr. Farlee has repeatedly dug down many feet to find the subterranean brook-bed, but in vain. It almost seems as if the water, after leaving the cool and deep Diamond Cañon, were afraid of being absorbed by the superheated air in the open space in which the hotel is situated, and therefore concealed itself underground.

I still felt so desiccated, after my four cups of tea and about ten glasses of lukewarm water, that I made the man in charge of the hotel promise to wake me at 10 P.M., as soon as the mysterious creek commenced to run again. He did so, depositing a bucket of the water at my bed, and it was delightfully cool and refreshing. A breeze had sprung up, and the night air was tolerably cool; but the man slept out of doors all the same.

Possibly there may be a poetic Indian legend accounting in some such manner for the fact that even the broad Colorado River has in this region dug its way into the bowels of the earth so deeply that it now runs more than a mile below the summit of its precipitous banks. Yet, after all, there lies more poetry and sublimity in the scientific account of the manner in which the soft water has, by infinitesimal degrees, worn its channel through these hard rocks, and even through the lava, with which Major Powell thinks this river-bed has been filled more than once: “What a conflict of water and fire there must have been here! Just imagine a river of molten rock running down into a river of melted snow. What a seething and boiling of the waters; what clouds of steam rolled into the heavens!” But it must be frankly admitted that those who visit the Grand Cañon, with anticipations at fever heat from reading Powell’s exciting and poetic description of his adventurous trip down the Colorado, will be somewhat disappointed at first sight of this river. It is about a mile from Farlee’s inn, and is reached by following Diamond Creek, which empties into it. On comparing the mud color of the Colorado with the crystalline purity of this creek, one realizes to what the latter might owe its name.[2] Rapid the Colorado is, and broad, and its walls do rise to the height of a mile, but they slope and recede towards the background, and in vain does the tourist look for the “granite prison walls” rising abruptly from the edge of the water, and almost meeting above so as to shut out the daylight, their sides adorned with floating clouds and with the water-falls and cascades of tributary streams.

[2] It is said, however, that the creek owes its name to the fact that diamonds were once “planted” here, to deceive investors.

Yet in truth it is foolish to look for all these things here—to expect that all the wonders of Mr. Powell’s long and perilous tour should be concentrated in one place for the convenience of tourists. The fact is, that the most sublime portions of the Cañon are at present inaccessible except to those who are willing to undergo the same dangers and hardships as Major Powell. One can readily believe the legends of parched travellers wandering along the brink of this Cañon for days, and “perishing with thirst at last, in sight of the river which was roaring its mockery into dying ears.” Powell himself once spent four days wandering along the river, trying to get down. Diamond Creek seems to afford the only entrance to the Grand Cañon. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad entertains a project of building an eighty-mile branch road from Flagstaff to the Cañon. Such a road would offer many attractions, as it would pass by some of the ancient cliff dwellings and the snow-capped San Francisco Mountains. It would, however, arrive at the top instead of at the bottom of the Cañon, which would thus lose some of its cathedral grandeur. Possibly the tourists might be let down to the river by means of a miner’s shaft, in which case a ride of a few miles down the river on a boat (or “water-pony,” as the Indians call it) should be added to the programme. But this would be at the Marble Cañon. For the Grand Cañon, Peach Spring will probably remain the stopping station; and for their partial disappointment in the Grand Cañon itself, tourists will be amply repaid by a visit to the Diamond Cañon, which is reached by going up Diamond Creek, a few miles from Mr. Farlee’s inn. Here they will find what they longed to see,—perpendicular, awe-inspiring walls, not, indeed, a mile, but more than half a mile, in height (twenty-seven hundred feet), topped with fanciful pinnacles and domes, and producing a feeling of gloomy sublimity as refreshing to the soul as the coolness of this granite prison is to the body.

Diamond Cañon and the Grand Cañon may be visited on the day of arrival at Farlee’s inn. Leaving the afternoon of the second day for the return to Peach Spring, no visitor should fail to ascend Prospect Point, which forms one of the banks of the river, in the morning. It is an hour’s hard climb from the inn, but it repays the toil a hundred-fold. From the summit one obtains several picturesque glimpses of the yellow Colorado, afar down, where it seems a mere brook; and of course the surrounding mountains do not appear in their true size and grandeur until one sees them from this elevated point of view. These mountains all have a curious family likeness. Their basis is always formed by a striated, vertical layer, reddish or brown; then follows a story or layer which slopes like a roof, suggesting human architectural efforts, but on a scale of infinite grandeur; and above this are several more distinct strata towering straight into the skies. It is the constant sight of these superb and unique mountains, on the way from Peach Spring, that partly prevents tourists from being as deeply impressed as they would otherwise be at first sight of the Grand Cañon. “They get their belly full before they reach the river,” as Mr. Farlee forcibly remarked.