Part 28

Climbing the terraces at the expense of wet feet, one stands upon broad, white, and occasionally very damp plateaus which steam vigorously in spots. These spots are irregularly circular and very shallow pools of hot water, some of which bubble industriously with a low, pleasant hum. They are not boiling springs; the bubbling is caused by escaping gases; but their waters are extremely hot. The intense color of some of these pools varies or disappears with the changing angle of vision; the water itself is limpid.

Elsewhere throughout the park the innumerable hot springs seem to be less charged with depositable matter; elsewhere they build no terraces, but bubble joyously up through bowls often many feet in depth and diameter. Often they are inspiringly beautiful. The blue Morning Glory Spring is jewel-like rather than flower-like in its color quality, but its bowl remarkably resembles the flower which gives it name. Most springs are gloriously green. Some are the sources of considerable streams. Some stir slightly with the feeling rather than the appearance of life; others are perpetually agitated, several small springs betraying their relationship to the geysers by a periodicity of activity.

When the air is dry and the temperature low, the springs shoot thick volumes of steam high in air. To the incomer by the north or west entrance who has yet to see a geyser, the first view of the Lower Geyser Basin brings a shock of astonishment no matter what his expectation. Let us hope it is a cool, bracing, breezy morning when the broad yellow plain emits hundreds of columns of heavy steam to unite in a wind-tossed cloud overlying and setting off the uncanny spectacle. Several geysers spout vehemently and one or more roaring vents bellow like angry bulls in a nightmare. This is appropriately the introduction to the greater geyser basins which lie near by upon the south.

Who shall describe the geysers? What pen, what brush, shall do justice to their ghostly glory, the eager vehemence of their assaults upon the sky, their joyful gush and roar, their insistence upon conscious personality and power, the white majesty of their fluted columns at the instant of fullest expansion, the supreme loveliness of their feathery florescence at the level of poise between rise and fall, their graciousness of form, their speedy airiness of action, their giant convolutions of sun-flecked steam rolling aloft in ever-expanding volume to rejoin the parent cloud?

Perhaps there have been greater geyser basins somewhere in the prehistoric past. There may be greater still to come; one or two promising possibilities are in Alaska. But for the lapse of geologic time in which man has so far lived, Yellowstone has cornered the world's geyser market. There are only two other places where one may enjoy the spectacle of large geysers. One of these is New Zealand and the other Iceland; but both displays combined cannot equal Yellowstone's either in the number or the size of the geysers.

Yellowstone has dozens of geysers of many kinds. They range in size from the little spring that spurts a few inches every minute to the monster that hurls hundreds of tons of water three hundred feet in air every six or eight weeks. Many spout at fairly regular intervals of minutes or hours or days. Others are notably irregular, and these include most of the largest. Old Faithful won its name and reputation by its regularity; it is the only one of the group of monsters which lives up to its time-table. Its period ranges from intervals of about fifty-five minutes in seasons following winters of heavy snow to eighty or eighty-five minutes in seasons following winters of light snow. Its eruptions are announced in the Old Faithful Inn a few minutes in advance of action and the population of the hotel walks out to see the spouting. At night a searchlight is thrown upon the gushing flood.

After all, Old Faithful is the most satisfactory of geysers. Several are more imposing. Sometimes enthusiasts remain in the neighborhood for weeks waiting for the Giant to play and dare not venture far away for fear of missing the spectacle; while Old Faithful, which is quite as beautiful and nearly as large, performs hourly for the pleasure of thousands. Even the most hurried visitor to the Upper Basin is sure, between stages, of seeing several geysers in addition to one or more performances of Old Faithful.

The greatest of known geysers ceased playing in 1888. I have found no authentic measurements or other stated records concerning the famous Excelsior. It hurled aloft an enormous volume of water, with a fury of action described as appalling. Posterity is fortunate in the existence of a striking photograph of this monster taken at the height of its play by F. Jay Haynes, then official photographer of the park.

"The first photographs I made were in the fall of 1881," Mr. Haynes writes me. "The eruptions continued during the winter at increasing intervals from two hours, when the series began, to four hours when it ceased operations before the tourist season of 1882. Not having the modern photographic plates for instantaneous work in 1881, it was impossible to secure instantaneous views then, but in the spring of 1888, I made the view which you write about. It was taken at the fulness of its eruption.

"The explosion was preceded by a rapid filling of the crater and a great overflow of water. The column was about fifty feet wide and came from the centre of the crater. Pieces of formation were torn loose and were thrown out during each eruption; large quantities eventually were removed from the crater, thus enlarging it to its present size."

Here we have a witness's description of the process which clouds the career of the Excelsior Geyser. The enlargement of the vent eventually gave unrestrained passage to the imprisoned steam. The geyser ceased to play. To-day the Excelsior Spring is one of the largest hot springs in the Yellowstone and the world; its output of steaming water is constant and voluminous. Thus again we find relationship between the hot spring and the geyser; it is apparent that the same vent, except perhaps for differences of internal shaping, might serve for both. It was the removal of restraining walls which changed the Excelsior Geyser to the Excelsior Spring.

For many years geyser action remained a mystery balanced among conflicting theories, of which at last Bunsen's won general acceptance. Spring waters, or surface waters seeping through porous lavas, gather thousands of feet below the surface in some pocket located in strata which internal pressures still keep hot. Boiling as they gather, the waters rise till they fill the long vent-hole to the surface. Still the steam keeps making in the deep pocket, where it is held down by the weight of the water in the vent above. As it accumulates this steam compresses more and more. The result is inevitable. There comes a moment when the expansive power of the compressed steam overcomes the weight above. Explosion follows. The steam, expanding now with violence, drives the water up the vent and out; nor is it satisfied until the vent is emptied.

Upon the surface, as the geyser lapses and dies, the people turn away to the Inn and luncheon. Under the surface, again the waters gather and boil in preparation for the next eruption. The interval till then will depend upon the amount of water which reaches the deep pocket, the size of the pocket, and the length and shape of the vent-hole. If conditions permit the upward escape of steam as fast as it makes in the pocket, we have a hot spring. If the steam makes faster than it can escape, we have a geyser.

THE EXCELSIOR GEYSER WHICH BLEW OUT IN 1888; YELLOWSTONE]

ONE OF THE TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS; YELLOWSTONE]

III

So interesting are the geysers and their kin that, with their splendid wilderness setting, other glories seem superfluous. I have had my moments of impatience with the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for being in the Yellowstone. Together, the canyon and the geysers are almost too much for one place, even perhaps for one visit. One can only hold so much, even of beauty, at once. Spectacles of this quality and quantity need assimilation, and assimilation requires time. Nevertheless, once enter into sympathetic relations with the canyon, once find its heart and penetrate its secret, and the tables are quickly turned. Strangely, it now becomes quite easy to view with comparative coolness the claims of mere hot-water wonders.

The canyon cannot be considered apart from its river any more than a geyser apart from its environment of hot spring and basin, and any consideration of the Yellowstone River begins with its lake. As compared with others of scenic celebrity, Yellowstone Lake is unremarkable. Its shores are so low and the mountains of its southern border so flat and unsuggestive that it curiously gives the impression of surface altitude--curiously because it actually has the altitude; its surface is more than seven thousand seven hundred feet above tide. If I have the advertisement right, it is the highest water in the world that floats a line of steamboats.

The lake is large, twenty miles north and south by fifteen miles east and west; it is irregular with deep indentations. It is heavily wooded to the water's edge. All its entering streams are small except the Yellowstone River, which, from its source in the Absarokas just south of the park boundary, enters the Southeast Arm through the lowland wilderness home of the moose and the wild buffalo. The lake is the popular resort of thousands of large white pelicans, its most picturesque feature.

That part of the Yellowstone River which interests us emerges from the lake at its most northerly point. It is here a broad swift stream of some depth and great clarity, so swarming with trout that a half-dozen or more usually may be seen upon its bottom at any glance from boat or bridge. A number of boats usually are anchored above the bridge from which anglers are successfully trailing artificial flies and spinners in the fast current; and the bridge is usually lined with anglers who, in spite of crude outfits, frequently hook good trout which they pull up by main strength much as the phlegmatic patrons of excursion-steamers to the Banks yank flopping cod from brine to basket on the top deck.

The last time I crossed the Fishing Bridge and paused to see the fun, a woman whose face beamed with happiness held up a twenty-inch trout and said:

"Just look! My husband caught this and he is seventy-six years old--last month. It's the first fish he ever caught, for he was brought up in Kansas, you know, where there isn't any fishing. My! but he's a proud man! We're going to get the camp to cook it for us. He's gone now to look for a board to draw its measurements to show the folks at home."

From here to the river's emergence from the park the fishing is not crude. In fact, it taxes the most skilful angler's art to steer his fighting trout through boiling rapids to the net. For very soon the Yellowstone narrows and pitches down sharper slants to the climax of the falls and the mighty canyon.

This intermediate stretch of river is beautiful in its quietude. The forests often touch the water's edge. And ever it narrows and deepens and splashes higher against the rocks which stem its current; forever it is steepening to the plunge. Above the Upper Fall it pinches almost to a mill-race, roars over low sills, swings eastward at right angles, and plunges a hundred and nine feet. I know of no cataract which expresses might in action so eloquently as the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone. Pressed as it is within narrow bounds, it seems to gush with other motive power than merely gravity. Seen from above looking down, seen sideways from below, or looked at straight on from the camp site on the opposite rim, the water appears hurled from the brink.

Less than a mile south of the Upper Fall, the river again falls, this time into the Grand Canyon.

Imposing as the Great Fall is, it must chiefly be considered as a part of the Grand Canyon picture. The only separate view of it looks up from the river's edge in front, a view which few get because of the difficult climb; every other view poses it merely as an element in the canyon composition. Compared with the Upper Fall, its more than double height gives it the great superiority of majesty without detracting from the Upper Fall's gushing personality. In fact, it is the King of Falls. Comparison with Yosemite's falls is impossible, so different are the elements and conditions. The Great Fall of the Yellowstone carries in one body, perhaps, a greater bulk of water than all the Yosemite Valley's falls combined.

And so we come to the canyon. In figures it is roughly a thousand feet deep and twice as wide, more or less, at the rim. The supremely scenic part reaches perhaps three miles below the Great Fall. Several rock points extend far into the canyon, from which the gorgeous spectacle may be viewed as from an aeroplane. Artists' Point, which is reached from the east side, displays the Great Fall as the centre of a noble composition. It was Moran's choice. Inspiration Point, which juts far in from the west side, shows a deeper and more comprehensive view of the canyon and only a glimpse of the Great Fall. Both views are essential to any adequate conception. From Artists' Point the eye loses detail in the overmastering glory of the whole. From Inspiration Point the canyon reveals itself in all the intimacy of its sublime form and color. Both views dazzle and astonish. Neither can be looked at very long at one time.

YELLOWSTONE VALLEY FROM THE UPPER FALL TO THE LOWER FALL]