Transcriber's Note The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfullypreserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The photograph "The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah", facing page 8, ismissing from the source document even though presented in the List ofIllustrations. [Illustration: Map] [Illustration: Map] THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS [Illustration: _From the painting by Chris Jorgenson_ ZOROASTER FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON Nature's greatest example of stream erosion] THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS BY ROBERT STERLING YARD CHIEF, EDUCATIONAL DIVISION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AUTHOR OF "THE NATIONAL PARKS PORTFOLIO" "THE TOP OF THE CONTINENT, " ETC. WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1919 PREFACE In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of itsnational park system, I have two principal objects. The one is todescribe and differentiate the national parks in a manner which willenable the reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning, beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to individual and nation. Theother is to use these parks, in which Nature is writing in large plainlines the story of America's making, as examples illustrating theseveral kinds of scenery, and what each kind means in terms of worldbuilding; in other words, to translate the practical findings of scienceinto unscientific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleasure, not only in his national parks but in all other scenic places great andsmall. At the outset I have been confronted with a difficulty because of thisdouble objective. The rôle of the interpreter is not always welcome. IfI write what is vaguely known as a "popular" book, wise men have warnedme that any scientific intrusion, however lightly and dramaticallyrendered, will displease its natural audience. If I write the simplestof scientific books, I am warned that a large body of warm-blooded, wholesome, enthusiastic Americans, the very ones above all others whosekeen enjoyment I want to double by doubling their sources of pleasure, will have none of it. The suggestion that I make my text "popular" andcarry my "science" in an appendix I promptly rejected, for if I cannotgive the scientific aspects of nature their readable values in the text, I cannot make them worth an appendix. Now I fail to share with my advisers their poor opinion of the taste, enterprise, and intelligence of the wide-awake American, but, for thesake of my message, I yield in some part to their warnings. Therefore Ihave so presented my material that the miscalled, and, I verily believe, badly slandered "average reader, " may have his "popular" book byomitting the note on the Appreciation of Scenery, and the several notesexplanatory of scenery which are interpolated between groups ofchapters. If it is true, as I have been told, that the "average reader"would omit these anyway, because it is his habit to omit prefaces andnotes of every kind, then nothing has been lost. The keen inquiring reader, however, the reader who wants to know valuesand to get, in the eloquent phrase of the day, all that's coming to him, will have the whole story by beginning the book with the note on theAppreciation of Scenery, and reading it consecutively, interpolatednotes and all. As this will involve less than a score of additionalpages, I hope to get the message of the national parks in terms of theirfullest enjoyment before much the greater part of the book's readers. The pleasure of writing this book has many times repaid its cost inlabor, and any helpfulness it may have in advancing the popularity ofour national parks, in building up the system's worth as a nationaleconomic asset, and in increasing the people's pleasure in all sceneryby helping them to appreciate their greatest scenery, will come to me aspure profit. It is my earnest hope that this profit may be large. A similar spirit has actuated the very many who have helped me acquirethe knowledge and experience to produce it; the officials of theNational Park Service, the superintendents and several rangers in thenational parks, certain zoologists of the United States BiologicalSurvey, the Director and many geologists of the United States GeologicalSurvey, scientific experts of the Smithsonian Institution, andprofessors in several distinguished universities. Many men have beenpatient and untiring in assistance and helpful criticism, and to these Irender warm thanks for myself and for readers who may benefit by theirwork. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE vii THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY 3 I. THE NATIONAL PARKS OF THE UNITED STATES 17 THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY 33 II. YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE 36 III. THE PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK 69 IV. THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES 93 V. MCKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS 118 VI. LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST 132 THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS ON THE VOLCANO IN SCENERY 145 VII. LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI 148 VIII. MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS 159 IX. CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO 184 X. YELLOWSTONE, A VOLCANIC INTERLUDE 202 XI. THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII 229 THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS XII. ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY 247 XIII. GLACIERED PEAKS AND PAINTED SHALES 251 XIV. ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE 284 XV. THE HEALING WATERS 305 THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST 321 XVI. A PAGEANT OF CREATION 328 XVII. THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT 352 XVIII. HISTORIC MONUMENTS OF THE SOUTHWEST 367 XIX. DESERT SPECTACLES 385 XX. THE MUIR WOODS AND OTHER NATIONAL MONUMENTS 404 ILLUSTRATIONS Zoroaster from the depths of the Grand Canyon _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE The Rainbow Natural Bridge, Utah 8 Middle fork of the Belly River, Glacier National Park 12 General Grant Tree 18 The Giant Geyser--greatest in the world 22 The Yosemite Falls--highest in the world 26 El Capitan, survivor of the glaciers 44 Half Dome, Yosemite's hooded monk 46 The climax of Yosemite National Park 56 The greatest waterwheel of the Tuolumne 56 Tehipite Dome, guardian rock of the Tehipite Valley 82 East Vidette from a forest of foxtail pines 84 Bull Frog Lake, proposed Roosevelt National Park 90 Under a giant sequoia 90 Estes Park Plateau, looking east 96 Front range of the Rockies from Bierstadt Lake 96 Summit of Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park 110 The Andrews Glacier hangs from the Continental Divide 114 A Rocky Mountain cirque carved from solid granite 114 Mount McKinley, looming above the great Alaskan Range 128 Archdeacon Stuck's party half-way up the mountain 128 The summit of Mount McKinley 128 In Lafayette National Park 134 Sea caves in the granite 134 Frenchman's Bay from the east cliff of Champlain Mountain 140 Lassen Peak seen from the southwest 152 Lassen Peak close up 152 Southeast slope of Mount Rainier 162 Mount St. Helens seen from Mount Rainier Park 166 Mount Adams seen from Mount Rainier Park 166 Sluiskin Ridge and Columbia Crest 172 Mount Rainier seen from Tacoma 172 Mount Rainier and Paradise Inn in summer 174 Winter pleasures at Paradise Inn, Mount Rainier 174 Dutton Cliff and the Phantom Ship, Crater Lake 190 Sunset from Garfield Peak, Crater Lake National Park 190 Applegate Cliff, Crater Lake 194 Phantom Ship from Garfield Peak 194 The Excelsior Geyser which blew out in 1888; Yellowstone 216 One of the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone 216 Yellowstone Valley from the upper fall to the lower fall 220 The lower fall and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 220 The Teton Mountain from Jackson Hole, south of Yellowstone 228 The lava landscape of the Yellowstone and Gibbon Falls 228 The Kilauea Pit of Fire, Hawaii National Park 238 Within the crater of Kilauea 238 The Great Gable of Gould Mountain 272 The Cirque at the head of Cut Bank Creek 272 Ptarmigan Lake and Mount Wilbur, Glacier National Park 276 Scooped both sides by giant glaciers 276 Showing the Agassiz Glacier 282 Beautiful Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park 282 Prehistoric pottery from Mesa Verde 298 Sun Temple, Mesa Verde National Park 302 Spruce Tree House from across the canyon 302 On Hot Springs Mountain, Hot Springs of Arkansas 308 Bath House Row, Hot Springs of Arkansas 308 Sunset from Grand View, Grand Canyon National Park 340 Camping party on the South Rim 344 Down Hermit Trail from rim to river 344 Through the Granite Gorge surges the muddy Colorado 346 When morning mists lift from the depths of the Grand Canyon 346 El Gobernador, Zion National Monument 362 Zion Canyon from the rim 364 The Three Patriarchs, Zion Canyon 364 Casa Grande National Monument 374 Prehistoric cave homes in the Bandelier National Monument 374 Tumacacori Mission 376 Montezuma Castle 376 Roosevelt party in Monument Valley 386 Rainbow Bridge in full perspective 386 The Petrified Forest of Arizona 396 Petrified trunk forming a bridge over a canyon 396 Cathedral Isle of the Muir Woods 406 Pinnacles National Monument 412 The Devil's Tower 412 MAPS AND DIAGRAMS PAGE Cross-section of Crater Lake showing probable outline ofMount Mazama 189 Cross-section of Crater Lake 191 Map of Hawaii National Park 230 FACING PAGE Outline of the Mesa Verde Formation 290 Outlines of the Western and Eastern Temples, Zion NationalMonument 356 AT END OF VOLUME Map of Yosemite National Park, California. Proposed Roosevelt National Park and the Sequoia and General Grant National Parks, California. The Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Mount Rainier National Park, Washington. Crater Lake National Park, Oregon. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Glacier National Park, Montana. Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Zion National Monument, Utah. THE BOOK OF THE NATIONAL PARKS The Book of the National Parks ON THE APPRECIATION OF SCENERY To the average educated American, scenery is a pleasing hodge-podge ofmountains, valleys, plains, lakes, and rivers. To him, theglacier-hollowed valley of Yosemite, the stream-scooped abyss of theGrand Canyon, the volcanic gulf of Crater Lake, the bristling granitecore of the Rockies, and the ancient ice-carved shales of GlacierNational Park all are one--just scenery, magnificent, incomparable, meaningless. As a people we have been content to wonder, not to know;yet with scenery, as with all else, to know is to begin fully to enjoy. Appreciation measures enjoyment. And this brings me to my proposition, namely, that we shall not really enjoy our possession of the grandestscenery in the world until we realize that scenery is the written pageof the History of Creation, and until we learn to read that page. The national parks of America include areas of the noblest and mostdiversified scenic sublimity easily accessible in the world;nevertheless it is their chiefest glory that they are among thecompletest expressions of the earth's history. The American people iswaking rapidly to the magnitude of its scenic possession; it has yet tolearn to appreciate it. Nevertheless we love scenery. We are a nation of sightseers. The yearbefore the world war stopped all things, we spent $286, 000, 000 in goingto Europe. That summer Switzerland's receipts from the sale oftransportation and board to persons coming from foreign lands to see herscenery was $100, 000, 000, and more than half, it has been statedapparently with authority, came from America. That same year touristtravel became Canada's fourth largest source of income, exceeding ingross receipts even her fisheries, and the greater part came from theUnited States; it is a matter of record that seven-tenths of the hotelregistrations in the Canadian Rockies were from south of the border. Hadwe then known, as a nation, that there was just as good scenery of itskind in the United States, and many more kinds, we would have gone tosee that; it is a national trait to buy the best. Since then, we havediscovered this important fact and are crowding to our national parks. "Is it true, " a woman asked me at the foot of Yosemite Falls, "that thisis the highest unbroken waterfall in the world?" She was the average tourist, met there by chance. I assured her thatsuch was the fact. I called attention to the apparent deliberation ofthe water's fall, a trick of the senses resulting from failure torealize height and distance. "To think they are the highest in the world!" she mused. I told her that the soft fingers of water had carved this valley threethousand feet into the solid granite, and that ice had polished itswalls, and I estimated for her the ages since the Merced River flowed atthe level of the cataract's brink. "I've seen the tallest building in the world, " she replied dreamily, "and the longest railroad, and the largest lake, and the highestmonument, and the biggest department store, and now I see the highestwaterfall. Just think of it!" If one has illusions concerning the average tourist, let him compare thehundreds who gape at the paint pots and geysers of Yellowstone with thedozens who exult in the sublimated glory of the colorful canyon. Or lethim listen to the table-talk of a party returned from Crater Lake. Orlet him recall the statistical superlatives which made up his friend'slast letter from the Grand Canyon. I am not condemning wonder, which, in its place, is a legitimate andpleasurable emotion. As a condiment to sharpen and accent an aboundingsense of beauty it has real and abiding value. Love of beauty is practically a universal passion. It is that whichlures millions into the fields, valleys, woods, and mountains on everyholiday, which crowds our ocean lanes and railroads. The fact that fewof these rejoicing millions are aware of their own motive, and that, strangely enough, a few even would be ashamed to make the admission ifthey became aware of it, has nothing to do with the fact. It's a wiseman that knows his own motives. The fact that still fewer, whetheraware or not of the reason of their happiness, are capable of making theleast expression of it, also has nothing to do with the fact. Thetourist woman whom I met at the foot of Yosemite Falls may have feltsecretly suffocated by the filmy grandeur of the incomparable spectacle, notwithstanding that she was conscious of no higher emotion than thecheap wonder of a superlative. The Grand Canyon's rim is the stillestcrowded place I know. I've stood among a hundred people on a precipiceand heard the whir of a bird's wings in the abyss. Probably the majorityof those silent gazers were suffering something akin to pain at theirinability to give vent to the emotions bursting within them. I believe that the statement can not be successfully challenged that, asa people, our enjoyment of scenery is almost wholly emotional. Love ofbeauty spiced by wonder is the equipment for enjoyment of the averageintelligent traveller of to-day. Now add to this a more or less equalpart of the intellectual pleasure of comprehension and you have theequipment of the average intelligent traveller of to-morrow. To hastenthis to-morrow is one of the several objects of this book. To see in the carved and colorful depths of the Grand Canyon not onlythe stupendous abyss whose terrible beauty grips the soul, but alsoto-day's chapter in a thrilling story of creation whose beginning layuntold centuries back in the ages, whose scene covers three hundredthousand square miles of our wonderful southwest, whose actors includethe greatest forces of nature, whose tremendous episodes shame theimagination of Doré, and whose logical end invites suggestions beforewhich finite minds shrink--this is to come into the presence of thegreat spectacle properly equipped for its enjoyment. But how many whosee the Grand Canyon get more out of it than merely the beauty thatgrips the soul? So it is throughout the world of scenery. The geologic story written onthe cliffs of Crater Lake is more stupendous even than the glory of itsindigo bowl. The war of titanic forces described in simple language onthe rocks of Glacier National Park is unexcelled in sublimity in thehistory of mankind. The story of Yellowstone's making multiplies manytimes the thrill occasioned by its world-famed spectacle. Even thesimplest and smallest rock details often tell thrilling incidents ofprehistoric tunes out of which the enlightened imagination reconstructsthe romances and the tragedies of earth's earlier days. How eloquent, for example, was the small, water-worn fragment of dullcoal we found on the limestone slope of one of Glacier's mountains!Impossible companionship! The one the product of forest, the other ofsubmerged depths. Instantly I glimpsed the distant age when thousands offeet above the very spot upon which I stood, but then at sea level, bloomed a Cretaceous forest, whose broken trunks and matted foliagedecayed in bogs where they slowly turned to coal; coal which, exposedand disintegrated during intervening ages, has long since--all but afew small fragments like this--washed into the headwaters of theSaskatchewan to merge eventually in the muds of Hudson Bay. And then, still dreaming, my mind leaped millions of years still further back tolake bottoms where, ten thousand feet below the spot on which I stood, gathered the pre-Cambrian ooze which later hardened to this verylimestone. From ooze a score of thousand feet, a hundred million years, to coal! And both lie here together now in my palm! Filled thus withvisions of a perspective beyond human comprehension, with whatmultiplied intensity of interest I now returned to the noble view fromGable Mountain! In pleading for a higher understanding of Nature's method andaccomplishment as a precedent to study and observation of our nationalparks, I seek enormously to enrich the enjoyment not only of thesesupreme examples but of all examples of world making. The same readingswhich will prepare you to enjoy to the full the message of our nationalparks will invest your neighborhood hills at home, your creek and riverand prairie, your vacation valleys, the landscape through your carwindow, even your wayside ditch, with living interest. I invite you to anew and fascinating earth, an earth interesting, vital, personal, beloved, because at last known and understood! It requires no great study to know and understand the earth well enoughfor such purpose as this. One does not have to dim his eyes with acresof maps, or become a plodding geologist, or learn to distinguishschists from granites, or to classify plants by table, or to call wildgeese and marmots by their Latin names. It is true that geography, geology, physiography, mineralogy, botany and zoology must eachcontribute their share toward the condition of intelligence which willenable you to realize appreciation of Nature's amazing earth, but theshare of each is so small that the problem will be solved, not byexhaustive study, but by the selection of essential parts. Two or threepopular books which interpret natural science in perspective shouldpleasurably accomplish your purpose. But once begun, I predict that fewwill fail to carry certain subjects beyond the mere essentials, whilesome will enter for life into a land of new delights. Let us, for illustration, consider for a moment the making of America. The earth, composed of countless aggregations of matter drawn togetherfrom the skies, whirled into a globe, settled into a solid masssurrounded by an atmosphere carrying water like a sponge, has reachedthe stage of development when land and sea have divided the surfacebetween them, and successions of heat and frost, snow, ice, rain, andflood, are busy with their ceaseless carving of the land. Alreadymountains are wearing down and sea bottoms are building up with theirrefuse. Sediments carried by the rivers are depositing in strata, whichsome day will harden into rock. We are looking now at the close of the era which geologists callArchean, because it is ancient beyond knowledge. A few of its rocks areknown, but not well enough for many definite conclusions. All theearth's vast mysterious past is lumped under this title. The definite history of the earth begins with the close of the dimArchean era. It is the lapse from then till now, a few hundred millionyears at most out of all infinity, which ever can greatly concern man, for during this time were laid the only rocks whose reading was assistedby the presence of fossils. During this time the continents attainedtheir final shape, the mountains rose, and valleys, plains, and riversformed and re-formed many times before assuming the passing forms whichthey now show. During this time also life evolved from its inferredbeginnings in the late Archean to the complicated, finely developed, andin man's case highly mentalized and spiritualized organization ofTo-day. Surely the geologist's field of labor is replete with interest, inspiration, even romance. But because it has become so saturated withtechnicality as to become almost a popular bugaboo, let us attempt nospecial study, but rather cull from its voluminous records those simplefacts and perspectives which will reveal to us this greatest of allstory books, our old earth, as the volume of enchantment that it reallyis. With the passing of the Archean, the earth had not yet settled into theperfectly balanced sphere which Nature destined it to be. In some placesthe rock was more compactly squeezed than in others, and these densermasses eventually were forced violently into neighbor masses which werenot so tightly squeezed. These movements far below the surface shiftedthe surface balance and became one of many complicated and little knowncauses impelling the crust here to slowly rise and there to slowly fall. Thus in places sea bottoms lifted above the surface and became land, while lands elsewhere settled and became seas. There are areas whichhave alternated many times between land and sea; this is why we findlimestones which were formed in the sea overlying shales which wereformed in fresh water, which in turn overlie sandstones which once werebeaches--all these now in plateaus thousands of feet above the ocean'slevel. Sometimes these mysterious internal forces lifted the surface in longwaves. Thus mountain chains and mountain systems were created. Oftentheir summits, worn down by frosts and rains, disclose the core of rockwhich, ages before, then hot and fluid, had underlain the crust and bentit upward into mountain form. Now, cold and hard, these masses aredisclosed as the granite of to-day's landscape, or as other igneousrocks of earth's interior which now cover broad surface areas, mingledwith the stratified or water-made rocks which the surface only produces. But this has not always been the fate of the under-surface molten rocks, for sometimes they have burst by volcanic vents clear through the crustof earth, where, turned instantly to pumice and lava by release frompressure, they build great surface cones, cover broad plains and fillbasins and valleys. Thus were created the three great divisions of the rocks which form thethree great divisions of scenery, the sediments, the granites, and thelavas. During these changes in the levels of enormous surface areas, the frostsand water have been industriously working down the elevations of theland. Nature forever seeks a level. The snows of winter, melting atmidday, sink into the rocks' minutest cracks. Expanded by the frosts, the imprisoned water pries open and chips the surface. The rains ofspring and summer wash the chippings and other débris into rivulets, which carry them into mountain torrents, which rush them into rivers, which sweep them into oceans, which deposit them for the upbuilding ofthe bottoms. Always the level! Thousands of square miles of Californiawere built up from ocean's bottom with sediments chiselled from themountains of Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, and swept seaward through theGrand Canyon. These mills grind without rest or pause. The atmosphere gathers themoisture from the sea, the winds roll it in clouds to the land, themountains catch and chill the clouds, and the resulting rains hurry backto the sea in rivers bearing heavy freights of soil. Spring, summer, autumn, winter, day and night, the mills of Nature labor unceasingly toproduce her level. If ever this earth is really finished to Nature'sliking, it will be as round and polished as a billiard ball. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Bailey Willis_ MIDDLE FORK OF THE BELLY RIVER, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK Very ancient shales and limestone fantastically carved by glaciers. Theillustration shows Glenns Lake, Pyramid Peak, Chaney Glacier, and MountKipp] Years mean nothing in the computation of the prehistoric past. Who canconceive a thousand centuries, to say nothing of a million years? Yeteither is inconsiderable against the total lapse of time even from theArchean's close till now. And so geologists have devised an easier method of count, measured notby units of time, but by what each phase of progress has accomplished. This measure is set forth in the accompanying table, together with aconjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms of years. The most illuminating accomplishment of the table, however, is itsbird's-eye view of the procession of the evolution of life from thefirst inference of its existence to its climax of to-day; and, concurrent with this progress, its suggestion of the growth anddevelopment of scenic America. It is, in effect, the table of contentsof a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustration areengraved immortally in the rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets thescholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but whosedramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open toall at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtfulseeing in the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big andgraphic that none may miss their meanings. Man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the Procession of theAges. Aghast, he discovers that the billions of years which have wroughtthis earth from star dust were not merely God's laborious preparationof a habitation fit for so admirable an occupant; that man, on thecontrary, is nothing more or less than the present master tenant ofearth, the highest type of hundreds of millions of years of succeedingtenants only because he is the latest in evolution. PROGRESS OF CREATION Chart of the Divisions of Geologic Time, and an Estimate in Years based on the assumption that a hundred million years have elapsed since the close of the Archean Period, together with a condensed table of the Evolution of Life from its Inferred Beginnings in the Archean to the Present Time. Read from the bottom up. Read the footnote upon the opposite page concerning the Estimate of Time. ---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- ERA | PERIOD | EPOCH | LIFE DEVELOPMENT | ESTIMATED | | | | TIME---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- | | Recent | THE AGE OF MAN |CENOZOIC | _Quaternary_ | Pleistocene |Animals and plants of | 6 | | (Ice Age) |the modern type. First | millions | | |record of man occurs in| of | | |the early Pleistocene. | years. Era of +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+Recent | | Pliocene | THE AGE OF MAMMALS |Life | _Tertiary_ | Miocene |Rise and development of| | | Oligocene |the highest orders of | | | Eocene |plants and animals. |---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- | _Cretaceous_ | | THE AGE OF REPTILES |MESOZOIC | _Jurassic_ | |Shellfish with complex | | _Triassic_ | |shells. Enormous land | | | |reptiles. Flying | 16 | | |reptiles and the | millions | | |evolution therefrom of | of | | |birds. First palms. | years. | | |First hardwood trees. | | | | First mammals. |Era of +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+Intermediate | | THE AGE OF AMPHIBIANS. |Life | | | THE COAL AGE | |_Carboniferous_| Permian |Sharks and sea animals | | | |with nautilus-like | | |Pennsylvanian |shells. Evolution of | | | |land plants in many | | |Mississippian |complex forms. First | | | |appearance of land | | | |vertebrates. First | | | |flowering plants. | | | |First cone-bearing | | | |trees. Club mosses and | | | |ferns highly developed. |---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- | | | THE AGE OF FISHES | | _Devonian_ | |Evolution of many | | | |forms. Fish of great | | | |size. First appearance | 45 | | |of amphibians and land | millions | | |plants. | of +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+ years. PALEOZOIC| | |Shellfish develop |Era of | _Silurian_ | |fully. Appearance and |Old Life | | |culmination of crinoids| | | |or sea-lilies, and | | | |large scorpion-like | | | |crustaceans. First | | | |appearance of | | | |reef-building corals. | | | |Development of fishes. | +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+ | | |Sea animals develop | | _Ordovician_ | |shells, especially | | | |cephalopods and | | | |mollusk-like | | | |brachiopods. Trilobites| | | |at their height. First | | | |appearance of insects. | | | |First appearance of | | | |fishes. | +---------------+--------------+-----------------------+ | | |More highly developed | | _Cambrian_ | |forms of water life. | | | |Trilobites and | | | |brachiopods most | | | |abundant. Algæ. |---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- | _Algonkian_ | |The first life which | | | |left a distinct record. | 33 | | |Very primitive forms | millionsPROTEROZOIC | |of water life, | of | | |crustaceans, | years. | | |brachiopods and algæ. |---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- | _Archean_ | |No fossils found, but | | | |life inferred from the | | | |existence of iron ores |ARCHEOZOIC | |and limestones, which | | | |are generally formed in| | | |the presence of | | | |organisms. |---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+---------- Who can safely declare that the day will not come when a newYellowstone, hurled from reopened volcanoes, shall found itself upon theburied ruin of the present Yellowstone; when the present Sierra shallhave disappeared into the Pacific and the deserts of the Great Basinbecome the gardens of the hemisphere; when a new Rocky Mountain systemshall have grown upon the eroded and dissipated granites of the present;when shallow seas shall join anew Hudson Bay with the Gulf of Mexico;when a new and lofty Appalachian Range shall replace the rounded summitsof to-day; when a race of beings as superior to man, intellectually andspiritually, as man is superior to the ape, shall endeavor toreconstruct a picture of man from the occasional remnants which floods maywash into view? NOTE EXPLANATORY OF THE ESTIMATE OF GEOLOGIC TIME IN THE TABLE ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE The general assumption of modern geologists is that a hundred million years have elapsed since the close of the Archean period; at least this is a round number, convenient for thinking and discussion. The recent tendency has been greatly to increase conceptions of geologic time over the highly conservative estimates of a few years ago, and a strong disposition is shown to regard the Algonkian period as one of very great length, extremists even suggesting that it may have equalled all time since. For the purposes of this popular book, then, let us conceive that the earth has existed for a hundred million years since Archean times, and that one-third of this was Algonkian; and let us apportion the two-thirds remaining among succeeding eras in the average of the proportions adopted by Professor Joseph Barrell of Yale University, whose recent speculations upon geologic time have attracted wide attention. Fantastic, you may say. It is fantastic. So far as I know there existsnot one fact upon which definite predictions such as these may be based. But also there exists not one fact which warrants specific denial ofpredictions such as these. And if any inference whatever may be madefrom earth's history it is the inevitable inference that the period inwhich man lives is merely one step in an evolution of matter, mind andspirit which looks forward to changes as mighty or mightier than those Ihave suggested. With so inspiring an outline, the study to which I invite you can benothing but pleasurable. Space does not permit the development of thetheme in the pages which follow, but the book will have failed if itdoes not, incidental to its main purposes, entangle the reader in thecharm of America's adventurous past. I THE NATIONAL PARKS OF THE UNITED STATES The National Parks of the United States are areas of supreme scenicsplendor or other unique quality which Congress has set apart for thepleasure and benefit of the people. At this writing they numbereighteen, sixteen of which lie within the boundaries of the UnitedStates and are reached by rail and road. Those of greater importancehave excellent roads, good trails, and hotels or hotel camps, or both, for the accommodation of visitors; also public camp grounds wherevisitors may pitch their own tents. Outside the United States there aretwo national parks, one enclosing three celebrated volcanic craters, theother conserving the loftiest mountain on the continent. I The starting point for any consideration of our national parksnecessarily is the recently realized fact of their supremacy in worldscenery. It was the sensational force of this realization whichintensely attracted public attention at the outset of the new movement;many thousands hastened to see these wonders, and their reports spreadthe tidings throughout the land and gave the movement its increasingimpetus. The simple facts are these: The Swiss Alps, except for several unmatchable individual features, areexcelled in beauty, sublimity and variety by several of our own nationalparks, and these same parks possess other distinguished individualfeatures unrepresented in kind or splendor in the Alps. The Canadian Rockies are more than matched in rich coloring by ourGlacier National Park. Glacier is the Canadian Rockies done in GrandCanyon colors. It has no peer. The Yellowstone outranks by far any similar volcanic area in the world. It contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the worldtogether; the next in rank are divided between Iceland and New Zealand. Its famous canyon is alone of its quality of beauty. Except for portionsof the African jungle, the Yellowstone is probably the most populatedwild animal area in the world, and its wild animals are comparativelyfearless, even sometimes friendly. Mount Rainier has a single-peak glacier system whose equal has not yetbeen discovered. Twenty-eight living glaciers, some of them very large, spread, octopus-like, from its centre. It is four hours by rail or motorfrom Tacoma. Crater Lake is the deepest and bluest accessible lake in the world, occupying the hole left after one of our largest volcanoes had slippedback into earth's interior through its own rim. [Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE It has a National Park all to itself] Yosemite possesses a valley whose compelling beauty the worldacknowledges as supreme. The valley is the centre of eleven hundredsquare miles of high altitude wilderness. The Sequoia contains more than a million sequoia trees, twelve thousandof which are more than ten feet in diameter, and some of which are thelargest and oldest living things in the wide world. The Grand Canyon of Arizona is by far the hugest and noblest example oferosion in the world. It is gorgeously carved and colored. In sheersublimity it offers an unequalled spectacle. Mount McKinley stands more than 20, 000 feet above sea level, and 17, 000feet above the surrounding valleys. Scenically, it is the world'sloftiest mountain, for the monsters of the Andes and the Himalayas whichsurpass it in altitude can be viewed closely only from valleys from fiveto ten thousand feet higher than McKinley's northern valleys. The Hawaii National Park contains the fourth greatest dead crater in theworld, the hugest living volcano, and the Kilauea Lake of Fire, which isunique and draws visitors from the world's four quarters. These are the principal features of America's world supremacy. They areincidental to a system of scenic wildernesses which in combined area aswell as variety exceed the combined scenic wilderness playgrounds ofsimilar class comfortably accessible elsewhere. No wonder, then, thatthe American public is overjoyed with its recently realized treasure, and that the Government looks confidently to the rapid development ofits new-found economic asset. The American public has discoveredAmerica, and no one who knows the American public doubts for a momentwhat it will do with it. II The idea still widely obtains that our national parks are principallyplaygrounds. A distinguished member of Congress recently asked: "Whymake these appropriations? More people visited Rock Creek Park here inthe city of Washington last Sunday afternoon than went to the Yosemiteall last summer. The country has endless woods and mountains which costthe Treasury nothing. " This view entirely misses the point. The national parks arerecreational, of course. So are state, county and city parks. So areresorts of every kind. So are the fields, the woods, the seashore, theopen country everywhere. We are living in an open-air age. The nation ofoutdoor livers is a nation of power, initiative, and sanity. I hope tosee the time when available State lands everywhere, when every squaremile from our national forest reserve, when even many private holdingsare made accessible and comfortable, and become habited with summertrampers and campers. It is the way to individual power and nationalefficiency. But the national parks are far more than recreational areas. They arethe supreme examples. They are the gallery of masterpieces. Here thevisitor enters in a holier spirit. Here is inspiration. They are alsothe museums of the ages. Here nature is still creating the earth upon ascale so vast and so plain that even the dull and the frivolous cannotfail to see and comprehend. This is no distinction without a difference. The difference is so markedthat few indeed even of those who visit our national parks in afrivolous or merely recreational mood remain in that mood. The spirit ofthe great places brooks nothing short of silent reverence. I have seenmen unconsciously lift their hats. The mind strips itself of affairs asone sheds a coat. It is the hour of the spirit. One returns to dailyliving with a springier step, a keener vision, and a broader horizon forhaving worshipped at the shrine of the Infinite. III The Pacific Coast Expositions of 1915 marked the beginning of thenation's acquaintance with its national parks. In fact, they were theoccasion, if not the cause, of the movement for national parksdevelopment which found so quickly a country-wide response, and which isdestined to results of large importance to individual and nation alike. Because thousands of those whom the expositions were expected to drawwestward would avail of the opportunity to visit national parks, Secretary Lane, to whom the national parks suggested neglectedopportunity requiring business experience to develop, induced Stephen T. Mather, a Chicago business man with mountain-top enthusiasms, toundertake their preparation for the unaccustomed throngs. Mr. Mather'svision embraced a correlated system of superlative scenic areas whichshould become the familiar playgrounds of the whole American people, asystem which, if organized and administered with the efficiency of agreat business, should even become, in time, the rendezvous of thesightseers of the world. He foresaw in the national parks a new andgreat national economic asset. The educational and other propaganda by which this movement waspresented to the people, which the writer had the honor to plan andexecute, won rapidly the wide support of the public. To me the nationalparks appealed powerfully as the potential museums and classrooms forthe popular study of the natural forces which made, and still aremaking, America, and of American fauna and flora. Here were set forth, in fascinating picture and lines so plain that none could fail to readand understand, the essentials of sciences whose real charm our rapideducational methods impart to few. This book is the logical outgrowth ofa close study of the national parks, beginning with the inception of thenew movement, from this point of view. How free from the partisan considerations common in governmentalorganization was the birth of the movement is shown by an incident ofMr. Mather's inauguration into his assistant secretaryship. SecretaryLane had seen him at his desk and had started back to his own room. Buthe returned, looked in at the door, and asked: [Illustration: _Copyright by Haynes, St. Paul_ THE GIANT GEYSER--GREATEST IN THE WORLD Yellowstone National Park] "Oh, by the way, Steve, what are your politics?" This book considers our national parks as they line up four years afterthe beginning of this movement. It shows them well started upon the longroad to realization, with Congress, Government, and the people unitedtoward a common end, with the schools and the universities interested, and, for the first time, with the railroads, the concessioners, themotoring interests, and many of the public-spirited educational andoutdoor associations all pulling together under the inspiration of arecognized common motive. Of course this triumph of organization, for it is no less, could nothave been accomplished nearly so quickly without the assistance of theclosing of Europe by the great war. Previous to 1915, Americans had beenspending $300, 000, 000 a year in European travel. Nor could it have beenaccomplished at all if investigation and comparison had not shown thatour national parks excel in supreme scenic quality and variety thecombined scenery which is comfortably accessible in all the rest of theworld together. To get the situation at the beginning of our book into full perspective, it must be recognized that, previous to the beginning of our propagandain 1915, the national parks, as such, scarcely existed in the publicconsciousness. Few Americans could name more than two or three of thefourteen existing parks. The Yosemite Valley and the Yellowstone alonewere generally known, but scarcely as national parks; most of theschool geographies which mentioned them at all ignored their nationalcharacter. The advertising folders of competing railroads were theprincipal sources of public knowledge, for few indeed asked for thecompilation of rates and charges which the Government then sent inresponse to inquiries for information. The parks had practically noadministration. The business necessarily connected with their upkeep anddevelopment was done by clerks as minor and troublesome details whichdistracted attention from more important duties; there was no one clerkwhose entire concern was with the national parks. The American publicstill looked confidently upon the Alps as the supreme scenic area in theworld, and hoped some day to see the Canadian Rockies. IV Originally the motive in park-making had been unalloyed conservation. Itis as if Congress had said: "Let us lock this up where no one can runaway with it; we don't need it now, but some day it may be valuable. "That was the instinct that led to the reservation of the Hot Springs ofArkansas in 1832, the first national park. Forty years later, whenofficial investigation proved the truth of the amazing tales ofYellowstone's natural wonders, it was the instinct which led to thereservation of that largely unexplored area as the second national park. Seventeen years after Yellowstone, when newspapers and scientificmagazines recounted the ethnological importance of the Casa Grande Ruinin Arizona, it resulted in the creation of the third national park, notwithstanding that the area so conserved enclosed less than a squaremile, which contained nothing of the kind and quality which to-day werecognize as essential to parkhood. This closed what may be regarded asthe initial period of national parks conservation. It was whollyinstinctive; distinctions, objectives, and policies were undreamed of. Less than two years after Casa Grande, which, by the way, has recentlybeen re-classed a national monument, what may be called the middleperiod began brilliantly with the creation, in 1890, of the Yosemite, the Sequoia, and the General Grant National Parks, all parks in the truesense of the word, and all of the first order of scenic magnificence. Nine years later Mount Rainier was added, and two years after thatwonderful Crater Lake, both meeting fully the new standard. What followed was human and natural. The term national park had begun tomean something in the neighborhoods of the parks. Yellowstone andYosemite had long been household words, and the introduction of otherareas to their distinguished company fired local pride in neighboringstates. "Why should we not have national parks, too?" people asked. Congress, always the reflection of the popular will, and therefore notalways abreast of the moment, was unprepared with reasons. Thus, during1903 and 1904, there were added to the list areas in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Oklahoma, which were better fitted for State parksthan for association with the distinguished company of the nation'snoblest. A reaction followed and resulted in what we may call the modern period. Far-sighted men in and out of Congress began to compare and look ahead. No hint yet of the splendid destiny of our national parks, now soclearly defined, entered the minds of these men at this time, but ideasof selection, of development and utilization undoubtedly began to takeform. At least, conservation, as such, ceased to become a sole motive. Insensibly Congress, or at least a few men of vision in Congress, beganto take account of stock and figure on realization. This healthy growth was helped materially by the public demand for theimprovement of several of the national parks. No thought ofappropriating money to improve the bathing facilities of Hot Springs hadaffected Congressional action for nearly half a century; it was enoughthat the curative springs had been saved from private ownership. Yellowstone was considered so altogether extraordinary, however, thatCongress began in 1879 to appropriate yearly for its approach by road, and for the protection of its springs and geysers; but this was becauseYellowstone appealed to the public sense of wonder. It took twenty yearsmore for Congress to understand that the public sense of beauty was alsoworth appropriations. Yosemite had been a national park for nine yearsbefore it received a dollar, and then only when public demand for roads, trails, and accommodations became insistent. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Pillsbury_ THE YOSEMITE FALLS--HIGHEST IN THE WORLD From the brink of the upper falls to the foot of the lower falls isalmost half a mile] But, once born, the idea took root and spread. It was fed by the pressand magazine reports of the glories of the newer national parks, thenattracting some public attention. It helped discrimination in thecomparison of the minor parks created in 1903 and 1904 with the greaterones which had preceded. The realization that the parks must bedeveloped at public expense sharpened Congressional judgment as to whatareas should and should not become national parks. From that time on Congress has made no mistakes in selecting nationalparks. Mesa Verde became a park in 1905, Glacier in 1910, Rocky Mountainin 1915, Hawaii and Lassen Volcanic in 1916, Mount McKinley in 1917, andLafayette and the Grand Canyon in 1919. From that time on Congress, mostconservatively, it is true, has backed its judgment with increasingappropriations. And in 1916 it created the National Park Service, abureau of the Department of the Interior, to administer them inaccordance with a definite policy. V The distinction between the national forests and the national parks isessential to understanding. The national forests constitute an enormousdomain administered for the economic commercialization of the nation'swealth of lumber. Its forests are handled scientifically with the objectof securing the largest annual lumber output consistent with the properconservation of the future. Its spirit is commercial. The spirit ofnational park conservation is exactly opposite. It seeks no greatterritory--only those few spots which are supreme. It aims to preservenature's handiwork exactly as nature made it. No tree is cut except tomake way for road, trail or hotel to enable the visitor to penetrate andlive among nature's secrets. Hunting is excellent in some of ournational forests, but there is no game in the national parks; in these, wild animals are a part of nature's exhibits; they are protected asfriends. It follows that forests and parks, so different in spirit and purpose, must be handled wholly separately. Even the rangers and scientificexperts have objects so opposite and different that the same individualcannot efficiently serve both purposes. High specialization in bothservices is essential to success. THE NATIONAL PARKS AT A GLANCE [Number, 18; total area, 10, 739 square miles] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------NATIONAL PARKS | | AREA IN|IN ORDER | LOCATION | SQUARE | DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICSOF CREATION | | MILES |---------------------------------------------------------------------------Hot Springs, | Middle Arkansas | 1-1/2 | 46 hot springs possessing1832 | | | curative properties--Many | | | hotels and boarding houses--20 | | | bath-houses under public | | | control. | | |Yellowstone, | Northwestern | 3, 348 | More geysers than in all rest1872 | Wyoming | | of world together--Boiling | | | springs--Mud | | | volcanoes--Petrified | | | forests--Grand Canyon of the | | | Yellowstone, remarkable for | | | gorgeous coloring--Large | | | lakes--Many large streams and | | | waterfalls--Greatest wild bird | | | and animal preserve in world. | | |Sequoia, 1890 | Middle eastern | 252 | The Big Tree National | California | | Park--12, 000 sequoia trees | | | over 10 feet in diameter, some | | | 25 to 36 feet in | | | diameter--Towering mountain | | | ranges--Startling | | | precipices--Large limestone | | | cave. | | |Yosemite, 1890 | Middle eastern | 1, 125 | Valley of world-famed | California | | beauty--Lofty cliffs--Romantic | | | vistas--Many waterfalls of | | | extraordinary height--3 groves | | | of big trees--High | | | Sierra--Waterwheel falls. | | |General Grant, | Middle eastern | 4 | Created to preserve the1890 | California | | celebrated General Grant | | | Tree, 35 feet in diameter--6 | | | miles from Sequoia National | | | Park. | | |Mount Rainier, | West central | 324 | Largest accessible single peak1899 | Washington | | glacier system--28 glaciers, | | | some of large size--48 square | | | miles of glacier, 50 to 500 | | | feet thick--Wonderful | | | sub-alpine wild flower fields. | | |Crater Lake, | Southwestern | 249 | Lake of extraordinary blue in1902 | Oregon | | crater of extinct | | | volcano--Sides 1, 000 feet | | | high--Interesting lava | | | formations. | | |Wind Cave, 1903| South Dakota | 17 | Cavern having many miles of | | | galleries and numerous chambers | | | containing peculiar formations. | | |Platt, 1904 | S. Oklahoma | 1-1/3 | Many sulphur and other springs | | | possessing medicinal value. | | |Sullys Hill, | North Dakota | 1-1/5 | Small park with woods, streams, 1904 | | | and a lake--Is an important | | | wild animal preserve. | | |Mesa Verde, | S. W. Colorado | 77 | Most notable and best preserved1906 | | | prehistoric cliff dwellings in | | | United States, if not in the | | | world. | | |Glacier, 1910 | Northwestern | 1, 534 | Rugged mountain region of | Montana | | unsurpassed Alpine | | | character--250 glacier-fed | | | lakes of romantic beauty--60 | | | small glaciers--Sensational | | | scenery of marked | | | individuality. | | |Rocky Mountain, | North middle | 398 | Heart of the Rockies--Snowy1915 | Colorado | | range, peaks 11, 000 to 14, 250 | | | feet altitude--Remarkable | | | records of glacial period. | | |Hawaii, 1916 | Hawaiian Islands| 118 | Three separate volcanic | | | areas--Kilauea and Mauna Loa on | | | Hawaii; Haleakala on Maui. | | |Lassen Volcanic| Northern | 124 | Only active volcano in United1916 | California | | States proper--Lassen Peak | | | 10, 465 feet--Cinder Cone 6, 879 | | | feet--Hot springs--Mud geysers. | | |Mount McKinley, | South central | 2, 200 | Highest mountain in North1917 | Alaska | | America--Rises higher above | | | surrounding country than any | | | other mountain in world. | | |Grand Canyon, | North central | 958 | The greatest example of erosion1919 | Arizona | | and the most sublime spectacle | | | in the world--One mile deep and | | | eight to twelve miles | | | wide--Brilliantly colored. | | |Lafayette, 1919| Maine Coast | 8 | The group of granite mountains | | | on Mount Desert Island. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another distinction which should be made is the difference between anational park and a national monument. The one is an area of sizecreated by Congress upon the assumption that it is a supreme example ofits kind and with the purpose of developing it for public occupancy andenjoyment. The other is made by presidential proclamation to conserve anarea or object which is historically, ethnologically, or scientificallyimportant. Size is not considered, and development is not contemplated. The distinction is often lost in practice. Casa Grande is essentially anational monument, but had the status of a national park until 1918. TheGrand Canyon, from every point of view a national park, was created anational monument and remained such until 1919. THE GRANITE NATIONAL PARKS GRANITE'S PART IN SCENERY The granite national parks are Yosemite, Sequoia, including the proposedRoosevelt Park, General Grant, Rocky Mountain, and Mount McKinley. Granite, as its name denotes, is granular in texture and appearance. Itis crystalline, which means that it is imperfectly crystallized. It iscomposed of quartz, feldspar, and mica in varying proportions, andincludes several common varieties which mineralogists distinguishscientifically by separate names. Because of its great range and abundance, its presence at the core ofmountain ranges where it is uncovered by erosion, its attractivecoloring, its massiveness and its vigorous personality, it figuresimportantly in scenery of magnificence the world over. In color granitevaries from light gray, when it shines like silver upon the highsummits, to warm rose or dark gray, the reds depending upon theproportion of feldspar in its composition. It produces scenic effects very different indeed from those resultingfrom volcanic and sedimentary rocks. While it bulks hugely in the highermountains, running to enormous rounded masses below the level of theglaciers, and to jagged spires and pinnacled walls upon the loftiestpeaks, it is found also in many regions of hill and plain. It is one ofour commonest American rocks. Much of the loftiest and noblest scenery of the world is wrought ingranite. The Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas, all of which areworld-celebrated for their lofty grandeur, are prevailingly granite. They abound in towering peaks, bristling ridges, and terrifyingprecipices. Their glacial cirques are girt with fantastically toothedand pinnacled walls. This is true of all granite ranges which are lofty enough to maintainglaciers. These are, in fact, the very characteristics of Alpine, Andean, Himalayan, Sierran, Alaskan, and Rocky Mountain summitlandscape. It is why granite mountains are the favorites of those daringclimbers whose ambition is to equal established records and make newones; and this in turn is why some mountain neighborhoods become so muchmore celebrated than others which are quite as fine, or finer--because, I mean, of the publicity given to this kind of mountain climbing, and ofthe unwarranted assumption that the mountains associated with theseexploits necessarily excel others in sublimity. As a matter of fact, theaccident of fashion has even more to do with the fame of mountains thanof men. But by no means all granite mountains are lofty. The White Mountains, for example, which parallel our northeastern coast, and are far olderthan the Rockies and the Sierra, are a low granite range, with few ofthe characteristics of those mountains which lift their heads among theperpetual snows. On the contrary, they tend to rounded forested summitsand knobby peaks. This results in part from a longer subjection of therock surface to the eroding influence of successive frosts and rainsthan is the case with high ranges which are perpetually locked in frost. Besides, the ice sheets which planed off the northern part of the UnitedStates lopped away their highest parts. There are also millions of square miles of eroded granite which are notmountains at all. These tend to rolling surfaces. The scenic forms assumed by granite will be better appreciated when oneunderstands how it enters landscape. The principal one of many igneousrocks, it is liquefied under intense heat and afterward cooled underpressure. Much of the earth's crust was once underlaid by granites in amore or less fluid state. When terrific internal pressures caused theearth's crust to fold and make mountains, this liquefied granite invadedthe folds and pushed close up under the highest elevations. There itcooled. Thousands of centuries later, when erosion had worn away thesemountain crests, there lay revealed the solid granite core which frostand glacier have since transformed into the bristling ramparts ofto-day's landscape. II YOSEMITE, THE INCOMPARABLE YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, MIDDLE EASTERN CALIFORNIA. AREA, 1, 125 SQUAREMILES The first emotion inspired by the sight of Yosemite is surprise. Noprevious preparation makes the mind ready for the actual revelation. Thehardest preliminary reading and the closest study of photographs, evenfamiliarity with other mountains as lofty, or loftier, fail to dullone's first astonishment. Hard on the heels of astonishment comes realization of the park'ssupreme beauty. It is of its own kind, without comparison, as individualas that of the Grand Canyon or the Glacier National Park. No singlevisit will begin to reveal its sublimity; one must go away and return tolook again with rested eyes. Its devotees grow in appreciative enjoymentwith repeated summerings. Even John Muir, life student, interpreter, andapostle of the Sierra, confessed toward the close of his many years thatthe Valley's quality of loveliness continued to surprise him at eachrenewal. And lastly comes the higher emotion which is born of knowledge. It isonly when one reads in these inspired rocks the stirring story of theirmaking that pleasure reaches its fulness. The added joy of thecollector upon finding that the unsigned canvas, which he bought onlyfor its beauty, is the lost work of a great master, and was associatedwith the romance of a famous past is here duplicated. Written historynever was more romantic nor more graphically told than that which Naturehas inscribed upon the walls of these vast canyons, domes and monolithsin a language which man has learned to read. I The Yosemite National Park lies on the western slope of the SierraNevada Mountains in California, nearly east of San Francisco. The snowycrest of the Sierra, bellying irregularly eastward to a climax among thejagged granites and gale-swept glaciers of Mount Lyell, forms itseastern boundary. From this the park slopes rapidly thirty miles or morewestward to the heart of the warm luxuriant zone of the giant sequoias. This slope includes in its eleven hundred and twenty-five square milessome of the highest scenic examples in the wide gamut of Sierragrandeur. It is impossible to enter it without exaltation of spirit, ordescribe it without superlative. A very large proportion of Yosemite's visitors see nothing more than theValley, yet no consideration is tenable which conceives the Valley asother than a small part of the national park. The two are inseparable. One does not speak of knowing the Louvre who has seen only the Venus deMilo, or St. Mark's who has looked only upon its horses. Considered as a whole, the park is a sagging plain of solid granite, hung from Sierra's saw-toothed crest, broken into divides and transversemountain ranges, punctured by volcanic summits, gashed and bitten byprehistoric glaciers, dotted near its summits with glacial lakes, furrowed by innumerable cascading streams which combine in singingrivers, which, in turn, furrow greater canyons, some of majestic depthand grandeur. It is a land of towering spires and ambitious summits, serrated cirques, enormous isolated rock masses, rounded granite domes, polished granite pavements, lofty precipices, and long, shimmeringwaterfalls. Bare and gale-ridden near its crest, the park descends in thirty milesthrough all the zones and gradations of animal and vegetable lifethrough which one would pass in travelling from the ice-bound shores ofthe Arctic Ocean the continent's length to Mariposa Grove. Its treesequence tells the story. Above timber-line there are none but inch-highwillows and flat, piney growths, mingled with tiny arctic flowers, whichshrink in size with elevation; even the sheltered spots on Lyell's loftysummit have their colored lichens, and their almost microscopic bloom. At timber-line, low, wiry shrubs interweave their branches to defy thegales, merging lower down into a tangle of many stunted growths, fromwhich spring twisted pines and contorted spruces, which the winds curveto leeward or bend at sharp angles, or spread in full development asprostrate upon the ground as the mountain lion's skin upon the homefloor of his slayer. Descending into the great area of the Canadian zone, with its thousandwild valleys, its shining lakes, its roaring creeks and plunging rivers, the zone of the angler, the hiker, and the camper-out, we enter forestsof various pines, of silver fir, hemlock, aged hump-backed juniper, andthe species of white pine which Californians wrongly call tamarack. This is the paradise of outdoor living; it almost never rains betweenJune and October. The forests fill the valley floors, thinning rapidlyas they climb the mountain slopes; they spot with pine green the broad, shining plateaus, rooting where they find the soil, leaving unclothedinnumerable glistening areas of polished uncracked granite; a strikingcharacteristic of Yosemite uplands. From an altitude of seven or eightthousand feet, the Canadian zone forests begin gradually to merge intothe richer forests of the Transition zone below. The towering sugarpine, the giant yellow pine, the Douglas fir, and a score of deciduousgrowths--live oaks, bays, poplars, dogwoods, maples--begin to appear andbecome more frequent with descent, until, two thousand feet or morebelow, they combine into the bright stupendous forests where, inspecially favored groves, King Sequoia holds his royal court. Wild flowers, birds, and animals also run the gamut of the zones. Amongthe snows and alpine flowerets of the summits are found the ptarmiganand rosy finch of the Arctic circle, and in the summit cirques and onthe shores of the glacial lakes whistles the mountain marmot. The richness and variety of wild flower life in all zones, each of itscharacteristic kind, astonishes the visitor new to the Americanwilderness. Every meadow is ablaze with gorgeous coloring, every copseand sunny hollow, river bank and rocky bottom, becomes painted in turnthe hue appropriate to the changing seasons. Now blues prevail in thekaleidoscopic display, now pinks, now reds, now yellows. Experience ofother national parks will show that the Yosemite is no exception; allare gardens of wild flowers. The Yosemite and the Sequoia are, however, the exclusive possessorsamong the parks of a remarkably showy flowering plant, the brilliant, rare, snow-plant. So luring is the red pillar which the snow-plant liftsa foot or more above the shady mould, and so easily is it destroyed, that, to keep it from extinction, the government fines covetous visitorsfor every flower picked. The birds are those of California--many, prolific, and songful. Ducksraise their summer broods fearlessly on the lakes. Geese visit fromtheir distant homes. Cranes and herons fish the streams. Every tree hasits soloist, every forest its grand chorus. The glades resound with thetapping of woodpeckers. The whirr of startled wings accompanies passagethrough every wood. To one who has lingered in the forests to watch andto listen, it is hard to account for the wide-spread fable that theYosemite is birdless. No doubt, happy talkative tourists, in companiesand regiments, afoot and mounted, drive bird and beast alike to silentcover--and comment on the lifeless forests. "The whole range, fromfoothill to summit, is shaken into song every summer, " wrote John Muir, to whom birds were the loved companions of a lifetime of Sierra summers, "and, though low and thin in winter, the music never ceases. " There are two birds which the unhurried traveller will soon know well. One is the big, noisy, gaudy Clark crow, whose swift flight andcompanionable squawk are familiar to all who tour the higher levels. Theother is the friendly camp robber, who, with encouragement, not onlywill share your camp luncheon, but will gobble the lion's share. Of the many wild animals, ranging in size from the great, powerful, timid grizzly bear, now almost extinct here, whose Indian name, by theway, is Yosemite, to the tiny shrew of the lowlands, the most frequentlyseen are the black or brown bear, and the deer, both of which, ascompared with their kind in neighborhoods where hunting is permitted, are unterrified if not friendly. Notwithstanding its able protection, the Yosemite will need generations to recover from the hideous slaughterwhich, in a score or two of years, denuded America of her splendidheritage of wild animal life. Of the several carnivora, the coyote alone is occasionally seen byvisitors. Wolves and mountain lions, prime enemies of the deer andmountain sheep, are hard to find, even when officially hunted in thewinter with dogs trained for the purpose. II The Yosemite Valley is the heart of the national park. Not only is itthe natural entrance and abiding place, the living-room, so to speak, the central point from which all parts of the park are most comfortablyaccessible; it is also typical in some sense of the Sierra as a whole, and is easily the most beautiful valley in the world. It is difficult to analyze the quality of the Valley's beauty. Thereare, as Muir says, "many Yosemites" in the Sierra. The Hetch HetchyValley, in the northern part of the park, which bears the same relationto the Tuolumne River that the Yosemite Valley bears to the Merced, isscarcely less in size, richness, and the height and magnificence of itscarved walls. Scores of other valleys, similar except for size, aboundnorth and south, which are, scientifically and in Muir's meaning, Yosemites; that is, they are pauses in their rivers' headlong rush, oncelakes, dug by rushing waters, squared and polished by succeedingglaciers, chiselled and ornamented by the frosts and rains whichpreceded and followed the glaciers. Muir is right, for all these areYosemites; but he is wrong, for there is only one Yosemite. It is not the giant monoliths that establish the incomparable Valley'sworld supremacy; Hetch Hetchy, Tehipite, Kings, and others have theirgiants, too. It is not its towering, perpendicular, serrated walls; theSierra has elsewhere, too, an overwhelming exhibit of titanic granitecarvings. It is not its waterfalls, though these are the highest, byfar, in the world, nor its broad, peaceful bottoms, nor its dramaticvistas, nor the cavernous depths of its tortuous tributary canyons. Itssecret is selection and combination. Like all supremacy, Yosemite's liesin the inspired proportioning of carefully chosen elements. Herein isits real wonder, for the more carefully one analyzes the beauty of theYosemite Valley, the more difficult it is to conceive its ensemble thechance of Nature's functioning rather than the master product of supremeartistry. Entrance to the Yosemite by train is from the west, by automobile fromeast and west both. From whatever direction, the Valley is the firstobjective, for the hotels are there. It is the Valley, then, which wemust see first. Nature's artistic contrivance is apparent even in theentrance. The train-ride from the main line at Merced is a constantup-valley progress, from a hot, treeless plain to the heart of thegreat, cool forest. Expectation keeps pace. Changing to automobile at ElPortal, one quickly enters the park. A few miles of forest andbehold--the Gates of the Valley. El Capitan, huge, glistening, risesupon the left, 3, 000 feet above the valley floor. At first sight itsbulk almost appalls. Opposite upon the right Cathedral Rocks support theBridal Veil Fall, shimmering, filmy, a fairy thing. Between them, in thedistance, lies the unknown. Progress up the valley makes constantly for climax. Seen presentlybroadside on, El Capitan bulks double, at least. Opposite, the valleybellies. Cathedral Rocks and the mediæval towers known as CathedralSpires, are enclosed in a bay, which culminates in the impressive needleknown as Sentinel Rock--all richly Gothic. Meantime the broadenedvalley, another strong contrast in perfect key, delightfully alternateswith forest and meadow, and through it the quiet Merced twists anddoubles like a glistening snake. And then we come to the Three Brothers. Already some notion of preconception has possessed the observer. Itcould not have been chance which set off the filmy Bridal Veil againstEl Capitan's bulk; which designed the Gothic climax of Sentinel Rock;which wondrously proportioned the consecutive masses of the ThreeBrothers; which made El Capitan, now looked back upon against a newbackground, a new and appropriate creation, a thing of brilliance andbeauty instead of bulk, mighty of mass, powerful in shape and poise, yetmysteriously delicate and unreal. As we pass on with rapidly increasingexcitement to the supreme climax at the Valley's head, where gathertogether Glacier Point, Yosemite Falls of unbelievable height andgraciousness, the Royal Arches, manifestly a carving, the gulf-likeentrances of Tenaya and the Merced Canyons, and above all, and pervadingall, the distinguished mysterious personality of Half Dome, presidingpriest of this Cathedral of Beauty, again there steals over us theuneasy suspicion of supreme design. How could Nature have happened uponthe perfect composition, the flawless technique, the divine inspirationof this masterpiece of more than human art? Is it not, in fact, themaster temple of the Master Architect? [Illustration: _From a photograph by J. T. Boysen_ EL CAPITAN, SURVIVOR OF THE GLACIERS Looking eastward up the Yosemite Valley, Half Dome is seen on the righthorizon] To appreciate the Valley we must consider certain details. It is eightmiles long, and from half a mile to a mile wide. Once prehistoric LakeYosemite, its floor is as level as a ball field, and except foroccasional meadows, grandly forested. The sinuous Merced is forested toits edges in its upper reaches, but lower down occasionally wandersthrough broad, blooming opens. The rock walls are dark pearl-huedgranite, dotted with pines wherever clefts or ledges exist capable ofsupporting them; even El Capitan carries its pine-tree half way up itssmooth precipice. Frequently the walls are sheer; they look soeverywhere. The valley's altitude is 4, 000 feet. The walls rise from2, 000 to 6, 000 feet higher; the average is a little more than 3, 000 feetabove the valley floor; Sentinel Dome and Mount Watkins somewhat exceed4, 000 feet; Half Dome nearly attains 5, 000 feet; Cloud's Rest soarsnearly 6, 000 feet. Two large trench-like canyons enter the valley at its head, one oneither side of Half Dome. Tenaya Canyon enters from the east in linewith the valley, looking as if it were the Valley's upper reach. MercedCanyon enters from the south after curving around the east and southsides of Half Dome. Both are extremely deep. Half Dome's 5, 000 feet formone side of each canyon; Mount Watkin's 4, 300 feet form the north sideof Tenaya Canyon, Glacier Point's 3, 200 feet the west side of MercedCanyon. Both canyons are superbly wooded at their outlets, and leadrapidly up to timber-line. Both carry important trails from the Valleyfloor to the greater park above the rim. To this setting add the waterfalls and the scene is complete. They arethe highest in the world. Each is markedly individualized; no tworesemble each other. Yet, with the exception of the Vernal Fall, allhave a common note; all are formed of comparatively small streamsdropping from great heights; all are wind-blown ribbons ending in cloudsof mist. They are so distributed that one or more are visible from mostparts of the Valley and its surrounding rim. More than any otherfeature, they differentiate and distinguish the Yosemite. The first of the falls encountered, Bridal Veil, is a perfect example ofthe valley type. A small stream pouring over a perpendicular wall dropssix hundred and twenty feet into a volume of mist. The mist, of course, is the bridal veil. How much of the water reaches the bottom as water isa matter of interesting speculation. This and the condensed mists reachthe river through a delta of five small brooks. As a spectacle theBridal Veil Fall is unsurpassed. The delicacy of its beauty, even in thehigh water of early summer, is unequalled by any waterfall I have seen. A rainbow frequently gleams like a colored rosette in the massed chiffonof the bride's train. So pleasing are its proportions that it isdifficult to believe the fall nearly four times the height of Niagara. [Illustration: _From a photograph by J. T. Boysen_ HALF DOME, YOSEMITE'S HOODED MONK Rising nearly four thousand feet above the valley floor; the view is upTenaya Canyon to the High Sierra] The Ribbon Fall, directly opposite Bridal Veil, a little west of ElCapitan, must be mentioned because for a while in early spring itssixteen hundred foot drop is a spectacle of remarkable grandeur. It ismerely the run of a snow-field which disappears in June. Thereafter adark perpendicular stain on the cliff marks its position. Another minorfall, this from the south rim, is that of Sentinel Creek. It is seenfrom the road at the right of Sentinel Rock, dropping five hundred feetin one leap of several which aggregate two thousand feet. Next in progress come Yosemite Falls, loftiest by far in the world, aspectacle of sublimity. These falls divide with Half Dome the honors ofthe upper Valley. The tremendous plunge of the Upper Fall, and themagnificence of the two falls in apparent near continuation as seen fromthe principal points of elevation on the valley floor, form a spectacleof extraordinary distinction. They vie with Yosemite's two great rocks, El Capitan and Half Dome, for leadership among the individual scenicfeatures of the continent. The Upper Fall pours over the rim at a point nearly twenty-six hundredfeet above the valley floor. Its sheer drop is fourteen hundred andthirty feet, the equal of nine Niagaras. Two-fifths of a mile south ofits foot, the Lower Fall drops three hundred and twenty feet more. Fromthe crest of the Upper Fall to the foot of the Lower Fall lacks a littleof half a mile. From the foot of the Lower Fall, after foaming down thetalus, Yosemite Creek, seeming a ridiculously small stream to haveproduced so monstrous a spectacle, slips quietly across a half mile oflevel valley to lose itself in the Merced. From the floods of late May when the thunder of falling water fills thevalley and windows rattle a mile away, to the October drought when theslender ribbon is little more than mist, the Upper Yosemite Fall is athing of many moods and infinite beauty. Seen from above and opposite atGlacier Point, sideways and more distantly from the summit of Cloud'sRest, straight on from the valley floor, upwards from the foot of theLower Fall, upwards again from its own foot, and downwards from theoverhanging brink toward which the creek idles carelessly to the verystep-off of its fearful leap, the Fall never loses for a moment itspower to amaze. It draws and holds the eye as the magnet does the iron. Looking up from below one is fascinated by the extreme leisureliness ofits motion. The water does not seem to fall; it floats; a pebble droppedalongside surely would reach bottom in half the time. Speculating uponthis appearance, one guesses that the air retards the water's drop, butthis idea is quickly dispelled by the observation that the solid innerbody drops no faster than the outer spray. It is long before thewondering observer perceives that he is the victim of an illusion; thatthe water falls normally; that it appears to descend with less thannatural speed only because of the extreme height of the fall, the eyenaturally applying standards to which it has been accustomed in viewingfalls of ordinary size. On windy days the Upper Fall swings from the brink like a pendulum ofsilver and mist. Back and forth it lashes like a horse's tail. The gustslop off puffy clouds of mist which dissipate in air. Muir tells ofpowerful winter gales driving head on against the cliff, which break thefall in its middle and hold it in suspense. Once he saw the wind doublethe fall back over its own brink. Muir, by the way, once tried to passbehind the Upper Fall at its foot, but was nearly crushed. By contrast with the lofty temperamental Upper Fall, the Lower Fallappears a smug and steady pigmy. In such company, for both are alwaysseen together, it is hard to realize that the Lower Fall is twice theheight of Niagara. Comparing Yosemite's three most conspicuous features, these gigantic falls seem to appeal even more to the imagination than tothe sense of beauty. El Capitan, on the other hand, suggests majesty, order, proportion, and power; it has its many devotees. Half Domesuggests mystery; to many it symbolizes worship. Of these three, HalfDome easily is the most popular. Three more will complete the Valley's list of notable waterfalls. Allof these lie up the Merced Canyon. Illilouette, three hundred andseventy feet in height, enters from the west, a frothing fall of greatbeauty, hard to see. Vernal and Nevada Falls carry the Merced River oversteep steps in its rapid progress from the upper levels to the valleyfloor. The only exception to the valley type, Vernal Fall, which someconsider the most beautiful of all, and which certainly is theprettiest, is a curtain of water three hundred and seventeen feet high, and of pleasing breadth. The Nevada Fall, three-fifths of a mile above, a majestic drop of nearly six hundred feet, shoots watery rockets fromits brink. It is full-run, powerful, impressive, and highlyindividualized. With many it is the favorite waterfall of Yosemite. In sharp contrast with these valley scenes is the view from GlacierPoint down into the Merced and Tenaya Canyons, and out over the magicalpark landscape to the snow-capped mountains of the High Sierra. Twotrails lead from the valley up to Glacier Point, and high upon theprecipice, three thousand feet above the valley floor, is a picturesquehotel; it is also reached by road. Here one may sit at ease on shadyporches and overlook one of the most extended, varied and romantic viewsin the world of scenery. One may take dinner on this porch and havesunset served with dessert and the afterglow with coffee. Here again one is haunted by the suggestion of artistic intention, sohappy is the composition of this extraordinary picture. The foregroundis the dark, tremendous gulf of Merced Canyon, relieved by the silvershimmer of Vernal and Nevada Falls. From this in middle distance rises, in the centre of the canvas, the looming tremendous personality of HalfDome, here seen in profile strongly suggesting a monk with outstretchedarms blessing the valley at close of day. Beyond stretches the horizonof famous, snowy, glacier-shrouded mountains, golden in sunset glow. III Every summer many thousands of visitors gather in Yosemite. Most ofthem, of course, come tourist-fashion, to glimpse it all in a day or twoor three. A few thousands come for long enough to taste most of it, orreally to see a little. Fewer, but still increasingly many, are thosewho come to live a little with Yosemite; among these we find the loversof nature, the poets, the seers, the dreamers, and the students. Living is very pleasant in the Yosemite. The freedom from storm duringthe long season, the dry warmth of the days and the coldness of thenights, the inspiration of the surroundings and the completeness of theequipment for the comfort of visitors make it extraordinary amongmountain resorts. There is a hotel in the Valley, and another upon therim at Glacier Point. There are three large hotel-camps in the Valley, where one may have hotel comforts under canvas at camp prices. Two ofthese hotel-camps possess swimming pools, dancing pavilions, tenniscourts electrically lighted for night play, hot and cold-water tubs andshowers, and excellent table service. One of the hotel-camps, thelargest, provides evening lectures, song services, and a generalatmosphere suggestive of Chatauqua. Still a third is for those whoprefer quiet retirement and the tradition of old-fashioned camp life. Above the valley rim, besides the excellent hotel upon Glacier Point, there are at this writing hotel-camps equipped with many hotel comforts, including baths, at such outlying points as Merced Lake and Tenaya Lake;the former centering the mountain climbing and trout fishing of thestupendous region on the southwest slope of the park, and the latter thekey to the entire magnificent region of the Tuolumne. These camps arereached by mountain trail, Tenaya Lake Camp also by motor road. Thehotel-camp system is planned for wide extension as growing demandwarrants. There are also hotels outside park limits on the south andwest which connect with the park roads and trails. The roads, by the way, are fair. Three enter from the west, centering atYosemite Village in the Valley; one from the south by way of thecelebrated Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias; one from El Portal, terminus of the Yosemite Railway; and one from the north, by way ofseveral smaller sequoia groves, connecting directly with the Tioga Road. Above the valley rim and north of it, the Tioga Road crosses thenational park and emerges at Mono Lake on the east, having crossed theSierra over Tioga Pass on the park boundary. The Tioga Road, which wasbuilt in 1881, on the site of the Mono Trail, to connect a gold minewest of what has since become the national park with roads east of theSierra, was purchased in 1915 by patriotic lovers of the Yosemite andgiven to the Government. The mine having soon failed, the road had beenimpassable for many years. Repaired with government money it has becomethe principal highway of the park and the key to its future development. The increase in motor travel to the Yosemite from all parts of thecountry which began the summer following the Great War, has made thisgift one of growing importance. It affords a new route across theSierra. But hotels and hotel-camps, while accommodating the great majority ofvisitors, by no means shelter all. Those who camp out under their owncanvas are likely to be Yosemite's most appreciative devotees. Thecamping-out colony lives in riverside groves in the upper reaches of theValley, the Government assigning locations without charge. Many familiesmake permanent summer homes here, storing equipment between seasons inthe village. Others hire equipment complete, from tents to salt-cellars, on the spot. Some who come to the hotels finish the season under hiredcanvas, and next season come with their own. An increasing number comein cars, which they keep in local garages or park near their canvashomes. Living is easy and not expensive in these camp homes. Middaytemperatures are seasonable, and nights are always cool. As it does notrain, tents are concessions to habit; many prefer sleeping under thetrees. Markets in the village supply meats, vegetables, milk, bread, andgroceries at prices regulated by Government, and deliver them at yourkitchen tent. Shops furnish all other reasonable needs. It is notcamping out as commonly conceived; you are living at home on the banksof the Merced, under the morning shadow of Half Dome, and within sightof Yosemite Falls. From these Valley homes one rides into the High Sierra on horses hiredfrom the government concessioner, tours to the Tuolumne Meadows or theMariposa Grove by automobile, wanders long summer afternoons in theValley, climbs the great rocks and domes, picnics by moonlight under theshimmering falls or beneath the shining tower of El Capitan, exploresfamous fishing waters above the rim, and, on frivolous evenings, dancesor looks at motion pictures at the greater hotel-camps. No wonder that camp homes in the Yosemite are growing in popularity. IV The trail traveller finds the trails the best in the country, and asgood as the best in the world; they are the models for the nationalsystem. Competent guides, horses, supplies, and equipment are easy tohire at regulated prices in the village. As for the field, there is none nobler or more varied in the world. There are dozens of divides, scores of towering, snow-splashed peaks, hundreds of noble valleys and shining lakes, thousands of cascadingstreams, great and small, from whose depths fighting trout rise to thecast fly. There are passes to be crossed which carry one throughconcentric cirques of toothed granite to ridges from which the HighSierra spreads before the eye a frothing sea of snowy peaks. Such a trip is that through Tuolumne Meadows up Lyell Canyon to itsheadwaters, over the Sierra at Donohue Pass, and up into the birthchambers of rivers among the summit glaciers of Lyell and McClure--anever-to-be-forgotten journey, which may be continued, if one has timeand equipment, down the John Muir Trail to Mount Whitney and the SequoiaNational Park. Or one may return to the park by way of Banner Peak andThousand Island Lake, a wonder spot, and thence north over Parker andMono Passes; trips like these produce views as magnificent as the landpossesses. Space does not permit even the suggestion of the possibilities to thetrail traveller of this wonderland above the rim. It is the summerplayground for a nation. Second in magnificence among the park valleys is Hetch Hetchy, theYosemite of the north. Both are broad, flowered and forested levelsbetween lofty granite walls. Both are accented by gigantic rockpersonalities. Kolana Rock, which guards Hetch Hetchy at its westerngateway as El Capitan guards Yosemite, must be ranked in the same class. Were there no Yosemite Valley, Hetch Hetchy, though it lacks thedistinction which gives Yosemite Valley its world-wide fame, would bemuch better known than it now is--a statement also true about otherfeatures of the national park. Hetch Hetchy is now being dammed below Kolana Rock to supply water forSan Francisco. The dam will be hidden from common observation, and thetimber lands to be flooded will be cut so as to avoid the unsightlinessusual with artificial reservoirs in forested areas. The reservoir willcover one of the most beautiful bottoms in America. It will destroyforests of luxuriance. It will replace these with a long sinuous lake, from which sheer Yosemite-like granite walls will rise abruptly two orthree thousand feet. There will be places where the edges are forested. Down into this lake from the high rim will cascade many roaring streams. The long fight in California, in the press of the whole country, andfinally in Congress, between the advocates of the Hetch Hetchy reservoirand the defenders of the scenic wilderness is one of the stirringepisodes in the history of our national parks. At this writing, timeenough has not yet passed to heal the wounds of battle, but at least wemay look calmly at what remains. One consideration, at least, affords alittle comfort. Hetch Hetchy was once, in late prehistoric times, anatural lake of great nobility. The remains of Nature's dam, not farfrom the site of man's, are plain to the geologist's eye. It is possiblethat, with care in building the dam and clearing out the trees to besubmerged, this restoration of one of Nature's noble features of thepast may not work out so inappropriately as once we feared. [Illustration: _From a photograph by J. T. Boysen_ THE CLIMAX OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK Mount Lyell and its glacier from Lyell Fork] [Illustration: THE GREATEST WATERWHEEL OF THE TUOLUMNE It is fifty feet in height and seventy-five feet long; Yosemite NationalPark] The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, through which the river descends fromthe level of the Tuolumne Meadows almost five thousand feet to the HetchHetchy Valley, possesses real Yosemite grandeur. Much of this enormousdrop occurs within a couple of amazing miles west of the CaliforniaFalls. Here the river slips down sharply tilted granite slopes atbreathless speed, breaking into cascades and plunging over waterfalls atfrequent intervals. It is a stupendous spectacle which few but thehardiest mountaineers saw previous to 1918, so steep and difficult wasthe going. During that season a trail was opened which makes accessibleto all one of the most extraordinary examples of plunging water in theworld. The climax of this spectacle is the Waterwheels. Granite obstructions inthe bed of the steeply tilted river throw solid arcs of frothing waterfifty feet in air. They occur near together, singly and in groups. V The fine camping country south of the Yosemite Valley also offers itssensation. At its most southern point, the park accomplishes its forestclimax in the Mariposa Grove. This group of giant sequoias (Sequoiawashingtoniana) ranks next, in the number and magnificence of its trees, to the Giant Forest of the Sequoia National Park and the General Grantgrove. The largest tree of the Mariposa Grove is the Grizzly Giant, which has adiameter of twenty-nine feet, a circumference of sixty-four feet, and aheight of two hundred and four feet. One may guess its age from threethousand to thirty-two hundred years. It is the third in size and age ofliving sequoias; General Sherman, the largest and oldest, has a diameterof thirty-six and a half feet, and General Grant a diameter ofthirty-five feet, and neither of these, in all probability, has attainedthe age of four thousand years. General Sherman grows in the SequoiaNational Park, seventy miles or more south of Yosemite; General Granthas a little national park of its own a few miles west of Sequoia. The interested explorer of the Yosemite has so far enjoyed a wonderfullyvaried sequence of surprises. The incomparable valley with its toweringmonoliths and extraordinary waterfalls, the High Sierra with itsglaciers, serrated cirques and sea of snowy peaks, the Grand Canyon ofthe Tuolumne with its cascades, rushing river and frothing Waterwheels, are but the headliners of a long catalogue of the unexpected andextraordinary. It only remains, to complete this new tale of the ArabianNights, to make one's first visit to the sequoias of Mariposa Grove. Thefirst sight of the calm tremendous columns which support the lofty roofof this forest temple provokes a new sensation. Unconsciously thevisitor removes his hat and speaks his praise in whispers. The sequoias are considered at greater length in the chapter describingthe Sequoia National Park, which was created especially to conserve andexhibit more than a million of these most interesting of trees. It willsuffice here to say that their enormous stems are purplish red, thattheir fine, lace-like foliage hangs in splendid heavy plumes, that theirenormous limbs crook at right angles, the lowest from a hundred to ahundred and fifty feet above the ground, and that all other trees, eventhe gigantic sugar pine and Douglas fir, are dwarfed in their presence. Several of the sequoias of the Mariposa grove approach three hundredfeet in height. The road passes through the trunk of one. VI The human history of the Yosemite is quickly told. The country north ofthe Valley was known from early times by explorers and trappers who usedthe old Mono Indian Trail, now the Tioga Road, which crossed the divideover Mono Pass. But, though the trail approached within a very few milesof the north rim of the Yosemite Valley, the valley was not discoveredtill 1851, when Captain Boling of the Mariposa Battalion, a volunteerorganization for the protection of settlers, entered it from the west inpursuit of Indians who had raided mining settlements in the foothills. These savages were known as the Yosemite or Grizzly Bear Indians. Tenaya, their chief, met their pursuers on the uplands and besought themto come no further. But Captain Boling pushed on through the heavysnows, and on March 21, entered the valley, which proved to be theIndians' final stronghold. Their villages, however, were deserted. The original inhabitants of the Valley were called the Ahwahneechees, the Indian name for the Valley being Ahwahnee, meaning a deep grassycanyon. The Ahwahneechees, previous to Captain Boling's expedition, hadbeen decimated by war and disease. The new tribe, the Yosemites, orGrizzly Bears, was made up of their remainder, with Monos and Piutesadded. Captain Boling's report of the beauty of the valley having beenquestioned, he returned during the summer to prove his assertions to afew doubters. Nevertheless, there were no further visitors until 1853, when Robert B. Stinson of Mariposa led in a hunting-party. Two yearslater J. M. Hutchings, who was engaged in writing up the beauties ofCalifornia for the _California Magazine_, brought the first tourists;the second, a party of sixteen, followed later the same year. Pleasure travel to the Yosemite Valley may be said to have commencedwith 1856, the year the first house was built. This house was enlargedin 1858 by Hite and Beardsley and used for a hotel. Sullivan and Cushmansecured it for a debt the following year, and it was operated in turn byPeck, Longhurst, and Hutchings until 1871. Meantime J. C. Lamon settledin 1860, the first actual resident of the valley, an honor which he didnot share with others for four years. The fame of the valley spread over the country and in 1864 Congressgranted to the State of California "the Cleft or Gorge of the GranitePeak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains" known as the Yosemite Valley, withthe understanding that all income derived from it should be spent forimproving the reservation or building a road to it. The Mariposa BigTree Grove was also granted at the same time. California carefullyfulfilled her charge. The Yosemite Valley became world-famous, and in1890 the Yosemite National Park was created. VII The Yosemite's geological history is much more thrilling. Everyone whosees it asks, How did Nature make the Yosemite Valley? Was it split byearth convulsions or scooped by glacier? Few ask what part was played bythe gentle Merced. The question of Yosemite's making has busied geologists from ProfessorWhitney of the University of California, who first studied the problem, down to F. E. Matthes, of the United States Geological Survey, whoserecent exhaustive studies have furnished the final solution. ProfessorWhitney maintained that glaciers never had entered the valley; he didnot even consider water erosion. At one time he held that the valleywas simply a cleft or rent in the earth's crust. At another time heimagined it formed by the sudden dropping back of a large block in thecourse of the convulsions that resulted in the uplift of the SierraNevada. Galen Clark, following him, carried on his idea of an origin byforce. Instead of the walls being cleft apart, however, he imagined theexplosion of close-set domes of molten rock the riving power, butconceived that ice and water erosion finished the job. With ClarenceKing the theory of glacial origin began its long career. John Muircarried this theory to its extreme. Since the period of Muir's speculations, the tremendous facts concerningthe part played by erosion in the modification of the earth's surfacestrata have been developed. Beginning with W. H. Turner, a group ofYosemite students under the modern influence worked upon the theory ofthe stream-cut valley modified by glaciers. The United States GeologicalSurvey then entered the field, and Matthes's minute investigationsfollowed; the manuscript of his monograph has helped me reconstruct thedramatic past. The fact is that the Yosemite Valley was cut from the solid granitenearly to its present depth by the Merced River; before the glaciersarrived, the river-cut valley was twenty-four hundred feet deep oppositeEl Capitan, and three thousand feet deep opposite Eagle Peak. The valleywas then V-shaped, and the present waterfalls were cascades; those whichare now the Yosemite Falls were eighteen hundred feet deep, and thoseof Sentinel Creek were two thousand feet deep. All this in pre-glacialtimes. Later on the glaciers of several successive epochs greatly widened thevalley, and measurably deepened it, making it U-shaped. The cascadesthen became waterfalls. But none will see the Yosemite Valley and its cavernous tributarycanyons without sympathizing a little with the early geologists. It isdifficult to imagine a gash so tremendous cut into solid granite byanything short of force. One can think of it gouged by massive glaciers, but to imagine it cut by water is at first inconceivable. To comprehend it we must first consider two geological facts. The firstis that no dawdling modern Merced cut this chasm, but a torrentconsiderably bigger; and that this roaring river swept at tremendousspeed down a sharply tilted bed, which it gouged deeper and deeper byfriction of the enormous masses of sand and granite fragments which itcarried down from the High Sierra. The second geological fact is thatthe Merced and Tenaya torrents sand-papered the deepening beds of thesecanyons day and night for several million years; which, when we rememberthe mile-deep canyons which the Colorado River and its confluents cutthrough a thousand or more miles of Utah and Arizona, is not beyondhuman credence, if not conception. But, objects the sceptical, the Merced couldn't keep always tilted; intime it would cut down to a level and slow up; then the sand and gravelit was carrying would settle, and the stream stop its digging. Again, ifthe stream-cut valley theory is correct, why isn't every Sierra canyon aYosemite? Let us look for the answer in the Sierra's history. The present Sierra Nevada is not the first mountain chain upon its site. The granite which underlay the folds of the first Sierra are stilldisclosed in the walls of the Yosemite Valley. The granites whichunderlay the second and modern Sierra are seen in the towering heightsof the crest. Once these mountains overran a large part of our present far west. Theyformed a level and very broad and high plateau; or, more accurately, they tended to form such a plateau, but never quite succeeded, becauseits central section kept caving and sinking in some of its parts as fastas it lifted in others. Finally, in the course, perhaps, of somemillions of years, the entire central section settled several thousandfeet lower than its eastern and western edges; these edges it leftstanding steep and high. This sunken part is the Great Basin of to-day. The remaining eastern edge is the Wasatch Mountains; the remainingwestern edge is the Sierra. That is why the Sierra's eastern front risesso precipitously from the deserts of the Great Basin, while its westernside slopes gradually toward the Pacific. But other crust changes accompanied the sinking of the Great Basin. Theprincipal one was the rise, in a series of upward movements, of theremaining crest of the Sierra. These movements may have correspondedwith the sinkings of the Great Basin; both were due to tremendousinternal readjustments. And of course, whenever the Sierra crest lifted, it tilted more sharply the whole granite block of which it was theeastern edge. These successive tiltings are what kept the Merced andTenaya channels always so steeply inclined that, for millions of years, the streams remained torrents swift enough to keep on sandpapering theirbeds. The first of these tiltings occurred in that far age which geologistscall the Cretaceous. It was inconsiderable, but enough to hasten thespeed of the streams and establish general outlines for all time. Aboutthe middle of the Tertiary Period volcanic eruptions changed all things. Nearly all the valleys except the Yosemite became filled with lava. Eventhe crest of the range was buried a thousand feet in one place. This wasfollowed by a rise of the Sierra Crest a couple of thousand feet, and ofcourse a much sharper tilting of the western slopes. The Merced andTenaya Rivers must have rushed very fast indeed during the many thousandyears that followed. The most conservative estimate of the duration of the Tertiary Period isfour or five million years, and until its close volcanic eruptionscontinued to fill valleys with lava, and the Great Basin kept settling, and the crest of the Sierra went on rising; and with each lifting of thecrest, the tilt of the rivers sharpened and the speed of the torrentshastened. The canyon deepened during this time from seven hundred to athousand feet. The Yosemite was then a mountain valley whose slopingsides were crossed by cascades. Then, about the beginning of the Quaternary Period, came the biggestconvulsion of all. The crest of the Sierra was hoisted, according toMatthes's calculations, as much as eight thousand feet higher in thisone series of movements, and the whole Sierra block was again tilted, this time, of course, enormously. For thousands of centuries following, the torrents from Lyell's andMcClure's melting snows must have descended at a speed which toreboulders from their anchorages, ground rocks into sand, and savagelyscraped and scooped the river beds. Armed with sharp hard-cutting toolsripped from the granite cirques of Sierra's crest, these mad rivers musthave scratched and hewn deep and fast. And because certain valleys, including the Yosemite, were never filled with lava like the rest, thesegrew ever deeper with the centuries. The great crust movement of the Quaternary Period was not the last, byany means, though it was the last of great size. There were many smallones later. Several even have occurred within historic times. On March26, 1872, a sudden earth movement left an escarpment twenty-five feethigh at the foot of the range in Owens Valley. The village of Lone Pinewas levelled by the accompanying earthquake. John Muir, who was in theYosemite Valley at the time, describes in eloquent phrase theaccompanying earthquake which was felt there. A small movement, doubtless of similar origin, started the San Francisco fire in 1906. Conditions created by the great Quaternary tilting deepened the valleyfrom eighteen hundred feet at its lower end to twenty-four hundred feetat its upper end. It established what must have been an unusuallyinteresting and impressive landscape, which suggested the modern aspect, but required completion by the glaciers. Geologically speaking, the glaciers were recent. There were several iceinvasions, produced probably by the same changes in climate whichoccasioned the advances of the continental ice sheet east of theRockies. Matthes describes them as similar to the northern glaciers ofthe Canadian Rockies of to-day. For unknown thousands of years theValley was filled by a glacier three or four thousand feet thick, andthe surrounding country was covered with tributary ice-fields. OnlyCloud's Rest, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome, and the crown of El Capitanemerged above this ice. The glacier greatly widened and considerablydeepened the valley, turned its slopes into perpendiculars, and changedits side cascades into waterfalls. When it receded it left YosemiteValley almost completed. There followed a long period of conditions not unlike those of to-day. Frosts chipped and scaled the granite surfaces, and rains carried awaythe fragments. The valley bloomed with forests and wild flowers. Thencame other glaciers and other intervening periods. The last glacieradvanced only to the head of Bridal Veil Meadow. When it melted it lefta lake which filled the Valley from wall to wall, three hundred feetdeep. Finally the lake filled up with soil, brought down by the streams, and made the floor of the present valley. The centuries since have been a period of decoration and enrichment. Frost and rain have done their perfect work. The incomparable valley iscomplete. III THE PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK INCLUDING THE PRESENT SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, WEST CENTRAL CALIFORNIA. AREA, 1, 600 SQUARE MILES I Where the lava billows of the Cascade Mountains end in northernCalifornia the granite knobs of the Sierra begin. Sharply differentiatedin appearance and nature a few miles further in either direction, heretheir terminals overlap, and so nearly merge that the southern end ofthe one and the northern beginning of the other are not easilydistinguished by the untrained eye. But southward the Sierra Nevada, the snowy saw-toothed range of theSpaniards, the Sierra of modern American phrase, rapidly acquires thebulk and towering height, the craggy cirqued summits and the snowyshoulders which have made it celebrated. Gathering grandeur as it sweepssouthward close to the western boundary of California, its westernslopes slashed deep with canyons, its granite peaks and domes pushingever higher above the scattering forests of its middle zones, itseastern ramparts dropping in precipices to the desert, it valiantlyguards its sunny state against the passage of eastern highways, andforces hard engineering problems upon the builders of transcontinentalrailroads. Where it becomes the eastern boundary of the YosemiteNational Park it breaks into climaxes of magnificence. From this point on the Sierra broadens and bulks. It throws out spurs, multiplies paralleling ranges, heaps peaks and ridges between gulf-likecanyons which carry roaring waters through their forested trenches. Pushing ever higher above timber-line, it breaks into large lake-bearingcirques, sometimes cirque within cirque, walled in silvery granite, hungwith garlands of snow and dripping with shining glaciers. Ninety milessouth of Yosemite it culminates in a close grouping of snow-daubed, glacier-gouged, lightning-splintered peaks, one of which, Mount Whitney, highest summit in the United States, raises his head just a little abovehis gigantic neighbors. South of Whitney, the Sierra subsides rapidly and merges into the highplateaus and minor ranges of southern California. Seventy-five miles of the crest of this titanic range at the climax ofits magnificence, sixty-five miles of it north of Whitney and ten milesof it south, constitute the western boundary of an area of sixteenhundred square miles which Congress is considering setting apart underthe title of the Roosevelt National Park; a region so particularlycharacterized by ruggedness, power, and unified purpose that it iseminently fitted to serve as the nation's memorial to TheodoreRoosevelt. Besides its stupendous mountains, it includes the wildest andmost exuberant forested canyons, and the most luxuriant groves in theUnited States, for its boundaries will enclose also the present SequoiaNational Park, in which a million trunks of the famous SequoiaWashingtoniana cluster around the General Sherman Tree, believed to bethe biggest and oldest living thing in all the world. Wide though its range from bleak crest to warm forest, every part ofthis region is a necessary part of its whole. Nature's subtle finger hasso knitted each succeeding zone into the fabric of its neighbors that itwould be a vandal's hand which should arbitrarily cut the picture shortof the full completion of its perfect composition. It is one of Nature'smasterpieces, through whose extremest contrasts runs the common note ofsupremacy. Whether or not, then, Congress insures its perpetuity and unifieddevelopment, we can consider it scenically only as a whole. Similar in kind to the Yosemite National Park, Roosevelt is far ruggederand more masterful. It will be the national park of superlatives. Yeteach of these similar areas is a completed unit of strikingindividuality. Yosemite, taking its note from its incomparable Valley, never will be equalled for sheer beauty; Roosevelt knows no peer forexuberance and grandeur. Yosemite will remain Mecca for the tourist;Roosevelt will draw into its forest of giant trees, and upon itsshoulders of chiselled granite, thousands of campers-out and lovers ofthe high trail. Joined near the crest of the Sierra by the John Muir Trail, California's memorial to her own prophet of the out-of-doors, these twonational parks, so alike and yet so different, each striking surely itsown note of sublimity, are, in a very real sense, parts of one stillgreater whole; the marriage of beauty and strength. II The region is roughly pear-shaped. A straight line drawn from Pine CreekPass at its northern end to Sheep Mountain on the southern base linemeasures sixty-eight miles; the park is thirty-six miles wide at itswidest, just north of Mount Whitney. Its eastern boundary, the crest ofthe Sierra, divides many notable peaks. From north to south we pass, aswe travel the John Muir Trail, Mount Humphreys, 13, 972 feet; MountDarwin, 13, 841 feet; Mount Winchell, 13, 749 feet; Split Mountain, 14, 051feet; Striped Mountain, 13, 160 feet; Mount Baxter, 13, 118 feet; JunctionPeak, 13, 903 feet; Mount Tyndall, 14, 025 feet; and Mount Whitney, 14, 501feet; supporting Whitney on the south is Mount Langley, 14, 042 feet; allthese connected by splintered peaks, granite ledges, and mountain massesscarcely less in altitude. Between the bristling crest of this snow-daubed eastern boundary and thepark's western boundary, thousands of feet lower where the forestsbegin, the region roughly divides into parallel zones. That whichimmediately adjoins the crest upon its west side, a strip ten miles ormore in width, is known to its devotees as the High Sierra. It is acountry of tremendous jagged peaks, of intermediate pinnacled walls, ofenormous cirques holding remnants of once mighty glaciers, of greatfields of sun-cupped snow, of turquoise lakes resting in chains uponenormous granite steps; the whole gleaming like chased silver in thenoon sun; a magical land of a thousand Matterhorns, whose trails leadfrom temple to temple, so mighty of size and noble of design that nomind less than the Creator's could ever have conceived them. The High Sierra has been celebrated for many years in the fast-growingbrotherhood of American mountain climbers, east as well as west, many ofwhom proclaim its marked superiority to all parts of the Swiss Alpsexcept the amazing neighborhood of Mont Blanc. With the multiplicationof trails and the building of shelters for the comfort of theinexperienced, the veriest amateur of city business life will find inthese mountains of perpetual sunshine a satisfaction which is only forthe seasoned mountaineer abroad. The zone adjoining the High Sierra upon its west is one of far widerrange of pleasure. Subsiding rapidly in elevation, it becomes a knobbedand bouldered land which includes timber-line and the thin forests ofwind-twisted pines which contend with the granite for foothold. It iscrossed westward by many lesser ranges buttressing the High Sierra; fromthese cross ranges many loftier peaks arise, and between them roar therivers whose thousands of contributing streams drain the snow-fields andthe glaciers of the white heights. Finally, paralleling the western boundary, is the narrow zone in whichthis region meets and merges with the greater forests and the meadowsbeyond the boundary. Here, in the southwestern corner, is the marvellouswarm forest in which trees of many kinds attain their maximum of sizeand proportion, and which encloses a million sequoia trees, includingthe greatest and oldest embodiments of the principle of life. Thisextraordinary forest was reserved in 1890 under the title of the SequoiaNational Park. At the same time was created the General Grant NationalPark, a reservation of four square miles of similar forest, virtually apart of it, but separated because of an intervening area of privatelyowned lands. Thus does this region run the gamut of supremacy from the High Sierraupon its east, to the Giant Forest upon its west. Of no less distinction are its waters. Innumerable lakelets of the HighSierra, born of the snows, overflow in tiny streams which combine intoroaring, frothing creeks. These in turn, augmented by the drainage ofthe lofty tumbled divides, combine into powerful little rivers. Fourriver systems originate in this region. Far in the north a lake, more than eleven thousand feet high, lying atthe western foot of Mount Goddard, begins the South Fork of the SanJoaquin River, which drains the park's northern area. Incidentally, ithas cut a canyon of romantic beauty, up which the John Muir Trail findsits way into the park. The northern middle area of the park is drained by the Middle and SouthForks of the Kings River, which find their origins in perhaps fortymiles of Sierra's crest. The drainage basins of these splendid streamscover nearly half of the park's total area, and include some of thebiggest, as well as some of the wildest and most beautiful mountainscenery in the world. Bounded upon their west by an arc of snowymountains, separated by the gigantic Monarch Divide, flanked by twistedranges and towering peaks, they cascade westward through meadows of rankgrasses and vividly colored wild-flowers, alternating with steep-sidedgorges and canyons of sublimity. Dropping thousands of feet within a fewmiles, they abound in cascades and majestic falls, between which swiftrapids alternate with reaches of stiller, but never still, waters whichare the homes of cut-throat trout. Each of these rivers has its canyonof distinguished magnificence. The Tehipite Valley of the Middle Forkand the Kings River Canyon of the South Fork are destined to worldcelebrity. The southwestern area of the park is drained by five forks of thebeautiful Kaweah River. These streams originate on the north in thedivide of the South Fork of the Kings River, and on the east in aconspicuously fine range known as the Great Western Divide. They windthrough the wooded valleys of the Sequoia National Park. Upon theirbanks grow the monsters of the American forest. The southern area is drained by the Kern River, into which flow thewaters of Mount Whitney and his giant neighbors. The Kern Canyon is oneof Roosevelt's noblest expressions. Flowing southward betweenprecipitous walls three thousand feet and more in height, flanked uponthe east by monsters of the High Sierra, and on the west by the splendidelevations of the Great Western Divide, it is a valley supremely fittedfor the highest realization of the region's gifts of enjoyment. Fromcamps beside its trout-haunted waters, it is a matter of no difficultyfor those equipped for the trail to reach the summit of Whitney, on theone hand, and the Giant Forest on the other. Near the southern boundary of the park, Golden Trout Creek enters theKern. It originates at the very crest of the Sierra, which it followsclosely for many miles before swinging westward to its outlet. In thisstream is found a trout which appears, when fresh caught, as thoughcarved from gold. Popularly it is known as the golden trout; itsscientific name is Salmo Rooseveltii. Originally, no doubt, the colorevolved from the peculiar golden hues of the rocks through which itswaters flow. The golden trout has been transplanted into other Sierrastreams, in some of which, notably the open upper waters of the MiddleFork of the Kings, it has thrived and maintained its vivid hue. Insheltered waters it has apparently disappeared, a fact which may merelymean that its color has changed with environment. III There are many gateways, two by road, the rest by trail. For years tocome, as in the past, the great majority of visitors will enter throughthe Giant Forest of the Sequoia National Park and through the GeneralGrant National Park. The traveller by rail will find motor stages atVisalia for the run into the Giant Forest, and at Fresno for the GeneralGrant National Park. The motorist will find good roads into both fromCalifornia's elaborate highway system. In both the traveller will findexcellent hotel camps, and, if his purpose is to live awhile under hisprivate canvas, public camp grounds convenient to stores and equippedwith water supply and even electric lights. Under the gigantic pines, firs, and ancient sequoias of these extraordinary forests, increasingthousands spend summer weeks and months. From these centres the lovers of the sublime take saddle-horses andpack-trains, or, if they are hikers, burros to carry their equipment, and follow the trails to Kern Canyon, or the summit of Whitney, or theKings River Canyon, or the Tehipite Valley, or the John Muir Trail uponthe Sierra's crest. Many are the trip combinations, the choice of whichdepends upon the time and the strenuousness of the traveller. Camping-out on trail in Roosevelt is an experience which demandsrepetition. Sure of clear weather, the traveller does not bother withtents, but snuggles at night in a sleeping-bag under a roof of spreadingpine. But it is possible to equip for the trail elsewhere. The principalpoint upon the north is the Yosemite National Park, where one mayprovide himself with horses and supplies for a journey of any desiredduration. Starting in the Yosemite Valley, and leaving the park near thecarved cirques of Mount Lyell, the traveller will find the interveningmiles of the John Muir Trail a panorama of magnificence. Thousand IslandLake, reflecting the glorious pyramid of Banner Peak, the Devil'sPostpile, a group of basaltic columns, far finer than Ireland'scelebrated Giant's Causeway, the Mono Valley, with its ancient volcanosplit down through the middle so that all may see its vent and spreadingcrater, are merely the more striking features of a progress ofspectacles to the north entrance of Roosevelt Park; this is at thejunction of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River and Piute Creek. Theprincipal eastern gateway is Kearsarge Pass, on the crest of the Sierraa few miles north of Mount Whitney. The trail ascends from Independence, where one also may comfortably outfit. These four are, at this writing, the principal entrance gates, eachopening from points at which parties may be sure of securing horses, equipment, and guides. But several other trails enter from the east, south, southwest, and west sides. All of these in time will become, withdevelopment, well travelled trails into the heart of the greatwilderness. IV Any description of the glories of the John Muir Trail from its entranceinto the park to its climax upon the summit of Mount Whitney far passesthe limits of a chapter. In time it will inspire a literature. Approaching from Yosemite through the canyon of the San Joaquin, thetraveller swings around the north side of Mount Goddard, crossesgorgeous Muir Pass, and enters the fringe of cirques and lakes whichborders the western edge of Sierra's crest from end to end. Through thishe winds his way southward, skirting lakes, crossing snow-fields, encircling templed cirques, plunging into canyons, climbing divides, rounding gigantic peaks, surprising views of sublimity, mounting everhigher until he stands upon the shoulders of Mount Whitney. Dismountinghere, he scrambles up the few hundred feet of stiff climb which placeshim on the summit, from which he looks out north, west, and south overthe most diversified high mountain landscape in America, and eastwardover the Sierra foothills to Death Valley, lowest land in the UnitedStates. No thrilling Alpine feat is the ascent of our loftiest summit. But thosewho want to measure human strength and skill in terms of perpendiculargranite may find among Whitney's neighbors peaks which will presentharder problems than those offered abroad, peaks which themselves wellmay become as celebrated in future years. The John Muir Trail is destined to a fame and a use perhaps many timesas great as those men thought who conceived it as a memorial to a loverof the trail, and of all that that implies. It will play a distinguishedpart in the education of the nation in the love of mountains. It willwin artists to a phase of the sublime in America which they haveoverlooked. It will bring students to the classrooms where Naturedisplays her most tremendous exhibits. Nevertheless, Roosevelt's lower levels will draw many times as manydevotees as will the High Sierra; and these visitors will stay longer. It is the valleys and the canyons which will prove the greatest lure, for here one may camp leisurely and in entire comfort, and thence makewhat trips he chooses into the regions of the peaks and the cirques. There are literally thousands of canyons and of many kinds. Besides theKern Canyon there are two which must rank with Yosemite. In the summerof 1916 I travelled the length of the park, as far as the Giant Forest, with a party led by Director Stephen T. Mather, of the National ParkService, then Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, and waspowerfully impressed with the scenic qualities of the Tehipite Valley, and the Kings River Canyon, at that time little known. Time will not dim my memory of Tehipite Dome, the august valley and theleaping, singing river which it overlooks. Well short of the YosemiteValley in the kind of beauty that plunges the observer into silence, the Tehipite Valley far excels it in bigness, power, and majesty. Lookout Point on the north rim, a couple of miles south of the Dome, gave us our first sensation. Three thousand feet above the river, itoffered by far the grandest valley view I have looked upon, for the rimview into Yosemite by comparison is not so grand as it is beautiful. The canyon revealed itself to the east as far as Mount Woodworth, itslofty diversified walls lifting precipitously from the heavy forests ofthe floor and sides, and yielding to still greater heights above. Enormous cliffs abutted, Yosemite-like, at intervals. South of us, directly across the canyon, rose the strenuous heights of the MonarchDivide, Mount Harrington, towering a thousand feet higher above thevalley floor than Clouds Rest above the Yosemite. Down the slopes of theMonarch Divide, seemingly from its turreted summits, cascaded manyfrothing streams. The Eagle Peaks, Blue Canyon Falls, Silver Spur, theGorge of Despair, Lost Canyon--these were some of the romantic andappropriate titles we found on the Geological Survey map. And, close at hand, opposite Mount Harrington and just across CrownCreek Canyon, rose mighty Tehipite. We stood level with its roundedglistening dome. The Tehipite Dome is a true Yosemite feature. Itcompares in height and prominence with El Capitan. In fact, it standshigher above the valley floor and occupies a similar position at thevalley's western gate. It is not so massive as El Capitan, and thereforenot so impressive; but it is superb. It is better compared with HalfDome, though again perhaps not so impressive. But it has its own augustpersonality, as notably so as either of these world-famed rocks; and, ifit stood in the Yosemite, would share with them the incomparablevalley's highest honors. Descending to the floor, the whole aspect of the valley changed. Lookingup, Tehipite Dome, now outlined against the sky, and the neighboringabrupt castellated walls, towered more hugely than ever. We did not needthe contour map to know that some of these heights exceeded Yosemite's. The sky-line was fantastically carved into spires and domes, acounterpart in gigantic miniature of the Great Sierra of which it wasthe valley climax. The Yosemite measure of sublimity, perhaps, lacked, but in its place was a more rugged grandeur, a certain suggestion ofvastness and power that I have not seen elsewhere. This impression was strengthened by the floor itself, which contains nosuggestion whatever of Yosemite's exquisiteness. Instead, it offersrugged spaciousness. In place of Yosemite's peaceful woods and meadows, here were tangled giant-studded thickets and mountainous masses ofenormous broken talus. Instead of the quiet winding Merced, here was asurging, smashing, frothing, cascading, roaring torrent, several timesits volume, which filled the valley with its turbulence. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason_ TEHIPITE DOME, GUARDIAN ROCK OF THE TEHIPITE VALLEY It rises abruptly more than three thousand feet; proposed RooseveltNational Park] Once step foot on the valley floor and all thought of comparison withYosemite vanishes forever. This is a different thing altogether, but athing in its own way no less superlative. The keynote of the TehipiteValley is wild exuberance. It thrills where Yosemite enervates. Yet itstemperature is quite as mild. The Middle Fork contains more trout than any other stream I have fished. We found them in pools and riffles everywhere; no water was too white toget a rise. In the long, greenish-white borders of fast rapids theyfloated continually into view. In five minutes' watching I could count adozen or more such appearances within a few feet of water. They ran fromeight to fourteen inches. No doubt larger ones lay below. So I got greatfun by picking my particular trout and casting specially for him. Stopyour fly's motion and the pursuing fish instantly stops, backs, swimsround the lure in a tour of examination, and disappears. Start it movingand he instantly reappears from the white depth, where, no doubt, he hasbeen cautiously watching. A pause and a swift start often tempted to astrike. These rainbows of the torrents are hard fighters. And many of them, ifungently handled, availed of swift currents to thresh themselves free. You must fish a river to appreciate it. Standing on its edges, leapingfrom rock to rock, slipping waist deep at times, wading recklessly toreach some pool or eddy of special promise, searching the rapids, peering under the alders, testing the pools; that's the way to makefriends with a river. You study its moods and its ways as those of amettlesome horse. And after a while its spirit seeps through and finds yours. Itspersonality unveils. A sweet friendliness unites you, a sense of mutualunderstanding. There follows the completest detachment that I know. Years and the worries disappear. You and the river dream away theunnoted hours. Passing on from the Tehipite Valley to the Kings River Canyon, theapproach to Granite Pass was nothing short of magnificent. We crossed asuperb cirque studded with lakelets; we could see the pass ahead of uson a fine snow-crowned bench. We ascended the bench and found ourselves, not in the pass, but in the entrance to still another cirque, alsolake-studded, a loftier, nobler cirque encircling the one below. Aheadof us upon another lofty bench surely was the pass. Those inspiringsnow-daubed heights whose serrated edges cut sharply into the skycertainly marked the supreme summit. Our winding trail up steep, rockyascents pointed true; an hour's toil would carry us over. But the hourpassed and the crossing of the shelf disclosed, not the glowing valleyof the South Fork across the pass, but still a vaster, nobler cirqueabove, sublime in Arctic glory! How the vast glaciers that cut these titanic carvings must have swirledamong these huge concentric walls, pouring over this shelf and that, piling together around these uplifting granite peaks, concentratingcombined effort upon this unyielding mass and that, and, beaten back, pouring down the tortuous main channel with rendings and tearingsunimaginable! [Illustration: _From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason_ EAST VIDETTE FROM A FOREST OF FOXTAIL PINES This is one of the great granite peaks of the proposed RooseveltNational Park] Granite Pass is astonishing! We saw no less than four of these vastconcentric cirques, through three of which we passed. And the GeologicalSurvey map discloses a tributary basin adjoining which enclosed a groupof large volcanic lakes, and doubtless other vast cirque-like chambers. We took photographs, but knew them vain. A long, dusty descent of Copper Creek brought us, near day's end, intothe exquisite valley of the South Fork of the Kings River, the KingsRiver Canyon. Still another Yosemite! It is not so easy to differentiate the two canyons of the Kings. Theyare similar and yet very different. Perhaps the difference lies chieflyin degree. Both lie east and west, with enormous rocky bluffs rising oneither side of rivers of quite extraordinary beauty. Both present carvedand castellated walls of exceptional boldness of design. Both areheavily and magnificently wooded, the forests reaching up sharp slopeson either side. Both possess to a marked degree the quality that liftsthem above the average of even the Sierra's glacial valleys. But the outlines here seem to be softer, the valley floor broader, theriver less turbulent. If the keynote of the Tehipite Valley is wildexuberance, that of the Kings River Canyon is wild beauty. The oneexcites, the other lulls. The one shares with Yosemite the distinctionof extraordinary outline, the other shares with Yosemite the distinctionof extraordinary charm. There are few nobler spots than the junction of Copper Creek with theKings. The Grand Sentinel is seldom surpassed. It fails of thepersonality of El Capitan, Half Dome, and Tehipite, but it only justfails. If they did not exist, it would become the most celebrated rockin the Sierra, at least. The view up the canyon from this spot has fewequals. The view down the canyon is not often excelled. When the day ofthe Kings River Canyon dawns, it will dawn brilliantly. V The western slopes of the Pacific ranges, from the Canadian bordersouthward to the desert, carry the most luxuriant forest in the UnitedStates. The immense stands of yellow pine and Douglas fir of the farnorth merge into the sugar pines and giant sequoias of the south inpractically an unbroken belt which, on Sierra's slopes, lies on themiddle levels between the low productive plains of the west and thetowering heights of the east. The Sequoia National Park and its littleneighbor, the General Grant National Park, enclose areas of remarkablefertility in which trees, shrubs, and wild flowers reach their greatestdevelopment. The million sequoia trees which grow here are a very smallpart, numerically, of this amazing forest. These slopes are rich with the soil of thousands of years ofaccumulations. They are warmed in summer by mild Pacific winds heated intheir passage across the lowlands, and blanketed in winter by many feetof soft snow. They are damp with countless springs and streams shelteredunder heavy canopies of foliage. In altitude they range from twothousand feet at the bottom of Kaweah's canyon, as it emerges from thepark, to eight thousand feet in the east, with mountains rising three orfour thousand feet higher. It is a tumbled land of ridges and canyons, but its slopes are easy and its outline gracious. Oases of lusciousmeadows dot the forests. This is the Court of King Sequoia. Here assemble in everlastingattendance millions of his nobles, a statelier gathering than ever bowedthe knee before human potentate. Erect, majestic, clothed in togas ofperpetual green, their heads bared to the heavens, stand rank upon rank, mile upon mile, the noblest personalities of the earth. Chief among the courtiers of the king is the sugar-pine, towering herehis full two hundred feet, straight as a ruler, his stem at times eightfeet in thickness, scarcely tapering to the heavy limbs of his highcrown. Largest and most magnificent of the Pacific pines, reachingsometimes six hundred years of age, the greater trunks clear themselvesof branches a hundred feet from the ground, and the bark develops longdark plates of armor. So marked is his distinguished personality that, once seen, he never can be mistaken for another. Next in rank and scarcely less in majesty is the massive white fir, rising at times even to two hundred feet, his sometimes six-foot trunkconspicuously rough, dark brown in color, deeply furrowed with ashengray. His pale yellow-green crown is mysteriously tinged with white. Hislimit of age is three hundred and fifty years. Last of the ranking trio is the western yellow pine, a warrior clad inplates of russet armor. A hundred and sixty feet in natural height, herehe sometimes towers even with his fellow knights. He guards the outerprecincts of the court, his cap of yellow-green, his branching armsresting upon his sides. These are the great nobles, but with them are millions of lessercourtiers, the incense cedar from whose buttressed, tapering trunksspring countless branches tipped with fan-like plumes; many lesserconifers; the splendid Pacific birches in picturesque pose; the oaks ofmany kinds far different from their eastern cousins. And among the feetof these courtiers of higher degree crowd millions upon millions offlowering shrubs, massing often in solid phalanxes, disputing passagewith the deer. All mingle together, great and small. The conifers, in the king's honor, flaunt from stem and greater branch long fluttering ribbons of palegreen moss. Thousands of squirrels chatter in the branches. Millions ofbirds make music. It is a gala day. Enter the King. The King of Trees is of royal lineage. The patient searchers in therocks of old have traced his ancestry unknown millions of years, back tothe forests of the Cretaceous Period. His was Viking stock from arcticzones where trees can live no more. To-day he links all human history. The identical tree around whichgather thousands of human courtiers every year emerged, a seedling, while Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem. No man knows how old hispredecessors were when finally they sank into death--mighty fall! ButJohn Muir counted four thousand rings in the trunk of one fallen giant, who must have lived while Pharaoh still held captive the Children ofIsrael. The General Sherman Tree of the Giant Forest, the oldest living thingto-day, so far as I have been able to ascertain, probably has seenthirty-six hundred years. It is evident to the unlearned observer that, while mature, he is long short of the turn of life. A thousand yearsfrom now he still may be the earth's biggest and oldest living thing;how much beyond that none may venture to predict. Picture, now, the Giant Forest, largest of the several sequoia groves inthe Sequoia National Park. You have entered, say, in the dusk of thenight before, and after breakfast wander planless among the trees. Onevery side rise the huge pines and firs, their dark columns springingfrom the tangled brush to support the cathedral roof above. Here anenormous purplish-red column draws and holds your astonished eye. It isa gigantic thing in comparison with its monster neighbors; it glowsamong their dull columns; it is clean and spotless amid their mosshungtrunks; branchless, it disappears among their upper foliage, hinting atsteeple heights above. Yet your guide tells you that this tree is small;that its diameter is less than twenty feet; that in age it is ayoungster of only two thousand years! Wait, he tells you, till you seethe General Sherman Tree's thirty-six and a half feet of diameter; waittill you see the hundreds, yes thousands, which surpass this infant! But you heed him not, for you see another back among those sugar pines!Yes, and there's another. And there on the left are two or three in aclump! Back in the dim cathedral aisles are reddish glows which mustmean still others. Your heart is beating with a strange emotion. Youlook up at the enormous limbs bent at right angles, at the canopy offeathery foliage hanging in ten thousand huge plumes. You cry aloud forthe sheer joy of this great thing, and plunge into the forest's heart. The Giant Forest contains several thousand sequoia trees of large size, and many young trees. You see these small ones on every hand, erect, sharply pointed, giving in every line a vivid impression of quivering, bounding life. Later on, as they emerge above the roof of the forest, for some of them are more than three hundred feet high, they lose theirsharp ambitious tops; they become gracefully rounded. Springing fromseed less than a quarter of an inch in diameter, they tend, like theircousins the redwoods, to grow in groups, and these groups tend to growin groves. But there are scattering individuals in every grove, and manysmall isolated groves in the Sierra. The Giant Forest is the largestgrove of greatest trees. The General Grant Grove, in a small nationalpark of its own, near by, is the second grove in size and importance;its central figure is the General Grant Tree, second in size and age tothe General Sherman Tree. [Illustration: _From a photograph by S. H. Willard_ BULL FROG LAKE, PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK Along the crest of the Sierra extends a region of lofty cirques andinnumerable glacier-fed lakelets] [Illustration: UNDER A GIANT SEQUOIA From right to left: Benjamin Ide Wheeler, William Loeb, Jr. , NicholasMurray Butler, John Muir, Surgeon-General Rixey, U. S. N. , TheodoreRoosevelt, then President, George C. Pardee, and William H. Moody] The dimensions of the greatest trees are astonishing. Glance at thistable: ----------------------------------------------- | HEIGHT | DIAMETER NAME | FEET | FEET----------------------------------------------- GIANT FOREST GROVE |General Sherman | 279. 9 | 36. 5Abraham Lincoln | 270 | 31William McKinley | 291 | 28 | | MUIR GROVE | |Dalton | 292 | 27 | | GARFIELD GROVE |California | 260 | 30 | | GENERAL GRANT GROVE |General Grant | 264 | 35George Washington | 255 | 29----------------------------------------------- The Theodore Roosevelt Tree, which has not been measured at thiswriting, is one of the noblest of all, perfect in form and color, abounding in the glory of young maturity. To help realization at home of the majesty of the General Sherman Tree, mark its base diameter, thirty-six and a half feet, plainly against theside of some building, preferably a church with a steeple andneighboring trees; then measure two hundred and eighty feet, itsheight, upon the ground at right angles to the church; then stand onthat spot and, facing the church, imagine the trunk rising, taperingslightly, against the building's side and the sky above it; then slowlylift your eyes until you are looking up into the sky at an angle offorty-five degrees, this to fix its height were it growing in front ofthe church. Imagine its lowest branches, each far thicker than the trunks of easternelms and oaks, pushing horizontally out at a height above ground of ahundred and fifty feet, which is higher than the tops of most of thefull-grown trees of our eastern forests. Imagine these limbs benthorizontally at right angles, like huge elbows, as though holding itsgreen mantle close about its form. Imagine the upper branches nearlybare, shattered perhaps by lightning. And imagine its crown of foliage, dark yellowish-green, hanging in enormous graceful plumes. This is the King of Trees. IV THE HEART OF THE ROCKIES THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO. AREA, 398SQUARE MILES I The Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Cascade Range ofCalifornia, Oregon, and Washington have each three national parks whichfully represent their kind and quality. The great central system of theUnited States, the Rocky Mountains, which also possess three nationalparks, are represented in kind by only one, for Yellowstone is anexceptional volcanic interlude, and Glacier is the chance upheaval ofshales and limestones from a period antedating the granite Rockies bymany millions of years; neither in any sense exhibits the nature andscenic quality of the backbone of our continent. This is one of the reasons for the extraordinary distinction of thereservation appropriately called the Rocky Mountain National Park, namely that it is the only true example of the continental mountainsystem in the catalogue of our national parks. It is well, therefore, tolay the foundations for a sound comprehension of its differentiatingfeatures. The Rocky Mountains, which began to rise at the close of the CretaceousPeriod at a rate so slow that geologists think they are making a paceto-day as rapid as their maximum, extend from the plateau of New Mexiconorthwesterly until they merge into the mountains of eastern Alaska. Inthe United States physiographers consider them in two groups, theNorthern Rockies and the Southern Rockies, the point of division beingthe elevated Wyoming Basin. There are numerous ranges, known, like theWasatch Mountains, by different names, which nevertheless are consistentparts of the Rocky Mountain System. The Rockies attain their most imposing mass and magnificence in theirsouthern group, culminating in Colorado. So stupendous is this heapingtogether of granitic masses that in Colorado alone are found forty-twoof the fifty-five named peaks in the United States which attain thealtitude of fourteen thousand feet. Of the others, twelve are in theSierra of California, and one, Mount Rainier, in Washington. MountElbert, in Colorado, our second highest peak, rises within eighty-twofeet of the height of California's Mount Whitney, our first in rank;Colorado's Mount Massive attains an altitude only four feet less thanWashington's Mount Rainier, which ranks third. In point of mass, oneseventh of Colorado rises above ten thousand feet of altitude. The statecontains three hundred and fifty peaks above eleven thousand feet ofaltitude, two hundred and twenty peaks above twelve thousand feet, and ahundred and fifty peaks above thirteen thousand feet; besides theforty-two named peaks which exceed fourteen thousand feet, there are atleast three others which are unnamed. Geologists call the Rockies young, by which they mean anything, say, from five to twenty million years. They are more or less contemporarywith the Sierra. Like the Sierra, the mountains we see to-day are notthe first; several times their ranges have uplifted upon wrecks offormer ranges, which had yielded to the assaults of frost and rain. Before they first appeared, parts of the Eastern Appalachians hadparalleled our eastern sea coast for many million years. The Age ofMammals had well dawned before they became a feature in a landscapewhich previously had been a mid-continental sea. II The Front Range, carrying the continental divide, is a gnarled andjagged rampart of snow-splashed granite facing the eastern plains, fromwhich its grim summits may be seen for many miles. Standing out beforeit like captains in front of gray ranks at parade rise three conspicuousmountains, Longs Peak, fifty miles northwest of Denver, Mount Evans, west of Denver, and Pikes Peak, seventy miles to the south. Longs Peakis directly connected with the continental divide by a series of jaggedcliffs. Mount Evans is farther away. Pikes Peak stands sentinel-likeseventy-five miles east of the range, a gigantic monadnock, remainderand reminder of a former range long ages worn away. Though many massive mountains of greater altitude lie farther west, theFront Range for many reasons is representative of the Rockies' noblest. To represent them fully, the national park should include the threesentinel peaks and their neighborhoods, and it is earnestly hoped thatthe day will come when Congress will recognize this need. At thiswriting only the section of greatest variety and magnificence, thenearly four hundred square miles of which Longs Peak is the climax, hasbeen thus entitled. In fact, even this was unfortunately curtailed inthe making, the straight southern boundary having been arbitrarily drawnthrough the range at a point of sublimity, throwing out of the park theSt. Vrain Glaciers which form one of the region's wildest and noblestspectacles, and Arapaho Peak and its glaciers which in several respectsconstitute a climax in Rocky Mountain scenery. Thus carelessly cropped, despoiled of the completeness which Naturemeant it to possess, nevertheless the Rocky Mountain National Park is areservation of distinguished charm and beauty. It straddles thecontinental divide, which bisects it lengthwise, north and south. Thewestern slopes rise gently to the divide; at the divide, the easternfront drops in a precipice several thousand feet deep, out of whichfrosts, rains, glaciers and streams have gouged gigantic gulfs andgranite-bound vales and canyons, whose intervening cliffs arebattlemented walls and monoliths. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Wiswall Brothers_ ESTES PARK PLATEAU, LOOKING EAST Showing the village and the foothills, which are remnants of a formergreat range, now almost washed away by erosion; Rocky Mountain NationalPark] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Wiswall Brothers_ FRONT RANGE OF THE ROCKIES FROM BIERSTADT LAKE From right to left: Flattop Mountain, Tyndall Glacier, Hallett Peak, Otis Peak, Andrews Glacier] As if these features were not enough to differentiate this nationalpark from any other, Nature has provided still another element ofpopularity and distinction. East of this splendid rampart spreads abroad area of rolling plateau, carpeted with wild flowers, edged anddotted with luxuriant groves of pine, spruce, fir, and aspen, anddiversified with hills and craggy mountains, carved rock walls, longforest-grown moraines and picturesque ravines; a stream-watered, lake-dotted summer and winter pleasure paradise of great size, boundedon the north and west by snow-spattered monsters, and on the east andsouth by craggy wooded foothills, only less in size, and no less inbeauty than the leviathans of the main range. Here is summer living roomenough for several hundred thousand sojourners from whose comfortablecamps and hotels the wild heart of the Rockies may be visited afoot oron horseback between early breakfast and late supper at home. This plateau has been known to summer visitors for many years under thetitles of several settlements; Moraine Park, Horseshoe Park, and LongsPeak, each had its hotels long before the national park was created;Estes Park and Allen's Park on the east side, and Grand Lake on the westside lie just outside the park boundaries, purposely excluded because oftheir considerable areas of privately owned land. Estes Park, theprincipal village and the distributing centre of all incoming routesfrom the east, is the Eastern Gateway; Grand Lake is the WesternGateway. And still there is another distinction, one which will probably alwayshold for Rocky Mountain its present great lead in popularity. That isits position nearer to the middle of the country than other greatnational parks, and its accessibility from large centres of population. Denver, which claims with some justice the title of Gateway to theNational Parks, meaning of course the eastern gateway to the westernparks, is within thirty hours by rail from Chicago and St. Louis, through one or other of which most travellers from the east find itconvenient to reach the west. It is similarly conveniently located fortouring motorists, with whom all the national parks are becoming evermore popular. From Denver several railroads lead to east-side towns, from which the park is reached by motor stages through the foothills, and a motor stage line runs directly from Denver to Estes Park, paralleling the range. The west side is reached through Granby. III Entry to the park by any route is dramatic. If the visitor comes theall-motor way through Ward he picks up the range at Arapaho Peak, andfollows it closely for miles. If he comes by any of the rail routes, hismotor stage emerges from the foothills upon a sudden spectacle ofmagnificence--the snowy range, its highest summits crowned with cloud, looming upon the horizon across the peaceful plateau. By any route theappearance of the range begins a panorama of ever-changing beauty andinspiration, whose progress will outlive many a summer's stay. Having settled himself in one of the hotels or camps of the east-sideplateau, the visitor faces the choice between two practical ways ofenjoying himself. He may, as the majority seem to prefer, spend hisweeks in the simple recreations familiar in our eastern hill and countryresorts; he may motor a little, walk a little, fish a little in the BigThompson and its tributaries, read and botanize a little in the meadowsand groves, golf a little on the excellent courses, climb a little onthe lesser mountains, and dance or play bridge in hotel parlors atnight. Or else he may avail himself of the extraordinary opportunitywhich Nature offers him in the mountains which spring from hiscomfortable plateau, the opportunity of entering into Nature's veryworkshop and of studying, with her for his teacher, the inner secretsand the mighty examples of creation. In all our national parks I have wondered at the contentment of themultitude with the less when the greater, and such a greater, was therefor the taking. But I ceased to criticize the so-called popular point ofview when I realized that its principal cause was ignorance of thewealth within grasp rather than deliberate choice of the morecommonplace; instead, I write this book, hoping that it may help thecause of the greater pleasure. Especially is the Rocky Mountain NationalPark the land of opportunity because of its accessibility, and of theease with which its inmost sanctuaries may be entered, examined, andappreciated. The story is disclosed at every step. In fact therevelation begins in the foothills on the way in from the railroad, forthe red iron-stained cliffs seen upon their eastern edges are remaindersof former Rocky Mountains which disappeared by erosion millions of yearsago. The foothills themselves are remnants of mountains which once weremuch loftier than now, and the picturesque canyon of the Big Thompson, through which it may have been your good fortune to enter the park, isthe stream-cut outlet of a lake or group of lakes which once coveredmuch of the national park plateau. Summer life on the plateau is as effective as a tonic. The altitudevaries from seven to nine thousand feet; Rocky Mountain's valley bottomsare higher than the summits of many peaks of celebrity elsewhere. Onevery hand stretch miles of tumbled meadows and craggy cliffs. Many arethe excellent roads, upon which cluster, at intervals of miles, groupsof hotels and camps. Here one may choose his own fashion of living, forthese hostelries range from the most formal and luxurious hotel to thesimplest collection of tents or log cabins around a central log diningstructure. Some of these camps are picturesque, the growth of years fromthe original log hut. Some are equipped with modern comforts; others areas primitive as their beginnings. All the larger resorts have stables ofriding horses, for riding is the fashion even with those who do notventure into the mountains. Or, one may camp out in the good old-fashioned way, and fry his ownmorning bacon over his fire of sticks. Wherever one lives, however one lives, in this broad tableland, he isunder the spell of the range. The call of the mountains is ever present. Riding, walking, motoring, fishing, golfing, sitting under the treeswith a book, continually he lifts his eyes to their calm heights. Unconsciously he throws them the first morning glance. Instinctively hegazes long upon their gleaming moonlit summits before turning in atnight. In time they possess his spirit. They calm him, exalt him, ennoble him. Unconsciously he comes to know them in all their myriadmoods. Cold and stern before sunrise, brilliant and vivid inmid-morning, soft and restful toward evening, gorgeously colored atsunset, angry, at times terrifying, in storm, their fascination neverweakens, their beauty changes but it does not lessen. Mountains of the height of these live in constant communion with thesky. Mummy Mountain in the north and Longs Peak in the south continuallygather handfuls of fleecy cloud. A dozen times a day a mist appears inthe blue, as if entangled while passing the towering summit. A fewmoments later it is a tiny cloud; then, while you watch, it thickens andspreads and hides the peak. Ten minutes later, perhaps, it dissipates asrapidly as it gathered, leaving the granite photographed against theblue. Or it may broaden and settle till it covers a vast acreage of skyand drops a brief shower in near-by valleys, while meadows half a mileaway are steeped in sunshine. Then, in a twinkling, all is clear again. Sometimes, when the clearing comes, the summit is white with snow. Andsometimes, standing upon a high peak in a blaze of sunshine from acleared sky, one may look down for a few moments upon the top of one ofthese settled clouds, knowing that it is sprinkling the hidden valley. The charm of the mountains from below may satisfy many, but sooner orlater temptation is sure to beset. The desire comes to see close upthose monsters of mystery. Many, including most women, ignorant ofrewards, refuse to venture because they fear hardship. "I can neverclimb mountains in this rarefied air, " pleads one, and in most casesthis is true; it is important that persons unused to the higheraltitudes be temperate and discreet. But the lungs and muscles of awell-trained mountain horse are always obtainable, and the leastpractice will teach the unaccustomed rider that all he has to do is tosit his saddle limply and leave everything else to the horse. It is myproud boast that I can climb any mountain, no matter how high anddifficult, up which my horse can carry me. And so, at last and inevitably, we ascend into the mountains. IV The mountains within the park fall naturally in two groupings. The FrontRange cuts the southern boundary midway and runs north to Longs Peak, where it swings westerly and carries the continental divide out of thepark at its northwestern corner. The Mummy Range occupies the park'sentire north end. The two are joined by a ridge 11, 500 feet in altitude, over which the Fall River Road is building to connect the east and thewest sides of the park. The lesser of these two, the Mummy Range, is a mountain group ofdistinguished beauty. Its climax is an arc of gray monsters, YpsilonMountain, 13, 507 feet, Mount Fairchild, 13, 502 feet, Hagues Peak, 13, 562feet, and Mount Dunraven, 12, 326 feet; these gather around MummyMountain with its 13, 413 feet. A noble company, indeed, herded in closecomradeship, the centre of many square miles of summits scarcely less. Ypsilon's big Greek letter, outlined in perpetual snow, is one of thefamous landmarks of the northern end. Hagues Peak supports HallettGlacier, the most interesting in the park. Dunraven, aloof and ofslenderer outline, offers marked contrast to the enormous sprawling bulkof Mummy, always portentous, often capped with clouds. The range issplit by many fine canyons and dotted with glacial lakes, an undevelopedwilderness designed by kindly nature for summer exploration. But it is the Front Range, the snowy pinnacled rampart, which commandsprofoundest attention. From Specimen Mountain in the far northwest, a spill of lava, now thehaunt of mountain sheep, the continental divide southward piles climaxupon climax. Following it at an elevation well exceeding twelve thousandfeet, the hardy, venturesome climber looks westward down a slope of baldgranite, thickly strewn with boulders; eastward he gazes into asuccession of gigantic gorges dropping upon the east, forest grown, lake-set canyons deep in mid-foreground, the great plateau spreading toits foothills far beyond the canyons, with now and then a sun glint fromsome irrigation pond beyond the foothills on the misty plains of easternColorado. Past the monolith of Terra Tomah Peak, with its fine glacialgorge of many lakes, past the Sprague Glacier, largest of the severalshrunken fields of moving ice which still remain, he finds, from thesummit of Flattop Mountain, a broad spectacle of real sublimity. But there is a greater viewpoint close at hand. Crossing the FlattopTrail which here ascends from the settlements below on its way to thewest side, and skirting the top of the Tyndall Glacier, a scramble offour hundred feet lands him on the summit of Hallett Peak, 12, 725 feetin altitude. Here indeed is reward. Below him lies the sheer abyss ofthe Tyndall Gorge, Dream Lake, a drop of turquoise in its depths; beyondit a moraine reaches out upon the plateau--six miles in length, a mileand more in width, nearly a thousand feet in height, holding BierstadtLake upon its level forested crown, an eloquent reminder of that ancienttime when enormous glaciers ripped the granite from these gorges to heapit in long winding hills upon the plains below. Turning southerly, theWild Gardens further spread before his gaze, a tumble of granite massesrising from lake-dotted, richly forested bottoms. The entrance to LochVale, gem canyon of the Rockies, lies in the valley foreground. Adjoining it, the entrance to Glacier Gorge, showing one of its severallakes, rests in peaceful contrast with its impressive eastern wall, along, winding, sharp-edged buttress pushing southward and upward tosupport the northern shoulder of the monster, Longs Peak, whose squaredsummit, from here for all the world like a chef's cap, outlines sharplyagainst the sky. Hallett Peak welcomes the climber to the Heart of theRockies at perhaps their most gorgeous point. South of Hallett difficult going will disclose new viewpoints of supremewildness. Otis Peak, nearly as high as Hallett, looks down upon theAndrews Glacier, and displays the length of Loch Vale, at whose headtowers Taylor Peak, a giant exceeding thirteen thousand feet. I have not sketched this tour of the continental divide as a suggestionfor travel, for there are no trails, and none but the mountaineer, experienced in pioneering, could accomplish it with pleasure andsuccess, but as a convenient mode of picturing the glories of thecontinental divide. Some day a trail, even perhaps a road, for one ispracticable, should make it fully accessible to the greater public. Meantime Flattop Trail invites valley dwellers of all degrees, afoot andhorseback, up to a point on the divide from which Hallett's summit andits stupendous view is no great conquest. The gorges of the Wild Gardens are most enjoyed from below. Trails of nodifficulty lead from the settlements to Fern and Odessa Lakes in acanyon unsurpassed; to Bear Lake at the outlet of the Tyndall Gorge; toLoch Vale, whose flower-carpeted terraces and cirque lakelets, Sky Pondand the Lake of Glass, are encircled with mighty canyon walls; and toGlacier Gorge, which leads to the foot of Longs Peak's westernprecipice. These are spots, each a day's round trip from convenientovernight hotels, which deserve all the fame that will be theirs whenthe people come to know them, for as yet only a few hundreds a summer ofRocky Mountain's hundred thousand take the trouble to visit them. To better understand the charm of these gray monsters, and the valleysand chasms between their knees, we must pause a moment to picture whatarchitects call the planting, for trees and shrubs and flowers play asimportant a part in the informal architectural scheme of the Front Rangeas they do in the formality of a palace. It will be recalled that thezones of vegetation from the equator to the frozen ice fields of the farnorth find their counterparts in altitude. The foothills bordering theRocky Mountain National Park lie in the austral zone of our middle andeastern states; its splendid east-side plateau and inter-mountainvalleys represent the luxuriance of the Canadian zone; its mountainspass rapidly up in a few thousand feet through the Hudsonian zone, including timber-line at about 11, 500 feet; and its highest summitscarry only the mosses, lichens, stunted grasses, and tiny alpineflowerets of the Arctic Zone. Thus one may walk waist deep through the marvellous wild flower meadowsof Loch Vale, bordered by luxuriant forests of majestic Engelmannspruce, pines, firs, junipers, and many deciduous shrubs, and lookupward at the gradations of all vegetation to the arctic seas. Especially interesting is the revelation when one takes it in order, climbing into the range. The Fall River Road displays it, but notdramatically; the forest approach is too long, the climb into theHudsonian Zone too short, and not typical. The same is true of the trailup beautiful Forest Canyon. The reverse is true of the Ute Trail, whichbrings one too quickly to the stupendous arctic summit of Trail Ridge. The Flattop Trail is in many respects the most satisfying, particularlyif one takes the time to make the summit of Hallett Peak, and hunts forarctic flowerets on the way. But one may also accomplish the purpose inLoch Vale by climbing all the way to Sky Pond, at the very foot of steeplittle Taylor Glacier, or by ascending Glacier Gorge to its head, or byclimbing the Twin Sisters, or Longs Peak as far as Boulder Field, or upthe St. Vrain valley to the top of Meadow Mountain, or Mount Copeland. All of these ascents are made by fair trails, and all display thefascinating spectacle of timber-line, which in Rocky Mountain NationalPark, I believe, attains its most satisfying popular expression; bywhich I mean that here the panorama of the everlasting struggle betweenthe ambitious climbing forests and the winter gales of the summits seemsto be condensed and summarized, to borrow a figure from the textbooks, as I have not happened to find it elsewhere. Following up some shelteredforested ravine to its head, we swing out upon the wind-swept slopesleading straight to the summit. Snow patches increase in size and numberas the conifers thin and shrink. Presently the trees bend eastward, permanently mis-shaped by the icy winter blasts. Presently they curve insemi-circles, or rise bravely in the lee of some great rock, to bend atright angles from its top. Here and there are full-grown trees growingprostrate, like a rug, upon the ground. Close to the summit trees shrink to the size of shrubs, but some ofthese have heavy trunks a few feet high, and doubtless have attainedtheir fulness of development. Gradually they thin and disappear, givingplace to wiry, powerful, deciduous shrubs, and these in turn to growthsstill smaller. There are forests of willows just above Rocky Mountain'stimber-line, two or three inches tall, and many acres in extent. From the Front Range, well in the south of the park, a spur of toothedgranite peaks springs two miles eastward to the monarch of the park, Longs Peak. It is this position in advance of the range, as much as theadvantage of its 14, 255 feet of altitude, which enables this famousmountain to become the climax of every east-side view. Longs Peak has a remarkable personality. It is an architecturalcreation, a solid granite temple, strongly buttressed upon four sides. From every point of view it is profoundly different, but alwaysconsistent and recognizable. Seen from the east, it is supported oneither side by mountains of majesty. Joined with it on the north, MountLady Washington rises 13, 269 feet, the cleft between their summits beingthe way of the trail to Longs Peak summit. Merging with it in mass uponthe south, Mount Meeker rises 13, 911 feet. Once the three were onemonster mountain. Frosts and rains carried off the crust strata, baredthe granite core, and chipped it into three summits, while a glacier oflarge size gouged out of its middle the abyss which divides themountains, and carved the precipice, which drops twenty-four hundredfeet from Longs Peak summit to Chasm Lake. The Chasm, which is easilyreached by trail from the hotels at the mountain's foot, is one of thewildest places in America. It may be explored in a day. Mountain climbing is becoming the fashion in Rocky Mountain NationalPark among those who never climbed before, and it will not be many yearsbefore its inmost recesses are penetrated by innumerable trampers andcampers. The "stunt" of the park is the ascent of Longs Peak. This is noparticular matter for the experienced, for the trail is well worn, andthe ascent may be made on horseback to the boulder field, less than twothousand feet from the summit; but to the inexperienced it appears anundertaking of first magnitude. From the boulder field the trail carriesout upon a long sharp slant which drops into the precipice of GlacierGorge, and ascends the box-like summit cap by a shelf trail whichsometimes has terrors for the unaccustomed. Several hundred persons makethe ascent each summer without accident, including many women and a fewchildren. The one risk is that accidental snow obscure the trail; butLongs Peak is not often ascended without a guide. The view from the summit of the entire national park, of the splendidrange south which should be in the park but is not, of the foothills andpond-spotted plains in the east, of Denver and her mountain background, and of the Medicine Bow and other ranges west of the park, is one of thecountry's great spectacles. Longs Peak is sometimes climbed at night forthe sunrise. The six miles of range between Longs Peak and the southern boundary ofthe park show five towering snow-spotted mountains of noble beauty, Mount Alice, Tanima Peak, Mahana Peak, Ouzel Peak, and Mount Copeland. Tributary to the Wild Basin, which corresponds, south of Longs Peak, tothe Wild Gardens north of it, are gorges of loveliness the waters ofwhose exquisite lakes swell St. Vrain Creek. The Wild Basin is one of Rocky Mountain's lands of the future. Theentire west side is another, for, except for the lively settlement atGrand Lake, its peaks and canyons, meadows, lakes, and valleys areseldom visited. It is natural that the east side, with its broaderplateaus and showier range, should have the first development, but noaccessible country of the splendid beauty of the west side can longremain neglected. Its unique feature is the broad and beautiful valleyof the North Fork of the Grand River, here starting for its greatadventure in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Wiswall Brothers_ SUMMIT OF LONGS PEAK, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK Twenty-four hundred feet from water to peak, a mighty chasm carved by anancient glacier] V The Rockies are a masterpiece of erosion. When forces below the surfacebegan to push them high in air, their granite cores were coveredthousands of feet deep with the sediments of the great sea of whosebottom once they were a part. The higher they rose the more insistentlyfrosts and rains concentrated upon their uplifting summits; in time allsedimentary rocks were washed away, and the granite beneath exposed. Then the frosts and rains, and later the glaciers, attacked the granite, and carved it into the jagged forms of to-day. The glaciers moulded thegorges which the streams had cut. The glaciers have passed, but stillthe work goes on. Slowly the mountains rise, and slowly, but not soslowly, the frosts chisel and the rains carry away. If conditions remainas now, history will again repeat itself, and the gorgeous peaks ofto-day will decline, a million years or more from now, into the lowrounded summits of our eastern Appalachians, and later into the flat, soil-hidden granites of Canada. These processes may be seen in practical example. Ascend the precipitouseast side by the Flattop Trail, for instance, and notice particularlythe broad, rolling level of the continental divide. For many miles itis nothing but a lofty, bare, undulating plain, interspersed withsummits, but easy to travel except for its accumulation of immense looseboulders. This plain slopes gently toward the west, and presentlybreaks, as on the east, into cliffs and canyons. It is a stage in thereduction by erosion of mountains which, except for erosion, might haverisen many thousands of feet higher. Geologists call it a peneplain, which means nearly-a-plain; it is from fragmentary remains of peneplainsthat they trace ranges long ages washed away. History may, in some dimfuture age, repeat still another wonder, for upon the flattened wreck ofthe Front Range may rise, by some earth movement, a new and even noblerrange. But what about the precipitous eastern front? That masterpiece was begun by water, accomplished by ice, and finishedby water. In the beginning, streams determined the direction of thevalleys and carved these valleys deep. Then came, in very recent times, as geologists measure earth's history, the Great Ice Age. As a result offalling temperature, the mountains became covered, except their highersummits and the continental divide, with glaciers. These came in atleast two invasions, and remained many hundreds of thousands of years. When changing climate melted them away, the Rocky Mountain National Parkremained not greatly different from what it is to-day. Frosts and rainshave softened and beautified it since. These glaciers, first forming in the beds of streams by theaccumulations of snow which presently turned to ice and moved slowlydown the valleys, began at once to pluck out blocks of granite fromtheir starting-points, and settle themselves in cirques. They pluckeddownward and backward, undermining their cirque walls until fallinggranite left precipices; armed with imprisoned rocks, they gouged andscraped their beds, and these processes, constantly repeated forthousands of centuries, produced the mountain forms, the giant gorges, the enormous precipices, and the rounded granite valleys of thestupendous east elevation of the Front Range. There is a good illustration in Iceberg Lake, near the base of TrailRidge on the Ute Trail. This precipitous well, which every visitor toRocky Mountain should see, originally was an ice-filled hollow in thehigh surface of the ridge. When the Fall River Glacier moved eastward, the ice in the hollow slipped down to join it, and by that very motionbecame itself a glacier. Downward and backward plucking in the cirquewhich it presently made, and the falling of the undermined walls, produced in, say, a few hundred thousand years this striking well, uponwhose lake's surface visitors of to-day will find cakes of floating ice, broken from the sloping snow-field which is the old glacier's remainderand representative of to-day. The glaciers which shaped Rocky Mountain's big canyons had enormous sizeand thickness. Ice streams from scores of glacial cirques joinedfan-like to form the Wild Basin Glacier, which swept out through thenarrow valley of St. Vrain. Four glaciers headed at Longs Peak, one westof Mount Meeker, which gave into the Wild Basin; one west of Longs Peak, which joined the combination of glaciers that hollowed Loch Vale; oneupon the north, which moulded Glacier Gorge; and the small but powerfulglacier which hollowed the great Chasm on the east front of Longs Peak. The Loch Vale and Glacier Gorge glaciers joined with giant ice streamsas far north as Tyndall Gorge to form the Bartholf Glacier; and north ofthat the mighty Thompson Glacier drained the divide to the head ofForest Canyon, while the Fall River Glacier drained the Mummy Rangesouth of Hagues Peak. These undoubtedly were the main glacial streams of those ancient days, the agencies responsible for the gorgeous spectacle we now enjoy. Thegreater glaciers reached a thickness of two thousand feet; they haveleft records scratched high upon the granite walls. As the glaciers moved down their valleys they carried, imprisoned intheir bodies and heaped upon their backs and sides, the plunder fromtheir wreckage of the range. This they heaped as large moraines in thebroad valleys. The moraines of the Rocky Mountain National Park areunequalled, in my observation, for number, size, and story-tellingability. They are conspicuous features of the great plateau upon theeast, and of the broad valley of the Grand River west of the park. Eventhe casual visitor of a day is stirred to curiosity by the straight, high wall of the great moraine for which Moraine Park is named, and bythe high curved hill which springs from the northeastern shoulder ofLongs Peak, and encircles the eastern foot of Mount Meeker. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Willis T. Lee_ THE ANDREWS GLACIER HANGS FROM THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE A glacier in the Rocky Mountain National Park which can be studied byvisitors] [Illustration: _From a photograph by H. T. Cowling_ A ROCKY MOUNTAIN CIRQUE CARVED FROM SOLID GRANITE Iceberg Lake was cut eighteen hundred feet deep by an ancient glacier] These and other moraines are fascinating features of any visit to RockyMountain National Park. The motor roads disclose them, the trails travelthem. In combination with the gulfs, the shelved canyons and the scarredand serrated peaks and walls, these moraines offer the visitor athrilling mystery story of the past, the unravelling of whose threadsand the reconstruction of whose plot and climax will add zest andinterest to a summer's outing, and bring him, incidentally, in closecommunion with nature in a thousand happy moods. VI The limitations of a chapter permit no mention of the giganticprehistoric monsters of land, sea, and air which once haunted the siteof this noble park, nor description of its more intimate beauties, nordetail of its mountaineering joys; for all of which and much otherinvaluable information I refer those interested to publications of theNational Park Service, Department of the Interior, by Doctor Willis T. Lee and Major Roger W. Toll. But something must be told of its earlyhistory. In 1819 the exploring expedition which President Madison sent west underColonel S. H. Long, while camping at the mouth of La Poudre River, wasgreatly impressed by the magnificence of a lofty, square-toppedmountain. They approached it no nearer, but named it Longs Peak, inhonor of their leader. Parkman records seeing it in 1845. The pioneers, of course, knew the country. Deer, elk, and sheep wereprobably hunted there in the forties and fifties. Joel Estes, the firstsettler, built a cabin in the foothills in 1860, hence the title ofEstes Park. James Nugent, afterward widely celebrated as "Rocky MountainJim, " arrived in 1868. Others followed slowly. William N. Byers, founder of the _Rocky Mountain News_, made the firstattempt to climb Longs Peak in 1864. He did not succeed then, but fouryears later, with a party which included Major J. W. Powell, who made thefirst exploration of the Grand Canyon the following year, he made thesummit. In 1871 the Reverend E. J. Lamb, the first regular guide on LongsPeak, made the first descent by the east precipice, a dangerous feat. The Earl of Dunraven visited Estes Park in 1871, attracted by the biggame hunting, and bought land. He projected an immense preserve, andinduced men to file claims which he planned to acquire after they hadsecured possession; but the claims were disallowed. Albert Bierstadtvisited Dunraven in 1874, and painted canvases which are famous inAmerican art. It was Dunraven, also, who built the first hotel. Tourists began toarrive in 1865. In 1874 the first stage line was established, coming infrom Longmont. Telephone connection was made in 1906. Under the name of Estes Park, the region prospered. Fifty thousandpeople were estimated to have visited it in 1914. It was not, however, till the national park was created, in 1915, that the mountains assumedconsiderable importance except as an agreeable and inspiring backgroundto the broad plateau. V McKINLEY, GIANT OF GIANTS MOUNT MCKINLEY NATIONAL PARK, ALASKA. AREA, ABOUT 2, 200 SQUARE MILES The monster mountain of this continent, "the majestic, snow-crownedAmerican monarch, " as General Greeley called it, was made a nationalpark in 1917. Mount McKinley rises 20, 300 feet above tide-water, and17, 000 feet above the eyes of the beholder standing on the plateau atits base. Scenically, it is the highest mountain in the world, for thosesummits of the Andes and Himalayas which are loftier as measured fromsea level, can be viewed closely only from valleys whose altitudes rangefrom 10, 000 to 15, 000 feet. Its enormous bulk is shrouded in perpetualsnow two-thirds down from its summit, and the foothills and broad plainsupon its north and west are populated with mountain sheep and caribou inunprecedented numbers. To appreciate Mount McKinley's place among national parks, one must knowwhat it means in the anatomy of the continent. The western margin ofNorth America is bordered by a broad mountainous belt known as thePacific System, which extends from Mexico northwesterly into and throughAlaska, to the very end of the Aleutian Islands, and includes suchcelebrated ranges as the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade, and the St. Elias. In Alaska, at the head of Cook Inlet, it swings a sharp curve to thesouthwest and becomes Alaska's mountain axis. This sharp curve, for allthe world like a monstrous granite hinge connecting the northwesterlyand southwesterly limbs of the System, is the gigantic Alaska Range, which is higher and broader than the Sierra Nevada, and of greaterrelief and extent than the Alps. Near the centre of this range, itsclimax in position, height, bulk, and majesty, stands Mount McKinley. Its glistening peak can be seen on clear days in most directions for twohundred miles. For many years Mount St. Elias, with its eighteen thousand feet ofaltitude, was considered North America's loftiest summit. That wasbecause it stands in that part of Alaska which was first developed. TheKlondike region, far northward, was well on the way to developmentbefore McKinley became officially recognized as the mountain climax ofthe continent. But that does not mean that it remained unknown. Thenatives of the Cook Inlet country on the east knew it as Doleika, andtell you that it is the rock which a god threw at his eloping wife. Theysay it was once a volcano, which is not the fact. The Aleutes on thesouth called it Traleika, the big mountain. The natives of the Kuskokwimcountry on the west knew it as Denalai, the god, father of the greatrange. The Russians who established the first permanent white settlementin Alaska on Kodiak Island knew it as Bulshia Gora, the great mountain. Captain Cook, who in 1778 explored the inlet which since has borne hisname, does not mention it, but Vancouver in 1794 unquestionably meant itin his reference to "distant stupendous mountains. " After the United States acquired Alaska, in 1867, there is littlemention of it for some years. But Frank Densmore, an explorer of 1889, entered the Kuskokwim region, and took such glowing accounts of itsmagnificence back to the Yukon that for years it was known through thesettlements as Densmore's Mountain. In 1885 Lieutenant Henry C. Allen, U. S. A. , made a sketch of the range from his skin boat on the TananaRiver, a hundred and fifty miles away, which is the earliest knownpicture of McKinley. Meantime the neighborhood was invaded by prospectors from both sides. The Cook Inlet gold fields were exploited in 1894. Two years later W. A. Dickey and his partner, Monks, two young Princeton graduates, exploringnorth from their workings, recognized the mountain's commandingproportions and named it Mount McKinley, by which it rapidly becameknown, and was entered on the early maps. With crude instrumentsimprovised on the spot, Dickey estimated the mountain's height as twentythousand feet--a real achievement. When Belmore Browne, who climbed thegreat peak in 1912, asked Dickey why he chose the name, Dickey told himthat he was so disgusted with the free-silver arguments of mentravelling with him that he named the mountain after the most ardentgold-standard man he knew. The War Department sent several parties to the region during the nextfew years to explore, and the United States Geological Survey, beginningin 1898 with the Eldridge-Muldrow party, has had topographical andgeological parties in the region almost continuously since. In 1915 theGovernment began the railroad from Seward to Fairbanks. Its course liesfrom Cook Inlet up the Susitna River to the headwaters of the NenanaRiver, where it crosses the range. This will make access to the regioneasy and comfortable. It was to safeguard the enormous game herds fromthe hordes of hunters which the railroad was expected to bring ratherthan to conserve an alpine region scenically unequalled that Congressset aside twenty-two hundred square miles under the name of the MountMcKinley National Park. From the white sides of McKinley and his giant neighbors descendglaciers of enormous bulk and great length. Their waters drain on theeast and south, through the Susitna River and its tributaries, into thePacific; and on the north and west, through tributaries of the Yukon andKuskokwim, into Bering Sea. The south side of McKinley is forbidding in the extreme, but its northand west fronts pass abruptly into a plateau of gravels, sands, andsilts twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet in altitude, whosegentle valleys lead the traveller up to the very sides of the granitemonster, and whose mosses and grasses pasture the caribou. The national park boundaries enclose immense areas of this plateau. Thecontours of its rounded rolling elevations mark the courses ofinnumerable streams, and occasionally abut upon great sweeping glaciers. Low as it is, the plateau is generally above timber-line. The day willcome when roads will wind through its valleys, and hotels and camps willnestle in its sheltered hollows; while the great herds of caribou, morethan one of which has been estimated at fifteen hundred animals, willpasture like sheep within close range of the camera. For the wildanimals of McKinley National Park, having never been hunted, werefearless of the explorers, and now will never learn to fear man. Thesame is true in lesser measure of the more timid mountain sheep whichfrequent the foothills in numbers not known elsewhere. Charles Sheldoncounted more than five hundred in one ordinary day's foot journeythrough the valleys. The magic of summer life on this sunlit plateau, with its limitlessdistances, its rushing streams, its enormous crawling glaciers, itswaving grasses, its sweeping gentle valleys, its myriad friendlyanimals, and, back of all and commanding all, its never-forgotten andever-controlling presence, the shining Range and Master Mountain, powerfully grip imagination and memory. One never can look long awayfrom the mountain, whose delicate rose tint differentiates it from othergreat mountains. Here is ever present an intimate sense of the infinite, which is reminiscent of that pang which sometimes one may get by gazinglong into the starry zenith. From many points of view McKinley looksits giant size. As the climber ascends the basal ridges there are placeswhere its height and bulk appall. Along the northern edge of the park lies the Kantishna mining district. In 1906 there was a wild stampede to this region. Diamond City, BearpawCity, Glacier City, McKinley City, Roosevelt, and other rude miningsettlements came into rapid existence. Results did not adequately rewardthe thousands who flocked to the new field, and the "cities" wereabandoned. A hundred or two miners remain, scattered thinly over a largearea, which is forested here and there with scrubby growths, and, inlocalities, is remarkably productive of cultivated fruits andvegetables. Few know and few will know Mount McKinley. It is too monstrous for anybut the hardiest to discover its ice-protected secrets. The South Peak, which is the summit, has been climbed twice, once by the Parker-Browneparty in 1912, after two previous unsuccessful expeditions, and once, the year following, by the party of Archdeacon Hudson Stuck, whogratified an ambition which had arisen out of his many years ofstrenuous missionary work among the Alaskan Indians. From the records ofthese two parties we gather nearly all that is known of the mountain. The North Peak, which is several hundred feet lower, was climbed byAnderson and Taylor of the Tom Lloyd party, in 1913. From each of these peaks an enormous buttressing ridge sweeps northwarduntil it merges into the foothills and the great plain. These ridgesare roughly parallel, and carry between them the Denali Glacier, toadopt Belmore Browne's suggested name, and its forks and tributaries. Upthis glacier is the difficult passage to the summit. Tremendous as itis, the greatest perhaps of the north side, the Denali Glacier by nomeans compares with the giants which flow from the southern front. In 1903 Judge James Wickersham, afterward Delegate to Congress fromAlaska, made the first attempt to climb McKinley; it failed through hisunderestimation of the extensive equipment necessary. In 1906 DoctorFrederick A. Cook, who meantime also had made an unsuccessful attemptfrom the north side, led an expedition from the south which includedProfessor Herschel Parker of Columbia University, and Mr. BelmoreBrowne, artist, explorer, and big game hunter. Ascending the YentnaRiver, it reached a point upon the Tokositna Glacier beyond whichprogress was impossible, and returned to Cook Inlet and disbanded. Parker returned to New York, and Cook proposed that Browne should lay ina needed supply of game while he, with a packer named Barrill, shouldmake what he described as a rapid reconnaissance preparatory to afurther attempt upon the summit the following year. Browne wanted toaccompany him, but was overpersuaded. Cook and Barrill then ascended theSusitna, struck into the country due south of McKinley, and returned toTyonik with the announcement that they had reached the summit. Cookexhibited a photograph of Barrill standing upon a crag, which he saidwas the summit. A long and painful controversy followed upon Cook'sreturn east with this claim. In all probability the object of the Parker-Browne expedition of 1910was as much to follow Cook's course and check his claim as to reach thesummit. The first object was attained, and Herman L. Tucker, a nationalforester, was photographed standing on the identical crag upon whichCook had photographed Barrill four years before. This crag was foundmiles south of McKinley, with other peaks higher than its ownintervening. From here the party advanced up a glacier of enormous sizeto the very foot of the upper reaches of the mountain's south side, butwas stopped by gigantic snow walls, which defeated every attempt tocross. "At the slightest touch of the sun, " writes Browne, "the greatcliffs literally _smoke_ with avalanches. " The Parker-Browne expedition undertaken in 1912 for purposes ofexploration, also approached from the south, but, following the SusitnaRiver farther up, crossed the Alaska Range with dog trains to the northside at a hitherto unexplored point. Just before crossing the divide itentered what five years later became the Mount McKinley National Park, and, against an April blizzard, descended into a land of many gorgeousglaciers. "We were now, " writes Belmore Browne, "in a wildernessparadise. The mountains had a wild, picturesque look, due to their barerock summits, and big game was abundant. We were wild with enthusiasmover the beauty of it all, and every few minutes as we jogged along someone would gaze fondly at the surrounding mountains and ejaculate: 'Thisis sure a white man's country. '" Of these "happy hunting grounds, " as Browne chapters the park country inhis book, Stephen R. Capps of the United States Geological Survey saysin his report: "Probably no part of America is so well supplied with wild game, unprotected by reserves, as the area on the north slope of the AlaskaRange, west of the Nanana River. This region has been so little visitedby white men that the game herds have, until recent years, been littlemolested by hunters. The white mountain sheep are particularly abundantin the main Alaska Range, and in the more rugged foothills. Caribou areplentiful throughout the entire area, and were seen in bands numberingmany hundred individuals. Moose are numerous in the lowlands, and rangeover all the area in which timber occurs. Black bears may be seen in ornear timbered lands, and grizzly bears range from the rugged mountainsto the lowlands. Rabbits and ptarmigan are at times remarkablynumerous. " Parker and Browne camped along the Muldrow Glacier, now a magnificentcentral feature of the park. Then they made for McKinley summit. Striking the Denali Glacier, they ascended it with a dog train to analtitude of eleven thousand feet, where they made a base camp and wenton afoot, packing provisions and camp outfit on their backs. At oneplace they ascended an incoming glacier over ice cascades, four thousandfeet high. From their last camp they cut steps in the ice for more thanthree thousand feet of final ascent, and attained the top on July 1 inthe face of a blizzard. On the northeastern end of the level summit, andonly five minutes' walk from the little hillock which forms the supremesummit, the blizzard completely blinded them. It was impossible to goon, and to wait meant rapid death by freezing; with extreme difficultythey returned to their camp. Two days later they made a second attempt, but were again enveloped in an ice storm that rendered progressimpossible. Exhaustion of supplies forbade another try, and saved theirlives, for a few days later a violent earthquake shook McKinley to itssummit. Later on Mr. Browne identified this earthquake as concurrentwith the terrific explosive eruption which blew off the top of MountKatmai, on the south coast of Alaska. The following spring the Stuck-Karstens party made the summit upon thatrarest of occasions with Mount McKinley, a perfect day. Archdeacon Stuckdescribes the "actual summit" as "a little crater-like snow basin, sixtyor sixty-five feet long, and twenty to twenty-five feet wide, with ahay-cock of snow at either end--the south one a little higher than thenorth. " Ignoring official and recognized nomenclature, and callingMcKinley and Foraker by their Kuskokwim Indian names, he writes of MountForaker: "Denali's Wife does not appear at all save from the actualsummit of Denali, for she is completely hidden by his South Peak, untilthe moment when his South Peak is surmounted. And never was nobler sightdisplayed to man than that great isolated mountain spread outcompletely, with all its spurs and ridges, its cliffs and its glaciers, lofty and mighty, and yet far beneath us. " "Above us, " he writes a few pages later, "the sky took on a blue so deepthat none of us had ever gazed upon a midday sky like it before. It wasdeep, rich, lustrous, transparent blue, as dark as Prussian blue, butintensely blue; a hue so strange, so increasingly impressive, that toone at least it 'seemed like special news of God, ' as a new poet sings. We first noticed the darkening tint of the upper sky in the Grand Basin, and it deepened as we rose. Tyndall observed and discussed thisphenomenon in the Alps, but it seems scarcely to have been mentionedsince. " A couple of months before the Parker-Browne party started for the top, there was an ascent of the lower North Peak which, for sheer daring andendurance must rank high in the history of adventure. Four prospectorsand miners from the Kantishna region organized by Tom Lloyd, tookadvantage of the hard ice of May, and an idle dog team, to make for thesummit. Their motive seems to have been little more than to plant a polewhere it could be seen by telescope, as they thought, from Fairbanks;that was why they chose the North Peak. They used no ropes, alpenstocks, or scientific equipment of any sort, and carried only one camera, thechance possession of McGonagall. [Illustration: _From a photograph by G. B. Gordon_ MOUNT McKINLEY, LOOMING ABOVE THE GREAT ALASKAN RANGE] [Illustration: _From a photograph by LaVoy_ ARCHDEACON STUCK'S PARTY HALF-WAY UP THE MOUNTAIN] [Illustration: THE SUMMIT OF MOUNT McKINLEY] They made their last camp at an altitude of eleven thousand feet. HereLloyd remained, while Anderson, Taylor, and McGonagall attempted thesummit in one day's supreme effort. Near the top McGonagall was overcomeby mountain sickness. Anderson and Taylor went on and planted their polenear the North summit, where the Stuck-Karstens party saw it a yearlater in their ascent of the South Peak. So extraordinary a feat of strength and endurance will hardly beaccomplished again unless, perhaps, by hardy miners of the arcticwilderness. "The North Pole's nothing to fellows like us, " one of themsaid later on; "once strike gold there, and we'll build a town on it ina month. " The published records of the Parker-Browne and Stuck-Karstensexpeditions emphasize the laborious nature of the climbing. The veryisolation which gives McKinley its spectacular elevation multiplies thedifficulties of ascent by lowering the snow line thousands of feet belowthe snow line of the Himalayas and Andes with their loftier surroundingvalleys. Travel on the glaciers was trying in the extreme, for much ofthe way had to be sounded for hidden crevasses, and, after the selectionof each new camping place, the extensive outfit must be returned for andsledded or carried up. Frequent barriers, often of great height, had tobe surmounted by tortuous and exhausting detours over icy cliffs andsoft snow. And always special care must be taken against avalanches;the roar of avalanches for much of the latter journey was almostcontinuous. Toward the end, the thermometer was rarely above zero, and at night farbelow; but the heat and glare of the sun was stifling and blindingduring much of the day; often they perspired profusely under theircrushing burdens, with the thermometer nearly at zero. Snow fell daily, and often several times a day. It is probable that no other of the world's mountain giants presentsclimbing conditions so strenuous. Farming is successfully carried on inthe Himalayas far above McKinley's level of perpetual snow, and Tuckerreports having climbed a twenty-thousand-foot peak in the Andes withless exertion than it cost the Parker-Browne party, of which he had beena member, to mount the first forty-five hundred feet of McKinley. While McKinley will be climbed again and again in the future, the featwill scarcely be one of the popular amusements of the national park. Yet Mount McKinley is the northern landmark of an immense unexploredmountain region south of the national park, which very far surpasses theAlps in every feature that has made the Alps world-famous. Of thisregion A. H. Brooks, Chief of the Alaska Division of the United StatesGeological Survey, writes: "Here lies a rugged highland area far greater in extent than all ofSwitzerland, a virgin field for explorers and mountaineers. He who wouldmaster unattained summits, explore unknown rivers, or traverseuntrodden glaciers in a region whose scenic beauties are hardlyequalled, has not to seek them in South America or Central Asia, forgenerations will pass before the possibilities of the Alaskan Range areexhausted. But this is not Switzerland, with its hotels, railways, trained guides, and well-worn paths. It will appeal only to him whoprefers to strike out for himself, who can break his own trail throughtrackless wilds, can throw the diamond hitch, and will take the chancesof life and limb so dear to the heart of the true explorer. " The hotels will come in time to the Mount McKinley National Park, andperhaps they will come also to the Alaskan Alps. Perhaps it is notstraining the credulity of an age like ours to suggest that McKinley'scommanding summit may be attained some day by aeroplane, with many ofthe joys and none of the distressing hardships endured by the wearyclimber. When this time comes, if it does come, there will be addedmerely another extraordinary experience to the very many unique andpleasurable experiences of a visit to the Mount McKinley National Park. VI LAFAYETTE AND THE EAST LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK, MAINE. AREA, 10, 000 ACRES It has been the policy of Congress to create national parks only frompublic lands, the title to which costs nothing to acquire. It may bemany years before the nation awakes to the fact that areas distinguishedfor supreme scenery, historical association, or extraordinary scientificsignificance are worth conserving even if conservation involves theirpurchase. The answer to the oft-asked question why the national parksare all in the west is that the east passed into private possessionbefore the national park idea assumed importance in the nationalconsciousness. The existence of the two national parks east of the Rocky Mountainsmerely emphasizes the fact. The Hot Springs of Arkansas were set apartin 1832 while the Ozark Mountains were still a wilderness. The LafayetteNational Park, in Maine, is made up of many small parcels of privatelyowned land which a group of public-spirited citizens, because of theimpossibility of securing national appropriations, patiently acquiredduring a series of laborious years, and presented, in 1916, to thepeople of the United States. While refusing to purchase land for national parks, Congressnevertheless is buying large areas of eastern mountain land fornational forest, the purpose being not only to conserve water sources, which national parks would accomplish quite as thoroughly, butparticularly to control lumbering operations in accord with principleswhich will insure the lumber supply of the future. Here and there inthis reserve are limited areas of distinguished national park quality, but whether they will be set aside as national parks is a question forthe people and the future to decide. Certainly the mountain topographyand the rich deciduous forests of the eastern United States should berepresented in the national parks system by several fine examples. The Lafayette National Park differs from all other members of thenational parks system in several important respects. It is in the fareast; it combines seashore and mountain; it is clothed with a rich andvaried growth of deciduous trees and eastern conifers; it is intimatelyassociated with the very early history of America. Besides which, it isa region of noble beauty, subtle charm and fascinating variety. The Appalachian Mountain uplift, which, roughly speaking, embraces allthe ranges constituting the eastern rib of the continent, may beconsidered to include also the very ancient peneplains of New England. These tumbled hills and shallow valleys, accented here and there byranges and monadnocks, by which the geologist means solitary peaks, areall that the frosts and rains of very many millions of years and theglaciers of more recent geologic times have left of what once must havebeen a towering mountain region crested in snow. The wrinkling of theearth's surface which produced this range occurred during the Devonianperiod when fishes were the predominant inhabitants of the earth, manymillions of years before birds or even reptiles appeared. Its rise wasaccompanied by volcanic disturbances, whose evidences are abundant onislands between the mouth of the Penobscot and Mount Desert Island, though not within the park. The mind cannot conceive the lapse of timewhich has reduced this range, at an erosional speed no greater thanto-day's, to its present level. During this process the coast line wasalso slowly sinking, changing valleys into estuaries and land-encircledbays. The coast of Maine is an eloquent chapter in the continent'sancient history, and the Lafayette National Park is one of the mostdramatic paragraphs in the chapter. Where the Penobscot River reaches the sea, and for forty miles east, thesinking continental shore has deeply indented the coast line with anetwork of broad, twisting bays, enclosing many islands. The largest andfinest of these is Mount Desert Island, for many years celebrated forits romantic beauty. Upon its northeast shore, facing Frenchman's Bay, is the resort town of Bar Harbor; other resorts dot its shores on everyside. The island has a large summer population drawn from all parts ofthe country. Besides its hotels, there are many fine summer homes. [Illustration: IN LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK Echo Lake in the foreground, Sommes Harbor beyond Acadia] [Illustration: SEA CAVES IN THE GRANITE Thus does the ocean everlastingly undermine the foundations of themountains. Photograph taken at low tide; Lafayette National Park] The feature which especially distinguishes Mount Desert Island fromother islands, in fact from the entire Atlantic coast, is a group ofgranitic mountains which rise abruptly from the sea. They were oncetowering monsters, perhaps only one, unquestionably the loftiest formany miles around. They are the sole remainders upon the present coastline of a great former range. They are composed almost wholly ofgranite, worn down by the ages, but massive enough still to resist theagencies which wiped away their comrades. They rise a thousand feet ormore, grim, rounded, cleft with winding valleys and deep passes, dividedin places by estuaries of the sea, holding in their hollows manycharming lakes. Their abrupt flanks gnawed by the beating sea, their valleys grown withsplendid forests and brightened by wild flowers, their slopes and domessprinkled with conifers which struggle for foothold in the cracks whichthe elements are widening and deepening in their granite surface, foryears they have been the resort of thousands of climbers, students ofnature and seekers of the beautiful; the views of sea, estuary, island, plain, lake, and mountain from the heights have no counterpartelsewhere. All this mountain wilderness, free as it was to the public, was inprivate ownership. Some of it was held by persons who had not seen itfor years. Some of it was locked up in estates. The time came whenowners began to plan fine summer homes high on the mountain slopes. Afew, however, believed that the region should belong to the wholepeople, and out of this belief grew the movement, led by George B. Dorrand Charles W. Eliot, to acquire title and present it to the nationwhich would not buy it. They organized a holding association, to whichthey gave their own properties; for years afterward Mr. Dorr devotedmost of his time to persuading others to contribute their holdings, andto raising subscriptions for the purchase of plots which were tied up inestates. In 1916 the association presented five thousand acres to theGovernment, and President Wilson created it by proclamation the Sieur deMonts National Monument. The gift has been greatly increased since. In1918 Congress made appropriations for its upkeep and development. InFebruary, 1919, Congress changed its name and status; it then became theLafayette National Park. The impulse to name the new national park after the French general whocame to our aid in time of need arose, of course, out of the war-timewarmth of feeling for our ally, France. The region had been identifiedwith early French exploration; the original monument had been named incommemoration of this historical association. The first Europeansettlement in America north of the latitude of the Gulf of Mexico washere. Henry of Navarre had sent two famous adventurers to the new world, de Monts and Champlain. The first colony established by de Monts was atthe mouth of the St. Croix River, which forms the eastern boundary ofMaine, and the first land within the present United States which wasreached by Champlain was Mount Desert Island. This was in 1604. It wasChamplain who gave the island its present name, after the mountainswhich rise so prominently from its rock-bound shore. To him, however, the name had a different significance than it first suggests to us. L'Isle des Monts Deserts meant to him the Island of the LonelyMountains, and lonely indeed they must have seemed above the flat shoreline. Thus named, the place became a landmark for future voyagers; amongothers Winthrop records seeing the mountains on his way to theMassachusetts colony in 1630. He anchored opposite and fished for twohours, catching "sixty-seven great cod, " one of which was "a yardaround. " "By a curious train of circumstances, " writes George B. Dorr, "thetitles by which these mountains to the eastward of Somes Sound are heldgo back to the early ownership of Mount Desert Island by the Crown ofFrance. For it was granted by Louis XIV, grandson of Henry IV, toAntoine de la Mothe Cadillac, an officer of noble family fromsouthwestern France, then serving in Acadia, who afterward becamesuccessively the founder of Detroit and Governor of Louisiana--theMississippi Valley. Cadillac lost it later, through English occupationof the region, ownership passing, first to the Province, then to theCommonwealth of Massachusetts. But presently the Commonwealth gave backto his granddaughter--Madame de Gregoire--and her husband, Frenchrefugees, the Island's eastern half, moved thereto by the part thatFrance had taken in the recent War of Independence and by letters theyhad brought from Lafayette. And they came down and lived there. " And so it naturally followed that, under stress of war enthusiasm, thisreservation with its French associations should commemorate not only theold Province of Acadia, which the French yielded to England only afterhalf a century of war, and England later on to us after another war, butthe great war also in which France, England, and the United States alljoined as allies in the cause of the world's freedom. In accord withthis idea, the highest mountain looking upon the sea has been named theFlying Squadron, in honor of the service of the air, born of an Americaninvention, and carried to perfection by the three allies in common. The park may be entered from any of the surrounding resorts, but themain gateway is Bar Harbor, which is reached by train, automobile, andsteamboat. No resort may be reached more comfortably, and hotelaccommodations are ample. The mountains rise within a mile of the town. They extend westward fortwelve miles, lying in two groups, separated by a fine salt-water fiordknown as Somes Sound. The park's boundary is exceedingly irregular, withdeep indentations of private property. It is enclosed, along the shore, by an excellent automobile road; roads also cross it on both sides ofSomes Sound. There are ten mountains in the eastern group; the three fronting BarHarbor have been renamed, for historic reasons, Cadillac Mountain, theFlying Squadron, and Champlain Mountain. For the same reason mountainsupon Somes Sound have been renamed Acadia Mountain, St. SauveurMountain, and Norumbega Mountain, the last an Indian name; similarchanges commemorating the early English occupation also have been madein the nomenclature of the western group. Tablets and memorials are alsoprojected in emphasis of the historical associations of the place. Both mountain groups are dotted with lakes; those of the western groupare the largest of the island. The pleasures, then, of the Lafayette National Park cover a wide rangeof human desire. Sea bathing, boating, yachting, salt-water andfresh-water fishing, tramping, exploring the wilderness, hunting theview spots--these are the summer occupations of many visitors, thediversions of many others. The more thoughtful will find its historicalassociations fascinating, its geological record one of the richest inthe continent, its forests well equipped schools for tree study, theirbranches a museum of bird life. To climb these low mountains, wandering by the hour in their hollows andupon their sea-horizoned shoulders, is, for one interested in nature, toget very close indeed to the secrets of her wonderful east. One maystand upon Cadillac's rounded summit and let imagination realize for himthe day when this was a glaciered peak in a mighty range which forgedsouthward from the far north, shoulder upon shoulder, peak upon peak, pushing ever higher as it approached the sea, and extending far beyondthe present ocean horizon; for these mountains of Mount Desert are by nomeans the terminal of the original mighty range; the slow subsidence ofthe coast has wholly submerged several, perhaps many, that once rosesouth of them. The valley which now carries the St. Croix River drainedthis once towering range's eastern slopes; the valley of the Penobscotdrained its western slopes. The rocks beneath his feet disclose not only this vision of the geologicpast; besides that, in their slow decay, in the chiselling of thetrickling waters, in the cleavage of masses by winter's ice, in thepeeling of the surface by alternate freezing and melting, in thedissolution and disintegration everywhere by the chemicals imprisoned inair and water, all of which he sees beneath his feet, they disclose tohim the processes by which Nature has wrought this splendid ruin. Andif, captivated by this vision, he studies intimately the page of historywritten in these rocks, he will find it full of fascinating detail. The region also offers an absorbing introduction to the study of oureastern flora. The exposed bogs and headlands support several hundredspecies of plants typical of the arctic, sub-arctic, and Hudsonianzones, together with practically all of the common plants of theCanadian zone, and many of the southern coasts. So with the trees. Essentially coastal, it is the land of conifers, the southern limit ofsome which are common in the great regions of the north, yet exhibitingin nearly full variety the species for many miles south; yet it is also, in its sheltered valleys, remarkably representative of the deciduousgrowths of the entire Appalachian region. [Illustration: FRENCHMAN'S BAY FROM THE EAST CLIFF OF CHAMPLAINMOUNTAIN Lafayette National Park] The bird life is full and varied. The food supply attracts migratorybirds, and aquatic birds find here the conditions which make forincrease. Deer are returning in some numbers from the mainland. In brief, the Lafayette National Park, small though it is, is one of themost important members of the national parks system. For the pleasureseeker no other provides so wide and varied an opportunity. To thestudent, no other offers a more readable or more distinctive volume; itis the only national museum of the fascinating geology of the east, andI can think of no other place in the east where classes can find sovaried and so significant an exhibit. To the artist, the poet, and thedreamer it presents vistas of ocean, inlet, fiord, shore, wave-lashedpromontory, bog, meadow, forest, and mountain--an answer to every mood. If this nation, as now appears, must long lack national parksrepresentative of the range of its splendid east, let us be thankfulthat this one small park is so complete and so distinguished. THE VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARKS ON THE VOLCANO IN SCENERY The volcanic national parks are Lassen Volcanic, Crater Lake, MountRainier, Yellowstone, and Hawaii. Though several of them exhibitextremely high mountains, their scenic ensemble differs in almost allrespects from that of the granite parks. The landscape tends to broadelevated surfaces and rolling hills, from which rise sharp toweringcones or massive mountains whose irregular bulging knobs were formed byoutbreaks of lava upon the sides of original central vents. The Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon, and northern California areone of the best examples of such a landscape; from its low swellingsummits rise at intervals the powerful master cones of Shasta, Rainier, Adams, Hood, Baker, and others. Fujiyama, the celebrated mountain ofJapan, may be cited as a familiar example of the basic mountain form, the single-cone volcanic peak. Vesuvius is a familiar example of simplecomplication, the double-cone volcano, while Mauna Loa in Hawaii, including Kilauea of the pit of fire, a neighbor volcano which it hasalmost engulfed in its swollen bulk, well illustrates the volcano builtup by outpourings of lava from vents broken through its sides. Flat androlling Yellowstone with its geyser fields, is one of the best possibleexamples of a dead and much eroded volcanic region. The scenic detail of the volcanic landscape is interesting and differentfrom any other. Centuries and the elements create from lava a soil ofgreat fertility. No forests and wild flowers excel those growing on thelavas of the Cascades, and the fertility of the Hawaiian Islands, whichare entirely volcanic, is world-famous. Streams cut deep and oftenhighly colored canyons in these broad lava lands, and wind and rain, while eroding valleys, often leave ornately modelled edifices of harderrock, and tall thin needles pointing to the zenith. In the near neighborhood of the volcanoes, as well as on their slopingsides, are found lava formations of many strange and wonderful kinds. Hot springs and bubbling paint pots abound; and in the YellowstoneNational Park, geysers. Fields of fantastic, twisted shapes, massessuggesting heaps of tumbled ropes, upstanding spatter cones, cavesarched with lava roofs, are a very few of the very many phenomena whichthe climber of a volcano encounters on his way. And at the top, broad, bowl-shaped craters, whose walls are sometimes many hundred feet deep, enclose, if the crater has long been dormant, sandy floors, from which, perhaps, small cinder cones arise. If the crater still is active, theadventurer's experiences are limited only by his daring. The entire region, in short, strikingly differs from any other of scenickind. Of the several processes of world-making, all of which are progressingto-day at normal speed, none is so thrilling as volcanism, because noother concentrates action into terms of human grasp. Lassen Peak'seruption of a thousand cubic yards of lava in a few hours thrills usmore than the Mississippi's erosion of an average foot of her vastvalley in a hundred thousand years; yet the latter is enormously thegreater. The explosion of Mount Katmai, the rise and fall of Kilauea'sboiling lava, the playing of Yellowstone's monster geysers, thespectacle of Mazama's lake-filled crater, the steaming of the Cascade'smyriad bubbling springs, all make strong appeal to the imagination. Theycarry home the realization of mysterious, overwhelming power. Lava is molten rock of excessively high temperature, which suddenlybecomes released from the fearful pressures of earth's interior. Hurledfrom volcanic vents, or gushing from cracks in the earth's skin, itspreads rapidly over large neighborhoods, filling valleys and raisingbulky rounded masses. Often it is soft and frothy, like pumice. Even in its frequent glassforms, obsidian, for example, it easily disintegrates. There are as manykinds of lava as there are kinds of rock from which it is formed. Volcanic scenery is by no means confined to what we call the volcanicnational parks. Volcanoes were frequent in many parts of the continent. We meet their remnants unexpectedly among the granites of the Rockiesand the Sierra, and the sedimentary rocks of the west and the southwest. Several of our national parks besides those prevailingly volcanic, andseveral of our most distinguished national monuments, exhibitinteresting volcanic interludes. VII LASSEN PEAK AND MOUNT KATMAI THE ONE A NATIONAL PARK IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, THE OTHER A NATIONALMONUMENT IN ALASKA Because most of the conspicuous volcanic eruptions of our day haveoccurred in warmer climes nearer the equator, we usually think ofvolcanoes as tropical, or semi-tropical, phenomena. Vesuvius is in theMediterranean, Pelee in the Caribbean, Mauna Loa and Kilauea on theHawaiian Islands. Of course there is Lassen Peak in California--theexception, as we say, which proves the rule. As a fact, many of the world's greatest volcanoes are very far indeedfrom the tropics. Volcanoes result from the movement of earth massesseeking equilibrium underneath earth's crust, but near enough to thesurface to enable molten rock under terrific pressure to work upwardfrom isolated pockets and break through. Volcanoes occur in alllatitudes. Even Iceland has its great volcano. It is true that thevolcano map shows them congregating thickly in a broad band, of whichthe equator is the centre, but it also shows them bordering the PacificCoast from Patagonia to Alaska, crossing the ocean through the AleutianIslands, and extending far down the Asian coast. It also shows manyinland volcanoes, isolated and in series. The distribution isexceedingly wide. Volcanoes usually occur in belts which may or may not coincide withlines of weakening in the earth's crust below. Hence the series offlaming torches of prehistoric days which, their fires now extinguishedand their sides swathed in ice, have become in our day the row ofspectacular peaks extending from northern California to Puget Sound. Hence also the long range of threatening summits which skirts Alaska'ssouthern shore, to-day the world's most active volcanic belt. Here itwas that Katmai's summit was lost in the mighty explosion of June, 1912, one of enormous violence, which followed tremendous eruptions elsewherealong the same coast, and is expected to be followed by others, perhapsof even greater immensity and power. These two volcanic belts contain each an active volcano which Congresshas made the centre of a national reservation. Lassen Peak, some wisemen believe, is the last exhibit of activity in the dying volcanism ofthe Cascade Mountains. Mount Katmai is the latest and greatest exhibitin a volcanic belt which is believed to be young and growing. THE BUILDING OF THE CASCADES Millions of years ago, in the period which geologists call Tertiary, thepressure under that part of the crust of the earth which now isWashington, Oregon, and northern California, became too powerful forsolid rock to withstand. Long lines of hills appeared parallel to thesea, and gradually rose hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of feet. Thesecracked, and from the long summit-fissures issued hot lava, which spreadover enormous areas and, cooling, laid the foundations for the comingCascade Mountains. When the gaping fissures eased the pressure from beneath, they filledwith ash and lava except at certain vent holes, around which grew thevolcanoes which, when their usefulness as chimneys passed, became thosecones of ice and snow which now are the glory of our northwest. There may have been at one time many hundreds of these volcanoes, bigand little. Most of them doubtless quickly perished under the growingslopes of their larger neighbors, and, as they became choked with ash, the lava which had been finding vent through them sought other doors ofescape, and found them in the larger volcanoes. Thus, by naturalselection, there survived at last that knightly company of monsters nowuniformed in ice, which includes, from north to south, such celebritiesas Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, MountHood, vanished Mount Mazama, Mount Shasta, and living Lassen Peak. Whether or not several of these vast beacons lit Pacific's nights at onetime can never be known with certainty, but probability makes the claim. Whether or not in their decline the canoes of prehistoric men foundharbor by guidance of their pillars of fire by night, and their pillarsof smoke by day is less probable but possible. One at least of the giantband, Lassen Peak, is semi-active to-day. At least two others, MountRainier and Mount Baker, offer evidences of internal heat beneath theirmail of ice. And early settlers in the northwest report Indiantraditions of the awful cataclysm in which Mount Rainier lost twothousand feet of cone. LASSEN PEAK NATIONAL PARK Lassen Peak, the last of the Cascades in active eruption, rises betweenthe northern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, of which it is locallybut wrongly considered a part, and the Klamath Mountains, a spur of theCascades. Actually it is the southern terminus of the Cascades. * * * * * Though quiet for more than two hundred years, the region long hasenjoyed scientific and popular interest because it possesses hotsprings, mud volcanoes and other minor volcanic phenomena, andparticularly because its cones, which are easily climbed and studied, have remained very nearly perfect. Besides Lassen Peak, whose altitudeis 10, 437 feet, there are others of large size and great interest closeby. Prospect Peak attains the altitude of 9, 200 feet; Harkness Peak9, 000 feet; and Cinder Cone, a specimen of unusual beauty, 6, 907 feet. Because it seemed desirable to conserve the best two of these examplesof recent volcanism, President Taft in 1906 created the Lassen Peak andthe Cinder Cone National Monuments. Doubtless there would have been nochange in the status of these reservations had not Lassen Peak brokenits long sleep in the spring of 1914 with a series of eruptions coveringa period of nineteen months. This centred attention upon the region, andin August, 1916, Congress created the Lassen Volcanic National Park, areservation of a hundred and twenty-four square miles, which includedboth national monuments, other notable cones of the neighborhood, andpractically all the hot springs and other lesser phenomena. Four monthsafter the creation of the national park Lassen Peak ceased activity withits two hundred and twelfth eruption. It is not expected to resume. Forsome years, however, scientists will continue to class it assemi-active. These eruptions, none of which produced any considerable lava flow, areregarded as probably the dying gasps of the volcanic energy of theCascades. They began in May, 1914, with sharp explosions of steam andsmoke from the summit crater. The news aroused wide-spread interestthroughout the United States; it was the first volcanic eruption withinthe national boundaries. During the following summer there werethirty-eight slight similar eruptions, some of which scattered ashes inthe neighborhood. The spectacle was one of magnificence because of theheavy columns of smoke. Eruptions increased in frequency with winter, fifty-six occurring during the balance of the year. [Illustration: _From a photograph by J. S. Diller_ LASSEN PEAK SEEN FROM THE SOUTHWEST On the left is the material last erupted from the slope of the peak. Itis called Chaos] [Illustration: _From a photograph by J. S. Diller_ LASSEN PEAK CLOSE UP Showing the northeast slope as seen from Chaos] About the end of March, 1915, according to Doctor J. S. Diller of theUnited States Geological Survey, new lava had filled the crater andoverflowed the west slope a thousand feet. On May 22 following occurredthe greatest eruption of the series. A mushroom-shaped cloud of smokeburst four miles upward in air. The spectacle, one of grandeur, wasplainly visible even from the Sacramento Valley. "At night, " writesDoctor Diller, "flashes of light from the mountain summit, flyingrocket-like bodies and cloud-glows over the crater reflecting the lightfrom incandescent lavas below, were seen by many observers from variouspoints of view, and appear to indicate that much of the material eruptedwas sufficiently hot to be luminous. " Another interesting phenomenon was the blast of superheated gas whichswept down Lost Creek and Hot Creek Valleys. For ten miles it witheredand destroyed every living thing in its path. Large trees were uprooted. Forests were scorched to a cinder. Snow-fields were instantly turned towater and flooded the lower valleys with rushing tides. Later examination showed that this explosion had opened a new fissure, and that the old and new craters, now joined in one, were filled with alava lid. Following this, the eruptions steadily declined in violencetill their close the following December. As a national park, though undeveloped and unequipped as yet, Lassen hasmany charms besides its volcanic phenomena. Its western and southernslopes are thickly forested and possess fine lakes and streams. Severalthousand persons, largely motorists, have visited it yearly of late. There are hot springs at Drakesbad, just within the southern border, which have local popularity as baths. The trout-fishing in lake andstream is excellent, and shooting is encouraged in the extensivenational forest which surrounds the park, but not in the park itself, which is sanctuary. In spite of the hunting, deer are still found. The greatest pleasure, however, will be found in exploring thevolcanoes, from whose summits views are obtainable of many miles of thistumbled and splendidly forested part of California and of the dry plainsof the Great Basin on its east. THE KATMAI NATIONAL MONUMENT We turn from the dying flutter of California's last remaining activevolcano to the excessive violence of a volcano in the extremely activeAlaskan coast range. The Mount Katmai National Monument will have fewvisitors because it is inaccessible by anything less than anexploring-party. We know it principally from the reports of fourexpeditions by the National Geographic Society. Informed by thesereports, President Wilson created it a national monument in 1918. A remarkable volcanic belt begins in southern Alaska at the head of CookInlet, and follows the coast in a broad southwesterly curve fifteenhundred miles long through the Alaskan Peninsula to the end of theAleutian Islands, nearly enclosing Behring Sea. It is very ancient. Itsmainland segment contains a dozen peaks, which are classed as active orlatent, and its island segment many other volcanoes. St. Augustine'seruption in 1883 was one of extreme violence. Kugak was active in 1889. Veniaminof's eruption in 1892 ranked with St. Augustine's. Redoubterupted in 1902, and Katmai, with excessive violence, in June, 1912. Theentire belt is alive with volcanic excitement. Pavlof, at thepeninsula's end, has been steaming for years, and several others areunder expectant scientific observation. Katmai may be outdone at anytime. Katmai is a peak of 6, 970 feet altitude, on treacherous Shelikof Strait, opposite Kodiak Island. It rises from an inhospitable shore far fromsteamer routes or other recognized lines of travel. Until it announceditself with a roar which was heard at Juneau, seven hundred and fiftymiles away, its very existence was probably unknown except to a fewprospectors, fishermen, geographers, and geologists. Earthquakesfollowed the blast, then followed night of smoke and dust. Darknesslasted sixty hours at Kodiak, a hundred miles away. Dust fell as far asKetchikan, nine hundred miles away. Fumes were borne on the wind as faras Vancouver Island, fifteen hundred miles away. Weather Bureau reportsnoted haziness as far away as Virginia during succeeding weeks, and theextraordinary haziness in Europe during the following summer is noted byDoctor C. S. Abbott, Director of the Astrophysical Observatory of theSmithsonian Institution, in connection with this eruption. Nevertheless, Katmai's is by no means the greatest volcanic eruption. Katmai's output of ash was about five cubic miles. Several eruptionshave greatly exceeded that in bulk, notably that of Tomboro, in theisland of Sumbawa, near Java, in 1815, when more than twenty-eight cubicmiles of ash were flung to the winds. Comparison with many greateruptions whose output was principally lava is of course impossible. The scene of this explosion is the national monument of to-day. Thehollowed shell of Katmai's summit is a spectacle of wonderment andgrandeur. Robert F. Griggs, who headed the expeditions which exploredit, states that the area of the crater is 8. 4 square miles, measuredalong the highest point of the rim. The abyss is 2. 6 miles long, 7. 6miles in circumference, and 4. 2 square miles in area. A lake has formedwithin it which is 1. 4 miles long and nine-tenths of a mile wide. Itsdepth is unknown. The precipice from the lake to the highest point ofthe rim measures thirty-seven hundred feet. The most interesting exhibit of the Katmai National Monument, however, is a group of neighboring valleys just across the western divide, theprincipal one of which Mr. Griggs, with picturesque inaccuracy, namedthe "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes"; for, from its floor and sides andthe floors and sides of smaller tributary valleys, superheated steamissues in thousands of hissing columns. It is an appalling spectacle. The temperatures of this steam are extremely high; Griggs reports oneinstance of 432 degrees Centigrade, which would equal 948 degreesFahrenheit; in some vents he found a higher temperature at the surfacethan a few feet down its throat. The very ground is hot. This phenomenal valley is not to be fully explained offhand; as Griggssays, there are many problems to work out. The steam vents appear to bevery recent. They did not exist when Spurr crossed the valley in 1898, and Martin heard nothing of them when he was in the near neighborhood in1903 and 1904. The same volcanic impulse which found its main relief inthe explosive eruption of near-by Katmai in 1912 no doubt cracked thedeep-lying rocks beneath this group of valleys, exposing superheatedrocks to subterranean waters which forthwith turned to steam and forcedthese vents for escape. Griggs reports that volcanic gases mingle freelywith the steam. The waters may have one or more of several sources; perhaps they comefrom deep springs originating in surface snows and rains; perhaps theyseep in from the sea. Whatever their origin the region especiallyinterests us as a probably early stage of phenomena whose later stagesfind conspicuous examples in several of our national parks. Some day, with the cooling of the region, this may become the valley of tenthousand hot springs. But it is useful and within scientific probability to carry thisconception much further. The comparison between Katmai's steamingvalleys and the geyser basin of Yellowstone is especially instructivebecause Yellowstone's basins doubtless once were what Katmai's steamingvalleys are now. The "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" may well be acoming geyser-field of enormous size. The explanation is simple. Bunsen's geyser theory, now generally accepted, presupposes a column ofwater filling the geyser vent above a deep rocky superheated chamber, inwhich entering water is being rapidly turned into steam. When this steambecomes plentiful enough and sufficiently compressed to overcome theweight of the water in the vent, it suddenly expands and hurls the waterout. That is what makes the geyser play. Now one difference between the Yellowstone geyser-fields and Katmai'ssteaming valleys is just a difference in temperature. The entire depthof earth under these valleys is heated far above boiling-point, so thatit is not possible for water to remain in the vents; it turns to steamas fast as it collects and rushes out at the top in continuous flow. Butwhen enough thousands of centuries elapse for the rocks between thesurface and the deep internal pockets to cool, the water will remain inmany vents as water until, at regular intervals, enough steam gathersbelow to hurl it out. Then these valleys will become basins of geysersand hot springs like Yellowstone's. VIII MOUNT RAINIER, ICY OCTOPUS MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WEST CENTRAL WASHINGTON. AREA, 324 SQUAREMILES I Mount Rainier, the loftiest volcano within the boundaries of the UnitedStates, one of our greatest mountains, and certainly our most imposingmountain, rises from western central Washington to an altitude of 14, 408feet above mean tide in Puget Sound. It is forty-two miles in directline from the centre of Tacoma, and fifty-seven miles from Seattle, fromboth of which its glistening peak is often a prominent spectacle. Withfavoring atmospheric conditions it can be seen a hundred and fifty milesaway. North and south of Rainier, the Cascade Mountains bear other snow-cappedvolcanic peaks. Baker rises 10, 703 feet; Adams, 12, 307 feet; St. Helens, 9, 697 feet; Hood, 11, 225 feet, and Shasta, 14, 162 feet. But Rainiersurpasses them all in height, bulk, and majesty. Once it stood 16, 000feet, as is indicated by the slopes leading up to its broken andflattened top. The supposition is that nearly two thousand feet of itsapex were carried away in one or more explosive eruptions long beforehistory, but possibly not before man; there are Indian traditions of acataclysm. There were slight eruptions in 1843, 1854, 1858, and 1870, and from the two craters at its summit issue many jets of steam whichcomfort the chilled climber. This immense sleeping cone is blanketed in ice. Twenty-eightwell-defined glaciers flow down its sides, several of which are nearlysix miles long. Imagining ourselves looking down from an airplane at agreat height, we can think of seeing it as an enormous frozen octopussprawling upon the grass, for its curving arms of ice, reaching out inall directions, penetrate one of the finest forests even of ournorthwest. The contrast between these cold glaciers and the luxuriantlywild-flowered and forest-edged meadows which border them as snugly as somany rippling summer rivers affords one of the most delightful featuresof the Mount Rainier National Park. Paradise Inn, for example, stands ina meadow of wild flowers between Rainier's icy front on the one side andthe snowy Tatoosh Range on the other, with the Nisqually Glacier fifteenminutes' walk away! The casual tourist who has looked at the Snowy Range of the Rockies fromthe distant comfort of Estes Park, or the High Sierra from thedining-porch of the Glacier Point Hotel, receives an invigorating shockof astonishment at beholding Mount Rainier even at a distance. Itsisolation gives it enormous scenic advantage. Mount Whitney of theSierra, our loftiest summit, which overtops it ninety-three feet, ismerely the climax in a tempestuous ocean of snowy neighbors which areonly less lofty; Rainier towers nearly eight thousand feet above itssurrounding mountains. It springs so powerfully into the air that oneinvoluntarily looks for signs of life and action. But no smoke risesfrom its broken top. It is still and helpless, shackled in bonds of ice. Will it remain bound? Or will it, with due warning, destroy in a day theelaborate system of glaciers which countless centuries have built, andleave a new and different, and perhaps, after years of glacial recovery, even a more gloriously beautiful Mount Rainier than now? The extraordinary individuality of the American national parks, theirdifference, each from every other, is nowhere more marked than here. Single-peaked glacial systems of the size of Rainier's, of course, arefound wherever mountains of great size rise in close masses far abovethe line of perpetual snow. The Alaskan Range and the Himalayas maypossess many. But if there is anywhere another mountain of approximateheight and magnitude, carrying an approximate glacier system, whichrises eight thousand feet higher than its neighbors out of a parkland oflakes, forests, and wild-flower gardens, which Nature seems to have madeespecially for pleasuring, and the heart of which is reached in fourhours from a large city situated upon transatlantic railway-lines, Ihave not heard of it. Seen a hundred miles away, or from the streets of Seattle and Tacoma, orfrom the motor-road approaching the park, or from the park itself, orfrom any of the many interglacier valleys, one never gets used to thespectacle of Rainier. The shock of surprise, the instant sense ofimpossibility, ever repeats itself. The mountain assumes a thousandaspects which change with the hours, with the position of the beholder, and with atmospheric conditions. Sometimes it is fairy-like, sometimesthreatening, always majestic. One is not surprised at the Indian's fear. Often Rainier withdraws his presence altogether behind the horizonmists; even a few miles away no hint betrays his existence. And veryoften, shrouded in snow-storm or cloud, he is lost to those at his foot. Mysterious and compelling is this ghostly mountain to us who see it forthe first time, unable to look long away while it remains in view. It isthe same, old Washingtonians tell me, with those who have kept watchingit every day of visibility for many years. And so it was to CaptainGeorge Vancouver when, first of white men, he looked upon it from thebridge of the _Discovery_ on May 8, 1792. "The weather was serene and pleasant, " he wrote under that date, "andthe country continued to exhibit, between us and the eastern snowyrange, the same luxuriant appearance. At its eastern extremity, mountBaker bore by compass N. 22 E. ; the round snowy mountain, now formingits southern extremity, and which, after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I distinguished by the name of MOUNT RAINIER, bore N. (S. ) 42 E. " [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. H. Barnes_ SOUTHEAST SLOPE OF MOUNT RAINIER The winding glacier is the Cowlitz. Gibraltar is the rock on the rightnear the summit] Thus Mount Rainier was discovered and named at the same time, presumably on the same day. Eighteen days later, having followed "theinlet, " meaning Puget Sound, to his point of nearest approach to themountain, Vancouver wrote: "We found the inlet to terminate here in an extensive circular compactbay whose waters washed the base of mount Rainier, though its elevatedsummit was yet at a very considerable distance from the shore, withwhich it was connected by several ridges of hills rising towards it withgradual ascent and much regularity. The forest trees and the severalshades of verdure that covered the hills gradually decreased in point ofbeauty until they became invisible; when the perpetual clothing of snowcommenced which seemed to form a horizontal line from north to southalong this range of rugged mountains, from whose summit mount Rainierrose conspicuously, and seemed as much elevated above them as they wereabove the level of the sea; the whole producing a most grand, picturesque effect. " Vancouver made no attempt to reach the mountain. Dreamer of great dreamsthough he was, how like a madhouse nightmare would have seemed to him atrue prophecy of mighty engines whose like no human mind had thenconceived, running upon roads of steel and asphalt at speeds which nohuman mind had then imagined, whirling thousands upon thousands ofpleasure-seekers from the shores of that very inlet to the glisteningmountain's flowered sides! Just one century after the discovery, the Geological Society of Americastarted the movement to make Mount Rainier a national park. Within ayear the American Association for the Advancement of Science, theNational Geographic Society, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and theSierra Club joined in the memorialization of Congress. Six years later, in 1899, the park was created. II The principal entrance to the park is up the Nisqually River at thesouth. Here entered the pioneer, James Longmire, many years ago, and theroads established by him and his fellows determined the direction of thefirst national-park development. Longmire Springs, for many years thenearest resort to the great mountain, lies just within the southernboundary. Beyond it the road follows the Nisqually and Paradise valleys, under glorious groves of pine, cedar, and hemlock, along ravines ofstriking beauty, past waterfalls and the snout of the Nisqually Glacier, finally to inimitable Paradise Park, its inn, its hotel camp, and itspublic camping-grounds. Other centres of wilderness life have been sinceestablished, and the marvellous north side of the park will be opened bythe construction of a northwesterly highway up the valley of the CarbonRiver; already a fine trail entirely around the mountain connects thesevarious points of development. But the southern entrance and Paradise Park will remain for many yearsthe principal centre of exploration and pleasuring. Here begins thepopular trail to the summit. Here begin the trails to many of thefinest viewpoints, the best-known falls, the most accessible of the manyexquisite interglacier gardens. Here the Nisqually Glacier is reached ina few minutes' walk at a point particularly adapted for ice-climbing, and the comfortable viewing of ice-falls, crevasses, caves, and otherglacier phenomena grandly exhibited in fullest beauty. It is a spotwhich can have in the nature of things few equals elsewhere in scenicvariety and grandeur. On one side is the vast glistening mountain; onthe other side the high serrated Tatoosh Range spattered with perpetualsnow; in middle distance, details of long winding glaciers seamed withcrevasses; in the foreground gorgeous rolling meadows of wild flowersdotted and bordered with equally luxuriant and richly varied forestgroves; from close-by elevations, a gorgeous tumbled wilderness ofhills, canyons, rivers, lakes, and falls backgrounded by the Cascadesand accented by distant snowy peaks; the whole pervaded by theever-present mountain, always the same yet grandly different, fromdifferent points of view, in the detail of its glaciered sides. The variety of pleasuring is similarly very large. One can ridehorseback round the mountain in a leisurely week, or spend a month ormore exploring the greater wilderness of the park. One can tramp thetrails on long trips, camping by the way, or vary a vacation withnumerous short tramps. Or one can loaf away the days in dreamy content, with now and then a walk, and now and then a ride. Or one can exploreglaciers and climb minor mountains; the Tatoosh Range alone will furnishthe stiffest as well as the most delightful climbing, with wonderfulrewards upon the jagged summits; while short climbs to points uponnear-by snow-fields will afford coasting without sleds, an excitingsport, especially appreciated when one is young. In July, before thevalley snows melt away, there is tobogganing and skiing within a shortwalk of the Inn. The leisurely tour afoot around the mountain, with pack-train followingthe trail, is an experience never to be forgotten. One passes the snoutsof a score of glaciers, each producing its river, and sees the mountainfrom every angle, besides having a continuous panorama of thesurrounding country, including Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, MountBaker, Tacoma, Seattle, Mount Olympus, the Pacific Ocean, and theCascades from the Columbia to the international line. Shorter excursionsto other beautiful park-lands offer a wide variety of pleasure. IndianHenry's Hunting Ground, Van Trump Park, Summerland, and others providecharm and beauty as well as fascinating changes in the aspect of thegreat mountain. [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. H. Barnes_ MOUNT ST. HELENS SEEN FROM MOUNT RAINIER PARK] [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. H. Barnes_ MOUNT ADAMS SEEN FROM MOUNT RAINIER PARK] Of course the ascent of the mountain is the ultimate objective of theclimber, but few, comparatively, will attempt it. It is a feat inendurance which not many are physically fit to undertake, while to theunfit there are no rewards. There is comparatively little rock-climbing, but what there is will try wind and muscle. Most of the way is trampingup long snow-covered and ice-covered slopes, with little rest from thestart at midnight to the return, if all goes well, before the followingsundown. Face and hands are painted to protect against sunburn, andcolored glasses avert snow-blindness. Success is so largely a matter ofphysical condition that many ambitious tourists are advised to practiseawhile on the Tatoosh Range before attempting the trip. "Do you see Pinnacle Peak up there?" they ask you. "If you can make thatyou can make Rainier. Better try it first. " And many who try Pinnacle Peak do not make it. As with every very lofty mountain the view from the summit depends uponthe conditions of the moment. Often Rainier's summit is lost in mistsand clouds, and there is no view. Very often on the clearest day cloudscontinually gather and dissipate; one is lucky in the particular time heis on top. Frequently there are partial views. Occasionally everycondition favors, and then indeed the reward is great. S. F. Emmons, whomade the second ascent, and after whom one of Rainier's greatestglaciers was named, stood on the summit upon one of those fortunatemoments. The entire mountain in all its inspiring detail lay at hisfeet, a wonder spectacle of first magnitude. "Looking to the more distant country, " he wrote, "the whole stretch ofPuget Sound, seeming like a pretty little lake embowered in green, couldbe seen in the northwest, beyond which the Olympic Mountains extend outinto the Pacific Ocean. The Cascade Mountains, lying dwarfed at ourfeet, could be traced northward into British Columbia and southward intoOregon, while above them, at comparatively regular intervals, rose theghostlike forms of our companion volcanoes. To the eastward the eyeranged over hundreds of miles, over chain on chain of mountain ridgeswhich gradually disappeared in the dim blue distance. " Notwithstanding the rigors of the ascent parties leave Paradise Inn forthe summit every suitable day. Hundreds make the ascent each summer. Tothe experienced mountain-climber it presents no special difficulties. Tothe inexperienced it is an extraordinary adventure. Certainly no oneknows his Mount Rainier who has not measured its gigantic proportions inunits of his own endurance. The first successful ascent was made by General Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump, both residents of Washington, on August 17, 1870. Startingfrom James Longmire's with Mr. Longmire himself as guide up theNisqually Valley, they spent several days in finding the IndianSluiskin, who should take them to the summit. With him, then, assumingLongmire's place, Stevens and Van Trump started on their greatadventure. It proved more of an adventure than they anticipated, for notfar below the picturesque falls which they named after Sluiskin, theIndian stopped and begged them to go no farther. From that compilationof scholarly worth, by Professor Edmond S. Meany, President of theMountaineers, entitled "Mount Rainier, a Record of Exploration, " Iquote General Stevens's translation of Sluiskin's protest: "Listen to me, my good friends, " said Sluiskin, "I must talk with you. " "Your plan to climb Takhoma is all foolishness. No one can do it andlive. A mighty chief dwells upon the summit in a lake of fire. He brooksno intruders. "Many years ago my grandfather, the greatest and bravest chief of allthe Yakima, climbed nearly to the summit. There he caught sight of thefiery lake and the infernal demon coming to destroy him, and fled downthe mountain, glad to escape with his life. Where he failed, no otherIndian ever dared make the attempt. "At first the way is easy, the task seems light. The broad snow-fieldsover which I have often hunted the mountain-goat offer an inviting path. But above them you will have to climb over steep rocks overhanging deepgorges, where a misstep would hurl you far down--down to certain death. You must creep over steep snow-banks and cross deep crevasses where amountain-goat would hardly keep his footing. You must climb along steepcliffs where rocks are continually falling to crush you or knock you offinto the bottomless depths. "And if you should escape these perils and reach the great snowy dome, then a bitterly cold and furious tempest will sweep you off into spacelike a withered leaf. But if by some miracle you should survive allthese perils, the mighty demon of Takhoma will surely kill you and throwyou into the fiery lake. "Don't you go. You make my heart sick when you talk of climbing Takhoma. You will perish if you try to climb Takhoma. You will perish and yourpeople will blame me. "Don't go! Don't go! If you go I will wait here two days and then go toOlympia and tell your people that you perished on Takhoma. Give me apaper to them to let them know that I am not to blame for your death. Mytalk is ended. " Except for the demon and his lake of fire, Sluiskin's portent ofhardship proved to be a literal, even a modest, prophecy. At fiveo'clock in the evening, after eleven hours of struggle with precipicesand glaciers, exhausted, chilled, and without food, they faced a nightof zero gales upon the summit. The discovery of comforting steam-jets ina neighboring crater, the reality perhaps of Sluiskin's lake of fire, made the night livable, though one of suffering. It was afternoon of thefollowing day before they reached camp and found an astonished Sluiskin, then, in fact, on the point of leaving to report their unfortunatedestruction. Stevens and Van Trump were doubly pioneers, for their way up themountain is, in general direction at least, the popular way to-day, greatly bettered since, however, by the short cuts and easier detourswhich have followed upon experience. III Our four volcanic national parks exemplify four states of volcanichistory. Lassen Peak is semi-active; Mount Rainier is dormant;Yellowstone is dead, and Crater Lake marks the spot through which avolcano collapsed and disappeared. Rainier's usefulness as a volcanicexample, however, is lost in its supreme usefulness as a glacialexhibit. The student of glaciers who begins here with the glacier inaction, and then studies the effects of glaciers upon igneous rocksamong the cirques of the Sierra, and upon sedimentary rocks in theGlacier National Park, will study the masters; which, by the way, is atip for universities contemplating summer field-classes. Upon the truncated top of Mount Rainier, nearly three miles in diameter, rise two small cinder cones which form, at the junction of theircraters, the mountain's rounded snow-covered summit. It is known asColumbia Crest. As this only rises four hundred feet above the oldercontaining crater, it is not always identified from below as the highestpoint. Two commanding rocky elevations of the old rim, Point Success onits southwest side, 14, 150 feet, and Liberty Cap on its northwest side, 14, 112 feet, appear to be, from the mountain's foot, its points ofgreatest altitude. Rainier's top, though covered with snow and ice, except in spots baredby internal heat, is not the source of its glaciers, although itsextensive ice-fields flow into and feed several of them. The glaciersthemselves, even those continuous with the summit ice, really originateabout four thousand feet below the top in cirques or pockets which areprincipally fed with the tremendous snows of winter, and the windsweepings and avalanches from the summit. The Pacific winds are chargedheavily with moisture which descends upon Rainier in snows of greatdepth. Even Paradise Park is snowed under from twelve to thirty feet. There is a photograph of a ranger cabin in February which shows only aslight snow-mound with a hole in its top which locates the hiddenchimney. F. E. Matthes, the geologist, tells of a snow level of fiftyfeet depth in Indian Henry's Hunting Ground, one of Rainier's mostbeautiful parks, in which the wind had sunk a crater-like hollow fromthe bottom of which emerged a chimney. These snows replenish theglaciers, which have a combined surface of forty-five square miles, along their entire length, in addition to making enormous accumulationsin the cirques. [Illustration: SLUISKIN RIDGE AND COLUMBIA CREST] [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by A. H. Barnes_ MOUNT RAINIER SEEN FROM TACOMA] Beginning then in its cirque, as a river often begins in its lake, theglacier flows downward, river-like, along a course of least resistance. Here it pours over a precipice in broken falls to flatten out in perfecttexture in the even stretch below. Here it plunges down rapids, breakinginto crevasses as the river in corresponding phase breaks into ripples. Here it rises smoothly over rocks upon its bottom. Here it strikesagainst a wall of rock and turns sharply. The parallel between theglacier and the river is striking and consistent, notwithstanding thatthe geologist for technical reasons will quarrel with you if youpicturesquely call your glacier a river of ice. Any elevated viewpointwill disclose several or many of these mighty streams flowing insnakelike curves down the mountainside, the greater streams swollen hereand there by tributaries as rivers are swollen by entering creeks. Andall eventually reach a point, determined by temperature and thereforenot constant, where the river of ice becomes the river of water. Beginning white and pure, the glacier gradually clothes itself in rockand dirt. Gathering as it moves narrow edges of matter filched from theshores, later on it heaps these up upon its lower banks. They arelateral moraines. Two merging glaciers unite the material carried ontheir joined edges and form a medial moraine, a ribbon broadening andthickening as it descends; a glacier made up of several tributariescarries as many medial moraines. It also carries much unorganized matterfallen from the cliffs or scraped from the bottom. Approaching thesnout, all these accumulations merge into one moraine; and so soiled hasthe ice now become that it is difficult to tell which is ice and whichis rock. At its snout is an ice-cave far inside of which the resultantriver originates. But the glacier has one very important function which the river does notshare. Far up at its beginnings it freezes to the back wall of itscirque, and, moving forward, pulls out, or plucks out, as thegeologists have it, masses of rock which it carries away in its current. The resulting cavities in the back of the cirque fill with ice, which inits turn freezes fast and plucks out more rock. And presently the backwall of the cirque, undermined, falls on the ice and also is carriedaway. There is left a precipice, often sheerly perpendicular; and, asthe process repeats itself, this precipice moves backward. At thebeginning of this process, it must be understood, the glacier lies upona tilted surface far more elevated than now when you see it in its oldage, sunk deep in its self-dug trench; and, while it is pluckingbackward and breaking off an ever-increasing precipice above it, it isplucking downward, too. If the rock is even in structure, this downwardcutting may be very nearly perpendicular, but if the rock lies in strataof varying hardness, shelves form where the harder strata areencountered because it takes longer to cut them through; in this way areformed the long series of steps which we often see in empty glacialcirques. By this process of backward and downward plucking, the Carbon Glacierbit its way into the north side of the great volcano until it invadedthe very foundations of the summit and created the Willis Wall whichdrops avalanches thirty-six hundred feet to the glacier below. WillisWall is nearly perpendicular because the lava rock at this point washomogeneous. But in the alternating shale and limestone strata ofGlacier National Park, on the other hand, the glaciers of old dugcirques of many shelves. The monster ice-streams which dug Glacier'smighty valleys have vanished, but often tiny remainders are still seenupon the cirques' topmost shelves. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Asahel Curtis_ MOUNT RAINIER AND PARADISE INN IN SUMMER] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Jacobs_ WINTER PLEASURES AT PARADISE INN, MOUNT RAINIER] So we see that the glacier acquires its cargo of rock not only byscraping its sides and plucking it from the bottom of its cirque andvalley, but by quarrying backward till undermined material drops uponit; all of this in fulfilment of Nature's purpose of wearing down thehighlands for the upbuilding of the hollows. This is not the place for a detailed description of Mount Rainier'stwenty-eight glaciers. A glance at the map will tell something of thestory. Extending northeasterly from the summit will be seen the greatestunbroken glacial mass. Here are the Emmons and the Winthrop Glaciers, much the largest of all. This is the quarter farthest from the sun, uponwhich its rays strike at the flattest angle. The melting then is leasthere. But still a more potent reason for their larger mass is found intheir position on the lee quarter of the peak, the prevailing windswhirling in the snow from both sides. The greater diversification of the other sides of the mountain withextruding cliffs, cleavers, and enormous rock masses tends strongly toscenic variety and grandeur. Some of the rock cleavers which divideglaciers stand several thousand feet in height, veritable fences. Someof the cliffs would be mountains of no mean size elsewhere, and aroundtheir sides pour mighty glacial currents, cascading to the depths belowwhere again they may meet and even merge. The Nisqually Glacier naturally is the most celebrated, not because ofscenic superiority, but because it is the neighbor and the playground ofthe visiting thousands. Its perfect and wonderful beauty are not inexcess of many others; and it is much smaller than many. The CowlitzGlacier near by exceeds it in size, and is one of the stateliest; itsprings from a cirque below Gibraltar, a massive near-summit rock, whosewell-deserved celebrity is due in some part to its nearness to thetravelled summit trail. The point I am making is not in depreciation ofany of the celebrated sights from the southern side, but in emphasis ofthe fact that a hundred other sights would be as celebrated, or morecelebrated, were they as well known. The Mount Rainier National Park atthis writing is replete with splendors which are yet to be discovered bythe greater travelling public. The great north side, for instance, with its mighty walls, itsmagnificently scenic glaciers, its lakes, canyons, and enormous areas offlowered and forested pleasure-grounds, is destined to wide development;it is a national park in itself. Already roads enter to camps at thefoot of great glaciers. The west side, also, with its four spectacularglaciers which pass under the names of Mowich and Tahoma, attainssublimity; it remains also for future occupation. Many of the minor phenomena, while common also to other areas of snowand ice, have fascination for the visitor. Snow-cups are always objectsof interest and beauty. Instead of reducing a snow surface evenly, thewarm sun sometimes melts it in patterned cups set close together likethe squares of a checker-board. These deepen gradually till they suggesta gigantic honeycomb, whose cells are sometimes several feet deep. Inone of these, one summer day in the Sierra, I saw a stumbling horsedeposit his rider, a high official of one of our Western railroads; andthere he sat helpless, hands and feet emerging from the top, until werecovered enough from laughter to help him out. Pink snow always arouses lively interest. A microscopic plant, Protococcus nivalis, growing in occasional patches beneath the surfaceof old snow gradually emerges with a pink glow which sometimes coversacres. On the tongue its flavor suggests watermelon. No doubt many othermicroscopic plants thrive in the snow-fields and glaciers which remaininvisible for lack of color. Insects also inhabit these glaciers. Thereare several Thysanura, which suggest the sand-fleas of our seashores, but are seldom noticed because of their small size. More noticeable arethe Mesenchytræus, a slender brown worm, which attains the length of aninch. They may be seen in great numbers on the lower glaciers in thesummer, but on warm days retreat well under the surface. IV The extraordinary forest luxuriance at the base of Mount Rainier is dueto moisture and climate. The same heavy snowfalls which feed theglaciers store up water-supplies for forest and meadow. The winters atthe base of the mountain are mild. The lower valleys are covered with a dense growth of fir, hemlock, andcedar. Pushing skyward in competition for the sunlight, trees attaingreat heights. Protected from winter's severity by the thickness of thegrowth, and from fire by the dampness of the soil, great age is assured, which means thick and heavy trunks. The Douglas fir, easily the mostimportant timber-tree of western America, here reaches its two hundredfeet in massive forests, while occasional individuals grow two hundredand fifty to two hundred and seventy feet with a diameter of eight feet. The bark at the base of these monsters is sometimes ten inches thick. The western hemlock also reaches equal heights in competition for thelight, with diameters of five feet or more. Red cedar, white pines ofseveral varieties, several firs, and a variety of hemlocks complete thelist of conifers. Deciduous trees are few and not important. Broad-leaved maples, cottonwoods, and alders are the principal species. Higher up the mountain-slopes the forests thin and lessen in size, whileincreasing in picturesqueness. The Douglas fir and other monsters of thelower levels disappear, their places taken by other species. At analtitude of four thousand feet the Englemann spruce and othermountain-trees begin to appear, not in the massed ranks of the lowerlevels, but in groves bordering the flowered opens. The extreme limit of tree growth on Mount Rainier is about seventhousand feet of altitude, above which one finds only occasionaldistorted, wind-tortured mountain-hemlocks. There is no well-definedtimber-line, as on other lofty mountains. Avalanches and snow-slideskeep the upper levels swept and bare. The wild-flower catalogue is too long to enumerate here. John Muirexpresses the belief that no other sub-alpine floral gardens excelRainier's in profusion and gorgeousness. The region differs little fromother Pacific regions of similar altitude in variety of species; inluxuriance it is unsurpassed. V According to Theodore Winthrop who visited the northwest in 1853 andpublished a book entitled "The Canoe and the Saddle, " which had widevogue at the time and is consulted to-day, Mount Rainier had its IndianRip Van Winkle. The story was told him in great detail by Hamitchou, "afrowsy ancient of the Squallyamish. " The hero was a wise and wilyfisherman and hunter. Also, as his passion was gain, he became anexcellent business man. He always had salmon and berries when foodbecame scarce and prices high. Gradually he amassed large savings inhiaqua, the little perforated shell which was the most valued form ofwampum, the Indian's money. The richer he got the stronger his passiongrew for hiaqua, and, when a spirit told him in a dream of vast hoardsat the summit of Rainier, he determined to climb the mountain. Thespirit was Tamanoüs, which, Winthrop explains, is the vague Indianpersonification of the supernatural. So he threaded the forests and climbed the mountain's glistening side. At the summit he looked over the rim into a large basin in the bottom ofwhich was a black lake surrounded by purple rock. At the lake's easternend stood three monuments. The first was as tall as a man and had a headcarved like a salmon; the second was the image of a camas-bulb; the tworepresented the great necessities of Indian life. The third was a stoneelk's head with the antlers in velvet. At the foot of this monument hedug a hole. Suddenly a noise behind him caused him to turn. An otter clambered overthe edge of the lake and struck the snow with its tail. Eleven othersfollowed. Each was twice as big as any otter he had ever seen; theirchief was four times as big. The eleven sat themselves in a circlearound him; the leader climbed upon the stone elk-head. At first the treasure-seeker was abashed, but he had come to find hiaquaand he went on digging. At every thirteenth stroke the leader of theotters tapped the stone elk with his tail, and the eleven followerstapped the snow with their tails. Once they all gathered closer andwhacked the digger good and hard with their tails, but, thoughastonished and badly bruised, he went on working. Presently he broke hiselkhorn pick, but the biggest otter seized another in his teeth andhanded it to him. Finally his pick struck a flat rock with a hollow sound, and the ottersall drew near and gazed into the hole, breathing excitedly. He liftedthe rock and under it found a cavity filled to the brim with pure-whitehiaqua, every shell large, unbroken and beautiful. All were hung neatlyon strings. Never was treasure-quest so successful! The otters, recognizing him asthe favorite of Tamanoüs, retired to a distance and gazed upon himrespectfully. "But the miser, " writes the narrator, "never dreamed of gratitude, neverthought to hang a string from the buried treasure about the salmon andcamas tamanoüs stones, and two strings around the elk's head; no, allmust be his own, all he could carry now, and the rest for the future. " Greedily he loaded himself with the booty and laboriously climbed to therim of the bowl prepared for the descent of the mountain. The otters, puffing in concert, plunged again into the lake, which at oncedisappeared under a black cloud. Straightway a terrible storm arose through which the voice of Tamanoüsscreamed tauntingly. Blackness closed around him. The din was horrible. Terrified, he threw back into the bowl behind him five strings ofhiaqua to propitiate Tamanoüs, and there followed a momentary lull, during which he started homeward. But immediately the storm burst againwith roarings like ten thousand bears. Nothing could be done but to throw back more hiaqua. Following eachsacrifice came another lull, followed in turn by more terribleoutbreaks. And so, string by string, he parted with all his gains. Thenhe sank to the ground insensible. When he awoke he lay under an arbutus-tree in a meadow of camas. He wasshockingly stiff and every movement pained him. But he managed to gatherand smoke some dry arbutus-leaves and eat a few camas-bulbs. He wasastonished to find his hair very long and matted, and himself bent andfeeble. "Tamanoüs, " he muttered. Nevertheless, he was calm and happy. Strangely, he did not regret his lost strings of hiaqua. Fear was goneand his heart was filled with love. Slowly and painfully he made his way home. Everything was strangelyaltered. Ancient trees grew where shrubs had grown four days before. Cedars under whose shade he used to sleep lay rotting on the ground. Where his lodge had stood now he saw a new and handsome lodge, andpresently out of it came a very old decrepit squaw who, nevertheless, through her wrinkles, had a look that seemed strangely familiar to him. Her shoulders were hung thick with hiaqua strings. She bent over a potof boiling salmon and crooned: "My old man has gone, gone, gone. My old man to Tacoma has gone. To hunt the elk he went long ago. When will he come down, down, down To salmon pot and me?" "He has come down, " quavered the returned traveller, at last recognizinghis wife. He asked no questions. Charging it all to the wrath of Tamanoüs, heaccepted fate as he found it. After all, it was a happy fate enough inthe end, for the old man became the Great Medicine-Man of his tribe, bywhom he was greatly revered. The name of this Rip Van Winkle of Mount Rainier is not mentioned in Mr. Winthrop's narrative. IX CRATER LAKE'S BOWL OF INDIGO CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, SOUTHWESTERN OREGON. AREA, 249 SQUARE MILES Crater Lake is in southwestern Oregon among the Cascade Mountains, andis reached by an automobile ride of several hours from Medford. Thegovernment information circular calls it "the deepest and bluest lake inthe world. " Advertising circulars praise it in choicest professionalphrase. Its beauty is described as exceeding that of any other lake inall the world. Never was blue so wonderful as the blue of these waters;never were waters so deep as its two thousand feet. Lured by this eloquence the traveller goes to Crater Lake and finds itall as promised--in fact, far better than promised, for the bestintended adjectives, even when winged by the energetic pen of the mosttalented ad writer, cannot begin to convey the glowing, changing, mysterious loveliness of this lake of unbelievable beauty. In fact, thetourist, with expectation at fever-heat by the time he steps from theauto-stage upon the crater rim, is silenced as much by astonishment asby admiration. Before him lies a crater of pale pearly lava several miles in diameter. A thousand feet below its rim is a lake whose farthest blues vie indelicacy with the horizon lavas, and deepen as they approach till athis feet they turn to almost black. There is nothing with which tocompare the near-by blue looked sharply down upon from Crater's rim. Thedeepest indigo is nearest its intensity, but at certain angles falls farshort. Nor is it only the color which affects him so strongly; its kind issomething new, startling, and altogether lovely. Its surface, somagically framed and tinted, is broken by fleeting silver wind-streakshere and there; otherwise, it has the vast stillness which we associatewith the Grand Canyon and the sky at night. The lava walls are pearly, faintly blue afar off, graying and daubed with many colors nearer by. Pinks, purples, brick-reds, sulphurs, orange-yellows and manyintermediates streak and splash the foreground gray. And oftenpine-green forests fringe the rim, and funnel down sharply tiltedcanyons to the water's edge; and sometimes shrubs of livelier green findfoothold on the gentler slopes, and, spreading, paint bright patches. Over all, shutting down and around it like a giant bowl, is a sky ofCalifornian blue overhead softening to the pearl of the horizon. Awonder spectacle indeed! And then our tourist, recovering from his trance, walks upon the rim anddescends the trail to the water's edge to join a launch-party around thelake. Here he finds a new and different experience which is quite assensational as that of his original discovery. Seen close by from thelake's surface these tinted lava cliffs are carved as grotesquely as aJapanese ivory. Precipices rise at times two thousand feet, sheer as awall. Elsewhere gentle slopes of powdery lava, moss-tinted, connect rimand water with a ruler line. And between these two extremes are foundevery fashion and kind and degree of lava wall, many of themprecipitous, most of them rugged, all of them contorted and carved inthe most fantastic manner that imagination can picture. Caves open theirdark doors at water's edge. Towered rocks emerge from submerged reefs. Amimic volcano rises from the water near one side. Perpetual snow fillssheltered crevices in the southern rim. And all this wonder is reflected, upside down, in the still mirrorthrough which the launch ploughs its rapid way. But looking backwardwhere the inverted picture is broken and tossed by the waves from thelaunch's prow, he looks upon a kaleidoscope of color which he willremember all his life; for, to the gorgeous disarray of the broken imageof the cliffs is added the magic tint of this deep-dyed water, everywavelet of which, at its crest, seems touched for the fraction of asecond with a flash of indigo; the whole dancing, sparkling, shimmeringin a glory which words cannot convey; and on the other side, and farastern, the subsiding waves calming back to normal in a flare ofrobin's-egg blue. Our tourist returns to the rim-side hotel to the ceremony of sunset onCrater Lake, for which the lake abandons all traditions and clothesitself in gold and crimson. And in the morning after looking, beforesunrise, upon a Crater Lake of hard-polished steel from which a fallingrock would surely bounce and bound away as if on ice, he breakfasts andleaves without another look lest repetition dull his priceless memory ofan emotional experience which, all in all, can never come again thesame. It is as impossible to describe Crater Lake as it is to paint it. Itsoutlines may be photographed, but the photograph does not tell thestory. Its colors may be reproduced, but the reproduction is not CraterLake. More than any other spot I know, except the Grand Canyon from itsrim, Crater Lake seems to convey a glory which is not of line or mass orcolor or composition, but which seems to be of the spirit. No doubt thisvivid impression which the stilled observer seems to acquire with hismortal eye, is born somehow of his own emotion. Somehow he finds himselfin communion with the Infinite. Perhaps it is this quality which seemsso mysterious that made the Klamath Indians fear and shun Crater Lake, just as the Indians of the great plateau feared and shunned the GrandCanyon. It is this intangible, seemingly spiritual quality which makesthe lake impossible either to paint or to describe. So different is this spectacle from anything else upon the continentthat the first question asked usually is how it came to be. The answerdiscloses one of the most dramatic incidents in the history of theearth. In the evolution of the Cascades, many have been the misadventures ofvolcanoes. Some have been buried alive in ash and lava, and merged intoconquering rivals. Some have been buried in ice which now, organized asglaciers, is wearing down their sides. Some have died of starvation andpassed into the hills. Some have been blown to atoms. Only one inAmerica, so far as known, has returned into the seething gulf which gaveit birth. That was Mount Mazama. The processes of creation are too deliberate for human comprehension. The Mississippi takes five thousand years to lower one inch its valley'ssurface. The making of Glacier National Park required many--perhapshundreds--of millions of years. It seems probable that the cataclysm inwhich Mount Mazama disappeared was exceptional; death may have comesuddenly, even as expressed in human terms. What happened seems to have been this. Some foundation underpinning gaveway in the molten gulf below, and the vast mountain sank and disappearedwithin itself. Imagine the spectacle who can! Mount Mazama left aclean-cut rim surrounding the hole through which it slipped andvanished. But there was a surging back. The eruptive forces, rebounding, pushed the shapeless mass again up the vast chimney. They found it tooheavy a load. Deep within the ash-choked vent burst three small craters, and that was all. Two of these probably were short-lived, the thirdlasted a little longer. And, centuries later, spring water seepedthrough, creating Crater Lake. Crater Lake is set in the summit of the Cascade Range, about sixty-fivemiles north of the California boundary. The road from therailway-station at Medford leads eighty miles eastward up thepicturesque volcanic valley of the Rogue River. The country ismagnificently forested. The mountains at this point are broad, gentlyrolling plateaus from which suddenly rise many volcanic cones, which, seen from elevated opens, are picturesque in the extreme. Each of thesecones is the top of a volcano from whose summit has streamed theprehistoric floods of lava which have filled the intervening valleys, raising and levelling the country. [Illustration: CROSS-SECTION OF CRATER LAKE SHOWING PROBABLE OUTLINE OFMOUNT MAZAMA] Entering the park, a high, broad, forested elevation is quicklyencountered which looks at a glance exactly what it is, the base whichonce supported a towering cone. At its summit, this swelling base isfound to be the outside supporting wall of a roughly circular lake, about five miles in diameter, the inside wall of which is steeplyinclined to the water's surface a thousand feet below. The strongcontrast between the outer and inner walls tells a plainly read story. The outer walls, all around, slope gently upward at an angle of aboutfifteen degrees; naturally, if carried on, they would converge in apeaked summit higher than that of Shasta. The inner walls convergedownward at a steep angle, suggesting a funnel of enormous depth. It wasthrough this funnel that Mount Mazama, as men call the volcano that mannever saw, once collapsed into the gulf from which it had emerged. Studying the scene from the Lodge on the rim where the automobile-stagehas left you, the most vivid impressions of detail are those of theconformation of the inner rim, the cliffs which rise above it, and thesmall volcano which emerges from the blue waters of the lake. The marvellous inner slope of the rim is not a continuous cliff, but ahighly diversified succession of strata. Examination shows the layers ofvolcanic conglomerate and lava of which, like layers of brick and stone, the great structure was built. The downward dip of these strata awayfrom the lake is everywhere discernible. The volcano's early story thuslies plain to eyes trained to read it. The most interesting of thesestrata is the lava flow which forms twelve thousand feet of the totalprecipice of Llao Rock, a prominence of conspicuous beauty. Many of these cliffs are magnificently bold. The loftiest is GlacierPeak, which rises almost two thousand feet above the water's surface. But Dutton Cliff is a close rival, and Vidæ Cliff, Garfield Peak, LlaoRock, and the Watchman fall close behind. Offsetting these are breakswhere the rim drops within six hundred feet of the water. The statementof a wall height of a thousand feet expresses the general impression, though as an average it is probably well short of the fact. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Scenic America Company_ DUTTON CLIFF AND THE PHANTOM SHIP, CRATER LAKE] [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Scenic America Company_ SUNSET FROM GARFIELD PEAK, CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK] [Illustration: CROSS-SECTION OF CRATER LAKE] At the foot of all the walls, at water's edge, lie slopes of talus, therocky fragments which erosion has broken loose and dropped into theabyss. Nowhere is there a beach. The talus shallows the water for a fewhundred feet, and descending streams build small deltas. These shallowsedge the intense blue of the depths with exquisite lighter tints whichtend to green. But this edging is very narrow. The next most striking object after the gigantic carven cliffs is WizardIsland. This complete volcano in miniature, notwithstanding that it isforest-clothed and rises from water, carries the traveller's mindinstantly to the thirteen similar cones which rise within the enormousdesert crater of dead Haleakala, in the Hawaii National Park. WizardIsland's crater may easily be seen in the tip of its cone. Its twofellow volcanoes are invisible four hundred feet under water. Scanning the blue surface, one's eye is caught by an interestingsail-like rock rising from the waters on the far right close to the footof Dutton Cliff. This is the Phantom Ship. Seen two miles away incertain lights the illusion is excellent. The masts seem to tiltrakishly and the sails shine in the sun. There are times when thePhantom Ship suddenly disappears, and times again when it as suddenlyappears where nothing was before. Hence its name and mysterious repute. But there is nothing really mysterious about this ghostly behavior, which occurs only when the heated atmosphere lends itself readily tomirage. Days and weeks of rare pleasure may be had in the exploration of theseamazing walls, a pleasure greatly to be enhanced by discovering andstudying the many plain evidences of Mazama's slow upbuilding and suddenextinction. The excellent automobile road around the rim affords easyapproach afoot as well as by automobile and bicycle. Its passage isenlivened by many inspiring views of the outlying Cascades with theirgreat forests of yellow pine and their lesser volcanic cones, some ofwhich, within and without the park boundaries, hung upon the flanks ofMount Mazama while it was belching flame and ash, while others, easingthe checked pressure following the great catastrophe, were formed anewor enlarged from older vents. From this road any part of the fantastic rim may be reached andexplored, often to the water's edge, by adventurous climbers. What moreenjoyable day's outing, for instance, than the exploration of thesplendid pile of pentagonal basaltic columns suspended half-way in therim at one point of picturesque beauty? What more inspiring than theclimbing of Dutton Cliff, or, for experienced climbers, of many of thestriking lava spires? The only drawback to these days of happy wanderingalong this sculptured and painted rim is the necessity of carryingdrinking-water from the Lodge. Then there are days of pleasure on the water. Wizard Island may bethoroughly explored, with luncheon under its trees by the lakeside. ThePhantom Ship's gnarled lavas may be examined and climbed. Everywhere thesteep rocky shore invites more intimate acquaintance; its caves may beentered, some afoot, at least one afloat. The lake is well stocked withrainbow trout, some of them descendants of the youngsters which Will G. Steel laboriously carried across country from Gordon's Ranch, forty-ninemiles away, in 1888. They are caught with the fly from shore and boat. Apound trout in Crater Lake is a small trout. Occasionally a monster ofeight or ten pounds is carried up the trail to the Lodge. During all these days and weeks of pleasure and study, the vision ofancient Mount Mazama and its terrible end grows more and more in theenlightened imagination. There is much in the conformation of the baseto justify a rather definite picture of this lost brother of Hood, Shasta, St. Helens, and Rainier. At the climax of his career, Mazamaprobably rose sixteen thousand feet above the sea, which means tenthousand feet above the level of the present lake. We are justified tooin imagining his end a cataclysm. Volcanic upbuildings are oftenspasmodic and slow, a series of impulses separated by centuries ofquiescence, but their climaxes often are sudden and excessively violent. It seems more probable that Mazama collapsed during violent eruption. Perhaps like a stroke of lightning at the moment of triumph, death cameat the supreme climax of his career. Certainly no mausoleum was ever conceived for human hero which may becompared for a moment with this glorified grave of dead Mazama! The human history of Crater Lake has its interest. The Indians fearedit. John W. Hillman was the first white man to see it. Early in 1853 aparty of Californian miners ascended the Rogue River to rediscover alost gold-mine of fabulous richness. The expedition was secret, butseveral Oregonians who suspected its object and meant to be in at thefinding, quickly organized and followed. Hillman was of this party. TheCalifornians soon learned of the pursuit. "Then, " wrote Hillman half a century later, "it was a game of hide andseek until rations on both sides got low. The Californians would pushthrough the brush, scatter, double backward on their trail, and thencamp in the most inaccessible places to be found, and it sometimespuzzled us to locate and camp near enough to watch them. " Eventually the rivals united. A combination search-party was chosenwhich included Hillman, and this party, while it found no gold-mine, found Crater Lake. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred H. Kiser_ APPLEGATE CLIFF, CRATER LAKE] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Fred H. Kiser_ PHANTOM SHIP FROM GARFIELD PEAK] "While riding up a long sloping mountain, " Hillman continued, "wesuddenly came in sight of water and were very much surprised as we didnot expect to see any lakes. We did not know but what we had come insight and close to Klamath Lake, and not until my mule stopped within afew feet of the rim of Crater Lake did I look down, and if I had beenriding a blind mule I firmly believe I would have ridden over the edgeto death and destruction.... " "The finding of Crater Lake, " he concludes, "was an accident, as we werenot looking for lakes; but the fact of my being the first upon its bankswas due to the fact that I was riding the best saddle mule in southernOregon, the property of Jimmy Dobson, a miner and packer withheadquarters at Jacksonville, who had furnished me the mule inconsideration of a claim to be taken in his name should we besuccessful. Stranger to me than our discovery was the fact that afterour return I could get no acknowledgment from any Indian, buck or squaw, old or young, that any such lake existed; each and every one denied anyknowledge of it, or ignored the subject completely. " The next development in Crater's history introduces Will G. Steel, widely known as "the Father of Crater Lake National Park, " a pioneer ofthe highest type, a gold-seeker in the coast ranges and the Klondike, aschool-teacher for many years, and a public-spirited enthusiast. In1869, a farmer's boy in Kansas, he read a newspaper account of an Oregonlake with precipice sides five thousand feet deep. Moving to Oregon in1871, he kept making inquiries for seven years before he verified thefact of the lake's existence, and it was two years later before he founda man who had seen it. This man's description decided him to visit it, then an undertaking of some difficulty. He got there in 1885. Standing on the rim he suggested to ProfessorJoseph Le Conte that an effort be made to induce the national governmentto save it from defacement and private exploitation. Returning home theyprepared a petition to President Cleveland, who promptly withdrew tentownships from settlement pending a bill before Congress to create anational park. Congress refused to pass the bill on the ground thatOregon should protect her own lake. Then Steel began an effort, orrather an unbroken succession of efforts, to interest Congress. Forseventeen years he agitated the project at home, where he made speecheswinter and summer all over the State, and at Washington, which hedeluged with letters and circulars. Finally the bill was passed. CraterLake became a national park on May 22, 1902. Mr. Steel's work was not finished. He now began just as vigorous acampaign to have the lake properly stocked with trout. It required yearsbut succeeded. Then he began a campaign for funds to build a road to thelake. This was a stubborn struggle which carried him to Washington for awinter, but it finally succeeded. During most of this time Mr. Steel was a country school-teacher withoutother personal income than his salary. He spent many of his summerstalking Crater-Lake projects to audiences in every part of the State, depending upon his many friends for entertainment and for "lifts" fromtown to town. He was superintendent of the park from 1913 to the winterof 1920, when he became United States commissioner for the park. The attitude of the Indians toward Crater Lake remains to be told. Steelis authority for the statement that previous to 1886 no modern Indianhad looked upon its waters. Legends inherited from their ancestors madethem greatly fear it. I quote O. C. Applegate's "Klamath Legend of La-o, "from _Steel Points_ for January, 1907: "According to the mythology of the Klamath and Modoc Indians, the chiefspirit who occupied the mystic land of Gaywas, or Crater Lake, was La-o. Under his control were many lesser spirits who appeared to be able tochange their forms at will. Many of these were monsters of variouskinds, among them the giant crawfish (or dragon) who could, if he chose, reach up his mighty arms even to the tops of the cliffs and drag down tothe cold depths of Crater Lake any too venturesome tourist of the primaldays. "The spirits or beings who were under the control of La-o assumed theforms of many animals of the present day when they chose to go abroad ondry land, and this was no less true of the other fabulous inhabitants ofKlamath land who were dominated by other chief spirits, and who occupiedseparate localities; all these forms, however, were largely or solelysubject to the will of Komookumps, the great spirit. "Now on the north side of Mount Jackson, or La-o Yaina (La-o'sMountain), the eastern escarpment of which is known as La-o Rock, is asmooth field sloping a little toward the north which was a commonplayground for the fabled inhabitants of Gaywas and neighboringcommunities. "Skell was a mighty spirit whose realm was the Klamath Marsh country, his capital being near the Yamsay River on the eastern side of themarsh. He had many subjects who took the form of birds and beasts whenabroad on the land, as the antelope, the bald eagle, the bliwas orgolden eagle, among them many of the most sagacious and active of allthe beings then upon the earth. "A fierce war occurred between Skell and La-o and their followers, whichraged for a long time. Finally Skell was stricken down in his own landof Yamsay and his heart was torn from his body and was carried intriumph to La-o Yaina. Then a great gala day was declared and even thefollowers of Skell were allowed to take part in the games on MountJackson, and the heart of Skell was tossed from hand to hand in thegreat ball game in which all participated. "If the heart of Skell could be borne away so that it could be restoredto his body he would live again, and so with a secret understandingamong themselves the followers of Skell watched for the opportunity tobear it away. Eventually, when it reached the hands of Antelope, hesped away to the eastward like the wind. When nearly exhausted, hepassed it on to Eagle, and he in turn to Bliwas, and so on, and althoughLa-o's followers pursued with their utmost speed, they failed toovertake the swift bearers of the precious heart. At last they heard thefar-away voice of the dove, another of Skell's people, and then theygave up the useless pursuit. "Skell's heart was restored and he lived again, but the war was not overand finally La-o was himself overpowered and slain and his bleeding bodywas borne to the La-o Yaina, on the very verge of the great cliff, and afalse message was conveyed to La-o's monsters in the lake that Skell hadbeen killed instead of La-o, and, when a quarter of the body was thrownover, La-o's monsters devoured it thinking it a part of Skell's body. Each quarter was thrown over in turn with the same result, but when thehead was thrown into the lake the monsters recognized it as the head oftheir master and would not touch it, and so it remains to-day, an islandin the lake, to all people now known as Wizard Island. " In 1885, at Fort Klamath, Steel obtained from Allen David, thewhite-headed chief of the Klamath Indians, the story of how the Indiansreturned to Crater Lake. It was "long before the white man appeared todrive the native out. " Several Klamaths while hunting were shocked tofind themselves on the lake rim, but, gazing upon its beauty, suddenlyit was revealed to them that this was the home of the Great Spirit. They silently left and camped far away. But one brave under the spell ofthe lake returned, looked again, built his camp-fire and slept. The nextnight he returned again, and still again. Each night strange voiceswhich charmed him rose from the lake; mysterious noises filled the air. Moons waxed and waned. One day he climbed down to the water's edge, where he saw creatures "like in all respects to Klamath Indians"inhabiting the waters. Again and again he descended, bathed, and soonbegan to feel mysteriously strong, "stronger than any Indian of histribe because of his many visits to the waters. " Others perceiving his growing power ventured also to visit the lake, and, upon bathing in its waters also received strength. "On one occasion, " said David solemnly, "the brave who first visited thelake killed a monster, or fish, and was at once set upon by untoldnumbers of excited Llaos (for such they were called), who carried him tothe top of the cliffs, cut his throat with a stone knife, then tore hisbody into small pieces which were thrown down to the waters far beneathand devoured by angry Llaos. " In 1886 two Klamaths accompanied Captain Clarence E. Dutton's GeologicalSurvey party to Crater Lake and descended to the water's edge. The newsof the successful adventure spread among the Indians, and others came tolook upon the forbidden spot. That was the beginning of the end of thesuperstition. Steel says that two hundred Klamaths camped upon the rimin 1896, while he was there with the Mazamas. The lake was variously named by its early visitors. The Hillman partywhich discovered it named it Deep Blue Lake on the spot. Later it wasknown as Lake Mystery, Lake Majesty, and Hole in the Ground. A partyfrom Jacksonville named it Crater Lake on August 4, 1869. X YELLOWSTONE, A VOLCANIC INTERLUDE THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING, NORTHWESTERN WYOMING. AREA, 3, 348 SQUARE MILES I John Coulter's story of hot springs at the upper waters of theYellowstone River was laughed at by the public of 1810. Jim Bridger'saccount of the geysers in the thirties made his national reputation as aliar. Warren Angus Ferris's description of the Upper Geyser Basin wasreceived in 1842 in unbelieving silence. Later explorers who sought theYellowstone to test the truth of these tales thought it wholesome tokeep their findings to themselves, as magazines and newspapers refusedto publish their accounts and lecturers were stoned in the streets asimpostors. It required the authority of the semiofficialWashburn-Langford expedition of 1869 to establish credence. The original appeal of the Yellowstone, that to wonder, remains its mostpopular appeal to-day, though science has dissipated mystery these manyyears. Many visitors, I am persuaded, enjoy the wonder of it more eventhan the spectacle. I have heard people refuse to listen to theexplanation of geyser action lest it lessen their pleasure in OldFaithful. I confess to moods in which I want to see the blue flames andsmell the brimstone which Jim Bridger described so eloquently. There areplaces where it is not hard to imagine both. For many years the uncanny wonders of a dying volcanic region absorbedthe public mind to the exclusion of all else in the Yellowstoneneighborhood, which Congress, principally in consequence of thesewonders, made a national park in 1872. Yet all the time it possessed twoother elements of distinction which a later period regards as equal tothe volcanic phenomena; elements, in fact, of such distinction thateither one alone, without the geysers, would have warranted thereservation of so striking a region for a national park. One of these isthe valley of the Yellowstone River with its spectacular waterfalls andits colorful canyon. The other is its population of wild animals which, in 1872, probably was as large and may have been larger than to-day's. Yet little was heard of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in thosedays, although Moran's celebrated painting, now in the Capitol atWashington, helped influence Congress to make it a national park; and solittle did the wild animals figure in the calculations of the periodthat they were not even protected in the national park until 1894, whenhunting had reduced the buffalo to twenty-five animals. Even in these days of enlightenment and appreciation the great majorityof people think of the Yellowstone only as an area enclosing geysers. There are tourists so possessed with this idea that they barely glanceat the canyon in passing. I have heard tourists refuse to walk toInspiration Point because they had already looked over the rim at aconvenient and unimpressive place. Imagine coming two thousand miles tobalk at two miles and a half to the only spectacle of its kind in theworld and one of the world's great spectacles at that! As for theanimals, few indeed see any but the occasional bears that feed at thehotel dumps in the evening. The Yellowstone National Park lies in the recesses of the RockyMountains in northwestern Wyoming. It slightly overlaps Montana on thenorth and northwest, and Idaho on the southwest. It is rectangular, withan entrance about the middle of each side. It is the largest of thenational parks, enclosing 3, 348 square miles. It occupies a high plaingirt with mountains. The Absarokas bound it on the east, their crestinvading the park at Mount Chittenden. The Gallatin Range pushes intothe northwestern corner from the north. The continental divide crossesthe southwestern corner over the lofty Madison Plateau and the ridgesouth of Yellowstone Lake. Altitudes are generally high. The plainsrange from six to eight thousand feet; the mountains rise occasionallyto ten thousand feet. South of the park the Pitchstone Plateau mergesinto the foothills of the Teton Mountains, which, thirty miles south ofthe southern boundary, rise precipitously seven thousand feet above thegeneral level of the country. Though occupying the heart of the Rocky Mountains, the region is not ofthem. In no sense is it typical. The Rockies are essentially granitewhich was forced molten from the depths when, at the creation of thisvast central mountain system, lateral pressures lifted the earth's skinhigh above sea-level, folded it, and finally eroded it along the crestof the folds. In this granite system the Yellowstone is a volcanicinterlude, and of much later date. It belongs in a general way to theimpulse of volcanic agitation which lighted vast beacons over threehundred thousand square miles of our northwest. The Cascade Mountainsbelong in this grouping. Four national parks of to-day were then in themaking, Mount Rainier in Washington, Crater Lake in Oregon, LassenVolcanic in California, and the Yellowstone in Wyoming. Subterraneanheat, remaining from those days of volcanic activity, to-day boils thewater which the geysers hurl in air. In the northeastern part of the Yellowstone a large central crater wassurrounded by smaller volcanoes. You can easily trace the conformationfrom Mount Washburn which stood upon its southeastern rim, heaped there, doubtless, by some explosion of more than common violence. This volcanicperiod was of long duration, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. Inthe northeastern part of the park the erosion of a hill has exposed thepetrified remains of thirteen large forests in layers one on top of theother, the deep intervening spaces filled with thick deposits of ashes. Thirteen consecutive times were great forests here smothered in theproducts of eruption. Thirteen times did years enough elapse betweeneruptions for soil to make and forests to grow again, each perhaps ofmany generations of great trees. Yellowstone's mountains, then, are decayed volcanoes, its rock is lava, its soil is ash and disintegrated lava. The resulting outline is softand waving, with a tendency to levels. There are no pinnacled heights, no stratified, minareted walls, no precipiced cirques andglacier-shrouded peaks. Yet glaciers visited the region. The largegranite boulder brought from afar and left near the west rim of theGrand Canyon with thousands of feet of rhyolite and other products ofvolcanism beneath it is alone sufficient proof of that. Between the periods from volcano to glacier and from glacier to to-day, stream erosion has performed its miracles. The volcanoes have beenrounded and flattened, the plateaus have been built up and levelled, andthe canyons of the Yellowstone, Gibbon, and Madison Rivers have beendug. Vigorous as its landscape still remains, it has thus become thenatural playground for a multitude of people unaccustomed to the rigorsof a powerfully accented mountain country. The fact is that, in spite of its poverty of peaks and precipices, theYellowstone country is one of the most varied and beautiful wildernessesin the world. Among national parks it gains rather than loses by itsdifference. While easily penetrated, it is wild in the extreme, hintingof the prairies in its broad opens, pasture for thousands of wildruminants, and of the loftier mountains in its distant ranges, itsisolated peaks and its groups of rugged, rolling summits. In the number, magnitude, and variety of its waters it stands quite alone. It containsno less than three watersheds of importance, those of the Yellowstone, Madison, and Snake Rivers, flowing respectively north, west, and south. The waters of the Yellowstone and Madison make it an important source ofthe Missouri. There are minor rivers of importance in the park andinnumerable lesser streams. It is a network of waterways. Its waterfallsare many, and two of them are large and important. Its lakes are many, and several are large. Yellowstone Lake is the largest of its altitudein the world. As a wilderness, therefore, the Yellowstone is unequalled. Itsinnumerable waters insure the luxuriance of its growths. Its forestedparts are densely forested; its flower-gardens are unexcelled in range, color, and variety, and its meadows grow deep in many kinds of richgrass. If it were only for the splendor of its wilderness, it stillwould be worth the while. Imagine this wilderness heavily populated withfriendly wild animals, sprinkled with geysers, hot springs, mudvolcanoes, painted terraces and petrified groves, sensational withbreath-taking canyons and waterfalls, penetrable over hundreds of milesof well built road and several times the mileage of trails, andcomfortable because of its large hotels and public camps locatedconveniently for its enjoyment, and you have a pleasure-ground ofextraordinary quality. Remember that one may camp out almost anywhere, and that all waters are trout waters. Yellowstone offers the bestfishing easily accessible in the continent. Another advantage possessed by the Yellowstone is a position near thecentre of the country among great railroad systems. The Northern Pacificreaches it on the north, the Burlington on the east, and the UnionPacific on the west. One can take it coming or going between oceans; itis possible to buy tickets in by any one railroad and out by either ofthe others. An elaborate system of automobile-coaches swings thepassenger where he pleases, meeting all incoming trains and deliveringat all outgoing trains. It is much easier now to see the Yellowstonethan in the much-vaunted stage-coach times previous to 1915, timessorely lamented by the romantic because their passing meant the passingof the picturesque old horse-drawn stage-coach from its last stand inthe United States; times when a tour of the Yellowstone meant six and ahalf days of slow, dusty travel, starting early and arriving late, witha few minutes or hours at each "sight" for the soiled and exhaustedtraveller to gape in ignorant wonder, watch in hand. To-day one travels swiftly and comfortably in entire leisure, stoppingat hotels or camps as he pleases, and staying at each as long as helikes. The runs between the lingering places are now a pleasure. Ifhurried, one can now accomplish the stage-coach trip of the past in twodays, while the old six and a half days now means a leisurely anddelightful visit. With the new order of travel began a new conception of theYellowstone's public usefulness. It ceased to be a museum of wonders andbegan to be a summer pleasure-ground. Instead of the fastautomobile-stage decreasing the average length of visit, the new ideawhich it embodied has lengthened it. This new idea is a naturalevolution which began with the automobile and spread rapidly. Therailroads had been bringing tourists principally on transcontinentalstop-overs. Automobiles brought people who came really to see theYellowstone, who stayed weeks at public camps to see it, or who broughtoutfits and camped out among its spectacles. The first Ford whichentered the park on the morning of August 1, 1915, the day when privatecars were first admitted, so loaded with tenting and cooking utensilsthat the occupants scarcely could be seen, was the herald of the new andgreater Yellowstone. Those who laughed and those who groaned at sight ofit, and there were both, were no seers; for that minute Yellowstoneentered upon her destiny. The road scheme is simple and effective. From each entrance a road leadsinto an oblong loop road enclosing the centre of the park and touchingthe principal points of scenic interest. This loop is connected acrossthe middle for convenience. From it several short roads push out tospecial spectacles, and a long road follows Lamar Creek through anortheastern entrance to a mining town which has no other means ofcommunication with the world outside. This is the road to SpecimenRidge with its thirteen engulfed forests, to the buffalo range, and, outside the park boundaries, to the Grasshopper Glacier, in whose glassyembrace may be seen millions of grasshoppers which have lain in verycold storage indeed from an age before man. All are automobile roads. II The hot-water phenomena are scattered over a large area of the park. TheMammoth Hot Springs at the northern entrance are the only activeexamples of high terrace-building. The geysers are concentrated in threeadjoining groups upon the middle-west side. But hot springs occureverywhere at widely separated points; a steam jet is seen emerging evenfrom the depths of the Grand Canyon a thousand feet below the rim. The traveller is never long allowed to forget, in the silent beauty ofthe supreme wilderness, the park's uncanny nature. Suddenly encounteredcolumns of steam rising from innocent meadows; occasional half-acres ofdead and discolored brush emerging from hot and yellow mud-holes withinthe glowing forest heart; an unexpected roaring hillside running withsmoking water; irregular agitated pools of gray, pink, or yellow mud, spitting, like a pot of porridge, explosive puffs of steam; the warmvaporing of a shallow in a cold forest-bound lake; a continuous violentbellowing from the depths of a ragged roadside hole which at intervalsvomits noisily quantities of thick brown and purple liquid; occasionalgroups of richly colored hot springs in an acre or more of dull yellows, the whole steaming vehemently and interchanging the pinks and blues ofits hot waters as the passing traveller changes his angle ofvision--these and other uncouth phenomena in wide variety and frequentrepetition enliven the tourist's way. They are more numerous in geyserneighborhoods, but some of them are met singly, always with a littleshock of surprise, in every part of the park. The terrace-building springs in the north of the park engulf trees. Thebulky growing mounds of white and gray deposit are edged with minutelycarven basins mounted upon elaborately fluted supports of ornate design, over whose many-colored edges flows a shimmer of hot water. Basin risesupon basin, tier upon tier, each in turn destined to clog and dry andmerge into the mass while new basins and new tiers form and grow andglow awhile upon their outer flank. The material, of course, isprecipitated by the water when it emerges from the earth's hot interior. The vivid yellows and pinks and blues in which these terraces clothethemselves upon warm days result from minute vegetable algæ which thrivein the hot saturated lime-water but quickly die and fade to gray andshining white on drying. The height of some of these shapeless masses ofterrace-built structures is surprising. But more surprising yet is thevividness of color assumed by the limpid springs in certain lights andat certain angles. Climbing the terraces at the expense of wet feet, one stands uponbroad, white, and occasionally very damp plateaus which steam vigorouslyin spots. These spots are irregularly circular and very shallow pools ofhot 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 thesepools varies or disappears with the changing angle of vision; the wateritself is limpid. Elsewhere throughout the park the innumerable hot springs seem to beless charged with depositable matter; elsewhere they build no terraces, but bubble joyously up through bowls often many feet in depth anddiameter. Often they are inspiringly beautiful. The blue Morning GlorySpring is jewel-like rather than flower-like in its color quality, butits bowl remarkably resembles the flower which gives it name. Mostsprings are gloriously green. Some are the sources of considerablestreams. Some stir slightly with the feeling rather than the appearanceof life; others are perpetually agitated, several small springsbetraying their relationship to the geysers by a periodicity ofactivity. When the air is dry and the temperature low, the springs shoot thickvolumes of steam high in air. To the incomer by the north or westentrance who has yet to see a geyser, the first view of the Lower GeyserBasin brings a shock of astonishment no matter what his expectation. Letus hope it is a cool, bracing, breezy morning when the broad yellowplain emits hundreds of columns of heavy steam to unite in awind-tossed cloud overlying and setting off the uncanny spectacle. Several geysers spout vehemently and one or more roaring vents bellowlike angry bulls in a nightmare. This is appropriately the introductionto the greater geyser basins which lie near by upon the south. Who shall describe the geysers? What pen, what brush, shall do justiceto their ghostly glory, the eager vehemence of their assaults upon thesky, their joyful gush and roar, their insistence upon consciouspersonality and power, the white majesty of their fluted columns at theinstant of fullest expansion, the supreme loveliness of their featheryflorescence at the level of poise between rise and fall, theirgraciousness of form, their speedy airiness of action, their giantconvolutions of sun-flecked steam rolling aloft in ever-expanding volumeto rejoin the parent cloud? Perhaps there have been greater geyser basins somewhere in theprehistoric past. There may be greater still to come; one or twopromising possibilities are in Alaska. But for the lapse of geologictime in which man has so far lived, Yellowstone has cornered the world'sgeyser market. There are only two other places where one may enjoy thespectacle of large geysers. One of these is New Zealand and the otherIceland; but both displays combined cannot equal Yellowstone's either inthe number or the size of the geysers. Yellowstone has dozens of geysers of many kinds. They range in size fromthe little spring that spurts a few inches every minute to the monsterthat hurls hundreds of tons of water three hundred feet in air every sixor eight weeks. Many spout at fairly regular intervals of minutes orhours or days. Others are notably irregular, and these include most ofthe 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 itstime-table. Its period ranges from intervals of about fifty-five minutesin seasons following winters of heavy snow to eighty or eighty-fiveminutes in seasons following winters of light snow. Its eruptions areannounced in the Old Faithful Inn a few minutes in advance of action andthe population of the hotel walks out to see the spouting. At night asearchlight is thrown upon the gushing flood. After all, Old Faithful is the most satisfactory of geysers. Several aremore imposing. Sometimes enthusiasts remain in the neighborhood forweeks waiting for the Giant to play and dare not venture far away forfear of missing the spectacle; while Old Faithful, which is quite asbeautiful and nearly as large, performs hourly for the pleasure ofthousands. Even the most hurried visitor to the Upper Basin is sure, between stages, of seeing several geysers in addition to one or moreperformances of Old Faithful. The greatest of known geysers ceased playing in 1888. I have found noauthentic measurements or other stated records concerning the famousExcelsior. It hurled aloft an enormous volume of water, with a fury ofaction described as appalling. Posterity is fortunate in the existenceof a striking photograph of this monster taken at the height of its playby F. Jay Haynes, then official photographer of the park. "The first photographs I made were in the fall of 1881, " Mr. Hayneswrites me. "The eruptions continued during the winter at increasingintervals from two hours, when the series began, to four hours when itceased operations before the tourist season of 1882. Not having themodern photographic plates for instantaneous work in 1881, it wasimpossible to secure instantaneous views then, but in the spring of1888, I made the view which you write about. It was taken at the fulnessof its eruption. "The explosion was preceded by a rapid filling of the crater and a greatoverflow of water. The column was about fifty feet wide and came fromthe centre of the crater. Pieces of formation were torn loose and werethrown out during each eruption; large quantities eventually wereremoved from the crater, thus enlarging it to its present size. " Here we have a witness's description of the process which clouds thecareer of the Excelsior Geyser. The enlargement of the vent eventuallygave unrestrained passage to the imprisoned steam. The geyser ceased toplay. To-day the Excelsior Spring is one of the largest hot springs inthe Yellowstone and the world; its output of steaming water is constantand voluminous. Thus again we find relationship between the hot springand the geyser; it is apparent that the same vent, except perhaps fordifferences of internal shaping, might serve for both. It was theremoval of restraining walls which changed the Excelsior Geyser to theExcelsior Spring. For many years geyser action remained a mystery balanced amongconflicting theories, of which at last Bunsen's won general acceptance. Spring waters, or surface waters seeping through porous lavas, gatherthousands of feet below the surface in some pocket located in stratawhich internal pressures still keep hot. Boiling as they gather, thewaters rise till they fill the long vent-hole to the surface. Still thesteam keeps making in the deep pocket, where it is held down by theweight of the water in the vent above. As it accumulates this steamcompresses more and more. The result is inevitable. There comes a momentwhen the expansive power of the compressed steam overcomes the weightabove. Explosion follows. The steam, expanding now with violence, drivesthe water up the vent and out; nor is it satisfied until the vent isemptied. Upon the surface, as the geyser lapses and dies, the people turn away tothe Inn and luncheon. Under the surface, again the waters gather andboil in preparation for the next eruption. The interval till then willdepend upon the amount of water which reaches the deep pocket, the sizeof the pocket, and the length and shape of the vent-hole. If conditionspermit the upward escape of steam as fast as it makes in the pocket, wehave a hot spring. If the steam makes faster than it can escape, we havea geyser. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_ THE EXCELSIOR GEYSER WHICH BLEW OUT IN 1888; YELLOWSTONE] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_ ONE OF THE TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS; YELLOWSTONE] III So interesting are the geysers and their kin that, with their splendidwilderness setting, other glories seem superfluous. I have had mymoments of impatience with the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for beingin the Yellowstone. Together, the canyon and the geysers are almost toomuch for one place, even perhaps for one visit. One can only hold somuch, even of beauty, at once. Spectacles of this quality and quantityneed assimilation, and assimilation requires time. Nevertheless, onceenter into sympathetic relations with the canyon, once find its heartand penetrate its secret, and the tables are quickly turned. Strangely, it now becomes quite easy to view with comparative coolness the claimsof mere hot-water wonders. The canyon cannot be considered apart from its river any more than ageyser apart from its environment of hot spring and basin, and anyconsideration of the Yellowstone River begins with its lake. As comparedwith others of scenic celebrity, Yellowstone Lake is unremarkable. Itsshores are so low and the mountains of its southern border so flat andunsuggestive that it curiously gives the impression of surfacealtitude--curiously because it actually has the altitude; its surface ismore than seven thousand seven hundred feet above tide. If I have theadvertisement right, it is the highest water in the world that floats aline of steamboats. The lake is large, twenty miles north and south by fifteen miles eastand west; it is irregular with deep indentations. It is heavily woodedto the water's edge. All its entering streams are small except theYellowstone River, which, from its source in the Absarokas just south ofthe park boundary, enters the Southeast Arm through the lowlandwilderness home of the moose and the wild buffalo. The lake is thepopular resort of thousands of large white pelicans, its mostpicturesque feature. That part of the Yellowstone River which interests us emerges from thelake at its most northerly point. It is here a broad swift stream ofsome depth and great clarity, so swarming with trout that a half-dozenor more usually may be seen upon its bottom at any glance from boat orbridge. A number of boats usually are anchored above the bridge fromwhich anglers are successfully trailing artificial flies and spinners inthe fast current; and the bridge is usually lined with anglers who, inspite of crude outfits, frequently hook good trout which they pull up bymain strength much as the phlegmatic patrons of excursion-steamers tothe 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, awoman whose face beamed with happiness held up a twenty-inch trout andsaid: "Just look! My husband caught this and he is seventy-six years old--lastmonth. It's the first fish he ever caught, for he was brought up inKansas, you know, where there isn't any fishing. My! but he's a proudman! We're going to get the camp to cook it for us. He's gone now tolook 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 notcrude. In fact, it taxes the most skilful angler's art to steer hisfighting trout through boiling rapids to the net. For very soon theYellowstone narrows and pitches down sharper slants to the climax of thefalls and the mighty canyon. This intermediate stretch of river is beautiful in its quietude. Theforests often touch the water's edge. And ever it narrows and deepensand splashes higher against the rocks which stem its current; forever itis steepening to the plunge. Above the Upper Fall it pinches almost to amill-race, roars over low sills, swings eastward at right angles, andplunges a hundred and nine feet. I know of no cataract which expressesmight in action so eloquently as the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone. Pressed as it is within narrow bounds, it seems to gush with othermotive power than merely gravity. Seen from above looking down, seensideways from below, or looked at straight on from the camp site on theopposite rim, the water appears hurled from the brink. Less than a mile south of the Upper Fall, the river again falls, thistime into the Grand Canyon. Imposing as the Great Fall is, it must chiefly be considered as a partof the Grand Canyon picture. The only separate view of it looks up fromthe river's edge in front, a view which few get because of the difficultclimb; every other view poses it merely as an element in the canyoncomposition. Compared with the Upper Fall, its more than double heightgives it the great superiority of majesty without detracting from theUpper Fall's gushing personality. In fact, it is the King of Falls. Comparison with Yosemite's falls is impossible, so different are theelements and conditions. The Great Fall of the Yellowstone carries inone body, perhaps, a greater bulk of water than all the YosemiteValley's falls combined. And so we come to the canyon. In figures it is roughly a thousand feetdeep and twice as wide, more or less, at the rim. The supremely scenicpart reaches perhaps three miles below the Great Fall. Several rockpoints extend far into the canyon, from which the gorgeous spectacle maybe viewed as from an aeroplane. Artists' Point, which is reached fromthe east side, displays the Great Fall as the centre of a noblecomposition. It was Moran's choice. Inspiration Point, which juts far infrom the west side, shows a deeper and more comprehensive view of thecanyon and only a glimpse of the Great Fall. Both views are essential toany adequate conception. From Artists' Point the eye loses detail in theovermastering glory of the whole. From Inspiration Point the canyonreveals itself in all the intimacy of its sublime form and color. Bothviews dazzle and astonish. Neither can be looked at very long at onetime. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Gifford_ YELLOWSTONE VALLEY FROM THE UPPER FALL TO THE LOWER FALL] [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Gifford_ THE LOWER FALL AND THE GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE] It will help comprehension of the picture quality of this remarkablecanyon to recall that it is carved out of the products of volcanism; itspromontories and pinnacles are the knobbed and gnarled decompositionproducts of lava rocks left following erosion; its sides are gashed andfluted lava cliffs flanked by long straight slopes of coarse volcanicsand-like grains; its colors have the distinctness and occasionalluridness which seem natural to fused and oxidized disintegrations. Geologically speaking, it is a young canyon. It is digging deeper allthe time. Yellow, of course, is the prevailing color. Moran was right. His was thegeneral point of view, his message the dramatic ensemble. But, even fromArtists' Point, closer looking reveals great masses of reds and grays, while Inspiration Point discloses a gorgeous palette daubed with most ofthe colors and intermediate tints that imagination can suggest. I doubtwhether there is another such kaleidoscope in nature. There isapparently every gray from purest white to dull black, every yellow fromlemon to deep orange, every red, pink, and brown. These tints dye therocks and sands in splashes and long transverse streaks which merge intoa single joyous exclamation in vivid color whose red and yellow accentshave something of the Oriental. Greens and blues are missing from thedyes, but are otherwise supplied. The canyon is edged with lodge-poleforests, and growths of lighter greens invade the sandy slants, at timesnearly to the frothing river; and the river is a chain of emeralds andpearls. Blue completes the color gamut from the inverted bowl of sky. No sketch of the canyon is complete without the story of the greatrobbery. I am not referring to the several hold-ups of the oldstage-coach days, but to a robbery which occurred long before the comingof man--the theft of the waters of Yellowstone Lake; for this splendidriver, these noble falls, this incomparable canyon, are the ill-gottenproducts of the first of Yellowstone's hold-ups. Originally Yellowstone Lake was a hundred and sixty feet higher and verymuch larger than it is to-day. It extended from the headwaters of thepresent Yellowstone River, far in the south, northward past the presentGreat Fall and Inspiration Point. It included a large part of what isnow known as the Hayden Valley. At that time the Continental Divide, which now cuts the southwest corner of the park, encircled the lake onits north, and just across the low divide was a small flat-lying streamwhich drained and still drains the volcanic slopes leading down fromDunraven Peak and Mount Washburn. This small stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or thedishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone, but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times thatthere is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake fromthe Snake River and used it to create the Yellowstone River, which inturn created the wonderful canyon. Here at last is a crime in which allwill agree that the end justified the means. How this piracy was accomplished is written on the rocks; even theformer lake outlet into the Snake River is plainly discernible to-day. At the lake's north end, where the seeping waters of Sulphur Creek andthe edge of the lake nearly met on opposite sides of what was then thelow flat divide, it only required some slight disturbance indirectlyvolcanic, some unaccustomed rising of lake levels, perhaps merely somespecial stress of flood or storm to make the connection. Perhaps thecreek itself, sapping back in the soft lava soils, unaided found thelake. Connection once made, the mighty body of lake water speedilydeepened a channel northward and Sulphur Creek became sure of itsposterity. At that time, hidden under the lake's surface, two rhyolite dikes, orupright walls of harder rock, extended crosswise through the lake morethan half a mile apart. As the lake-level fell, the nearer of thesedikes emerged and divided the waters into two lakes, the upper of whichemptied over the dike into the lower. This was the beginning of theGreat Fall. And presently, as the Great Fall cut its breach deeper anddeeper into the restraining dike, it lowered the upper-lake level untilpresently the other rhyolite dike emerged from the surface carryinganother cataract. And thus began the Upper Fall. Meantime the stream below kept digging deeper the canyon of SulphurCreek, and there came a time when the lower lake drained wholly away. In its place was left a bottom-land which is now a part of the HaydenValley, and, running through it, a river. Forthwith this river beganscooping, from the Great Fall to Inspiration Point, the scenic ditchwhich is world-celebrated to-day as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. IV Now imagine this whole superlative wilderness heavily populated withwild animals in a state of normal living. Imagine thirty thousand elk, for instance, roaming about in bands of half a dozen to half a thousand. Imagine them not friendly, perhaps, but fearless, with that entireindifference which most animals show to creatures which neither help norharm them--as indifferent, say, as the rabbits in your pasture or thesquirrels in your oak woods. Imagine all the wild animals, except thesneaking, predatory kind, proportionally plentiful and similarlyfearless--bear, antelope, mountain-sheep, deer, bison, even moose in thefastnesses, to say nothing of the innumerable smaller beasts. There hasbeen no hunting of harmless animals in the Yellowstone since 1894, andthis is one result. It is true that comparatively few visitors see many animals, but that isthe fault of their haste or their temperament or their inexperience ofnature. One must seek in sympathy to find. Tearing over the wildernessroads in noisy motors smelling of gasolene is not the best way to findthem, although the elk and deer became indifferent to automobiles assoon as they discovered them harmless. One may see them not infrequentlyfrom automobiles and often from horse-drawn wagons; and one may see themoften and intimately who walks or rides horseback on the trails. The admission of the automobile to Yellowstone roads changed seeingconditions materially. In five days of quiet driving in 1914 withColonel L. M. Brett, then superintendent of the park, in a directionopposite to the stages, I saw more animals from my wagon-seat than I hadexpected to see wild in all my life. We saw bear half a dozen times, elkin numbers, black-tailed and white-tailed deer so frequently that countwas lost the second morning, four bands of antelope, buffalo, foxes, coyotes, and even a bull moose. Once we stopped so as not to hurry alarge bear and two cubs which were leisurely crossing the road. Deerwatched us pass within a hundred yards. Elk grazed at close quarters, and our one bull moose obligingly ambled ahead of us along the road. There was never fear, never excitement (except my own), not even haste. Even the accustomed horses no more than cocked an ear or two whilewaiting for three wild bears to get out of the middle of the road. Of course scenic completeness is enough in itself to justify theexistence of these animals in the marvellous wilderness of theYellowstone. Their presence in normal abundance and their calmat-homeness perfects nature's spectacle. In this respect, also, Yellowstone's unique place among the national parks is secure. The lessons of the Yellowstone are plain. It is now too late to restoreelsewhere the great natural possession which the thoughtless savagery ofa former generation destroyed in careless ruth, but, thanks to thisearly impulse of conservation, a fine example still remains in theYellowstone. But it is not too late to obliterate wholly certainmisconceptions by which that savagery was then justified. It is not toolate to look upon wild animals as fellow heritors of the earth, possessing certain natural rights which men are glad rather than boundto respect. It is not too late to consider them, with birds and forests, lakes, rivers, seas, and skies, a part of nature's glorious gift forman's manifold satisfaction, a gift to carefully conserve for the studyand enjoyment of to-day, and to develop for the uses of larger and moreappreciative generations to come. Of course if this be brought to universal accomplishment (and theimpulse has been advancing fast of late), it must be Yellowstone's partto furnish the exhibit, for we have no other. To many the most surprising part of Yellowstone's wild-animal message isman's immunity from hatred and harm by predatory beasts. To know thatwild bears if kindly treated are not only harmless but friendly, thatgrizzlies will not attack except in self-defense, and that wolves, wildcats, and mountain-lions fly with that instinctive dread which is man'sdependable protection, may destroy certain romantic illusions of youthand discredit the observation if not the conscious verity of many anhonest hunter; but it imparts a modern scientific fact which sets thewhole wild-animal question in a new light. In every case of assault bybears where complete evidence has been obtainable, the United StatesBiological Survey, after fullest investigation, has exonerated the bear;he has always been attacked or has had reason to believe himselfattacked. In more than thirty summers of field-work Vernon Bailey, ChiefField-Naturalist of the Biological Survey, has slept on the groundwithout fires or other protection, and frequently in the morning foundtracks of investigating predatory beasts. There are reports but norecords of human beings killed by wolves or mountain-lions in America. Yet, for years, all reports susceptible of proof have been officiallyinvestigated. One of Yellowstone's several manifest destinies is to become thewell-patronized American school of wild-life study. Already, from itsabundance, it is supplying wild animals to help in the long anddifficult task of restoring here and there, to national parks and otherfavorable localities, stocks which existed before the great slaughter. V Thirty miles south of this rolling volcanic interlude the pristineRockies, as if in shame of their moment of gorgeous softness, rear incontrast their sharpest and most heroic monument of bristling granite. Scarcely over the park's southern boundary, the foothills of the TetonMountains swell gently toward their Gothic climax. The country opens androughens. The excellent road, which makes Jackson's Hole a practicalpart of the Yellowstone pleasure-ground, winds through a rolling, partlywooded grazing-ground of elk and deer. The time was when these wildherds made living possible for the nation's hunted desperadoes, forJackson's Hole was the last refuge to yield to law and order. At the climax of this sudden granite protest, the Grand Teton rises7, 014 feet in seeming sheerness from Jackson Lake to its total altitudeof 13, 747 feet. To its right is Mount Moran, a monster only less. Theothers, clustering around them, have no names. All together, they are few and grouped like the units of some fabulousbarbaric stronghold. Fitted by size and majesty to be the climax of amighty range, the Tetons concentrate their all in this one giant group. Quickly, north and south, they subside and pass. They are a graniteisland in a sea of plain. Seen across the lake a dozen miles which seem but three, these clusteredsteepled temples rise sheer from the water. Their flanks aresnow-streaked still in August, their shoulders hung with glaciers, theirspires bare and shining. A greater contrast to the land from which wecame and to which we presently return cannot be imagined. Geologically, the two have nothing in common. Scenically, the Tetons set off andcomplete the spectacle of the Yellowstone. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Charles D. Walcott_ THE TETON MOUNTAIN FROM JACKSON HOLE, SOUTH OF YELLOWSTONE] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_ THE LAVA LANDSCAPE OF THE YELLOWSTONE AND GIBBON FALLS] XI THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII HAWAII NATIONAL PARK, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. AREA, 118 SQUARE MILES If this chapter is confined to the three volcano tops which Congressreserved on the islands of Hawaii and Maui in 1917, wonderful thoughthese are, it will describe a small part indeed of the wide range ofnovelty, charm, and beauty which will fall to the lot of those who visitthe Hawaii National Park. One of the great advantages enjoyed by thisnational park, as indeed by Mount McKinley's, is its location in asurrounding of entire novelty, so that in addition to the object of hisvisit, itself so supremely worth while, the traveller has also thepleasure of a trip abroad. In novelty at least the Hawaii National Park has the advantage over theAlaskan park because it involves the life and scenery of the tropics. Wecan find snow-crowned mountains and winding glaciers at home, but notequatorial jungles, sandalwood groves, and surf-riding. Enormous as this element of charm unquestionably is, this is not theplace to sing the pleasures of the Hawaiian Islands. Their palm-fringedhorizons, surf-edged coral reefs, tropical forests and gardens, plantations of pineapple and sugar-cane are as celebrated as theirrainbows, earthquakes, and graceful girls dancing under tropical starsto the languorous ukelele. [Illustration: MAP OF HAWAII NATIONAL PARK] Leaving these and kindred spectacles to the steamship circulars and thelibrary shelf, it is our part to note that the Hawaii National Parkpossesses the fourth largest volcanic crater in the world, whose aspectat sunrise is one of the world's famous spectacles, the largest activevolcano in the world, and a lake of turbulent, glowing, molten lava, "the House of Everlasting Fire, " which fills the beholder with awe. It was not at all, then, the gentle poetic aspects of the HawaiianIslands which led Congress to create a national park there, though theseform its romantic, contrasted setting. It was the extraordinary volcanicexhibit, that combination of thrilling spectacles of Nature's colossalpower which for years have drawn travellers from the four quarters ofthe earth. The Hawaii National Park includes the summits of Haleakala, on the island of Maui, and Mauna Loa and Kilauea, on the island ofHawaii. Spain claims the discovery of these delectable isles by Juan Gaetano, in1555, but their formal discovery and exploration fell to the lot ofCaptain James Cook, in 1778. The Hawaiians thought him a god and loadedhim with the treasures of the islands, but on his return the followingyear his illness and the conduct of his crew ashore disillusioned them;they killed him and burned his flesh, but their priests deified hisbones, nevertheless. Parts of these were recovered later and a monumentwas erected over them. Then civil wars raged until all the tribes wereconquered, at the end of the eighteenth century, by one chieftain, Kamehameha, who became king. His descendants reigned until 1874 when, the old royal line dying out, Kalakaua was elected his successor. From this time the end hastened. A treaty with the United States cededPearl Harbor as a coaling-station and entered American goods free ofduty, in return for which Hawaiian sugar and a few other productsentered the United States free. This established the sugar industry ona large and permanent scale and brought laborers from China, Japan, theAzores, and Madeira. More than ten thousand Portuguese migrated to theislands, and the native population began a comparative decrease whichstill continues. After Kalakaua's death, his sister Liliuokalani succeeding him in 1891, the drift to the United States became rapid. When President Clevelandrefused to annex the islands, a republic was formed in 1894, but thedanger from Japanese immigration became so imminent that in 1898, duringthe Spanish-American War, President McKinley yielded to the Hawaiianrequest and the islands were annexed to the United States by resolutionof Congress. The setting for the picture of our island-park will be complete withseveral facts about its physical origin. The Hawaiian Islands rose fromthe sea in a series of volcanic eruptions. Originally, doubtless, thegreater islands were simple cones emitting lava, ash, and smoke, whichcoral growths afterward enlarged and enriched. Kauai was the first todevelop habitable conditions, and the island southeast of it followed inorder. Eight of the twelve are now habitable. The most eastern island of the group is Hawaii. It is also much thelargest. This has three volcanoes. Mauna Loa, greatest of the three, andalso the greatest volcanic mass in the world, is nearly the centre ofthe island; Kilauea lies a few miles east of it; the summits of both areincluded in the national park. Mauna Kea, a volcanic cone of greatbeauty in the north centre of the island, forming a triangle with theother two, is not a part of the national park. Northwest of Hawaii across sixty miles or more of salt water is theisland of Maui, second largest of the group. In its southern part risesthe distinguished volcano of Haleakala, whose summit and world-famouscrater is the third member of the national park. The other habitedislands, in order westward, are Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau; no portions of these are included in the park. Kahoolawe, Lanai, and Niihau are much the smallest of the group. HALEAKALA Of the three volcanic summits which concern us, Haleakala is nearest theprincipal port of Honolulu, though not always the first visited. Itsslopes nearly fill the southern half of the island of Maui. The popular translation of the name Haleakala is "The House of the Sun";literally the word means "The House Built by the Sun. " The volcano is amonster of more than ten thousand feet, which bears upon its summit acrater of a size and beauty that make it one of the world's show-places. This crater is seven and a half miles long by two and a third mileswide. Only three known craters exceed Haleakala's in size. Aso san, themonster crater of Japan, largest by far in the world, is fourteen mileslong by ten wide and contains many farms. Lago di Bolseno, in Italy, next in size, measures eight and a half by seven and a half miles; andMonte Albano, also in Italy, eight by seven miles. Exchanging your automobile for a saddle-horse at the volcano's foot, youspend the afternoon in the ascent. Wonderful indeed, looking back, isthe growing arc of plantation and sea, islands growing upon the horizon, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa lifting distant snow-tipped peaks. You spend thenight in a rest-house on the rim of the crater, but not until you haveseen the spectacle of sunset; and in the gray of the morning you aresummoned to the supreme spectacle of sunrise. Thousands have crossedseas for Haleakala's sunrise. That first view of the crater from the rim is one never to be forgotten. Its floor lies two thousand feet below, an enormous rainless, rollingplain from which rise thirteen volcanic cones, clean-cut, as regular inform as carven things. Several of these are seven hundred feet inheight. "It must have been awe-inspiring, " writes Castle, "when itscones were spouting fire, and rivers of scarlet molten lava crawledalong the floor. " The stillness of this spot emphasizes its emotional effect. A wordspoken ordinarily loud is like a shout. You can hear the footsteps ofthe goats far down upon the crater floor. Upon this floor grow plantsknown nowhere else; they are famous under the name of SilverSwords--yucca-like growths three or four feet high whose droopingfilaments of bloom gleam like polished silver stilettos. When Mark Twain saw the crater, "vagrant white clouds came driftingalong, high over the sea and valley; then they came in couples andgroups; then in imposing squadrons; gradually joining their forces, theybanked themselves solidly together a thousand feet under us and totallyshut out land and ocean; not a vestige of anything was left in view, butjust a little of the rim of the crater circling away from the pinnaclewhereon we sat, for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmyhosts without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filedround and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till theabyss was stored to the brim with a fleecy fog. Thus banked, motionceased, and silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, thesnowy folds, with shallow creases between, and with here and therestately piles of vapory architecture lifting themselves aloft out of thecommon plain--some near at hand, some in the middle distances, andothers relieving the monotony of the remote solitudes. There was littleconversation, for the impressive scene overawed speech. I felt like theLast Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, aforgotten relic of a vanished world. " The extraordinary perfection of this desert crater is probably due totwo causes. Vents which tapped it far down the volcano's flanksprevented its filling with molten lava; absence of rain has preservedits walls intact and saved its pristine beauty from the defacement oferosion. Haleakala has its legend, and this Jack London has sifted to itselements and given us in "The Cruise of the _Snark_. " I quote: "It is told that long ago, one Maui, the son of Hina, lived on what isnow known as West Maui. His mother, Hina, employed her time in themaking of kapas. She must have made them at night, for her days wereoccupied in trying to dry the kapas. Each morning, and all morning, shetoiled at spreading them out in the sun. But no sooner were they outthan she began taking them in in order to have them all under shelterfor the night. For know that the days were shorter then than now. Mauiwatched his mother's futile toil and felt sorry for her. He decided todo something--oh, no, not to help her hang out and take in the kapas. Hewas too clever for that. His idea was to make the sun go slower. Perhapshe was the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate, he took a series ofobservations of the sun from various parts of the island. His conclusionwas that the sun's path was directly across Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, hestood in no need of divine assistance. He gathered a huge quantity ofcocoanuts, from the fibre of which he braided a stout cord, and in oneend of which he made a noose, even as the cowboys of Haleakala do tothis day. "Next he climbed into the House of the Sun. When the sun came tearingalong the path, bent on completing its journey in the shortest timepossible, the valiant youth threw his lariat around one of the sun'slargest and strongest beams. He made the sun slow down some; also, hebroke the beam short off. And he kept on roping and breaking off beamstill the sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set forth histerms of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowlythereafter. Wherefore Hina had ample time in which to dry her kapas, andthe days are longer than they used to be, which last is quite in accordwith the teachings of modern astronomy. " MAUNA LOA Sixty miles south of Maui, Hawaii, largest of the island group, containsthe two remaining parts of our national park. From every point of viewMauna Loa and Mauna Kea, both snow-crowned monsters approaching fourteenthousand feet of altitude, dominate the island. But Mauna Kea is not apart of the national park; Kilauea, of less than a third its height, shares that honor with Mauna Loa. Of the two, Kilauea is much the older, and doubtless was a conspicuous figure in the old landscape. It has beenlargely absorbed in the immense swelling bulk of Mauna Loa, which, springing later from the island soil near by, no doubt divertingKilauea's vents far below sea-level, has sprawled over many miles. Sonearly has the younger absorbed the older, that Kilauea's famous pit ofmolten lava seems almost to lie upon Mauna Loa's slope. Mauna Loa soars 13, 675 feet. Its snowy dome shares with Mauna Kea, which rises even higher, the summit honors of the islands. From Hilo, the principal port of the island of Hawaii, Mauna Loa suggests the backof a leviathan, its body hidden in the mists. The way up, throughforests of ancient mahogany and tangles of giant tree-fern, then up manymiles of lava slopes, is one of the inspiring tours in the mountainworld. The summit crater, Mokuaweoweo, three-quarters of a mile long bya quarter mile wide, is as spectacular in action as that of Kilauea. This enormous volcanic mass has grown of its own output in comparativelya short time. For many decades it has been extraordinarily frequent ineruption. Every five or ten years it gets into action with violence, sometimes at the summit, oftener of recent years since the central venthas lengthened, at weakened places on its sides. Few volcanoes have beenso regularly and systematically studied. KILAUEA The most spectacular exhibit of the Hawaii National Park is the lake offire in the crater of Kilauea. Kilauea is unusual among volcanoes. It follows few of the popularconceptions. Older than the towering Mauna Loa, its height is only fourthousand feet. Its lavas have found vents through its flanks, which theyhave broadened and flattened. Doubtless its own lavas have helped MaunaLoa's to merge the two mountains into one. It is no longer explosivelike the usual volcano; since 1790, when it destroyed a native army, ithas ejected neither rocks nor ashes. Its crater is no longer definitelybowl-shaped. From the middle of a broad flat plain, which really is whatis left of the ancient great crater, drops a pit with vertical sideswithin which boil its lavas. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by E. M. Newman_ THE KILAUEA PIT OF FIRE, HAWAII NATIONAL PARK Photographed at night by the light of its flaming lava] [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Newman Travel Talks andBrown and Dawson_ WITHIN THE CRATER OF KILAUEA] The pit, the lake of fire, is Halemaumau, commonly translated "TheHouse of Everlasting Fire"; the correct translation is "The House of theMaumau Fern, " whose leaf is twisted and contorted like some forms oflava. Two miles and a little more from Halemaumau, on a part of theancient crater wall, stands the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, which isunder the control of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Theobservatory was built for the special purpose of studying the pit offire, the risings and fallings of whose lavas bear a relationship towardthe volcanism of Mauna Loa which is scientifically important, but whichwe need not discuss here. The traveller enters Hawaii by steamer through Hilo. He reaches the rimof Kilauea by automobile, an inspiring run of thirty-one miles over aroad of volcanic glass, bordered with vegetation strange to eyesaccustomed only to that of the temperate zone--brilliant hibiscus, native hardwood trees with feathery pompons for blossoms, and the giantferns which tower overhead. On the rim are the hotels and theobservatory. Steam-jets emerge at intervals, and hot sulphur banksexhibit rich yellows. From there the way descends to the floor of thecrater and unrolls a ribbon of flower-bordered road seven miles long tothe pit of fire. By trail, the distance is only two miles and a halfacross long stretches of hard lava congealed in ropes and ripples andstrange contortions. Where else is a spectacle one-tenth as appalling socomfortably and quickly reached? Halemaumau is an irregular pit a thousand feet long with perpendicularsides. Its depth varies. Sometimes one looks hundreds of feet down tothe boiling surface; sometimes its lavas overrun the top. The fumes ofsulphur are very strong, with the wind in your face. At these times, too, the air is extremely hot. There are cracks in the surrounding lavawhere you can scorch paper or cook a beefsteak. Many have been the attempts to describe it. Not having seen it myself, Iquote two here; one a careful picture by a close student of thespectacle, Mr. William R. Castle, Jr. , of Honolulu; the other a rapidsketch by Mark Twain. "By daylight, " writes Castle, "the lake of fire is a greenish-yellow, cut with ragged cracks of red that look like pale streaks of stationarylightning across its surface. It is restless, breathing rapidly, bubbling up at one point and sinking down in another; throwing up suddenfountains of scarlet molten lava that play a few minutes and subside, leaving shimmering mounds which gradually settle to the level surface ofthe lake, turning brown and yellow as they sink. "But as the daylight fades the fires of the pit shine more brightly. Mauna Loa, behind, becomes a pale, gray-blue, insubstantial dome, andoverhead stars begin to appear. As darkness comes the colors on thelake grow so intense that they almost hurt. The fire is not only red; itis blue and purple and orange and green. Blue flames shimmer and dartabout the edges of the pit, back and forth across the surface of therestless mass. Sudden fountains paint blood-red the great plume ofsulphur smoke that rises constantly, to drift away across the poisoneddesert of Kau. Sometimes the spurts of lava are so violent, soexaggerated by the night, that one draws back terrified lest some atomof their molten substance should spatter over the edge of the precipice. Sometimes the whole lake is in motion. Waves of fire toss and battlewith each other and dash in clouds of bright vermilion spray against theblack sides of the pit. Sometimes one of these sides falls in with aroar that echoes back and forth, and mighty rocks are swallowed in theliquid mass of fire that closes over them in a whirlpool, like waterover a sinking ship. "Again everything is quiet, a thick scum forms over the surface of thelake, dead, like the scum on the surface of a lonely forest pool. Thenit shivers. Flashes of fire dart from side to side. The centre burstsopen and a huge fountain of lava twenty feet thick and fifty high, streams into the air and plays for several minutes, waves of blindingfire flowing out from it, dashing against the sides until the blackrocks are starred all over with bits of scarlet. To the spectator thereis, through it all, no sense of fear. So intense, so tremendous is thespectacle that silly little human feelings find no place. Allsensations are submerged in a sense of awe. " Mark Twain gazed into Halemaumau's terrifying depths. "It looked, " hewrites, "like a colossal railroad-map of the State of Massachusetts donein chain lightning on a midnight sky. Imagine it--imagine a coal-blacksky shivered into a tangled network of angry fire! "Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diameter, brokenin the dark crust, and in them the melted lava--the color a dazzlingwhite just tinged with yellow--was boiling and surging furiously; andfrom these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, like the spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for awhile and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a longsuccession of sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like thefiercest jagged lightning. Those streams met other streams, and theymingled with and crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivabledirection, like skate-tracks on a popular skating-ground. Sometimesstreams twenty or thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to somedistance without dividing--and through the opera-glasses we could seethat they ran down small, steep hills and were genuine cataracts offire, white at their source, but soon cooling and turning to the richestred, grained with alternate lines of black and gold. Every now and thenmasses of the dark crust broke away and floated slowly down thesestreams like rafts down a river. "Occasionally, the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crustbroke through--split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousandfeet long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre ofthe cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes ofice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward, and were swallowedin the crimson caldron. Then the wide expanse of the 'thaw' maintained aruddy glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and levelagain. During a 'thaw' every dismembered cake was marked by a glitteringwhite border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and fromthence toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into arich, pale carmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own amoment and then dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferredto mingle together in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then theylooked something like the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deckwhen she has just taken in sail and dropped anchor--provided one canimagine those ropes on fire. "Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked verybeautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and dischargedsprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, forinstance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower ofbrilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts ofblood and snowflakes. " One can descend the sides and approach surprisingly close to theflaming surface, the temperature of which, by the way, is 1750 degreesFahrenheit. Such is "The House of Everlasting Fire" to-day. But who can say what itwill be a year or a decade hence? A clogging or a shifting of the ventsbelow sea-level, and Kilauea's lake of fire may become again explosive. Who will deny that Kilauea may not soar even above Mauna Loa? Strangerthings have happened before this in the Islands of Surprise. THE SEDIMENTARY NATIONAL PARKS XII ON SEDIMENTARY ROCK IN SCENERY The national parks which are wrought in sedimentary rocks are Glacier, Mesa Verde, Hot Springs, Platt, Wind Cave, Sully's Hill, and GrandCanyon. Zion National Monument is carved from sedimentary rock; alsoseveral distinguished reservations in our southwest which conservenatural bridges and petrified forests. Sedimentary rocks have highly attractive scenic quality. Lying in stratausually horizontal but often inclined by earth movements, sometimes evenstanding on end, they form marked and pleasing contrasts with the heavymassing of the igneous rocks and the graceful undulations and occasionalsharp-pointed summits of the lavas. As distinguished from igneous rocks, which form under pressure in theearth's hot interior, and from lava, which results from volcaniceruption when fluid igneous rocks are released from pressure, sedimentary rocks are formed by the solidification of precipitations inwater, like limestone; or from material resulting from rockdisintegrations washed down by streams, like sandstone and shale. Thebeds in which they lie one above another exhibit a wide range of tintand texture, often forming spectacles of surpassing beauty andgrandeur. These strata tend to cleave vertically, sometimes producing anappearance suggestive of masonry, frequently forming impressive cliffs;but often they lie in unbroken beds of great area. When a number ofwell-defined strata cleave vertically, and one end of the series sagsbelow the other, or lifts above it, the process which geologists callfaulting, the scenic effect is varied and striking; sometimes, as inGlacier National Park, it is puzzling and amazing. Many granitic and volcanic landscapes are variegated in places byaccidental beds of sedimentary rock; and conversely occasionalsedimentary landscapes are set off by intrusions of igneous rocks. Besides variety of form, sedimentary rocks furnish a wide range of colorderived from mineral dyes dissolved out of rocks by erosion. Thegorgeous tint of the Vermilion Cliff in Utah and Arizona, the reds andgreens of the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park, the glowing cliffsof the Canyon de Chelly, and the variegated hues of the Painted Desertare examples which have become celebrated. Geologists distinguish many kinds of sedimentary rocks. Scenically, weneed consider only four: limestone, conglomerate, sandstone, and shale. Limestone is calcium carbonate derived principally from sea-water, sometimes from fresh water, either by the action of microscopicorganisms which absorb it for their shells, or occasionally by directprecipitation from saturated solutions. The sediment from organisms, which is the principal source of American scenic limestones, collects asooze in shallow lakes or seas, and slowly hardens when lifted above thewater-level. Limestone is a common and prominent scenic rock; generallyit is gray or blue and weathers pale yellow. Moisture seeping in fromabove often reduces soluble minerals which drain away, leaving caveswhich sometimes have enormous size. The other sedimentary rocks which figure prominently in landscape areproducts of land erosion which rivers sweep into seas or lakes, wherethey are promptly deposited. The coarse gravels which naturally fallfirst become conglomerate when cemented by the action of chemicals inwater. The finer sandy particles become sandstone. The fine mud, whichdeposits last, eventually hardens into shale. Shale has many varieties, but is principally hardened clay; it tends tosplit into slate-like plates each the thickness of its original deposit. It is usually dull brown or slate color, but sometimes, as in GlacierNational Park and the Grand Canyon, shows a variety of more or lessbrilliant colors and, by weathering, a wide variety of kindred tints. Sandstone, which forms wherever moving water or wind has collectedsands, and pressure or chemical action has cemented them, is usuallybuff, but sometimes is brilliantly colored. The processes of Nature have mixed the earth's scenic elements inseemingly inextricable confusion, and the task of the geologist hasbeen colossal. Fortunately for us, the elements of scenery are few, andtheir larger combinations broad and simple. Once the mind has graspedthe outline and the processes, and the eye has learned to distinguishelements and recognize forms, the world is recreated for us. XIII GLACIERED PEAKS AND PAINTED SHALES GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, NORTHWESTERN MONTANA. AREA, 1, 534 SQUARE MILES I To say that Glacier National Park is the Canadian Rockies done in GrandCanyon colors is to express a small part of a complicated fact. Glacieris so much less and more. It is less in its exhibit of ice and snow. Both are dying glacial regions, and Glacier is hundreds of centuriesnearer the end; no longer can it display snowy ranges in August andlong, sinuous Alaska-like glaciers at any time. Nevertheless, it has itsglaciers, sixty or more of them perched upon high rocky shelves, thebeautiful shrunken reminders of one-time monsters. Also it has theprecipice-walled cirques and painted, lake-studded valleys which thesemonsters left for the enjoyment of to-day. It is these cirques and valleys which constitute Glacier's uniquefeature, which make it incomparable of its kind. Glacier's innermostsanctuaries of grandeur are comfortably accessible and intimatelyenjoyable for more than two months each summer. The greatest places ofthe Canadian Rockies are never accessible comfortably; alpinists mayclamber over their icy crevasses and scale their slippery heights inAugust, but the usual traveller will view their noblest spectacles fromhotel porches or valley trails. This comparison is useful because both regions are parts of the samegeological and scenic development in which Glacier may be said to bescenically, though by no means geologically, completed and the CanadianRockies still in the making. A hundred thousand years or more from nowthe Canadian Rockies may have reached, except for coloring, the presentscenic state of Glacier. Glacier National Park hangs down from the Canadian boundary-line innorthwestern Montana, where it straddles the continental divide. Adjoining it on the north is the Waterton Lakes Park, Canada. TheBlackfeet Indian Reservation borders it on the east. Its southernboundary is Marias Pass, through which the Great Northern Railwaycrosses the crest of the Rocky Mountains. Its western boundary is theNorth Fork of the Flathead River. The park contains fifteen hundred andthirty-four square miles. Communication between the east and west sides within the park is only bytrail across passes over the continental divide. There are parts of America quite as distinguished as Glacier: MountMcKinley, for its enormous snowy mass and stature; Yosemite, for thequality of its valley's beauty; Mount Rainier, for its massive radiatingglaciers; Crater Lake, for its color range in pearls and blues; GrandCanyon, for its stupendous painted gulf. But there is no part of Americaor the Americas, or of the world, to match it of its kind. In respectto the particular wondrous thing these glaciers of old left behind themwhen they shrank to shelved trifles, there is no other. At Glacier onesees what he never saw elsewhere and never will see again--except atGlacier. There are mountains everywhere, but no others carved intoshapes quite like these; cirques in all lofty ranges, but not cirquesjust such as these; and because of these unique bordering highlandsthere are nowhere else lakes having the particular kind of charmpossessed by Glacier's lakes. Visitors seldom comprehend Glacier; hence they are mute, or praise ingeneralities or vague superlatives. Those who have not seen othermountains find the unexpected and are puzzled. Those who have seen othermountains fail to understand the difference in these. I have never heardcomparison with any region except the Canadian Rockies, and this seldomvery intelligent. "I miss the big glaciers and snowy mountain-tops, "says the traveller of one type. "You can really see something herebesides snow, and how stunning it all is!" says the traveller of anothertype. "My God, man, where are your artists?" cried an Englishman who hadcome to St. Mary Lake to spend a night and was finishing his week. "Theyought to be here in regiments. Not that this is the greatest thing inthe world, but that there's nothing else in the world like it. " Yet thisemotional traveller, who had seen the Himalayas, Andes, and CanadianRockies, could not tell me clearly why it was different. Neither couldthe others explain why they liked it better than the Canadian Rockies, or why its beauty puzzled and disturbed them. It is only he whomintelligent travel has educated to analyze and distinguish who sees inthe fineness and the extraordinary distinction of Glacier's mountainforms the completion of the more heroic undevelopment north of theborder. II The elements of Glacier's personality are so unusual that it will bedifficult, if not impossible, to make phrase describe it. Comparisonfails. Photographs will help, but not very efficiently, because they donot convey its size, color, and reality; or perhaps I should say itsunreality, for there are places like Two Medicine Lake in still palemid-morning, St. Mary Lake during one of its gold sunsets, and thecirques of the South Fork of the Belly River under all conditions whichnever can seem actual. To picture Glacier as nearly as possible, imagine two mountain rangesroughly parallel in the north, where they pass the continental dividebetween them across a magnificent high intervening valley, and, in thesouth, merging into a wild and apparently planless massing of high peaksand ranges. Imagine these mountains repeating everywhere huge pyramids, enormous stone gables, elongated cones, and many other unusual shapes, including numerous saw-toothed edges which rise many thousand feetupward from swelling sides, and suggest nothing so much as overturnedkeel-boats. Imagine ranges glacier-bitten alternately on either sidewith cirques of three or four thousand feet of precipitous depth. Imagine these cirques often so nearly meeting that the intervening wallsare knife-like edges; miles of such walls carry the continental divide, and occasionally these cirques meet and the intervening wall crumblesand leaves a pass across the divide. Imagine places where cirque wallshave been so bitten outside as well as in that they stand likeamphitheatres builded up from foundations instead of gouged out of rockfrom above. Imagine these mountains plentifully snow-spattered upon their northernslopes and bearing upon their shoulders many small and beautifulglaciers perched upon rock-shelves above and back of the cirques left bythe greater glaciers of which they are the remainders. These glaciersare nearly always wider than they are long; of these I have seen onlythree with elongated lobes. One is the Blackfeet Glacier, whoseinteresting west lobe is conveniently situated for observation south ofGunsight Lake, and another, romantically beautiful Agassiz Glacier, inthe far northwest of the park, whose ice-currents converge in a tonguewhich drops steeply to its snout. These elongations are completeminiatures, each exhibiting in little more than half a mile of lengthall usual glacial phenomena, including caves and ice-falls. Occasionally, as on the side of Mount Jackson at Gunsight Pass and eastof it, one notices small elongated glaciers occupying clefts in steepslopes. The largest and most striking of these tongued glaciers is thewesternmost of the three Carter Glaciers on the slopes of Mount Carter. It cascades its entire length into Bowman Valley, and Marius R. Campbell's suggestion that it should be renamed the Cascading Glacierdeserves consideration. Imagine deep rounded valleys emerging from these cirques and twistingsnakelike among enormous and sometimes grotesque rock masses which oftenare inconceivably twisted and tumbled, those of each drainage-basinconverging fan-like to its central valley. Sometimes a score or more ofcirques, great and small, unite their valley streams for the making of ariver; seven principal valleys, each the product of such a group, emergefrom the east side of the park, thirteen from the west. Imagine hundreds of lakes whose waters, fresh-run from snow-field andglacier, brilliantly reflect the odd surrounding landscape. Each glacierhas its lake or lakes of robin's-egg blue. Every successive shelf ofevery glacial stairway has its lake--one or more. And every valley hasits greater lake or string of lakes. Glacier is pre-eminently the parkof lakes. When all is said and done, they constitute its mostdistinguished single element of supreme beauty. For several of thementhusiastic admirers loudly claim world pre-eminence. And finally imagine this picture done in soft glowing colors--not onlythe blue sky, the flowery meadows, the pine-green valleys, and theinnumerable many-hued waters, but the rocks, the mountains, and thecirques besides. The glaciers of old penetrated the most colorful depthsof earth's skin, the very ancient Algonkian strata, that from which apart of the Grand Canyon also was carved. At this point, the rocksappear in four differently colored layers. The lowest of these is calledthe Altyn limestone. There are about sixteen hundred feet of it, paleblue within, weathering pale buff. Whole yellow mountains of this rockhang upon the eastern edge of the park. Next above the Altyn liesthirty-four hundred feet of Appekunny argillite, or dull-green shale. The tint is pale, deepening to that familiar in the lower part of theGrand Canyon. It weathers every darkening shade to very darkgreenish-brown. Next above that lies twenty-two hundred feet of Grinnellargillite, or red shale, a dull rock of varying pinks which weathersmany shades of red and purple, deepening in places almost to black. There is some gleaming white quartzite mixed with both these shales. Next above lies more than four thousand feet of Siyeh limestone, verysolid, very massive, iron-gray with an insistent flavor of yellow, andweathering buff. This heavy stratum is the most impressive part of theGlacier landscape. Horizontally through its middle runs a dark broadribbon of diorite, a rock as hard as granite, which once, while molten, burst from below and forced its way between horizontal beds oflimestone; and occasionally, as in the Swiftcurrent and Triple DividePasses, there are dull iron-black lavas in heavy twisted masses. Aboveall of these colored strata once lay still another shale of verybrilliant red. Fragments of this, which geologists call the Kintlaformation, may be seen topping mountains here and there in the northernpart of the park. Imagine these rich strata hung east and west across the landscape andsagging deeply in the middle, so that a horizontal line would cut allcolors diagonally. Now imagine a softness of line as well as color resulting probably fromthe softness of the rock; there is none of the hard insistence, theuncompromising definiteness of the granite landscape. And imaginefurther an impression of antiquity, a feeling akin to that with whichone enters a mediæval ruin or sees the pyramids of Egypt. Only here isthe look of immense, unmeasured, immeasurable age. More than at anyplace except perhaps the rim of the Grand Canyon does one seem to standin the presence of the infinite; an instinct which, while it bafflesanalysis, is sound, for there are few rocks of the earth's skin so agedas these ornate shales and limestones. And now, at last, you can imagine Glacier! III But, with Glacier, this is not enough. To see, to realize in full itsbeauty, still leaves one puzzled. One of the peculiarities of thelandscape, due perhaps to its differences, is its insistence uponexplanation. How came this prehistoric plain so etched with cirques andvalleys as to leave standing only worm-like crests, knife-edged walls, amphitheatres, and isolated peaks? The answer is the story of a romanticepisode in the absorbing history of America's making. Somewhere between forty and six hundred million years ago, according tothe degree of conservatism controlling the geologist who does thecalculating, these lofty mountains were deposited in the shape of muddysediments on the bottom of shallow fresh-water lakes, whose waves leftmany ripple marks upon the soft muds of its shores, fragments of which, hardened now to shale, are frequently found by tourists. So ancient wasthe period that these deposits lay next above the primal Archean rocks, and marked, therefore, almost the beginning of accepted geologicalhistory. Life was then so nearly at its beginnings that the forms whichWalcott found in the Siyeh limestone were not at first fully accepted asorganic. Thereafter, during a time so long that none may even estimate it, certainly for many millions of years, the history of the region leavestraces of no extraordinary change. It sank possibly thousands of feetbeneath the fresh waters tributary to the sea which once swept from theGulf of Mexico to the Arctic, and accumulated there sediments whichto-day are scenic limestones and shales, and doubtless other sedimentsabove these which have wholly passed away. It may have alternated aboveand below water-level many times, as our southwest has done. Eventually, under earth-pressures concerning whose cause many theorieshave lived and died, it rose to remain until our times. Then, millions of years ago, but still recently as compared with thewhole vast lapse we are considering, came the changes which seemdramatic to us as we look back upon them accomplished; but which came topass so slowly that no man, had man then lived, could have noticed asingle step of progress in the course of a long life. Underearth-pressures the skin buckled and the Rocky Mountains rose. At somestage of this process the range cracked along its crest from what is nowMarias Pass to a point just over the Canadian border, and, a couple ofhundred miles farther north, from the neighborhood of Banff to thenorthern end of the Canadian Rockies. Then the great overthrust followed. Side-pressures of inconceivablepower forced upward the western edge of this crack, including the entirecrust from the Algonkian strata up, and thrust it over the eastern edge. During the overthrusting, which may have taken a million years, andduring the millions of years since, the frosts have chiselled open andthe rains have washed away all the overthrust strata, the accumulationsof the geological ages from Algonkian times down, except only that onebottom layer. This alone remained for the three ice invasions of theGlacial Age to carve into the extraordinary area which is called to-daythe Glacier National Park. The Lewis Overthrust, so called because it happened to the Lewis Range, is ten to fifteen miles wide. The eastern boundary of the park roughlydefines its limit of progress. Its signs are plain to the eye taught toperceive them. The yellow mountains on the eastern edge near the gatewayto Lake McDermott lie on top of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, whosesurface is many millions of years younger and quite different incoloring. Similarly, Chief Mountain, at the entrance of the Belly RiverValley, owes much of its remarkable distinction to the incompatibilityof its form and color with the prairie upon which it lies but out ofwhich it seems to burst. The bottom of McDermott Falls at Many GlacierHotel is plainly a younger rock than the colored Algonkian limestoneswhich form its brink. Perhaps thousands of years after the overthrust was accomplished anothertremendous faulting still further modified the landscape of to-day. Theoverthrust edge cracked lengthwise, this time west of the continentaldivide all the way from the Canadian line southward nearly to MariasPass. The edge of the strata west of this crack sank perhaps manythousands of feet, leaving great precipices on the west side of thedivide similar to those on the east side. There was this greatdifference, however, in what followed: the elongated gulf or ditch thusformed became filled with the deposits of later geologic periods. This whole process, which also was very slow in movement, is importantin explaining the conformation and scenic peculiarities of the west sideof the park, which, as the tourist sees it to-day, is remarkablydifferent from those of the east side. Here, the great limestone ranges, glaciered, cirqued, and precipiced as on the east side, suddenly giveplace to broad, undulating plains which constitute practically the wholeof the great west side from the base of the mountains on the east to thevalley of the Flathead which forms the park's western boundary. Theseplains are grown thickly with splendid forests. Cross ranges, largelyglacier-built, stretch west from the high mountains, subsiding rapidly;and between these ranges lie long winding lakes, forest-grown to theiredges, which carry the western drainage of the continental dividethrough outlet streams into the Flathead. The inconceivable lapse of time covered in these titanic operations ofNature and their excessive slowness of progress rob them of much oftheir dramatic quality. Perhaps an inch of distance was an extraordinaryadvance for the Lewis Overthrust to make in any ordinary year, anddoubtless there were lapses of centuries when no measurable advance wasmade. Yet sometimes sudden settlings, accompanied by more or lessextended earthquakes, must have visibly altered local landscapes. Were it possible, by some such mental foreshortening as that by whichthe wizards of the screen compress a life into a minute, for imaginationto hasten this progress into the compass of a few hours, howoverwhelming would be the spectacle! How tremendously would loom thisadvancing edge, which at first we may conceive as having enormousthickness! How it must have cracked, crumbled, and fallen in frequenttitanic crashes as it moved forward. It does not need the imagination ofDoré to picture this advance, thus hastened in fancy, grim, relentlessas death, its enormous towering head lost in eternal snows, its feetshaken by earthquakes, accumulating giant glaciers only to crush theminto powder; resting, then pushing forward in slow, smashing, reverberating shoves. How the accumulations of all periods may beimagined crashing together into the depths! Silurian gastropods, strangeDevonian fishes, enormous Triassic reptiles, the rich and varied shellsof the Jurassic, the dinosaurs and primitive birds of Cretaceous, thelittle early horses of Eocene, and Miocene's camels and mastodonsmingling their fossil remnants in a democracy of ruin to defy theeternal ages! It all happened, but unfortunately for a romantic conception, it did nothappen with dramatic speed. Hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions ofyears intervened between the greater stages of progress which, withintervening lesser stages, merged into a seldom-broken quietude such asthat which impresses to-day's visitor to the mountain-tops of GlacierNational Park. And who can say that the landscape which to-day'svisitor, with the inborn arrogance of man, looks upon as the thing whichthe ages have completed for his pleasure, may not merely represent aminor stage in a progress still more terrible? The grist of Creation's past milling has disappeared. The waters ofheaven, collected and stored in snow-fields and glaciers to be releasedin seasonal torrents, have washed it all away. Not a sign remains to-daysave here and there perhaps a fragment of Cretaceous coal. All has beenground to powder and carried off by flood and stream to enrich the soilsand upbuild later strata in the drainage basins of the Saskatchewan, theColumbia, and the Mississippi. It is probable that little remained but the Algonkian shales andlimestones when the Ice Age sent southward the first of its three greatinvasions. Doubtless already there were glaciers there of sorts, but thelowering temperatures which accompanied the ice-sheets developed localglaciers so great of size that only a few mountain-tops were leftexposed. It was then that these extraordinary cirques were carved. Therewere three such periods during the Ice Age, between which and afterwhich stream erosion resumed its untiring sway. The story of the ice iswritten high upon Glacier's walls and far out on the eastern plains. IV Into this wonderland the visitor enters by one of two roads. Either heleaves the railroad at Glacier Park on the east side of the continentaldivide or at Belton on the west side. In either event he can cross tothe other side only afoot or on horseback over passes. The usual way inis through Glacier Park. There is a large hotel at the station fromwhich automobile-stages run northward to chalets at Two Medicine Lake, the Cut Bank Valley, and St. Mary Lake, and to the Many Glacier Hoteland chalets at Lake McDermott. A road also reaches Lake McDermott fromCanada by way of Babb, and Canadian visitors can reach the trails at thehead of Waterton Lake by boat from their own Waterton Lakes Park. Thoseentering at Belton, where the park headquarters are located, findchalets at the railroad-station and an excellent hotel near the head ofLake McDonald. There is also a comfortable chalet close to the SperryGlacier. To see Glacier as thoroughly as Glacier deserves and to draw freely onits abundant resources of pleasure and inspiration, one must travel thetrails and pitch his tent where day's end brings him. But that does notmean that Glacier cannot be seen and enjoyed by those to whomcomfortable hotel accommodations are a necessity, or even by those whofind trail-travelling impossible. Visitors, therefore, fall into three general classes, all of whom maystudy scenery which quite fully covers the range of Glacier's naturalphenomena and peculiar beauty. The largest of these classes consists ofthose who can travel, or think they can travel, only in vehicles, andcan find satisfactory accommodations only in good hotels. Theintermediate class includes those who can, at a pinch, ride ten ortwelve miles on comfortably saddled horses which walk the trails at twoor three miles an hour, and who do not object to the somewhat primitivebut thoroughly comfortable overnight accommodations of the chalets. Finally comes the small class, which constantly will increase, of thosewho have the time and inclination to leave the beaten path with tent andcamping outfit for the splendid wilderness and the places of suprememagnificence which are only for those who seek. The man, then, whose tendency to gout, let us say, forbids him ride ahorse or walk more than a couple of easy miles a day may, nevertheless, miss nothing of Glacier's meaning and magnificence provided he takes thetrouble to understand. But he must take the trouble; he must comprehendthe few examples that he sees; this is his penalty for refusing the richexperience of the trail, which, out of its very fulness, drives meaninghome with little mental effort. His knowledge must be got from sixplaces only which may be reached by vehicle, at least three of which, however, may be included among the world's great scenic places. He canfind at Two Medicine, St. Mary, and McDermott superb examples ofGlacier's principal scenic elements. Entering at Glacier Park, he will have seen the range from the plains, an important beginning; already, approaching from the east, he haswatched it grow wonderfully on the horizon. So suddenly do these paintedmountains spring from the grassy plain that it is a relief to recognizein them the advance guard of the Lewis Overthrust, vast fragments of theupheavals of the depths pushed eastward by the centuries to their finalresting-places upon the surface of the prairie. From the hotel porchesthey glow gray and yellow and purple and rose and pink, according to thenatural coloring of their parts and the will of the sun--a splendidever-changing spectacle. THE TWO MEDICINE COUNTRY An hour's automobile-ride from Glacier Park Hotel will enable ourtraveller to penetrate the range at a point of supreme beauty and standbeside a chalet at the foot of Two Medicine Lake. He will face whatappears to be a circular lake in a densely forested valley from whoseshore rises a view of mountains which will take his breath. In the nearcentre stands a cone of enormous size and magnificence--MountRockwell--faintly blue, mistily golden, richly purple, dull silver, orred and gray, according to the favor of the hour and the sky. Upon itsleft and somewhat back rises a smaller similar cone, flatter but quiteas perfectly proportioned, known as Grizzly Mountain, and upon its rightless regular masses. In the background, connecting all, are more distantmountains flecked with snow, the continental divide. Towering mountainsclose upon him upon both sides, that upon his right a celebrity in redargillite known as Rising Wolf. He sees all this from a beach ofmany-colored pebbles. Few casual visitors have more than a midday view of Two Medicine Lake, for the stage returns in the afternoon. The glory of the sunset and thewonder before sunrise are for the few who stay over at the chalet. Thelover of the exquisite cannot do better, for, though beyond lie scenessurpassing this in the qualities which bring to the lips the shout ofjoy, I am convinced that nothing elsewhere equals the Two Medicinecanvas in the perfection of delicacy. It is the Meissonier of Glacier. Nor can the student of Nature's processes afford to miss the study ofTwo Medicine's marvellously complete and balanced system of cirques andvalleys--though this of course is not for the rheumatic traveller butfor him who fears not horse and tent. Such an explorer will find thrillswith every passing hour. Giant Mount Rockwell will produce one when asideview shows that its apparent cone is merely the smaller eastern endof a ridge two miles long which culminates in a towering summit on thedivide; Pumpelly Piller, with the proportions of a monument when seenfrom near the lake, becomes, seen sideways, another long and exceedinglybeautiful ridge; striking examples, these, of the leavings of convergingglaciers of old. Two Medicine Lake proves to be long and narrow, thechalet view being the long way, and Upper Two Medicine Lake proves to bean emerald-encircled pearl in a silvery-gray setting. The climax of sucha several days' trip is a night among the coyotes at the head of themain valley and a morning upon Dawson Pass overlooking the indescribabletangle of peak, precipice, and canyon lying west of the continentaldivide. Taken as a whole, the Two Medicine drainage-basin is an epitome ofGlacier in miniature. To those entering the park on the east side andseeing it first it becomes an admirable introduction to the greaterpark. To those who have entered on the west side and finish here it isan admirable farewell review, especially as its final picture sounds thenote of scenic perfection. Were there nothing else of Glacier, this spotwould become in time itself a world celebrity. Incidentally, exceedinglylively Eastern brook-trout will afford an interesting hour to one whofloats a fly down the short stream into the lakelet at the foot of TwoMedicine Lake not far below the chalet. There are also fish below TrickFalls. THE SPECTACLE OF ST. MARY St. Mary Lake, similarly situated in the outlet valley of a much greatergroup of cirques north of Two Medicine, offers a picture as similar inkind as two canvases are similar which have been painted by the samehand; but they widely differ in composition and magnificence; TwoMedicine's preciousness yields to St. Mary's elemental grandeur. Thesteamer which brings our rheumatic traveller from the motor-stage at thefoot of the lake lands him at the upper chalet group, appropriatelySwiss, which finds vantage on a rocky promontory for the view of thedivide. Gigantic mountains of deep-red argillite, grotesquely carved, close in the sides, and with lake and sky wonderfully frame the amazingcentral picture of pointed pyramids, snow-fields, hanging glaciers, andsilvery ridges merging into sky. Seen on the way into Glacier, St. Maryis a prophecy which will not be fulfilled elsewhere in charm thoughoften far exceeded in degree. Seen leaving Glacier, it combines withsurpassing novelty scenic elements whose possibilities of furthergorgeous combination the trip through the park has seemed to exhaust. The St. Mary picture is impossible to describe. Its colors vary with thehours and the atmosphere's changing conditions. It is silver, golden, mauve, blue, lemon, misty white, and red by turn. It is seen clearly inthe morning with the sun behind you. Afternoons and sunsets offertheatrical effects, often baffling, always lovely and different. PointedFusillade and peaked Reynolds Mountains often lose their tops inlowering mists. So, often, does Going-to-the-Sun Mountain in the near-byright foreground. So, not so often, does keel-shaped Citadel Mountain onthe near-by left; also, at times, majestic Little Chief, he of loftymien and snow-dashed crown, and stolid Red Eagle, whose giganticreflection reddens a mile of waters. It is these close-up monsters evenmore than the colorful ghosts of the Western horizon which stamp St. Mary's personality. From the porches of the chalets and the deck of the steamer in itsevening tour of the lake-end the traveller will note the enormous sizeof those upper valleys which once combined their glaciers as now they dotheir streams. He will guess that the glacier which once swept throughthe deep gorge in whose bottom now lies St. Mary Lake was severalthousand feet in thickness. He will long to examine those upper valleysand reproduce in imagination the amazing spectacle of long ago. But theyare not for him. That vision is reserved for those who ride the trails. THE SCENIC CLIMAX OF THE SWIFTCURRENT Again passing north, the automobile-stage reaches road's end atMcDermott Lake, the fan-handle of the Swiftcurrent drainage-basin. Overlooking a magnificent part of each of its contributing valleys, thelake, itself supremely beautiful, may well deserve its reputation asGlacier's scenic centre. I have much sympathy with the thousands whoclaim supremacy for McDermott Lake. Lake McDonald has its wonderfullywooded shores, its majestic length and august vista; Helen Lake itsunequalled wildness; Bowman Lake its incomparable view ofglacier-shrouded divide. But McDermott has something of everything; itis a composite, a mosaic masterpiece with every stone a gem. There is nobackground from which one looks forward to "the view. " Its horizoncontains three hundred and sixty degrees of view. From the toweringsouth gable of that rock-temple to God the Creator, which the map callsMount Gould, around the circle, it offers an unbroken panorama insuperlative. In no sense by way of comparison, which is absurd between scenes sodifferent, but merely to help realization by contrast with what is wellknown, let us recall the Yosemite Valley. Yosemite is a valley, Swiftcurrent an enclosure. Yosemite is gray and shining, Swiftcurrentricher far in color. Yosemite's walls are rounded, peaked, and polished, Swiftcurrent's toothed, torn, and crumbling; the setting sun shinesthrough holes worn by frost and water in the living rock. Yosemiteguards her western entrance with a shaft of gray granite risingthirty-six hundred feet from the valley floor, and her eastern end bygranite domes of five thousand and six thousand feet; Swiftcurrent'srocks gather round her central lake--Altyn, thirty-two hundred feetabove the lake's level; Henkel, thirty-eight hundred feet; Wilbur, forty-five hundred feet; Grinnell, four thousand; Gould, forty-sevenhundred; Allen, forty-five hundred--all of colored strata, green atbase, then red, then gray. Yosemite has its winding river andwaterfalls, Swiftcurrent its lakes and glaciers. Swiftcurrent has the repose but not the softness of Yosemite. Yosemiteis unbelievably beautiful. Swiftcurrent inspires wondering awe. McDermott Lake, focus point of all this natural glory, is scarcely amile long, and narrow. It may be vivid blue and steel-blue andmilky-blue, and half a dozen shades of green and pink all within twiceas many minutes, according to the whim of the breeze, the changingatmosphere, and the clouding of the sun. Often it suggests nothing somuch as a pool of dull-green paint. Or it may present a reversed imageof mountains, glaciers, and sky in their own coloring. Or at sunset itmay turn lemon or purple or crimson or orange, or a blending of all. Or, with rushing storm-clouds, it may quite suddenly lose every hint of anycolor, and become a study in black, white, and intermediate grays. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Bailey Willis_ THE GREAT GABLE OF GOULD MOUNTAIN The water is McDermott Lake, one of the most beautiful in GlacierNational Park] [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. J. Baker_ THE CIRQUE AT THE HEAD OF CUT BANK CREEK Fine examples of glacier cirques throughout the park. The peak is MountMorgan, Glacier National Park. ] There are times when, from hotel porch, rock, or boat, the toweringpeaks and connecting limestone walls become suddenly so fairy-like thatthey lose all sense of reality, seeming to merge into their backgroundof sky, from which, nevertheless, they remain sharply differentiated. The rapidity and the variety of change in the appearance of the water isnothing to that in the appearance of these magical walls and mountains. Now near, now distant; now luring, now forbidding; now gleaming as ifwith their own light; now gloomy in threat, they lose not their hold onthe eye for a moment. The unreality of McDermott Lake, the sense itoften imparts of impossibility, is perhaps its most striking feature. One suspects he dreams, awake. THE SCENIC CIRCLE To realize the spot as best we may, let us pause on the bridge amongthose casting for trout below the upper fall and glance around. To ourleft rises Allen Mountain, rugged, irregular, forest-clothed half-way upits forty-five hundred feet of elevation above the valley floor. Beyondit a long gigantic wall sets in at right angles, blue, shining, serrated, supporting, apparently on the lake edge, an enormous gable endof gray limestone banded with black diorite, a veritable personalitycomparable with Yosemite's most famous rocks. This is Mount Gould. Nextis the Grinnell Glacier, hanging glistening in the air, drippingwaterfalls, backgrounded by the gnawed top of the venerable Garden Wall. Then comes in turn the majestic mass of Mount Grinnell, four miles long, culminating at the lakeside in an enormous parti-colored pyramid moreimpressive from the hotel than even Rockwell is from Two Medicinechalets. Then, upon its right, appears a wall which is the unnamedcontinuation of the Garden Wall, and, plastered against the side ofSwiftcurrent Mountain, three small hanging glaciers, seeming in thedistance like two long parallel snow-banks. Then Mount Wilbur, anothergiant pyramid, gray, towering, massively carved, grandly proportioned, kingly in bearing! Again upon its right emerges still anothercontinuation, also unnamed, of the Garden Wall, this section loftiest ofall and bitten deeply by the ages. A part of it is instantly recognizedfrom the hotel window as part of the sky-line surrounding famous IcebergLake. Its right is lost behind the nearer slopes of red Mount Henkel, which swings back upon our right, bringing the eye nearly to itsstarting-point. A glance out behind between mountains, upon thelimitless lake-dotted plain, completes the scenic circle. McDermott Lake, by which I here mean the Swiftcurrent enclosure as seenfrom the Many Glacier Hotel, is illustrative of all of Glacier. Thereare wilder spots, by far, some which frighten; there are places ofnobler beauty, though as I write I know I shall deny it the next time Istand on McDermott's shores; there are supreme places which at firstglance seem to have no kinship with any other place on earth. Nevertheless, McDermott contains all of Glacier's elements, all hercharm, and practically all her combinations. It is the place of placesto study Glacier. It is also a place to dream away idle weeks. So he who cannot ride or walk the trails may still see and understandGlacier in her majesty. Besides the places I have mentioned he may see, from the Cut Bank Chalet, a characteristic forested valley of greatbeauty, and at Lewis's hotel on Lake McDonald the finest spot accessibleupon the broad west side, the playground, as the east side is theshow-place, of hundreds of future thousands. So many are the short horseback trips from Many Glacier Hotel to placesof significance and beauty that it is hard for the timid to withstandthe temptation of the trail. Four miles will reach Grinnell Lake at thefoot of its glacier, six miles will penetrate the Cracker Lake Gorge atthe perpendicular base of Mount Siyeh, eight miles will disclose theastonishing spectacle of Iceberg Lake, and nine miles will cross theSwiftcurrent Pass to the Granite Park Chalet. ICEBERG LAKE TYPICAL OF ALL In some respects Iceberg Lake is Glacier's supreme spectacle. There arefew spots so wild. There may be no easily accessible spot in the worldhalf so wild. Imagine a horseshoe of perpendicular rock wall, twenty-seven hundred to thirty-five hundred feet high, a glacier in itsinmost curve, a lake of icebergs in its centre. The back of thetower-peak of Mount Wilbur is the southern end of this horseshoe. Thisenclosure was not built up from below, as it looks, but bitten downwithin and without; it was left. On the edge of the lake in early Julythe sun sets at four o'clock. Stupendous as Iceberg Lake is as a spectacle, its highest purpose isillustrative. It explains Glacier. Here by this lakeside, fronting theglacier's floating edge and staring up at the jagged top in front and oneither side, one comprehends at last. The appalling story of the pastseems real. THE CLIMAX AT GRANITE PARK It is at Granite Park that one realizes the geography of Glacier. Youhave crossed the continental divide and emerged upon a lofty abutmentjust west of it. You are very nearly in the park's centre, and on themargin of a forested canyon of impressive breadth and depth, lined oneither side by mountain monsters, and reaching from Mount Cannon at thehead of Lake McDonald northward to the Alberta plain. The western wallof this vast avenue is the Livingston Range. Its eastern wall is theLewis Range. Both in turn carry the continental divide, which crossesthe avenue from Livingston to Lewis by way of low-crowned FlattopMountain, a few miles north of where you stand, and back to Livingstonby way of Clements Mountain, a few miles south. Opposite you, across thechasm, rises snowy Heavens Peak. Southwest lies Lake McDonald, hidden byHeavens' shoulder. South is Logan Pass, carrying another trail acrossthe divide, and disclosing hanging gardens beyond on Reynolds' easternslope. Still south of that, unseen from here, is famous Gunsight Pass. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Haynes_ PTARMIGAN LAKE AND MOUNT WILBUR, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK] [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. J. Thiri_ SCOOPED BOTH SIDES BY GIANT GLACIERS Wall on the left encloses Iceberg Lake; on the right is the Belly Riverabyss; Glacier National Park] It is a stirring spectacle. But wait. A half-hour's climb to the summitof Swiftcurrent Mountain close at hand (the chalet is most of the wayup, to start with) and all of Glacier lies before you like a model inrelief. Here you see the Iceberg Cirque from without and above. TheBelly River chasm yawns enormously. Mount Cleveland, monarch of theregion, flaunts his crown of snow among his near-by court of only lessermonsters. The Avenue of the Giants deeply splits the northern half ofthe park, that land of extravagant accent, mysterious because so littleknown; the Glacier of tourists lying south. A marvellous spectacle, this, indeed, and one which clears up many misconceptions. The CanadianRockies hang on the misty northern horizon, the Montana plains floateastward, the American Rockies roll south and west. OVER GUNSIGHT PASS To me one of the most stirring sights in all Glacier is the view ofGunsight Pass from the foot of Gunsight Lake. The immense glaciereduplift of Mount Jackson on the south of the pass, the wild whitenedsides of Gunsight Mountain opposite dropping to the upturned strata ofred shale at the water's edge, the pass itself--so well named--perchedabove the dark precipice at the lake's head, the corkscrew which thetrail makes up Jackson's perpendicular flank and its passage across amammoth snow-bank high in air--these in contrast with the silent blackwater of the sunken lake produce ever the same thrill however oftenseen. The look back, too, once the pass is gained, down St. Mary'sgracious valley to Going-to-the-Sun Mountain and its horizon companions!Sun Mountain (for short), always a personality, is never from any otherpoint of view so undeniably the crowned majesty as from Gunsight Pass. And finally, looking forward, which in this speaking means westward, thefirst revelation of Lake Ellen Wilson gives a shock of awed astonishmentwhose memory can never pass. Truly, Gunsight is a pass of many sensations, for, leaving Lake EllenWilson and its eighteen hundred feet of vertical frothing outlet, thewestward trail crosses the shoulder of Lincoln Peak to the SperryGlacier and its inviting chalet (where the biggest hoary marmot I eversaw sat upon my dormitory porch), and, eight miles farther down themountain, beautiful Lake McDonald. DESTINY OF THE WEST SIDE Although it was settled earlier, Glacier's west side is less developedthan its east side; this because, for the most part, its scenery is lesssensational though no less gorgeously beautiful. Its five long lakes, ofwhich McDonald is much the longest and largest, head up toward the snowymonsters of the divide; their thin bodies wind leisurely westward amongsuperbly forested slopes. Its day is still to come. It is the land ofthe bear, the moose, the deer, the trout, and summer leisure. Itsdestiny is to become Glacier's vacation playground. THE COMING SPLENDORS OF THE NORTH The wild north side of Glacier, its larger, bigger-featured, andoccasionally greater part, is not yet for the usual tourist; for manyyears from this writing, doubtless, none will know it but the travellerwith tent and pack-train. He alone, and may his tribe increase, willenjoy the gorgeous cirques and canyons of the Belly River, the wildquietude of the Waterton Valley, the regal splendors of Brown Pass, andthe headwater spectacles of the Logging, Quartz, Bowman, and Kintlavalleys. He alone will realize that here is a land of greater power, larger measures, and bigger horizons. And yet with Kintla comes climax. Crossing the border the mountainssubside, the glaciers disappear. Canada's Waterton Lakes Park begins atour climax and merges in half a dozen miles into the great prairies ofAlberta. It is many miles northwest before the Canadian Rockies assumeproportions of superlative scenic grandeur. THE BELLY RIVER VALLEYS To realize the growing bigness of the land northward one has only tocross the wall from Iceberg Lake into the Belly River canyon. "Only, "indeed! In 1917 it took us forty miles of detour outside the park, evenunder the shadow of Chief Mountain, to cross the wall from Iceberg Lake, the west-side precipice of which is steeper even than the east. TheBelly River drainage-basin is itself bigger, and its mountains bulk inproportion. Eighteen glaciers contribute to the making of perhaps asmany lakes. The yellow mountains of its northern slopes invade Canada. The borders of its principal valley are two monster mountains, Cleveland, the greatest in the park for mass and height and intricateoutline; the other, Merritt, in some respects the most interesting ofGlacier's abundant collection of majestic peaks. There are three valleys. The North Fork finds its way quickly intoCanada. The Middle Fork rises in a group of glaciers high under thecontinental divide and descends four giant steps, a lake upon each step, to two greater lakes of noble aspect in the valley bottom. The SouthFork emerges from Helen Lake deep in the gulf below the Ahern Glacieracross the Garden Wall from Iceberg Lake. Between the Middle and SouthForks Mount Merritt rises 9, 944 feet in altitude, minareted like amediæval fort and hollow as a bowl, its gaping chasm hung with glaciers. This is the valley of abundance. The waters are large, their trout manyand vigorous; the bottoms are extravagantly rich in grasses and flowers;the forests are heavy and full-bodied; there is no open place, evenmiles beyond its boundaries, which does not offer views of extraordinarynobility. Every man who enters it becomes enthusiastically prophetic ofits future. After all, the Belly River country is easily visited. Aleisurely horseback journey from McDermott, that is all; three daysamong the strange yellow mountains of the over thrust's eastern edge, including two afternoons among the fighting trout of Kennedy Creek andSlide Lake, and two nights in camp among the wild bare arroyos of theAlgonkian invasion of the prairie--an interesting prelude to the fulnessof wilderness life to come. I dwell upon the Belly valleys because their size, magnificence, andaccessibility suggest a future of public use; nothing would be easier, for instance, than a road from Babb to join the road already in fromCanada. The name naturally arouses curiosity. Why Belly? Was it not theAnglo-Saxon frontier's pronunciation of the Frenchman's original Belle?The river, remember, is mainly Canadian. Surely in all its forks andtributaries it was and is the Beautiful River. THE AVENUE OF THE GIANTS The Avenue of the Giants looms in any forecast of Glacier's future. Itreally consists of two valleys joined end on at their beginnings onFlattop Mountain; McDonald Creek flowing south, Little Kootenai flowingnorth. The road which will replace the present trail up this avenue fromthe much-travelled south to Waterton Lake and Canada is a matterdoubtless of a distant future, but it is so manifestly destiny that itmust be accepted as the key to the greater Glacier to come. Uniting atits southern end roads from both sides of the divide, it will reach theBelly valleys by way of Ahern Pass, the Bowman and Kintla valleys by wayof Brown Pass, and will terminate at the important tourist settlementwhich is destined to grow at the splendid American end of Waterton Lake. Incidentally it will become an important motor-highway between Canadaand America. Until then, though all these are now accessible by trail, the high distinction of the Bowman and the Kintla valleys' supremeexpression of the glowing genius of this whole country will remainunknown to any considerable body of travellers. THE CLIMAX OF BOWMAN AND KINTLA And, after all, the Bowman and Kintla regions are Glacier's ultimateexpression, Bowman of her beauty, Kintla of her majesty. No one who hasseen the foaming cascades of Mount Peabody and a lost outlet of thelofty Boulder Glacier emerging dramatically through Hole-in-the-WallFall, for all the world like a horsetail fastened upon the face of acliff, who has looked upon the Guardhouse from Brown Pass and traced thedistant windings of Bowman Lake between the fluted precipice of RainbowPeak and the fading slopes of Indian Ridge; or has looked upon themighty monolith of Kintla Peak rising five thousand feet from the lakein its gulf-like valley, spreading upon its shoulders, like wingsprepared for flight, the broad gleaming glaciers known as Kintla andAgassiz, will withhold his guerdon for a moment. [Illustration: _From a photograph by the U. S. Geological Survey_ SHOWING THE AGASSIZ GLACIER Kintla Peak, Glacier National Park, 5, 000 feet above the lake spreadsglaciers out either way like wings] [Illustration: _From a photograph by M. R. Campbell_ BEAUTIFUL BOWMAN LAKE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK It heads close up under the Continental Divide, where is found some ofthe most striking scenery of America] Here again we repeat, for the hundredth or more time in our leisurelysurvey of the park, what the Englishman said of the spectacle of St. Mary: "There is nothing like it in the world. " XIV ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO. AREA, 77 SQUARE MILES I Many years, possibly centuries, before Columbus discovered America, acommunity of cliff-dwellers inhabiting a group of canyons in what is nowsouthwestern Colorado entirely disappeared. Many generations before that, again possibly centuries, the founders ofthis community, abandoning the primitive pueblos of their peopleelsewhere, had sought new homes in the valleys tributary to the MancosRiver. Perhaps they were enterprising young men and women dissatisfiedwith the poor and unprogressive life at home. Perhaps they weredissenters from ancient religious forms, outcasts and pilgrims, forthere is abundant evidence that the prehistoric sun-worshippers of oursouthwest were deeply religious, and human nature is the same underskins of all colors in every land and age. More likely they were merelythrifty pioneers attracted to the green cedar-grown mesas by the hope ofbetter conditions. Whatever the reason for their pilgrimage, it is a fair inference that, like our own Pilgrim Fathers, they were sturdy of body and progressiveof spirit, for they had a culture which their descendants carriedbeyond that of other tribes and communities of prehistoric people inAmerica north of the land of the Aztecs. Beginning with modest stone structures of the usual cliff-dwellers' typebuilt in deep clefts in the mesa's perpendicular cliff, safe fromenemies above and below, these enterprising people developed in time acomplicated architecture of a high order; they advanced the arts beyondthe practice of their forefathers and their neighbors; they herdedcattle upon the mesas; they raised corn and melons in clearings in theforests, and watered their crops in the dry seasons by means of simpleirrigation systems as soundly scientific, so far as they went, as thoseof to-day; outgrowing their cliff homes, they invaded the neighboringmesas, where they built pueblos and more ambitious structures. Then, apparently suddenly, for they left behind them many of theirhousehold goods, and left unfinished an elaborate temple to their god, the sun, they vanished. There is no clew to the reason or the manner oftheir going. Meantime European civilization was pushing in all directions. Columbusdiscovered America; De Soto explored the southeast and ascended theMississippi; Cortez pushed into Mexico and conquered the Aztecs; Spanishpriests carried the gospel north and west from the Antilles to thecontinent; Raleigh sent explorers to Virginia; the Pilgrim Fatherslanded in Massachusetts; the white man pushed the Indian aside, and atlast the European pioneer sought a precarious living on the sands of thesouthwest. One December day in 1888 Richard and Alfred Wetherill hunted lost cattleon the top of one of the green mesas north and west of the Mancos River. They knew this mesa well. Many a time before had they rounded up theirherds and stalked the deer among the thin cedar and pinyon forests. Often, doubtless, in their explorations of the broad Mancos Valleybelow, they had happened upon ruins of primitive isolated or groupedstone buildings hidden by sage-brush, half buried in rock and sand. Nodoubt, around their ranch fire, they had often speculated concerning themanner of men that had inhabited these lowly structures so many yearsbefore that sometimes aged cedars grew upon the broken walls. But this December day brought the Wetherills the surprise of theiruneventful lives. Some of the cattle had wandered far, and the searchled to the very brink of a deep and narrow canyon, across which, in along deep cleft under the overhang of the opposite cliff, they saw whatappeared to be a city. Those who have looked upon the stirring spectacleof Cliff Palace from this point can imagine the astonishment of theseranchmen. Whether or not the lost cattle were ever found is not recorded, but wemay assume that living on the mesa was not plentiful enough to make theWetherills forget them in the pleasure of discovering a ruin. But theylost no time in investigating their find, and soon after crossed thecanyon and climbed into this prehistoric city. They named it CliffPalace, most inappropriately, by the way, for it was in fact that mostdemocratic of structures, a community dwelling. Pushing theirexplorations farther, presently they discovered also a smaller ruin, which they named Spruce Tree House, because a prominent spruce grew infront of it. These are the largest two cliff-dwellings in the Mesa VerdeNational Park, and, until Doctor J. Walter Fewkes unearthed Sun Templein 1915, among the most extraordinary prehistoric buildings north ofMexico. There are thousands of prehistoric ruins in our southwest, and manybesides those of the Mesa Verde are examples of an aboriginalcivilization. Hundreds of canyons tell the story of the ancientcliff-dwellers; and still more numerous are the remains of communalhouses built of stone or sun-dried brick under the open sky. Thesepueblos in the open are either isolated structures like the lessercliff-dwellings, or are crowded together till they touch walls, as inour modern cities; often they were several stories high, the floorsconnected by ladders. Sometimes, for protection against the elements, whole villages were built in caves. Pueblos occasionally may be seenfrom the car-window in New Mexico. The least modified of the prehistorictype which are occupied to-day are the eight villages of the Hopi nearthe Grand Canyon in Arizona; a suggestive reproduction of a modelpueblo, familiar to many thousands who have visited the canyon, standsnear the El Tovar Hotel. It was not therefore because of the rarity of prehistoric dwellings ofeither type that the cliff villages of the Mesa Verde were conserved asa national park, nor only because they are the best preserved of allNorth American ruins, but because they disclose a type of this culturein advance of all others. The builders and inhabitants of these dwellings were Indians havingphysical features common to all American tribes. That theiraccomplishment differed in degree from that of the shiftless war-makingtribes north and east of them, and from that of the cultured andartistic Mayas of Central America, was doubtless due to differences inconditions of living. The struggle for bare existence in the southwest, like that of the habitats of other North American Indians, was intense;but these were agriculturalists and protected by environment. The desertwas a handicap, of course, but it offered opportunity in many places fordry farming; the Indian raised his corn. The winters, too, were short. It is only in the southwest that enterprise developed the architectureof stone houses which distinguish pueblo Indians from others in NorthAmerica. The dwellers in the Mesa Verde were more fortunate even than theirfellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the aridcliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertilesoil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos Riverprovided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness canyons fromthe trails of raiders and traders and their ease of defense made forlong generations of peace. The enterprise innate in the spirit of mandid the rest. II The history of the Mesa Verde National Park began with the making ofAmerica. All who have travelled in the southwest have seen mesas fromthe car-window. New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Utah, theregion of the pueblos, constitute an elevated plateau largely arid. Manymillions of years ago all was submerged in the intercontinental sea; infact the region was sea many times, for it rose and fell alternately, accumulating thousands of feet of sands and gravels much of whichhardened into stone after the slow great uplifting which made it thelofty plateau of to-day. Erosion did its work. For a million years ormore the floods of spring have washed down the sands and gravels, andthe rivers have carried them into the sea. Thousands of vertical feethave disappeared in this way from the potential altitude of the region. The spring floods are still washing down the sands and gravels, and thecanyons, cliffs, and mesas of the desert are disclosed to-day as stagesin the eternal levelling. Thus were created the canyons and mesas of the Mesa Verde. Mesa, by theway, is Spanish for table, and verde for green. These, then, are thegreen tablelands, forest-covered and during the summer grown scantilywith grass and richly with flowers. The Mesa Verde National Park was created by act of Congress in June, 1906, and enlarged seven years later. The Mancos River, on its way tothe San Juan and thence to the Colorado and the passage of the GrandCanyon, forms its southern boundary. Scores of canyons, large and small, nearly all dry except at the spring floods, are tributary. All of thesetrend south; in a general way they are parallel. Each of the greaterstems has its lesser tributaries and each of these its lesser forks. Between the canyons lie the mesas. Their tops, if continued withoutbreak, would form a more or less level surface; that is, all had been aplain before floods cut the separating canyons. The region has a wonderful scenic charm. It is markedly different inquality from other national parks, but in its own way is quite asstartling and beautiful. Comparison is impossible because of the lack ofelements in common, but it may be said that the Mesa Verde representsour great southwest in one of its most fascinating phases, combining thefundamentals of the desert with the flavor of the near-by mountains. Thecanyons, which are seven or eight hundred feet deep and two or threetimes as wide where the cliff-dwellings gather, are prevailingly tawnyyellow. Masses of sloping talus reach more than half-way up; above themthe cliffs are perpendicular; it is in cavities in these perpendicularsthat the cliff-dwellings hide. Above the cliffs are low growths ofyellowish-green cedar with pinyons and other conifers of darker foliage. Beneath the trees and covering the many opens grows the familiar sage ofthe desert, a gray which hints at green and yellow both but realizesneither. But the sage-brush shelters desert grasses, and, around theoccasional springs and their slender outlets, grass grows rank andplenteous; a little water counts for a great deal in the desert. [Illustration: OUTLINE OF THE MESA VERDE FORMATION Showing the manner in which water erosion is reducing the plains tocanyons and mesas. The Mesa Verde cliff-dwellers built their homes incaves in the perpendicular cliffs above the sloping talus] Summer, then, is delightful on the Mesa Verde. The plateau is high andthe air invigorating, warm by day in midsummer, always cool at night. The atmosphere is marvellously clear, and the sunsets are famous. Thewinter snows, which reach three or four feet in depth, disappear inApril. From May to Thanksgiving the region is in its prime. It isimportant to realize that this land has much for the visitor besides itsruins. It has vigor, distinction, personality, and remarkable charm. Itis the highest example of one of America's most distinctive andimportant scenic phases, and this without reference to its prehistoricdwellings. No American traveller knows his America, even the greatsouthwest, who does not know the border-land where desert and forestmingle. The Southern Ute Indian Reservation bites a large rectangle from thesoutheast corner of the park, but its inhabitants are very different inquality of mind and spirit from the ancient and reverent builders of SunTemple. Reservation Indians frequently enter the park, but they cannotbe persuaded to approach the cliff-dwellings. The "little people, " theytell you, live there, and neither teaching nor example will convincethem that these invisible inhabitants will not injure intruders. Someof these Indians allege that it was their own ancestors who built thecliff-dwellings, but there is neither record nor tradition to supportsuch a claim. The fact appears to be that the Utes were the ancientenemies of this people. There is a Ute tradition of a victory over theancient pueblo-dwellers at Battle Rock in McElmo Canyon. There are, on the other hand, many reasons for the opinion that the HopiIndians of the present day, so far at least as culture goes, aredescendants of this remarkable prehistoric people. Besides the manysimilarities between the architectural types of the Mesa Verde and thepueblos of the modern Hopi, careful investigators have found suggestivepoints of similarity in their utensils, their art forms, and theircustoms. Doctor Fewkes cites a Hopi tradition to that effect bymentioning the visit of a Hopi courier a few years ago to prehistoricruins in the Navajo National Monument to obtain water from an ancestralspring for use in a Hopi religious ceremonial. If these traditions arefounded in fact, the promising civilization of the Mesa Verde has sadlyretrograded in its transplanting. Hopi architecture and masonry showsmarked retrogression from the splendid types of the Mesa Verde. When the telephone-line was under construction to connect the park withthe outside world, the Indians from the adjoining Ute reservation becamesuspicious and restless. Upon hearing its purpose, they begged thesuperintendent not to go on with the work, which was certain to bringevil to the neighborhood. "The little people, " they solemnly declared, "will not like it. " They assured the superintendent that the wires would not talk. "The little people will not let them talk, " they told him. But the line was completed and the wires talked. The park is reached by motor and rail. From Denver, Salt Lake City, andSanta Fé railroad routes offer choice of some of the biggest country ofthe Rockies. From either direction a night is spent en route in amountain mining-town, an experience which has its usefulness inpreparation for the contrasted and unusual experience to come. Entranceis through Mancos, from which motor-stages thread the maze of canyonsand mesas from the highlands of the northern border to the deep canyonsof the south where cluster the ruins of distinction. This entry is delightful. The road crosses the northern boundary at thebase of a lofty butte known as Point Lookout, the park's highestelevation. Encircling its eastern side and crossing the Morefield Canyonthe road perches for several miles upon the sinuous crest of a ridgemore than eight thousand feet in altitude, whose north side plungeseighteen hundred feet into the broad Montezuma Valley, and whose gentlesouthern slope holds the small beginnings of the great canyons of thecliff-dwellers. Both north and south the panorama unfolds in impressivegrandeur, eloquent of the beautiful scanty land and of the difficultconditions of living which confronted the sturdy builders whose ancientmasterpieces we are on our way to see. At the northern end of ChapinMesa we swing sharply south and follow its slope, presently entering thewarm, glowing, scented forests, through which we speed to the hotel-campperched upon a bluff overlooking the depths of Spruce Canyon. Upon the top and under the eaves of this mesa are found very fine typesof prehistoric civilization. At Mummy Lake, half-way down the mesa, wepassed on the way a good example of pueblo architecture, and within aneasy walk of our terminal camp we find some of the noblest examples ofcliff-dwellings in existence. Here it was, near the head of this remote, nearly inaccessible, canyon, guarded by nature's ramparts, thataboriginal American genius before the coming of the Anglo-Saxon foundits culminating expression. In this spirit the thoughtful American of to-day enters the Mesa VerdeNational Park and examines its precious memorials. III Although the accident of the road brings the traveller first to themesa-top pueblos of the Mummy Lake district, historical sequencesuggests that examination begin with the cliff-dwellings. Of the many examples of these remains in the park, Cliff Palace, SpruceTree House, and Balcony House are the most important because theyconcisely and completely cover the range of life and the fulness ofdevelopment. This is not the place for detailed descriptions of theseruins. The special publications of the National Park Service andparticularly the writings of Doctor J. Walter Fewkes of the SmithsonianInstitution, who has devoted many years of brilliant investigation toAmerican prehistoric remains, are obtainable from government sources. Here we shall briefly consider several types. It is impossible, without reference to photographs, to convey a conciseadequate idea of Cliff Palace. Seen from across its canyon the splendidcrescent-shaped ruin offers to the unaccustomed eye little that iscommon to modern architecture. Prominently in the foreground, largecircular wells at once challenge interest. These were the kivas, orceremonial rooms of the community, centres of the religious activitieswhich counted so importantly in pueblo life. Here it was that mengathered monthly to worship their gods. In the floors of some kivas aresmall holes representing symbolically the entrance to the underworld, and around these from time to time priests doubtless performed archaicceremonies and communicated with the dead. Each family or clan in thecommunity is supposed to have had its own kiva. The kiva walls of Cliff Palace show some of the finest prehistoricmasonry in America. All are subterranean, which in a few instancesnecessitated excavation in floors of solid rock. The roofs weresupported by pedestals rising from mural banquettes, usually sixpedestals to a kiva; the kiva supposed to have belonged to the chiefsclan had eight pedestals, and one, perhaps belonging to a clan of lesserprominence, had only two. Several kivas which lack roof-supports mayhave been of different type or used for lesser ceremonials. All exceptthese have fireplaces and ventilators. Entrance was by ladder from theroof. Other rooms identified are living-rooms, storage-rooms, milling-rooms, and round and square towers, besides which there are dark rooms ofunknown use and several round rooms which are neither kivas nor towers. Several of the living-rooms have raised benches evidently used for beds, and in one of them pegs for holding clothing still remain in the walls. The rooms are smoothly plastered or painted. Mills for grinding corn were found in one room in rows; in others, singly. The work was done by women, who rubbed the upper stone againstthe lower by hand. The rests for their feet while at work still remainin place; also the brushes for sweeping up the meal. The smallstorage-rooms had stone doors, carefully sealed with clay to keep outmice and prevent moisture from spoiling the corn and meal. One of the most striking buildings in Cliff Palace is the Round Tower, two stories high, which not only was an observatory, as is indicated byits peep-holes, but also served purposes in religious festivals. Itsmasonry belongs to the finest north of Mexico. The stones arebeautifully fitted and dressed. The Square Tower which stands at thesouthern end of the village is four stories high, reaching the roof ofthe cave. The inner walls of its third story are elaborately paintedwith red and white symbols, triangles, zigzags, and parallels, thesignificance of which is not known. The ledge under which Cliff Palace is built forms a roof that overhangsthe structure. An entrance, probably the principal one, came from belowto a court at a lower level than the floor, from which access was byladder. Spruce Tree House, which may have been built after Cliff Palace, has acircular room with windows which were originally supposed to have beenport-holes for defense. Doctor Fewkes, however, suggests a more probablepurpose, as the position of the room does not specially suggest afortress. Through the openings in this room the sun-priest may havewatched the setting sun to determine the time for ceremonies. The roomwas entered from above, like a kiva. Another room, differing from any inother cliff-dwellings, has been named the Warriors' Room because, unlikesleeping-rooms, its bench surrounds three sides, and because, unlike anyother room, it is built above a kiva. Only the exigencies of defense, itis supposed, would warrant so marked a departure from the prescribedreligious form of room. Balcony House has special interest, apart from its commanding location, perfection of workmanship and unusual beauty, and because of theingenuity of the defenses of its only possible entrance. At the top of asteep trail a cave-like passage between rocks is walled so as to leave adoor capable of admitting only one at a time, behind which two or threemen could strike down, one by one, an attacking army. Out of these simple architectural elements, together with the utensilsand weapons found in the ruins, the imagination readily constructs apicture of the austere, laborious, highly religious, and doubtless happylives led by the earnest people who built these ancient dwellings in thecaves. When all the neighborhood caves were filled to overflowing withincreasing population, and generations of peace had wrought a confidencewhich had not existed when the pioneers had sought safety in caves, these people ventured to move out of cliffs and to build upon the topsof the mesa. Whether all the cave-dwellers were descended from theoriginal pilgrims or whether others had joined them afterward is notknown, but it seems evident that the separate communities had found somecommon bond, probably tribal, and perhaps evolved some commongovernment. No doubt they intermarried. No doubt the blood of manycliff-dwelling communities mingled in the new communities which builtpueblos upon the mesa. In time there were many of these pueblos, andthey were widely scattered; there are mounds at intervals all over theMesa Verde. The largest group of pueblos, one infers from the number ofvisible mounds, was built upon the Chapin Mesa several miles north ofthe above-mentioned cliff-dwelling near a reservoir known to-day asMummy Lake. It is there, then, that we shall now go in continuation ofour story. [Illustration: PREHISTORIC POTTERY FROM MESA VERDE Coloring and design as well as form show high artistic sense and cleanworkmanship] Mummy Lake is not a lake and no mummies were ever found there. Thisold-time designation applies to an artificial depression surrounded by alow rude stone wall, much crumbled, which was evidently a storagereservoir for an irrigation system of some size. A number of conspicuousmounds in the neighborhood suggest the former existence of a village ofpueblos dependent upon the farms for which the irrigation system hadbeen built. One of these, from which a few stones protruded, wasexcavated in 1916 by Doctor Fewkes, and has added a new and importantchapter to the history of this people. This pueblo has been named FarView House. Its extensive vista includes four other groups of similarmounds. Each cluster occurs in the fertile sage-brush clearings whichbloom in summer with asters and Indian paint-brush; there is no doubtthat good crops of Indian corn could still be raised from these sandsto-day by dry-farming methods. Far View House is a pueblo, a hundred and thirteen feet long by morethan fifty feet wide, not including a full-length plaza aboutthirty-five feet wide in which religious dances are supposed to havetaken place. The differences between this fine structure and thecliff-cities are considerable. The most significant evidence ofprogress, perhaps, is the modern regularity of the ground-plan. Thepartitions separating the secular rooms are continuous through thebuilding, and the angles are generally accurately right angles. The pueblo had three stories. It is oriented approximately to thecardinal points and was terraced southward to secure a sunny exposure. The study of the solar movements became an advanced science with thesepeople in the latter stages of their development. It must be rememberedthat they had no compasses; knowing nothing of the north or any otherfixed point, nevertheless there is evidence that they successfullyworked out the solstices and planned their later buildings accuratelyaccording to cardinal points of their own calculation. Another difference indicating development is the decrease in the numberof kivas, and the construction of a single very large kiva in the middleof the building. Its size suggests at once that the individual clanorganization of cliff-dwelling days had here given place to a singlepriestly fraternity, sociologically a marked advance. Drawing parallelswith the better-known customs of other primitive people, we are atliberty, if we please, to infer similar progress in other directions. The original primitive communism was developing naturally, thoughdoubtless very slowly, into something akin to organized society, probably involving more complicated economic relationships in alldepartments of living. While their masonry did not apparently improve in proportion, Far ViewHouse shows increase in the number and variety of the decorative figuresincised on hewn stones. The spiral, representing the coiled serpent, appears a number of times, as do many combinations of squares, curves, and angles arranged in fanciful design, which may or may not have hadsymbolic meanings. A careful examination of the neighborhood discloses few details of theirrigation system, but it shows a cemetery near the southeast corner ofthe building in which the dead were systematically buried. Large numbers of minor antiquities were found in this interestingstructure. Besides the usual stone implements of the mason and thehousekeeper, many instruments of bone, such as needles, dirks, andbodkins, were found. Figurines of several kinds were unearthed, carvedfrom soft stone, including several intended to symbolize Indian corn;all these may have been idols. Fragments of pottery were abundant, infull variety of form, decoration, and color, but always the most ancienttypes. Among the bones of animals, the frequency of those of rabbits, deer, antelope, elk, and mountain-sheep indicate that meat formed noinconsiderable part of the diet. Fabrics and embroideries were notdiscovered, as in the cliff-dwellings, but they may have disappeared inthe centuries through exposure to the elements. Far View House may not show the highest development of the Mummy Lakecluster of pueblos, and further exhumations here and in neighboringgroups may throw further light upon this interesting people in theirgropings from darkness to light. Meantime, however, returning to theneighborhood of the cliff-dwellings, let us examine a structure so latein the history of these people that they left it unfinished. Sun Temple stands on a point of Chapin Mesa, somewhat back from theedge of Cliff Canyon, commanding an extraordinary range of country. Itis within full view of Cliff Palace and other cliff-dwellings ofimportance and easy of access. From it, one can look southward to theMancos River. On every side a wide range of mesa and canyon lies in fullview. The site is unrivalled for a temple in which all could worshipwith devotion. When Doctor Fewkes, in the early summer of 1915, attacked the moundwhich had been designated Community House under the supposition that itcovered a ruined pueblo, he had no idea of the extraordinary nature ofthe find awaiting him, although he was prepared from its shape and otherindications for something out of the usual. So wholly without parallelwas the disclosure, however, that it was not till it was entirelyuncovered that he ventured a public conjecture as to its significance. The ground-plan of Sun Temple is shaped like the letter D. It enclosesanother D-shaped structure occupying nearly two-thirds of its totalarea, within which are two large kivas. Between the outer and the innerD are passages and rooms, and at one end a third kiva is surrounded byrooms, one of which is circular. Sun Temple is also impressive in size. It is a hundred and twenty-onefeet long and sixty-four feet wide. Its walls average four feet inthickness, and are double-faced, enclosing a central core of rubble;they are built of the neighborhood sandstone. The masonry is of finequality. This, together with its symmetrical architectural design, itsfine proportions, and its many decorated stones, mark it the highesttype of Mesa Verde architecture. [Illustration: _From a photograph by George L. Beam_ SUN TEMPLE, MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK Built by prehistoric people to their god, the sun, and unfinished whenthey suddenly disappeared] [Illustration: _From a photograph by George L. Beam_ SPRUCE TREE HOUSE FROM ACROSS THE CANYON Showing the overhanging rock roof and the forest which tops the MesaVerde] It was plainly unfinished. Walls had risen in some places higher thanin others. As yet there was no roofing. No rooms had been plastered. Ofinternal finishing little was completed, and of contents, of course, there was none. The stone hammers and other utensils of the builderswere found lying about as if thrown down at day's close. The kivas, although circular, are unlike those of Cliff Palace, inasmuchas they are above ground, not subterranean. The mortar used in pointingshows the impress of human hands; no trowels were used. The wallsexhibit many stones incised with complicated designs, largely geometric;some may be mason's marks; others are decorative or symbolic. Thesedesigns indicate a marked advance over those in Far View House; in factthey are far more complicated and artistic than any in the southwest. Bare and ineloquent though its unfinished condition left it, thereligious purposes of the entire building are clear to the archæologistin its form. And, as if to make conjecture certainty, a shrine wasuncovered on the corner-stone of the outer wall which frames in solidstone walls a large fossil palm-leaf whose rays strongly suggest thesun! It requires no imagination to picture the effect which the originaldiscovery of this image of their god must have had upon a primitivecommunity of sun-worshippers. It must have seemed to them a divine gift, a promise, like the Ark of the Covenant, of the favor of the Almighty. It may even have first suggested the idea of building this temple totheir deity. This is all the story. Go there and study it in detail. Enlightened, profoundly impressed, nevertheless you will finish at this point. Thetale has no climax. It just stops. What happened to the people of the Mesa Verde? Some archæologists believe that they emigrated to neighboring valleyssouthwest. But why should they have left their prosperous farms and finehomes for regions which seem to us less desirable? And why, a profoundlyreligious people, should they have left Sun Temple unfinished? What other supposition remains? Only, I think, that, perhaps because of their prosperity and theunpreparedness that accompanies long periods of peace, they weresuddenly overwhelmed by enemies. XV THE HEALING WATERS HOT SPRINGS RESERVATION, ARKANSAS. PLATT NATIONAL PARK, OKLAHOMA I From a hillside on the edge of the Ozark Mountains in central Arkansasissue springs of hot water which are effective in the alleviation ofrheumatic and kindred ills. Although chemical analysis fails to explainthe reason, the practice of many years has abundantly proved theirworth. Before the coming of the white man they were known to theIndians, who are said to have proclaimed them neutral territory in timeof war. Perhaps it was rumor of their fame upon which Ponce de Leonfounded his dream of a Fountain of Youth. In the early years of the last century hundreds of settlers toiled manymiles over forest trails to camp beside them and bathe daily in theirwaters. The bent and suffering were carried there on stretchers. So manyand so striking were the cures that the fame of these springs spreadthroughout the young nation, and in 1832, to prevent their falling intohands outstretched to seize and exploit them for private gain, Congresscreated them a national reservation. The Hot Springs Reservation was ourfirst national park. Previous to this a couple of log houses built by visitors served forshelter for the pilgrims at the shrine of health. Soon after, otherbuildings quite as primitive were erected. A road was constructedthrough the forests from the settled portions of the State, and manydrove laboriously in with tents and camping outfits. I have seen a copyof a photograph which was taken when photographs were new, showingseveral men and women in the odd conventional costume of that periodsitting solemnly upon the banks of a steaming spring, their clothesdrawn up, their bare legs calf deep in the hot water. Once started, Hot Springs grew rapidly. Unfortunately, this first act ofnational conservation failed to foresee the great future of thesesprings, and the reservation line was drawn so that it barely enclosedthe brook of steaming vapors which was their outlet. To-day, when thenation contemplates spending millions to beautify the national spa, itfinds the city built solidly opposite. Railroads soon pushed their way through the Ozark foothills and landedthousands yearly beside the healing waters. Hotels became larger andmore numerous. The government built a public bathhouse into which thewaters were piped for the free treatment of the people. Concessionersbuilt more elaborate structures within the reservation to accommodatethose who preferred to pay for pleasanter surroundings or for privatetreatment. The village became a town and the town a city. Boarding-houses sprang up everywhere with accommodations to suit theneeds of purses of all lengths. Finally, large and costly hotels werebuilt for the prosperous and fashionable who began to find rareenjoyment in the beautiful Ozark country while they drank their hotwater and took their invigorating baths. Hot Springs became a nationalresort. It will be seen that, in its way, Hot Springs has reflected the socialdevelopment of the country. It has passed through the various stagesthat marked the national growth in taste and morals. During the periodwhen gambling was a national vice it was noted for its high play, andthen gamblers of all social grades looked forward to their season in theSouth. During the period of national dissipation, when politedrunkenness was a badge of class and New Year's day an orgy, it becamethe periodic resort of inebriates, just as later, with the elevation ofthe national moral sense, it became instead the most conservative ofresorts, the periodic refuge of thousands of work-worn business andprofessional men seeking the astonishing recuperative power of itswater. True again to the spirit of the times, Hot Springs reflects to the fullthe spirit of to-day. It is a Southern mountain resort of quiet charmand wonderful natural beauty set on the edge of a broad region of hills, ravines, and sweet-smelling pines, a paradise for the walker, the hiker, and the horseback rider. Down on the street a long row of handsomemodern bath-houses, equipped with all the scientific luxuries, and morebesides, of the most elaborate European spa, concentrates the businessof bath and cure. Back of this rise directly the beautiful Ozark hills. One may have exactly what he wishes at Hot Springs. He may live with thesick if that is his bent, or he may spend weeks of rich enjoyment of theSouth in holiday mood, and have his baths besides, without a suggestionof the sanitarium or even of the spa. Meantime the mystery of the water's potency seems to have been solved. It is not chemical in solution which clears the system of its ills andrestores the jaded tissues to buoyancy, but the newly discoveredprinciple of radioactivity. Somewhere deep in Nature's laboratory thesewaters become charged with an uplifting power which is imparted to thosewho bathe according to the rules which many years of experience haveprescribed. Many physicians refuse to verify the waters' virtues; someopenly scoff. But the fact stands that every year hundreds who comehelpless cripples walk jauntily to the station on their departure, andmany thousands of sufferers from rheumatic ills and the wear and tear ofstrenuous living return to their homes restored. I myself can testify tothe surprising recuperative effect of only half a dozen daily baths, andI know business men who habitually go there whenever the stress ofoverwork demands measures of quick relief. [Illustration: ON HOT SPRINGS MOUNTAIN, HOT SPRINGS OF ARKANSAS] [Illustration: BATH HOUSE ROW, HOT SPRINGS OF ARKANSAS] It is not surprising that more than a hundred thousand persons visitHot Springs every year. The recognized season begins after the winterholidays; then it is that gayety and pleasuring, riding, driving, motoring, golfing, and the social life of the fashionable hotels reachtheir height. But, for sheer enjoyment of the quieter kind, the spring, early summer, and the autumn are unsurpassed; south though it lies, HotSprings is delightful even in midsummer. Two railroads land the visitor almost at the entrance of thereservation. A fine road brings the motorist sixty miles from the livelycity of Little Rock. The elaborate bath-houses line the reservation sideof the principal street, opposite the brick city. But back of them risesabruptly the beautiful forested mountain from whose side gush thehealing waters, and back of this roll the beautiful pine-grown Ozarks. The division is sharply drawn. He who chooses may forget the city exceptat the hour of his daily bath. The plans for realizing in stone and landscape gardening the ideal ofthe great American spa, which this spot is in fact, contemplate the workof years. II In southern Oklahoma not far from the Texas boundary, a group of thirtyhealing springs, these of cold sparkling water, were set apart byCongress in 1904 under the title of the Platt National Park. Most ofthem are sulphur springs; others are impregnated with bromides and othermineral salts. Many thousands visit yearly the prosperous bordering cityof Sulphur to drink these waters; many camp in or near the reservation;the bottled waters bring relief to thousands at home. Through the national park, from its source in the east to its entry intoRock Creek, winds Travertine Creek, the outlet of most of these springs. Rock Creek outlines the park's western boundary, and on its farther banklies the city. Springs of importance within the park pour their watersdirectly into its current. All these Platt springs, like those of HotSprings, Arkansas, were known to the Indians for their curativeproperties for many generations before the coming of the white settler. The park is the centre of a region of novelty and charm for the visitorfrom the North and East. The intimate communion of prairie and richforested valley, the sophistication of the bustling little city incontrast with the rough life of the outlying ranches, the mingling incommon intercourse of such differing human elements as the Easterntourist, the free and easy Western townsman, the cowboy and the Indian, give rare spice to a visit long enough to impart the spirit of a countryof so many kinds of appeal. The climate, too, contributes to enjoyment. The long spring lasts from February to June. During the short summer, social life is at its height. The fall lingers to the holidays before itgives way to a short winter, which the Arbuckle Mountains soften bydiverting the colder winds. The pleasures are those of prairie and valley. It is a great land forriding. There is swimming, rowing, and excellent black-bass fishing inthe larger lakes. It is a region of deer and many birds. Its altitudeis about a thousand feet. The rolling Oklahoma plateau attains in this neighborhood itspleasantest outline and variety. Broad plains of grazing-land alternatewith bare rocky heights and low mountains. The creeks and rivers whichaccumulate the waters of the springs scattered widely among theseprairie hills are outlined by winding forested belts and floweredthickets of brush. Great areas of thin prairie yield here and there torounded hills, some of which bear upon their summits columns of flatrocks heaped one upon the other high enough to be seen for miles againstthe low horizon. These, which are known as the Chimney Hills, for many years have been acause of speculation among the settlers who have nearly replaced theIndians since the State of Oklahoma replaced the Indian Territory withwhich we became familiar in the geographies of earlier days. Who werethe builders of these chimneys and what was their purpose? "At a hearing in Ardmore a few years ago before a United States courttaking testimony upon some ancient Indian depredation claims, " writesColonel R. A. Sneed, for years the superintendent of the Platt NationalPark, "practically all the residents of the Chickasaw Nation, Indian andnegro, whose memories of that country extend back fifty years or more, were in attendance. In recounting his recollections of a Comanche raidin which his master's horses were stolen, one old negro incidentallygave a solution of the Chimney Hills which is the only one the writerever heard, and which probably accounts for all of them. "He said that his master lived at Big Sulphur Springs, farthest west ofany of the Chickasaws; that the Kiowas and Comanches raided the countryevery summer and drove out horses or cattle wherever they could findthem unprotected; that he had often gone with his master to find thesestolen cattle; that these forages were so frequent that the Chickasawshad never undertaken to occupy any of their lands west of Rock Creek, north of Big Sulphur Springs, nor west of the Washita River south of thesprings; that the country west of Sulphur Springs was dry, and water washard to find unless one knew just where to look; and that the Comancheshad a custom of marking all the springs they could find by building rockchimneys on the hills nearest to the springs. Only one chimney would bebuilt if the spring flowed from beneath the same hill, but if the springwas distant from the hill two chimneys would be built, either upon thesame hill or upon two distant hills, and a sight along the two chimneyswould indicate a course toward the spring. "The old man said that every hill in their pasture had a Comanchechimney on it and that his master would not disturb them because he didnot want to make the wild Indians mad. There never was open war betweenthe Chickasaws and the Comanches, but individual Chickasaws often hadtrouble with Comanche hunting-parties. "The Big Sulphur Springs on Rock Creek in the Chickasaw Nationafterward became the centre around which the city of Sulphur was built, and after the town was grown to a population of two thousand or more itwas removed bodily to make room for the Platt National Park, aroundwhich has been built the new city of Sulphur, which now has a populationof forty-five hundred. "Many of the Comanche monuments are extant and the great bluff above theBromide Springs of the national park looks out toward the north and westover a prairie that extends to the Rocky Mountains; the monument thatstood on the brow of that bluff must have been visible for many miles tothe keen vision of the Comanche who knew how to look for it. " The Indian Territory became the State of Oklahoma in 1907; the story ofthe white man's peaceful invasion is one of absorbing interest; thehuman spectacle of to-day is complex, even kaleidoscopic. In thethirties and forties the government had established in the territory thefive civilized Indian nations, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, each with its allotted boundaries, its nativegovernment, its legislatures, and its courts. In many respects thesewere foreign nations within our boundaries. Besides them, the OsageIndians had their reservation in the north, and fragments of no lessthan seventeen other tribes lived on assigned territory. Gradually white men invaded the land, purchased holdings from theIndian nations, built cities, established businesses of many kinds, ranrailroads in all directions. In time, the nations were abolished andtheir remaining lands were divided up among the individuals composingthem; the Indians of these nations became American citizens; their negroslaves, for they had been large slaveholders, received each his portionof the divided land. Then came Oklahoma. To-day there is only one Indian reservation in the State, that of theOsages. Oil has been found on their land and they are the wealthiestpeople in the world to-day, the average cash income of each exceedingfive thousand dollars a year. In a state with a total population of twoand a quarter millions live 336, 000 Indians representing twenty-threetribes and 110, 000 negroes descended from slaves. There has been muchintermarrying between Indians and whites, and some between Indians andblacks. Here is a mixture of races to baffle the keenest eye. Elsewhere than in the Osage Reservation, wealth also has come to theIndians. Many have very large incomes, large even for the rich of ourEastern cities. Asphalt also has enriched many. Cotton is raisedextensively in the southern counties. Grazing on a large scale hasproved profitable. Many Indians own costly and luxurious homes, ride inautomobiles, and enter importantly into business, politics, and theprofessions; these usually have more or less white blood. Manyfull-bloods who have grown rich without effort possess finely furnishedbedrooms, and sleep on the floor in blankets; elaborate dining-roomswith costly table equipments, and eat cross-legged on the kitchen floor;gas-ranges, and cook over chip fires out-of-doors; automobiles, and rideblanketed ponies. Many wealthy men are deeply in debt because of uselessluxuries which they have been persuaded to buy. Platt National Park lies about the centre of what was once the Chickasawnation. It is a grazing and a cotton country. There are thousands ofIndians, many of them substantial citizens, some men of local influence. Native dress is seldom seen. Quoting again from my correspondence with Colonel Sneed, here is thelegend of the last of the Delawares: "Along about 1840, a very few years after the Chickasaws and Choctawshad arrived in Indian Territory, a small band of about sixty DelawareIndians arrived in the Territory, having roved from Alabama throughMississippi and Missouri, and through the northwest portion of Arkansas. Being a small band, they decided to link their fortunes with those ofsome other tribe of Indians, and they first pitched their tepees withthose of the Cherokees. But the Cherokee Chief and old Chief Wahpanuckaof the Delawares did not agree. So the little band of Delawarescontinued rambling until they reached the Choctaw Nation, where theyagain tried to make terms with the Chief of the tribe. Evidently noagreement was reached between that Chief and Wahpanucka, for theDelawares continued their roving until they reached the ChickasawNation, where they remained. "Old Chief Wahpanucka had a beautiful daughter whose name was Deerface;two of the Delaware braves were much in love with her, but Deerfacecould not decide which one of these warriors she should take to becomeChief after the death of Wahpanucka. "Chief Wahpanucka called the two warriors before him and a powwow wasagreed upon. The council was held around the Council Rocks (which is nowa point of interest within the Platt National Park), and a decision wasreached to the effect that at a certain designated time the Delawaresshould all assemble on the top of the Bromide Cliff, at the foot ofwhich flow the now famous Bromide and Medicine Springs, and that the twobraves should ride their Indian ponies to the edge of the cliff, whichwas at that time known as Medicine Bluff, and jump off to the bed of thecreek about two hundred feet below. The one who survived was to marryDeerface, and succeed Wahpanucka as Chief of the Delawares. "The race was run and both Indian braves made the jump from the bluff, but both were killed. When Deerface saw this she threw herself from thebluff and died at the foot of the cliff where her lovers had met theirdeath. To-day her image may be seen indelibly fixed on one of the rocksof the cliff where she fell, and the water of the Medicine Spring issupposed to be the briny tears of the old Chief when he saw the havochis decision had wrought. These tears, filtering down through the cliffwhere the old Chief stood, are credited with being so purified that thewater of the spring which they form is possessed with remedial qualitieswhich make it a cure for all human ailments. " THE GRAND CANYON AND OUR NATIONAL MONUMENTS ON THE SCENERY OF THE SOUTHWEST To most Americans the southwest means the desert, and it is true thatmost of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado andsouthern California, are arid or semiarid lands, relieved, however, byregions of fertility and agricultural prosperity. In popular conceptionthe desert has been the negative of all that means beauty, richness, andsublimity; it has been the synonym of poverty and death. Gradually butsurely the American public is learning that again popular conception iswrong, that the desert is as positive a factor in scenery as themountain, that it has its own glowing beauty, its own intensepersonality, and occasionally, in its own amazing way, a sublimity asgorgeous, as compelling, and as emotion-provoking as the most stupendoussnow-capped range. The American desert region includes some of the world's greatestscenery. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is sunk in a plateauwhich, while sprinkled with scant pine, is nearly rainless. Zion Canyonis a palette of brilliant color lying among golden sands. A score ofnational monuments conserve large natural bridges, forests of petrifiedtrees, interesting volcanic or other phenomena of prehistoric times, areas of strange cactus growths, deposits of the bones of monstrousreptiles, and remains of a civilization which preceded the discovery ofAmerica; and, in addition to these, innumerable places of remarkablemagnificence as yet unknown except to the geologist, the topographer, the miner, the Indian, and the adventurer in unfrequented lands. This arid country consists of rolling sandy plains as broad as seas, dotted with gray sage-brush and relieved by bare craggy monadnocks andnaked ranges which the rising and the setting sun paints unbelievablecolors. Here and there thin growths of cottonwood outline thin ribbonsof rivers, few and far between. Here and there alkali whitens the edgesof stained hollows where water lies awhile after spring cloudbursts. Here and there are salt ponds with no outlet. Yet even in the desolationof its tawny monotony it has a fascination which is insistent andcumulative. But the southwest is not all desert. There are great areas of thingrazing ranges and lands where dry farming yields fair crops. There arevalleys which produce fruits and grains in abundance. There are hamletsand villages and cities which are among the oldest in America, centresof fertile tracts surrounded by deserts which need only water to becomethe richest lands on the continent. There are regions reclaimed byirrigation where farming has brought prosperity. In other places theplateau covers itself for hundreds of square miles with scrubby pine andcedar. All in all, it is a land of rare charm and infinite variety. To appreciate a region which more and more will enter into Americanconsciousness and divide travel with the mountains, the reader shouldknow something of its structural history. The southwestern part of the United States rose above sea-level and sankbelow it many times during the many thousands of centuries preceding itspresent state, which is that of a sandy and generally desert plateau, five to ten thousand feet in altitude. How many times it repeated thecycle is not fully known. Some portions of it doubtless were submergedoftener than others. Some were lifting while others were lowering. And, meantime, mountains rose and were carried away by erosion to give placeto other mountains which also wore away; river systems formed anddisappeared, lakes and inland seas existed and ceased to exist. Thehistory of our southwest would have been tempestuous indeed had it beencompassed within say the life of one man; but, spread over a period oftime inconceivable to man, there may have been no time when it mighthave seemed to be more active in change than its still hot deserts seemto-day to the traveller in passing trains. Other parts of the continent, no doubt, have undergone as many changes;our southwest is not singular in that. But nowhere else, perhaps, hasthe change left evidences so plain and so interesting to theunscientific observer. The page of earth's history is more easily readupon the bare deserts of our southwest than on the grass-concealedprairies of the Mississippi Valley or the eroded and forested ranges ofthe Appalachians. Before the Rockies and the Sierra even existed, in the shallow sea whichcovered this part of the continent were deposited the ooze which later, when this region rose above the sea, became the magnificent limestonesof the Grand Canyon. Muds accumulated which to-day are seen in manyhighly colored shales. Long ages of erosion from outlying mountainregions spread it thick with gravels and sands which now appear in rockywalls of deep canyons. A vast plain was built up and graded by thesedeposits. The trunks of trees washed down by the floods from far distantuplands were buried in these muds and sands, where, in the course ofunnumbered centuries, they turned to stone. They are the petrifiedforests of to-day. Mountains, predecessors of our modern Sierra, lifted in the south andwest, squeezed the moisture from the Pacific winds, and turned theregion into desert. This was in the Jurassic Period. Sands thousands offeet deep were accumulated by the desert winds which are to-day thesandstones of the giant walls of Zion Canyon. But this was not the last desert, for again the region sank below thesea. Again for half a million years or more ooze settled upon the sandsto turn to limestone millions of years later. In this Jurassic seasported enormous marine monsters whose bones settled to the bottom to beunearthed in our times, and great flying reptiles crossed its water. Again the region approached sea-level and accumulated, above its newlimestones, other beds of sands. New river systems formed and broughtother accumulations from distant highlands. It was then a low swampyplain of enormous size, whose northern limits reached Montana, and whichtouched what now is Kansas on its east. Upon the borders of its swamps, in Cretaceous times, lived gigantic reptiles, the Dinosaurs and theirungainly companions whose bones are found to-day in several places. For the last time the region sank and a shallow sea swept from the Gulfof Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Again new limestones formed, and as thesurface very slowly rose for the last time at the close of theCretaceous Period many new deposits were added to the scenic exhibit ofto-day. Meantime other startling changes were making which extended over a lapseof time which human mind cannot grasp. Responding to increasingpressures from below, the continent was folding from north to south. Themiracle of the making of the Rockies was enacting. During all of Tertiary times earth movements of tremendous energy rockedand folded the crust and hastened change. The modern Sierra rose uponthe eroded ruins of its predecessor, again shutting off themoisture-laden western winds and turning the southwest again into adesert. One of the mountain-building impulses spread eastward from theSierra to the Wasatch Mountains, but Nature's project for this vastgranite-cored tableland never was realized, for continually its centralsections caved and fell. And so it happened that the eastern edge of theSierra and the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains became theprecipitous edges, thousands of feet high, of a mountain-studded desertwhich to-day is called the Great Basin. It includes southeastern Oregon, nearly all of Nevada, the western half of Utah, and a large area in thesouth of California, besides parts of Idaho and Wyoming. It is 880 milesnorth and south and 572 miles wide. Its elevation is five thousand feet, more or less, and its area more than two hundred thousand square miles. This enormous bowl contained no outlet to the sea, and the rivers whichflowed into it from all its mountainous borders created a prehistoriclake with an area of fifty-four thousand square miles which was namedLake Bonneville after the army officer whose adventures in 1833 werenarrated by Washington Irving; but it was Fremont who first clearlydescribed it. Lake Bonneville has evaporated and disappeared, but in itsplace are many salty lakes, the greatest of which is Great Salt Lake inUtah. Attenuated rivers still flow into the Great Basin, but are lost intheir sands. The greatest of these, the Mohave River, is a hundred mileslong, but is not often seen because it hides its waters chiefly underthe surface sands. Lake Bonneville's prehistoric beaches exist to-day. Transcontinental passengers by rail cross its ancient bed, but few knowit. The Great Basin to-day is known to travellers principally by the manylesser deserts which compose it, deserts separated from each other bylesser mountain ranges and low divides. Its southern and southeasternboundaries are the plateaus and mountains which form the northernwatershed of the muddy Colorado River and its confluents. South of theColorado, the plateaus of New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Californiagradually subside to the Rio Grande. During this period and the Quaternary which followed it, volcanoesappeared in many places; their dead cones diversify our modernlandscape. It was during the Quaternary Period, in whose latter endlives man, that erosion dug the mighty canyons of our great southwest. The Colorado was sweeping out the Grand Canyon at the same time that, far in the north, the glaciers of the Great Ice Age were carving fromAlgonkian shales and limestones the gorgeous cirques and valleys ofGlacier National Park. XVI A PAGEANT OF CREATION GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA. AREA, 958 SQUARE MILES There is only one Grand Canyon. It lies in northern Arizona, and theColorado River, one of the greatest of American rivers, flows throughits inner gorge. It must not be confused with the Grand Canyon of theYellowstone, or with any of the _grande cañons_ which the Spaniards sonamed because they were big canyons. The Grand Canyon is 217 miles long, 8 to 12 miles wide at the rim, andmore than a mile deep. It is the Colossus of canyons, by far the hugestexample of stream erosion in the world. It is gorgeously colored. It isby common consent the most stupendous spectacle in the world. It may beconceived as a mountain range reversed. Could its moulded image, similarly colored, stand upon the desert floor, it would be a spectaclesecond only to the vast mould itself. More than a hundred thousand persons visit the Grand Canyon each year. In other lands it is our most celebrated scenic possession. It was madea national park in 1919. I The Grand Canyon is not of America but of the world. Like the Desert ofSahara and the monster group of the Himalayas, it is so entirely thegreatest example of its kind that it refuses limits. This is true of italso as a spectacle; far truer, in fact, for, if it is possible tocompare things so dissimilar, in this respect certainly it will lead allothers. None see it without being deeply moved--all to silence, someeven to tears. It is charged to the rim with emotion; but the emotion ofthe first view varies. Some stand astounded at its vastness. Others arestupefied and search their souls in vain for definition. Some tremble. Some are uplifted with a sense of appalling beauty. For a time the soulsof all are naked in the presence. This reaction is apparent in the writings of those who have visited it;no other spectacle in America has inspired so large a literature. Joaquin Miller found it fearful, full of glory, full of God. CharlesDudley Warner pronounced it by far the most sublime of earthlyspectacles. William Winter saw it a pageant of ghastly desolation. Hamlin Garland found its lines chaotic and disturbing but itscombinations of color and shadow beautiful. Upon John Muir it bestowed anew sense of earth's beauty. Marius R. Campbell, whose geological researches have familiarized himwith Nature's scenic gamut, told me that his first day on the rim lefthim emotionally cold; it was not until he had lived with the spectaclethat realization slowly dawned. I think this is the experience of verymany, a fact which renders still more tragic a prevailing publicassumption that the Grand Canyon is a one-day stop in a transcontinentaljourney. It is not surprising that wonder is deeply stirred by its vastness, itscomplexity, and the realization of Nature's titanic labor in its making. It is far from strange that extreme elation sometimes follows upon arevelation so stupendous and different. That beauty so extraordinaryshould momentarily free emotion from control is natural enough. But whythe expressions of repulsion not infrequently encountered upon theprinted pages of the past? I have personally inquired of many of our ownday without finding one, even among the most sensitive, whom itrepelled. Perhaps a clew is discovered in the introductory paragraphs ofan inspired word-picture which the late Clarence E. Dutton hid in atechnical geological paper of 1880. "The lover of nature, " he wrote, "whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, orNew England, in the Appalachians or Cordilleras, in Scotland orColorado, would enter this strange region with a shock and dwell therewith a sense of oppression, and perhaps with horror. Whatsoever thingshe had learned to regard as beautiful and noble he would seldom or neversee, and whatsoever he might see would appear to him as anything butbeautiful or noble. Whatsoever might be bold or striking would seem atfirst only grotesque. The colors would be the very ones he had learnedto shun as tawdry or bizarre. The tones and shades, modest and tender, subdued yet rich, in which his fancy had always taken special delight, would be the ones which are conspicuously absent. " I suspect that this repulsion, this horror, as several have called it, was born of the conventions of an earlier generation which boundconceptions of taste and beauty, as of art, dress, religion, and humanrelations generally, in shackles which do not exist in these days ofindividualism and broad horizons. To-day we see the Grand Canyon withprofound astonishment but without prejudice. Its amazing size, itsbewildering configuration, its unprecedented combinations of coloraffect the freed and elated consciousness of our times as another andperhaps an ultimate revelation in nature of law, order, and beauty. In these pages I shall make no attempt to describe the Grand Canyon. Nature has written her own description, graving it with a pen of waterin rocks which run the series of the eternal ages. Her story can be readonly in the original; translations are futile. Here I shall try only tohelp a little in the reading. II The Grand Canyon was cut by one of the great rivers of the continent, the Colorado, which enters Arizona from the north and swings sharplywest; thence it turns south to form most of Arizona's western boundary, and a few miles over the Mexican border empties into the head of theGulf of California. It drains three hundred thousand square miles ofArizona, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. It is formed in Utah by theconfluence of the Green and the Grand Rivers. Including the greater ofthese, the Green River, it makes a stream fifteen hundred miles inlength which collects the waters of the divide south and east of theGreat Basin and of many ranges of the Rocky Mountain system. The GrandRiver, for its contribution, collects the drainage of the Rockies'mighty western slopes in Colorado. The lower reaches of these great tributaries and practically all of theColorado River itself flow through more than five hundred miles ofcanyons which they were obliged to dig through the slowly upheavingsandstone plateaus in order to maintain their access to the sea. Succeeding canyons bear names designating their scenic or geologiccharacter. Progressively southward they score deeper into the strata ofthe earth's crust until, as they approach their climax, they breakthrough the bottom of the Paleozoic limestone deep into the heart of theArchean gneiss. This limestone trench is known as the Marble Canyon, theArchean trench as the Granite Gorge. The lower part of the Marble Canyonand all the Granite Gorge, together with their broad, vividly coloredand fantastically carved upper canyon ten miles across from rim to rim, a mile high from water to rim-level, the climax of the world of canyonsand the most gorgeous spectacle on earth, is the Grand Canyon of theColorado. It lies east and west in the northern part of the State. To comprehend it, recall one of those ditches which we all have seencrossing level fields or bordering country roads. It is broad from rimto rim and deeply indented by the side washes which follow heavyshowers. Its sides descend by terraces, steep in places with gentleslopes between the steeps, and on these slopes are elevations of rock ormud which floods have failed to wash away. Finally, in the middle, isthe narrow trench which now, in dry weather, carries a small tricklingstream. Not only does this ditch roughly typify the Grand Canyon, reproducing in clumsy, inefficient miniature the basic characteristicsof its outline, but it also is identical in the process of its making. Imagining it in cross-section, we find its sides leading down bysuccessive precipices to broad intermediate sloping surfaces. We findupon these broad surfaces enormous mesas and lofty, ornately carvededifices of rock which the floods have left standing. We find in itsmiddle, winding snakelike from side to side, the narrow gorge of theriver. The parallel goes further. It is not at all necessary to conceive thateither the wayside ditch or the Grand Canyon was once brimful of madlydashing waters. On the contrary, neither may ever have held much greaterstreams than they hold to-day. In both cases the power of the stream hasbeen applied to downward trenching; the greater spreading sides were cutby the erosion of countless side streamlets resulting temporarily fromperiods of melting snow or of local rainfall. It was these streamletswhich cut the side canyons and left standing between them the boldpromontories of the rim. It was these streamlets, working from thesurface, which separated portions of these promontories from the plateauand turned them into isolated mesas. It was the erosion of these mesaswhich turned many of them into the gigantic and fantastic temples andtowers which rise from the canyon's bowl. Standing upon the rim and overlooking miles of these successiveprecipices and intermediate templed levels, we see the dark gorge of thegranite trench, and, deep within it, wherever its windings permit a viewof its bottom, a narrow ribbon of brown river. This is the Colorado--arill; but when we have descended six thousand feet of altitude to itsedge we find it a rushing turbulent torrent of muddy water. Its averagewidth is three hundred feet; its average depth thirty feet. It isindustriously digging the Grand Canyon still deeper, and perhaps asrapidly as it ever dug since it entered the granite. Developing the thought in greater detail, let us glance at theillustrations of this chapter and at any photographs which may be athand, and realization will begin. Let imagination dart back a millionyears or more to the time when this foreground rim and that far runacross the vast chasm are one continuous plain; perhaps it is a pineforest, with the river, no greater than to-day, perhaps not so great, winding through it close to the surface level. As the river cutsdownward, the spring floods following the winter snows cave in its bankshere and there, forming sharply slanted valleys which enclosepromontories between them. Spring succeeds spring, and these sidevalleys deepen and eat backward while the promontories lengthen andgrow. The harder strata resist the disintegration of alternate heat andcold, and, while always receding, hold their form as cliffs; the softerstrata between the cliffs crumbles and the waste of spring watersspreads them out in long flattened slopes. The centuries pass. The ruinburies itself deep in the soft sandstone. The side valleys work milesback into the pine forest. Each valley acquires its own system oferosion; into each, from either side, enter smaller valleys whichthemselves are eating backward into the promontories. The great valley of the Colorado now has broad converging cliff-brokensides. Here and there these indentations meet far in the backgroundbehind the promontories, isolating island-like mesas. The rest of the story is simple repetition. Imagine enough thousands ofcenturies and you will imagine the Grand Canyon. Those myriad templesand castles and barbaric shrines are all that the rains and meltingsnows have left of noble mesas, some of which, when originally isolated, enclosed, as the marble encloses the future statue, scores of the lesserbut mighty structures which compose the wonder city of the depths. These architectural operations of Nature may be seen to-day in midwaystages. Find on the map the Powell Plateau in the northwest of thecanyon. Once it was continuous with the rim, a noble promontory. It wascut out from the rim perhaps within the existence of the human race. Afew hundred thousand years from now it will be one or more Aladdinpalaces. Find on the map the great Walhalla Plateau in the east of the canyon. Note that its base is nearly separated from the parental rim; a thousandcenturies or so and its isolation will be complete. Not long after that, as geologists reckon length of time, it will divide into two plateaus;it is easy to pick the place of division. The tourist of a million yearshence will see, where now it stands, a hundred glowing castles. Let us look again at our photographs, which now we can see withunderstanding. To realize the spectacle of the canyon, let imaginationpaint these strata their brilliant colors. It will not be difficult; buthere again we must understand. It is well to recall that these strata were laid in the sea, and thatthey hardened into stone when the earth's skin was pushed thousands offeet in air. Originally they were the washings of distant highlandsbrought down by rivers; the coloring of the shales and sandstones isthat of the parent rock modified, no doubt, by chemical action insea-water. The limestone, product of the sea, is gray. As these differently colored strata were once continuous across thecanyon, it follows that their sequence is practically identical on bothsides of the canyon. That the colors seem confused is because, viewingthe spectacle from an elevation, we see the enormous indentations of theopposite rim in broken and disorganized perspective. Few minds arepatient and orderly enough to fully disentangle the kaleidoscopicdisarray, but, if we can identify the strata by form as well as color, we can at least comprehend without trouble our principal outline; andcomprehension is the broad highway to appreciation. To identify these strata, it is necessary to call them by name. Thenames that geologists have assigned them have no scientific significanceother than identity; they are Indian and local. Beginning at the canyon rim we have a stalwart cliff of gray limestoneknown as the Kaibab Limestone, or, conversationally, the Kaibab; it isabout seven hundred feet thick. Of this product of a million years ofmicroscopic life and death on sea-bottoms is formed the splendidsouth-rim cliffs from which we view the chasm. Across the canyon it isalways recognizable as the rim. Below the talus of the Kaibab is the Coconino sandstone, lightyellowish-gray, coarse of grain, the product of swift currents of untoldthousands of centuries ago. This stratum makes a fine bright cliffusually about four hundred feet in thickness, an effective roofing forthe glowing reds of the depths. Immediately below the Coconino are the splendid red shales andsandstones known as the Supai formation. These lie in many strata ofvarying shades, qualities, and thicknesses, but all, seen across thecanyon, merging into a single enormous horizontal body of gorgeous red. The Supai measures eleven hundred feet in perpendicular thickness, butas it is usually seen in slopes which sometimes are long and gentle, itpresents to the eye a surface several times as broad. This is the mostprominent single mass of color in the canyon, for not only does it formthe broadest feature of the opposite wall and of the enormouspromontories which jut therefrom, but the main bodies of Buddha, Zoroaster, and many others of the fantastic temples which rise from thefloor. Below the Supai, a perpendicular wall of intense red five hundred feethigh forces its personality upon every foot of the canyon's vast length. This is the famous Redwall, a gray limestone stained crimson with thedrip of Supai dye from above. Harder than the sloping sandstone aboveand the shale below, it pushes aggressively into the picture, squared, perpendicular, glowing. It winds in and out of every bay and gulf, andfronts precipitously every flaring promontory. It roofs with overhangingeaves many a noble palace and turns many a towering monument into apagoda. Next below in series is the Tonto, a deep, broad, shallow slant ofdull-green and yellow shale, which, with the thin broad sandstone baseon which it rests, forms the floor of the outer canyon, the tessellatedpavement of the city of flame. Without the Tonto's green the spectacleof the Grand Canyon would have missed its contrast and its fulness. Through this floor the Granite Gorge winds its serpentine way, twothousand feet deep, dark with shadows, shining in places where theriver swings in view. These are the series of form and color. They occur with great regularityexcept in several spots deep in the canyon where small patches ofgleaming quartzites and brilliant red shales show against the darkgranite; the largest of these lies in the depths directly opposite ElTovar. These rocks are all that one sees of ancient Algonkian stratawhich once overlay the granite to a depth of thirteen thousandfeet--more than twice the present total depth of the canyon. The erosionof many thousands of centuries wore them away before the rocks that nowcompose the floor, the temples and the precipiced walls of the greatcanyon were even deposited in the sea as sand and limestone ooze, a factthat strikingly emphasizes the enormous age of this exhibit. Geologistsspeak of these splashes of Algonkian rocks as the Unkar group, anotherlocal Indian designation. There is also a similar Chuar group, whichneed not concern any except those who make a close study of the canyon. This is the picture. The imagination may realize a fleet, vividimpression from the photograph. The visitor upon the rim, outline inhand, may trace its twisting elements in a few moments of attentiveobservation, and thereafter enjoy his canyon as one only enjoys a newcity when he has mastered its scheme and spirit, and can mentallyclassify its details as they pass before him. To one thus prepared, the Grand Canyon ceases to be the brew-pot ofchaotic emotion and becomes the orderly revelation of Nature, the mastercraftsman and the divine artist. III Entrance is from the south. The motor-road to Grand View is availablefor most of the year. The railroad to the El Tovar Hotel serves the yeararound, for the Grand Canyon is an all-year resort. There is a shortwinter of heavy snows on the rim, but not in the canyon, which may bedescended at all seasons. Both routes terminate on the rim. Alwaysdramatic, the Grand Canyon welcomes the pilgrim in the full panoply ofits appalling glory. There is no waiting in the anteroom, no sounding oftrumpets, no ceremony of presentation. He stands at once in thepresence. Most visitors have bought tickets at home which permit only one day'sstay. The irrecoverable sensation of the first view is broken by thenecessity for an immediate decision upon how to spend that day, for ifone is to descend horseback to the river he must engage his place anddon his riding-clothes at once. Under this stress the majority elect toremain on the rim for reasons wholly apart from any question ofrespective merit. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred Harvey_ SUNSET FROM GRAND VIEW, GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK All the strata from the rim to the river may be seen in this picture] After all, if only one day is possible, it is the wise decision. Withthe rim road, over which various drives are scheduled, and severalcommanding points to whose precipices one may walk, it will be a day toremember for a lifetime. One should not attempt too much in this oneday. It is enough to sit in the presence of the spectacle. Fortunate ishe who may stay another day and descend the trail into the streets ofthis vast city; many times fortunate he who may live a little amid itsglories. Because of this general habit of "seeing" the Grand Canyon betweensunrise and sunset, the admirable hotel accommodations are notextensive, but sufficient. There are cottage accommodations also atcheaper rates. Hotels and cottages are well patronized summer andwinter. Upon the rim are unique rest-houses, in one of which is ahigh-power telescope. There is a memorial altar to John Wesley Powell, the first explorer of the canyon. There is an excellent reproduction ofa Hopi house. There is an Indian camp. The day's wanderer upon the rimwill not lack entertainment when his eyes turn for rest from the chasm. From the hotel, coaches make regular trips daily to various viewpoints. Hopi Point, Mohave Point, Yavapai Point, and Grandeur Point may all bevisited; the run of eight miles along the famous Hermit Rim Road permitsbrief stops at Hopi, Mohave, and Pima Points. Automobiles also makeregular runs to the gorgeous spectacle from Grand View. Still moredistant points may be made in private or hired cars. Navajo Point offersunequalled views up and down the full length of the canyon, and anautomobile-road will bring the visitor within easy reach of Bass Campnear Havasupai Point in the far west of the reservation. Many one-day visitors take none of these stage and automobile trips, contented to dream the hours away upon Yavapai or Hopi Points near by. After all, it is just as well. A single viewpoint cannot be mastered inone's first day, so what's the use of others? On the other hand, seeingthe same view from different viewpoints miles apart will enrich andelaborate it. Besides, one should see many views in order to acquiresome conception, however small, of the intricacy and grandeur of thecanyon. Besides, these trips help to rest the eyes and mind. It is hardindeed to advise the unlucky one-day visitor. It is as if a dyspepticshould lead you to an elaborate banquet of a dozen courses, and say: "Ihave permission to eat three bites. Please help me choose them. " Wherever he stands upon the rim the appalling silence hushes the voiceto whispers. No cathedral imposes stillness so complete. It is sacrilegeto speak, almost to move. And yet the Grand Canyon is a moving picture. It changes every moment. Always shadows are disappearing here, appearingthere; shortening here, lengthening there. With every passing hour itbecomes a different thing. It is a sun-dial of monumental size. In the early morning the light streams down the canyon from the east. Certain promontories shoot miles into the picture, gleaming in vividcolor, backed by dark shadows. Certain palaces and temples stand inmagnificent relief. The inner gorge is brilliantly outlined in certainplaces. As the day advances these prominences shift positions; somefade; some disappear; still others spring into view. As midday approaches the shadows fade; the promontories flatten; thetowering edifices move bodily backward and merge themselves in theopposite rim. There is a period of several hours when the whole canyonhas become a solid wall; strata fail to match; eye and mind becomeconfused; comprehension is baffled by the tangle of disconnected bandsof color; the watcher is distressed by an oppressive sense ofhelplessness. It is when afternoon is well advanced that the magician sun begins hismost astonishing miracles in the canyon's depths. Out from the blazingwall, one by one, step the mighty obelisks and palaces, defined byever-changing shadows. Unsuspected promontories emerge, undreamed-ofgulfs sink back in the perspective. The serpentine gorge appears here, fades there, seems almost to move in the slow-changing shadows. I shallnot try even to suggest the soul-uplifting spectacle which culminates insunset. Days may be spent upon the rim in many forms of pleasure; short campingtrips may be made to distant points. The descent into the canyon is usually made from El Tovar down theBright Angel Trail, so called because it faces the splendid Bright AngelCanyon of the north side, and by the newer Hermit Trail which starts afew miles west. There are trails at Grand View, eight miles east, and atBass Camp, twenty-four miles west of El Tovar, which are seldom usednow. All go to the bottom of the Granite Gorge. The commonly used trailsmay be travelled afoot by those physically able, and on mule-back by anyperson of any age who enjoys ordinary health. The Bright Angel tripreturns the traveller to the rim at day's end. The Hermit Trail tripcamps him overnight on the floor of the canyon at the base of a magictemple. The finest trip of all takes him down the Hermit Trail, giveshim a night in the depths, and returns him to the rim by the BrightAngel Trail. Powell named Bright Angel Creek during that memorable firstpassage through the Canyon. He had just named a muddy creek Dirty Devil, which suggested, by contrast, the name of Bright Angel for a stream sopure and sparkling. The Havasupai Indian reservation may be visited in the depths ofCataract Canyon by following the trail from Bass Camp. The first experience usually noted in the descent is the fine quality ofthe trail, gentle in slope and bordered by rock on the steep side. Thenext experience is the disappearance of the straight uncompromisinghorizon of the opposite rim, which is a distinctive feature of everyview from above. As soon as the descent fairly begins, even the smallerbluffs and promontories assume towering proportions, and, from the Tontofloor, the mighty elevations of Cheops, Isis, Zoroaster, Shiva, Wotan, and the countless other temples of the abyss become mountains ofenormous height. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred Harvey_ CAMPING PARTY ON THE SOUTH RIM This is within a few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon abyss] [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred Harvey_ DOWN HERMIT TRAIL FROM RIM TO RIVER Grand Canyon National Park] From the river's side the elevations of the Granite Gorge present a newseries of precipitous towers, back of which in places loom the tops ofthe painted palaces, and back of them, from occasional favoredview-spots, the far-distant rim. Here, and here only, does the GrandCanyon reveal the fulness of its meaning. IV The Grand Canyon was discovered in 1540 by El Tovar, one of the captainsof Cardenas, in charge of one of the expeditions of the Spanishexplorer, Diaz, who was hunting for seven fabled cities of vast wealth. "They reached the banks of a river which seemed to be more than three orfour leagues above the stream that flowed between them. " It was seen in1776 by a Spanish priest who sought a crossing and found one at a pointfar above the canyon; this still bears the name Vado de los Padres. By 1840 it was probably known to the trappers who overran the country. In 1850 Lieutenant Whipple, surveying for a Pacific route, explored theBlack Canyon and ascended the Grand Canyon to Diamond Creek. In 1857 Lieutenant Ives, sent by the War Department to test thenavigability of the Colorado, ascended as far as the Virgin River in asteamboat which he had shipped in pieces from Philadelphia. From therehe entered the Grand Canyon afoot, climbed to the rim, and, making adetour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White waspicked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said thathis hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked byIndians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapidsand his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and waswashed through the Grand Canyon. About this time Major John Wesley Powell, a school-teacher who had lostan arm in the Civil War, determined to explore the great canyons of theGreen and Colorado Rivers. Besides the immense benefit to science, theexpedition promised a great adventure. Many lives had been lost in thesecanyons and wonderful were the tales told concerning them. Indiansreported that huge cataracts were hidden in their depths and that in oneplace the river swept through an underground passage. Nevertheless, with the financial backing of the State institutions ofIllinois and the Chicago Academy of Science, Powell got together a partyof ten men with four open boats, provisions for ten months, and allnecessary scientific instruments. He started above the canyons of theGreen River on May 24, 1869. There are many canyons on the Green and Colorado Rivers. They vary inlength from eight to a hundred and fifty miles, with walls successivelyrising from thirteen hundred to thirty-five hundred feet in height. Theclimax of all, the Grand Canyon, is two hundred and seventeen mileslong, with walls six thousand feet in height. [Illustration: _From a photograph by A. J. Baker_ THROUGH THE GRANITE GORGE SURGES THE MUDDY COLORADO] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Fred Harvey_ WHEN MORNING MISTS LIFT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON] On August 17, when Powell and his adventurers reached the Grand Canyon, their rations had been reduced by upsets and other accidents to enoughmusty flour for ten days, plenty of coffee, and a few dried apples. Thebacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific instruments were in the bottomof the river. One boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin andunable to make a fire. In this plight they entered the Grand Canyon, somewhere in whose depths a great cataract had been reported. The story of the passage is too long to tell here. Chilled, hungry, andworn, they struggled through it. Often they were obliged to let theirboats down steep rapids by ropes, and clamber after them along theslippery precipices. Often there was nothing to do but to climb intotheir boats and run down long foaming slants around the corners of whichdeath, perhaps, awaited. Many times they were upset and barely escapedwith their lives. With no wraps or clothing that were not soaked withwater, there were nights when they could not sleep for the cold. So the days passed and the food lessened to a few handfuls of wet flour. The dangers increased; some falls were twenty feet in height. Finallythree of the men determined to desert; they believed they could climbthe walls and that their chances would be better with the Indians thanwith the canyon. Powell endeavored to dissuade them, but they were firm. He offered to divide his flour with them, but this they refused. These men, two Howlands, brothers, and William Dunn, climbed the canyonwalls and were killed by Indians. Two or three days later Powell and therest of his party emerged below the Grand Canyon, where they found foodand safety. Taught by the experience of this great adventure, Powell made a secondtrip two years later which was a scientific achievement. Later on hebecame Director of the United States Geological Survey. Since then, the passage of the Grand Canyon has been made several times. R. B. Stanton made it in 1889 in the course of a survey for a proposedrailroad through the canyon; one of the leaders of the party wasdrowned. V The history of the Grand Canyon has been industriously collected. Itremains for others to gather the legends. It is enough here to quotefrom Powell the Indian story of its origin. "Long ago, " he writes, "there was a great and wise chief who mourned thedeath of his wife, and would not be comforted until Tavwoats, one of theIndian gods, came to him and told him his wife was in a happier land, and offered to take him there that he might see for himself, if, uponhis return, he would cease to mourn. The great chief promised. ThenTavwoats made a trail through the mountains that intervene between thatbeautiful land, the balmy region of the great West, and this, the deserthome of the poor Numa. This trail was the canyon gorge of the Colorado. Through it he led him; and when they had returned the deity exacted fromthe chief a promise that he would tell no one of the trail. Then herolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulfany that might attempt to enter thereby. " VI The bill creating the Grand Canyon National Park passed Congress earlyin 1919, and was signed by President Wilson on February 26. This closedan intermittent campaign of thirty-three years, begun by PresidentHarrison, then senator from Indiana, in January, 1886, to make anational park of the most stupendous natural spectacle in the world. Politics, private interests, and the deliberation of governmentalprocedure were the causes of delay. A self-evident proposition from thebeginning, it illustrates the enormous difficulties which confront thosewho labor to develop our national-parks system. The story is worth thetelling. Senator Harrison's bill of 1886 met an instant response from the wholenation. It called for a national park fifty-six miles long andsixty-nine miles wide. There was opposition from Arizona and the billfailed. In 1893 the Grand Canyon National Forest was created. In 1898, depredations and unlawful seizures of land having been reported, theSecretary of the Interior directed the Land-Office to prepare a newnational-park bill. In 1899 the Land-Office reported that the bill couldnot be drawn until the region was surveyed. It took the GeologicalSurvey five years to make the survey. The bill was not prepared becausemeantime it was discovered that the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, nowthe Santa Fé, owned rights which first must be eliminated. Failing to become a national park, President Roosevelt proclaimed theGrand Canyon a national monument in 1908. In 1909 a bill was introducedentitling Ralph H. Cameron to build a scenic railway along the canyonrim, which created much adverse criticism and failed. In 1910 theAmerican Scenic and Historic Preservation Society proposed a bill tocreate the Grand Canyon a national park of large size. The GeologicalSurvey, to which it was referred, recommended a much smaller area. Bythe direction of President Taft, Senator Flint introduced anational-park bill which differed from both suggestions. The oppositionof grazing interests threw it into the hands of conferees. In 1911Senator Flint introduced the conferees' bill, but it was opposed byprivate interests and failed. Meantime the country became aroused. Patriotic societies petitioned fora national park, and the National Federation of Women's Clubs began anagitation. The Department of the Interior prepared a map upon which tobase a bill, and for several years negotiated with the Forest Service, which administered the Grand Canyon as a national monument, concerningboundaries. Finally the boundaries were reduced to little more than theactual rim of the canyon, and a bill was prepared which Senator Ashurstintroduced in February, 1917. It failed in committee in the House owingto opposition from Arizona. It was the same bill, again introduced bySenator Ashurst in the new Congress two months later, which finallypassed the House and became a law in 1919; but it required a favoringresolution by the Arizona legislature to pave the way. Meantime many schemes were launched to utilize the Grand Canyon forprivate gain. It was plastered thickly with mining claims, though theGeological Survey showed that it contained no minerals worth mining;mining claims helped delay. Schemers sought capital to utilize itswaters for power. Railroads were projected. Plans were drawn to runsightseeing cars across it on wire cables. These were the interests, andmany others, which opposed the national park. XVII THE RAINBOW OF THE DESERT ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT, SOUTHERN UTAH. AREA, 120 SQUARE MILES When, in the seventies, Major J. W. Powell, the daring adventurer of theGrand Canyon, faced Salt Lake City on his return from one of his notablegeological explorations of the southwest, he laid his course by a templeof rock "lifting its opalescent shoulders against the eastern sky. " Hisparty first sighted it across seventy miles of a desert which "rose in aseries of Cyclopean steps. " When, climbing these, they had seen the WestTemple of the Virgin revealed in the glory of vermilion body and shiningwhite dome, and had gazed between the glowing Gates of Little Zion intothe gorgeous valley within, these scenery-sated veterans of the GrandCanyon and the Painted Desert passed homeward profoundly impressed andplanning quick return. No wonder that Brigham Young, who had visited it many years before witha party of Mormons seeking a refuge in event of Indian raids or of exilefrom their Zion, Salt Lake City, had looked upon its glory as prophetic, and named it Little Zion. Geologists found the spot a fruitful field of study. They found it alsoa masterpiece of desert beauty. "Again we are impressed with the marvellous beauty of outline, theinfinite complication of these titanic buttes, " wrote F. S. Dellenbaugh, topographer of the Powell party, on his second visit. "It is doubtful ifin this respect the valley has its equal. Not even the Grand Canyonoffers a more varied spectacle; yet all is welded together in a superbensemble. " "Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of Little Zion Canyon, " wroteC. E. Dutton. "In its proportions it is about equal to Yosemite, but inthe nobility and beauty of its sculptures there is no comparison. It isHyperion to a Satyr. No wonder the fierce Mormon zealot who named it wasreminded of the Great Zion on which his fervid thoughts were bent, of'houses not built with hands, eternal in the heavens. '" And Doctor G. K. Gilbert, whose intimate study of its recesses has becomea geological classic, declared it "the most wonderful defile" that ithad been even his experienced fortune to behold. Technical literature contains other outbursts of enthusiasticadmiration, some of eloquence, hidden, however, among pages soincomprehensible to the average lover of the sublime in Nature that theglory of Little Zion was lost in its very discovery. So remote did itlie from the usual lines of travel and traffic that, though itsimportance resulted in its conservation as a national monument in 1909, it was six or seven years more before its fame as a spectacle of thefirst order began to get about. The tales of adventurous explorers, asusual, were discounted. It was not until agencies seeking new touristattractions sent parties to verify reports that the public gaze wascentred upon the canyon's supreme loveliness. [Illustration] To picture Zion one must recall that the great plateau in which theVirgin River has sunk these canyons was once enormously higher than now. The erosion of hundreds of thousands, or, if you please, millions ofyears, has cut down and still is cutting down the plateau. These"Cyclopean steps, " each step the thickness of a stratum or a series ofstrata of hardened sands, mark progressive stages in the decompositionof the whole. Little Zion Canyon is an early stage in Nature's process of levellingstill another sandstone step, that is all; this one fortunately of manygorgeous hues. From the top of this layer we may look down thousands ofvertical feet into the painted canyon whose river still is sweeping outthe sands that Nature chisels from the cliffs; or from the canyon'sbottom we may look up thousands of feet to the cliffed and serrated topof the doomed plateau. These ornate precipices were carved by tricklingwater and tireless winds. These fluted and towered temples of masterdecoration were disclosed when watery chisels cut away the sands thatformerly had merged them with the ancient rock, just as the Lion ofLucerne was disclosed for the joy of the world when Thorwaldsen's chiselchipped away the Alpine rock surrounding its unformed image. The colors are even more extraordinary than the forms. The celebratedVermilion Cliff, which for more than a hundred miles streaks the desertlandscape with vivid red, here combines spectacularly with the WhiteCliff, another famous desert feature--two thousand feet of the redsurmounted by a thousand feet of the white. These constitute the body ofcolor. But there are other colors. The Vermilion Cliff rests upon the so-calledPainted Desert stratum, three hundred and fifty feet of a more insistentred relieved by mauve and purple shale. That in turn rests upon ahundred feet of brown conglomerate streaked with gray, the grave ofreptiles whose bones have survived a million years or more. And thatrests upon the greens and grays and yellows of the Belted Shales. Nor is this all, for far in the air above the wonderful White Cliff risein places six hundred feet of drab shales and chocolate limestonesintermixed with crimsons whose escaping dye drips in broad verticalstreaks across the glistening white. And even above that, in places, lieremnants of the mottled, many-colored beds of St. Elmo shales andlimestones in whose embrace, a few hundred miles away, lie embedded thebones of many monster dinosaurs of ages upon ages ago. Through these successive layers of sands and shales and limestones, thedeposits of a million years of earth's evolution, colored like a Romansash, glowing in the sun like a rainbow, the Virgin River has cut avertical section, and out of its sides the rains of centuries ofcenturies have detached monster monoliths and temples of marvellous sizeand fantastic shape, upon whose many-angled surfaces water and wind havesculptured ten thousand fanciful designs and decorations. The way in to this desert masterpiece of southern Utah is a hundredmiles of progressive preparation. From railroad to canyon there is notan unuseful mile or hour. It is as if all were planned, step by step, tomake ready the mind of the traveller to receive the revelation withfullest comprehension. To one approaching who does not know the desert, the motion-picture onthe screen of the car-window is exciting in its mystery. These vast aridbottomlands of prehistoric Lake Bonneville, girded by mountain groupsand ranges as arid as the sands from which they lift their tawny sides, provoke suggestive questions of the past. [Illustration: THE WESTERN TEMPLE THE EASTERN TEMPLE OUTLINES OF THEWESTERN AND EASTERN TEMPLES, ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT _From drawings by William H. Holmes_] In this receptive mood the traveller reaches Lund and an automobile. The ride to Cedar City, where he spends the night, shows him thesage-dotted desert at close range. His horizon is one of bare, ruggedmountains. In front of him rise the "Cyclopean steps" in long, irregular, deeply indented sweeps. The vivid Pink Cliff, which, had itnot long since been washed away from Little Zion, would have addedanother tier of color to its top, here, on the desert, remains a distanthorizon. The road climbs Lake Bonneville's southern shore, and, at CedarCity, reaches the glorified sandstones. From Cedar City to the canyon one sweeps through Mormon settlementsfounded more than sixty years ago, a region of stream-watered valleysknown of old as Dixie. The road is part of the Arrowhead Trail, once infact a historic trail, now a motor-highway between Salt Lake and LosAngeles. The valleys bloom. Pomegranates, figs, peaches, apricots, melons, walnuts, and almonds reach a rare perfection. Cotton, whichBrigham Young started here as an experiment in 1861, is still grown. Lusty cottonwood-trees line the banks of the little rivers. Cedars dotthe valleys and cover thickly the lower hills. And everywhere, on everyside, the arid cliffs close in. The Pink Cliff has been left behind, butthe Vermilion Cliff constantly appears. The White Cliff enters andstays. Long stretches of road overlie one and another colored stratum;presently the ground is prevailingly red, with here and there reaches ofmauve, yellow, green, and pink. Cedar City proves to be a quaint, straggling Mormon village with a touchof modern enterprise; south of Cedar City the villages lack theenterprise. The houses are of a gray composition resembling adobe, andmany of them are half a century old and more. Dilapidated square forts, reminders of pioneer struggles with the Indians, are seen here andthere. Compact Mormon churches are in every settlement, however small. The men are bearded, coatless, and wear baggy trousers, suggestive ofHolland. Bronzed and deliberate women, who drive teams and work thefields with the men, wear old-fashioned sunbonnets. Many of these peoplehave never seen a railroad-train. Newspapers are scarce and long pastdate. Here Mormonism of the older fashion is a living religion, affecting the routine of daily life. Dixie is a land of plenty, but it is a foreign land. It is reminiscent, with many differences, of an Algerian oasis. The traveller is immenselyinterested. Somehow these strange primitive villages, these simple, earnest, God-fearing people, merge into unreality with the desert, thesage-dotted mountains, the cedar-covered slopes, the blooming valleys, the colored sands, and the vivid cliffs. Through Bellevue, Toquerville, the ruins of Virgin City, Rockville, andfinally to Springdale winds the road. Meantime the traveller has speededsouth under the Hurricane Cliff, which is the ragged edge left when allthe land west of it sank two thousand feet during some geologic timelong past. He reaches the Virgin River where it emerges from the greatcliffs in whose recesses it is born, and whence it carries in its broadmuddy surge the products of their steady disintegration. From here on, swinging easterly up-stream, sensation hastens to itsclimax. Here the Hurricane Cliff sends aloft an impressive butte paintedin slanting colors and capped with black basalt. Farther on a ruggedpromontory striped with vivid tints pushes out from the southern wallnearly to the river's brink. The cliffs on both sides of the river arecarved from the stratum which geologists call the Belted Shales. Greenish-grays, brownish-yellows, many shades of bright red, areprominent; it is hard to name a color or shade which is not representedin its horizontal bands. "The eye tires and the mind flags in theirpresence, " writes Professor Willis T. Lee. "To try to realize in anhour's time the beauty and variety of detail here presented is asuseless as to try to grasp the thoughts expressed in whole rows ofvolumes by walking through a library. " Far up the canyon which North Creek pushes through this banded cliff, two towering cones of glistening white are well named GuardianAngels--of the stream which roars between their feet. Eagle Crag, whichMoran painted, looms into view. On the south appears the majesticmassing of needle-pointed towers which Powell named the Pinnacles of theVirgin. The spectacular confuses with its brilliant variations. At the confluence of the Virgin River and its North Fork, known of oldas the Parunuweap and the Mukuntuweap, the road sweeps northward up theMukuntuweap. There have been differing reports of the meaning of thisword, which gave the original name to the national monument. It hasbeen popularly accepted as meaning "Land of God, " but John R. Wallis, ofSt. George, Utah, has traced it to its original Indian source. Mukuntuweap, he writes, means "Land of the Springs, " and Parunuweap"Land of the Birds. " Reaching Springdale, at the base of the Vermilion Cliff, the travellerlooks up-stream to the valley mouth through which the river emerges fromthe cliffs, and a spectacle without parallel meets his eye. Left of thegorgeous entrance rises the unbelievable West Temple of the Virgin, and, merging with it from behind, loom the lofty Towers of the Virgin. Opposite these, and back from the canyon's eastern brink, rises theloftier and even more majestic East Temple of the Virgin. Between themhe sees a perspective of red and white walls, domes, and pinnacles whichthrills him with expectation. And so, fully prepared in mind and spirit, awed and exultant, he entersZion. Few natural objects which have been described so seldom have provokedsuch extravagant praise as the West Temple. It is seen from a foregroundof gliding river, cottonwood groves, and talus slopes dotted withmanzanita, sage, cedars, and blooming cactus. From a stairway of mingledyellows, reds, grays, mauves, purples, and chocolate brown, it springsabruptly four thousand feet. Its body is a brilliant red. Its upperthird is white. It has the mass and proportions, the dignity andgrandeur, of a cathedral. It is supremely difficult to realize that itwas not designed, so true to human conception are the upright form andmass of its central structure, the proportioning and modelling of itsextensive wings and buttresses. On top of the lofty central rectanglerests, above its glistening white, a low squared cap of deepest red. Itis a temple in the full as well as the noblest sense of the word. The East Temple, which rises directly opposite and two miles back fromthe rim, is a fitting companion. It is a thousand feet higher. Itscentral structure is a steep truncated cone capped like the West Temple. Its wings are separated half-way down, one an elongated pyramid and theother a true cone, both of magnificent size and bulk but trulyproportioned to the central mass. Phrase does not convey the suggestionof architectural calculation in both of these stupendous monuments. Onecan easily believe that the Mormon prophet in naming them saw them thedesigned creations of a personal deity. A more definite conception of Nature's gigantic processes follows uponrealization that these lofty structures once joined across the canyon, stratum for stratum, color for color. The rock that joined them, disintegrated by the frosts and rains, has passed down the muddy currentof the Virgin, down the surging tide of the Colorado, through the GrandCanyon, and into the Pacific. Some part of these sands doubtless helpedto build the peninsula of Lower California. Passing the gates the traveller stands in a trench of nearlyperpendicular sides more than half a mile deep, half a mile wide at thebottom, a mile wide from crest to crest. The proportions andmeasurements suggest Yosemite, but there is little else in common. Thesewalls blaze with color. On the west the Streaked Wall, carved from theWhite Cliff, is stained with the drip from the red and drab andchocolate shales and limestones not yet wholly washed from its top. Itis a vivid thing, wonderfully eroded. Opposite is the Brown Wall, richin hue, supporting three stupendous structures of gorgeous color, two ofwhich are known as the Mountain of the Sun and the Watchman. Togetherthey are the Sentinels. Passing these across a plaza apparentlybroadened for their better presentation rise on the west the ThreePatriarchs, Yosemite-like in form, height, and bulk, but not inpersonality or color. The brilliance of this wonder-spot passesdescription. Here the canyon contracts, and we come to the comfortable hotel-camp, terminal of the automobile journey. It is on the river side in a shadyalcove of the east wall near a spring. Here horses may be had forexploration. A mile above the camp stands one of the most remarkable monoliths of theregion. El Gobernador is a colossal truncated dome, red below and whiteabove. The white crown is heavily marked in two directions, suggestingthe web and woof of drapery. Directly opposite, a lesser monolith, nevertheless gigantic, is suggestively if sentimentally called Angel'sLanding. A natural bridge which is still in Nature's workshop is one ofthe interesting spectacles of this vicinity. Its splendid arch is fullyformed, but the wall against which it rests its full length remains, broken through in one spot only. How many thousands or hundreds ofthousands of years will be required to wipe away the wall and leave thebridge complete is for those to guess who will. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Douglas White_ EL GOBERNADOR, ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT Three thousand feet high; the lower two thousand feet is a brilliantred, the upper thousand feet is white] Here also is the valley end of a wire cable which passes upwardtwenty-five hundred feet to cross a break in the wall to a forest on themesa's top. Lumber is Dixie's most hardly furnished need. For years sawntimbers have been cabled down into the valley and carted to the villagesof the Virgin River. In some respects the most fascinating part of Little Zion is stillbeyond. A mile above El Gobernador the river swings sharply west anddoubles on itself. Raspberry Bend is far nobler than its name implies, and the Great Organ which the river here encircles exacts no imaginativeeffort. Beyond this the canyon narrows rapidly. The road has long sincestopped, and soon the trail stops. Presently the river, now a shrunkenstream, concealing occasional quicksands, offers the only footing. Thewalls are no less lofty, no less richly colored, and the weary travellerworks his difficult way forward. There will come a time if he persists when he may stand at the bottom ofa chasm more than two thousand feet deep and, nearly touching the wallson either side, look up and see no sky. "At the water's edge the walls are perpendicular, " writes Doctor G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, who first described it, "but inthe deeper parts they open out toward the top. As we entered and foundour outlook of sky contracted--as we had never before seen it betweencanyon cliffs--I measured the aperture above, and found it thirty-fivedegrees. We had thought this a minimum, but soon discovered our error. Nearer and nearer the walls approached, and our strip of blue narroweddown to twenty degrees, then ten, and at last was even intercepted bythe overhanging rocks. There was, perhaps, no point from which, neitherforward nor backward, could we discover a patch of sky, but many timesour upward view was completely cut off by the interlocking of the walls, which, remaining nearly parallel to each other, warped in and out asthey ascended. " Here he surprises the secret of the making of Zion. "As a monument of denudation, this chasm is an example of downwarderosion by sand-bearing water. The principle on which the cuttingdepends is almost identical with that of the marble saw, but the sandgrains, instead of being embedded in rigid iron, are carried by aflexible stream of water. By gravity they have been held against thebottom of the cut, so that they should make it vertical, but the currenthas carried them, in places, against one side or the other, and so farmodified the influence of gravity that the cut undulates somewhat in itsvertical section, as well as in its horizontal. " [Illustration: _From a photograph by the U. S. Geological Survey_ ZION CANYON FROM THE RIM] [Illustration: THE THREE PATRIARCHS, ZION CANYON These red-and-white structures rise more than two thousand feet abovethe canyon floor] This, then, is how Nature began, on the original surface of theplateau, perhaps with the output of a spring shower, to dig this wholemighty spectacle for our enjoyment to-day. We may go further. We mayimagine the beginning of the titanic process that dug the millions ofmillions of chasms, big and little, contributing to the mighty Colorado, that dug the Grand Canyon itself, that reduced to the glorified thing itnow is the enormous plateau of our great southwest, which would havebeen many thousands of feet higher than the highest pinnacle of LittleZion had not erosion more than counteracted the uplifting of theplateau. Little else need be said to complete this picture. The rains and meltingsnows of early spring produce mesa-top torrents which pour into thevalley and hasten for a period the processes of decorating the walls andlevelling the plateau. So it happens that waterfalls of power and beautythen enrich this wondrous spectacle. But this added beauty is not forthe tourist, who may come in comfort only after its disappearance. But springs are many. Trickling from various levels in the walls, theydevelop new tributary gorges. Gushing from the foundations, they createalcoves and grottos which are in sharp contrast with their desertenvironment, enriching by dampness the colors of the sandstone anddecorating these refreshment-places with trailing ferns and floweringgrowths. In these we see the origin of the Indian name, Mukuntuweap, Land of the Springs. The Indians, however, always stood in awe of Little Zion. They enteredit, but feared the night. In 1918 President Wilson changed the name from Mukuntuweap to Zion. Atthe same time he greatly enlarged the reservation. Zion NationalMonument now includes a large area of great and varied desertmagnificence, including the sources and canyons of two other streamsbesides Mukuntuweap. XVIII HISTORIC MONUMENTS OF THE SOUTHWEST Eleven national monuments in the States of Arizona, New Mexico, andColorado illustrate the history of our southwest from the times whenprehistoric man dwelt in caves hollowed in desert precipices downthrough the Spanish fathers' centuries of self-sacrifice and the Spanishexplorers' romantic search for the Quivira and the Seven Cities ofCibola. The most striking feature of the absorbing story of the Spanishoccupation is its twofold inspiration. Hand in hand the priest and thesoldier boldly invaded the desert. The passion of the priest was thesaving of souls, and the motive of the soldier was the greed of gold. The priest deprecated the soldier; the soldier despised the priest. Eachused the other for the realization of his own purposes. The zealouspriest, imposing his religion upon the shrinking Indian, did nothesitate to invoke the soldier's aid for so holy a purpose; the soldierused the gentle priest to cloak the greedy business of wringing wealthfrom the frugal native. Together, they hastened civilization. Glancing for a moment still further back, the rapacious hordes alreadyhad gutted the rich stores of Central America and the northern regionsof South America. The rush of the lustful conqueror was astonishinglyswift. Columbus himself was as eager for gold as he was zealous forreligion. From the discovery of America scarcely twenty years elapsedbefore Spanish armies were violently plundering the Caribbean Islands, ruthlessly subjugating Mexico, overrunning Venezuela, and eagerlyseeking tidings of the reputed wealth of Peru. The air was superchargedwith reports of treasure, and no reports were too wild for belief;myths, big and little, ran amuck. El Dorado, the gilded man of rumor, became the dream, then the belief, of the times; presently a wholenation was conceived clothed in dusted gold. The myth of the SevenCities of Cibola, each a city of vast treasure, the growth of years ofrumor, seems to have perfected itself back home in Spain. The twice-bornmyth of Quivira, city of gold, which cost thousands of lives andhundreds of thousands of Spanish ducats, lives even to-day in remoteneighborhoods of the southwest. Pizarro conquered Peru in 1526; by 1535, with the south looted, Spanisheyes looked longingly northward. In 1539 Fray Marcos, a Franciscan, madea reconnaissance from the Spanish settlements of Sonora into Arizonawith the particular purpose of locating the seven cities. The followingyear Coronado, at his own expense, made the most romantic exploration inhuman history. Spanish expectation may be measured by the cost of thisand its accompanying expedition by sea to the Gulf of California, thecombined equipment totalling a quarter million dollars of American moneyof to-day. Coronado took two hundred and sixty horsemen, sixtyfoot-soldiers, and more than a thousand Indians. Besides hispack-animals he led a thousand spare horses to carry home the loot. He sought the seven cities in Arizona and New Mexico, and found thepueblo of Zuñi, prosperous but lacking its expected hoard of gold; hecrossed Colorado in search of Quivira and found it in Kansas, a wretchedhabitation of a shiftless tribe; their houses straw, he reported, theirclothes the hides of cows, meaning bison. He entered Nebraska in searchof the broad river whose shores were lined with gold--the identicalyear, curiously, in which De Soto discovered the Mississippi. Many werethe pueblos he visited and many his adventures and perils; but the onlytreasure he brought back was his record of exploration. This was the first of more than two centuries of Spanish expeditions. Fifty years after Coronado, the myth of Quivira was born again;thereafter it wandered homeless, the inspiration of constant search, andfinally settled in the ruins of the ancient pueblo of Tabirá, or, asBandelier has it, Teypaná, New Mexico; the myth of the seven citiesnever wholly perished. It is not my purpose to follow the fascinating fortunes of Spanishproselyting and conquest. I merely set the stage for the tableaux of thenational monuments. I The Spaniards found our semiarid southwest dotted thinly with thepueblos and its canyons hung with the cliff-dwellings of a large andfairly prosperous population of peace-loving Indians, who hunted thedeer and the antelope, fished the rivers, and dry-farmed the mesas andvalleys. Not so advanced in the arts of civilization as the people ofthe Mesa Verde, in Colorado, nevertheless their sense of form was patentin their architecture, and their family life, government, and religionwere highly organized. They were worshippers of the sun. Each pueblo andoutlying village was a political unit. Let us first consider those national monuments which touch intimatelythe Spanish occupation. GRAN QUIVIRA NATIONAL MONUMENT Eighty miles southeast of Albuquerque, in the hollow of towering desertranges, lies the arid country which Indian tradition calls the AccursedLakes. Here, at the points of a large triangle, sprawl the ruins ofthree once flourishing pueblo cities, Abo, Cuaray, and Tabirá. Once, says tradition, streams flowed into lakes inhabited by great fish, andthe valleys bloomed; it was an unfaithful wife who brought down thecurse of God. When the Spaniards came these cities were at the flood-tide ofprosperity. Their combined population was large. Tabirá was chosen asthe site of the mission whose priests should trudge the long deserttrails and minister to all. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most important of the early Spanishmissions. The greater of the two churches was built of limestone, itsouter walls six feet thick. It was a hundred and forty feet long andforty-eight feet wide. The present height of the walls is twenty-fivefeet. The ancient community building adjoining the church, the main pueblo ofTabirá, has the outlines which are common to the prehistoric pueblos ofthe entire southwest and persist in general features in modern Indianarchitecture. The rooms are twelve to fifteen feet square, with ceilingseight or ten feet high. Doors connect the rooms, and the stories, ofwhich there are three, are connected by ladders through trapdoors. Itprobably held a population of fifteen hundred. The pueblo has well stoodthe rack of time; the lesser buildings outside it have been reduced tomounds. The people who built and inhabited these cities of the Accursed Lakeswere of the now extinct Piro stock. The towns were discovered in 1581 byFrancisco Banchez de Chamuscado. The first priest assigned to the fieldwas Fray Francisco de San Miguel, this in 1598. The mission of Tabiráwas founded by Francisco de Acevedo about 1628. The smaller church wasbuilt then; the great church was built in 1644, but was never fullyfinished. Between 1670 and 1675 all three native cities and theirSpanish churches were wiped out by Apaches. Charles F. Lummis, from whom some of these historical facts are quoted, has been at great pains to trace the wanderings of the Quivira myth. Bandelier mentions an ancient New Mexican Indian called Tio Juan Largo, who told a Spanish explorer about the middle of the eighteenth centurythat Quivira was Tabirá. Otherwise history is silent concerning theprocess by which the myth finally settled upon that historic city, farindeed from its authentic home in what now is Kansas. The fact stands, however, that as late as the latter half of the eighteenth century thename Tabirá appeared on the official map of New Mexico. When and howthis name was lost and the famous ruined city with its Spanish churchesaccepted as Gran Quivira perhaps never will be definitely known. "Mid-ocean is not more lonesome than the plains, nor night so gloomy asthat dumb sunlight, " wrote Lummis in 1893, approaching the Gran Quiviraacross the desert. "The brown grass is knee-deep, and even this shockgives a surprise in this hoof-obliterated land. The bands of antelopethat drift, like cloud shadows, across the dun landscape suggest less oflife than of the supernatural. The spell of the plains is a wondrousthing. At first it fascinates. Then it bewilders. At last it crushes. Itis intangible but resistless; stronger than hope, reason, will--strongerthan humanity. When one cannot otherwise escape the plains, one takesrefuge in madness. " This is the setting of the "ghost city" of "ashen hues, " that "wraithin pallid stone, " the Gran Quivira. EL MORRO NATIONAL MONUMENT Due west from Albuquerque, New Mexico, not far from the Arizonaboundary, El Morro National Monument conserves a mesa end of strikingbeauty upon whose cliffs are graven many inscriptions cut in passing bythe Spanish and American explorers of more than two centuries. It is ahistorical record of unique value, the only extant memoranda of severalexpeditions, an invaluable detail in the history of many. It has helpedtrace obscure courses and has established important departures. To thetourist it brings home, as nothing else can, the realization of thesegrim romances of other days. El Morro, the castle, is also called Inscription Rock. West of itssteepled front, in the angle of a sharp bend in the mesa, is a largepartly enclosed natural chamber, a refuge in storm. A spring herebetrays the reason for El Morro's popularity among the explorers of asemidesert region. The old Zuñi trail bent from its course to touch thisspring. Inscriptions are also found near the spring and on the outerside of the mesa facing the Zuñi Road. For those acquainted with the story of Spanish exploration this nationalmonument will have unique interest. To all it imparts a fascinatingsense of the romance of those early days with which the large body ofAmericans have yet to become familiar. The popular story of thisromantic period of American history, its poetry and its fiction remainto be written. The oldest inscription is dated February 18, 1526. The name of Juan deOñate, later founder of Santa Fé, is there under date of 1606, the yearof his visit to the mouth of the Colorado River. One of the latestSpanish inscriptions is that of Don Diego de Vargas, who in 1692reconquered the Indians who rebelled against Spanish authority in 1680. The reservation also includes several important community houses ofgreat antiquity, one of which perches safely upon the very top of ElMorro rock. CASA GRANDE NATIONAL MONUMENT In the far south of Arizona not many miles north of the boundary ofSonora, there stands, near the Gila River, the noble ruin which theSpaniards call Casa Grande, or Great House. It was a building of largesize situated in a compound of outlying buildings enclosed in arectangular wall; no less than three other similar compounds and fourdetached clan houses once stood in the near neighborhood. Evidently, inprehistoric days, this was an important centre of population; remains ofan irrigation system are still visible. [Illustration: CASA GRANDE NATIONAL MONUMENT] [Illustration: PREHISTORIC CAVE HOMES IN THE BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT The holes worn by erosion have been enlarged for doors and windows] The builders of these prosperous communal dwellings were probably PimaIndians. The Indians living in the neighborhood to-day have traditionsindicated by their own names for the Casa Grande, the Old House of theChief and the Old House of Chief Morning Green. "The Pima word for greenand blue is the same, " Doctor Fewkes writes me. "Russell translates theold chief's name Morning Blue, which is the same as my Morning Green. Ihave no doubt Morning Glow is also correct, no doubt nearer the Indianidea which refers to sun-god. This chief was the son of the Sun by amaid, as was also Tcuhu-Montezuma, a sun-god who, legends say, builtCasa Grande. " Whatever its origin, the community was already in ruins when theSpaniards first found it. Kino identified it as the ruin which FrayMarcos saw in 1539 and called Chichilticalli, and which Coronado passedin 1540. The early Spanish historians believed it an ancestralsettlement of the Aztecs. Its formal discovery followed a century and a half later. DomingoJironza Petriz de Cruzate, governor of Sonora, had directed his nephew, Lieutenant Juan Mateo Mange, to conduct a group of missionaries into thedesert, where Mange heard rumors from the natives of a fine group ofruins on the banks of a river which flowed west. He reported this toFather Eusebio Francisco Kino, the fearless and famous Jesuit missionaryamong the Indians from 1687 to 1711; in November, 1694, Kino searchedfor the ruins, found them, and said mass within the walls of the CasaGrande. This splendid ruin is built of a natural concrete called culeche. Theexternal walls are rough, but are smoothly plastered within, showing themarks of human hands. Two pairs of small holes in the walls oppositeothers in the central room have occasioned much speculation. Two lookeast and west; the others, also on opposite walls, look north andsouth. Some persons conjecture that observations were made through themof the solstices, and perhaps of some star, to establish the seasons forthese primitive people. "The foundation for this unwarrantedhypothesis, " Doctor Fewkes writes, "is probably a statement in amanuscript by Father Font in 1775, that the 'Prince, ' 'chief' of CasaGrande, looked through openings in the east and west walls 'on the sunas it rose and set, to salute it. ' The openings should not be confusedwith smaller holes made in the walls for placing iron rods to supportthe walls by contractors when the ruin was repaired. " TUMACACORI NATIONAL MONUMENT One of the best-preserved ruins of one of the finest missions whichSpanish priests established in the desert of the extreme south ofArizona is protected under the name of the Tumacacori National Monument. It is fifty-seven miles south of Tucson, near the Mexican border. Theoutlying country probably possessed a large native population. The ruins are most impressive, consisting of the walls and tower of anold church building, the walls of a mortuary chapel at the north end ofthe church, and a surrounding court with adobe walls six feet high. These, like all the Spanish missions, were built by Indian convertsunder the direction of priests, for the Spanish invaders performed nomanual labor. The walls of the church are six feet thick and plasteredwithin. The belfry and the altar-dome are of burned brick, the onlyexample of brick construction among the early Spanish missions. There isa fine arched doorway. [Illustration: TUMACACORI MISSION] [Illustration: _From a photograph by T. H. Bate_ MONTEZUMA CASTLE] For many reasons, this splendid church is well worth a visit. It wasfounded and built about 1688 by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, and wasknown as the Mission San Cayetano de Tumacacori. About 1769 theFranciscans assumed charge, and repaired and elaborated the structure. They maintained it for about sixty years, until the Apache Indians laidsiege and finally captured it, driving out the priests and dispersingthe Papagos. About 1850 it was found by Americans in its presentcondition. NAVAJO NATIONAL MONUMENT The boundary-line which divides Utah from Arizona divides the mostgorgeous expression of the great American desert region. From the MesaVerde National Park on the east to Zion National Monument on the west, from the Natural Bridges on the north to the Grand Canyon and thePainted Desert on the south, the country glows with golden sands andcrimson mesas, a wilderness of amazing and impossible contours andindescribable charm. Within this region, in the extreme north of Arizona, lie the ruins ofthree neighboring pueblos. Richard Wetherill, who was one of thediscoverers of the famous cliff-cities of the Mesa Verde, was one of theparty which found the Kit Siel (Broken Pottery) ruin in 1894 within along crescent-shaped cave in the side of a glowing red sandstone cliff;in 1908, upon information given by a Navajo Indian, John Wetherill, Professor Byron Cumming, and Neil Judd located Betatakin (HillsideHouse) ruin within a crescent-shaped cavity in the side of a small redcanyon. Twenty miles west of Betatakin is a small ruin known asInscription House upon whose walls is a carved inscription supposed tohave been made by Spanish explorers who visited them in 1661. While these ruins show no features materially differing from those ofhundreds of other more accessible pueblo ruins, they possess quiteextraordinary beauty because of their romantic location in cliffs ofstriking color in a region of mysterious charm. II But the Indian civilization of our southwest began very many centuriesbefore the arrival of the Spaniard, who found, besides the innumerablepueblos which were crowded with busy occupants, hundreds of puebloswhich had been deserted by their builders, some of them for centuries, and which lay even then in ruins. The desertion of so many pueblos with abundant pottery and otherevidences of active living is one of the mysteries of this prehistoriccivilization. No doubt, with the failure of water-supplies and otherchanging physical conditions, occasionally communities sought betterliving in other localities, but it is certain that many of thesedesertions resulted from the raids of the wandering predatory tribes ofthe plains, the Querechos of Bandelier's records, but usually mentionedby him and others by the modern name of Apaches. These fierce bandscontinually sought to possess themselves of the stores of food andclothing to be found in the prosperous pueblos. The utmost cruelties ofthe Spanish invaders who, after all, were ruthless only in pursuit ofgold, and, when this was lacking, tolerant and even kindly in theirtreatment of the natives, were nothing compared to the atrocities ofthese Apache Indians, who gloried in conquest. Of the ruins of pueblos which were not identified with Spanishoccupation, six have been conserved as national monuments. THE BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT Many centuries before the coming of the Spaniards, a deep gorge on theeastern slope of the Sierra de los Valles, eighteen miles west of SantaFé, New Mexico, was the home of a people living in caves which theyhollowed by enlarging erosional openings in the soft volcanic sides ofnearly perpendicular cliffs. The work was done with pains and skill. Asmall entrance, sometimes from the valley floor, sometimes reached byladder, opened into a roomy apartment which in many cases consisted ofseveral connecting rooms. These apartments were set in tiers or stories, as in a modern flat-house. There were often two, sometimes three, floors. They occurred in groups, probably representing families orclans, and some of these groups numbered hundreds. Seen to-day, thecliff-side suggests not so much the modern apartment-house, of which itwas in a way the prehistoric prototype, as a gigantic pigeon-house. In time these Indians emerged from the cliff and built a greatsemi-circular pueblo up the valley, surrounded by smaller habitations. Other pueblos, probably still later in origin, were built uponsurrounding mesas. All these habitations were abandoned perhapscenturies before the coming of the Spaniards. The gorge is known as theRito de la Frijoles, which is the Spanish name of the clearmountain-stream which flows through it. Since 1916 it has been known asthe Bandelier National Monument, after the late Adolf Francis Bandelier, the distinguished archæologist of the southwest. The valley is a place of beauty. It is six miles long and nowherebroader than half a mile; its entrance scarcely admits two personsabreast. Its southern wall is the slope of a tumbled mesa, its northernwall the vertical cliff of white and yellowish pumice in which the caveswere dug. The walls rise in crags and pinnacles many hundreds of feet. Willows, cottonwoods, cherries, and elders grow in thickets along thestream-side, and cactus decorates the wastes. It is reached byautomobile from Santa Fé. This national monument lies within a large irregular area which has beensuggested for a national park because of the many interesting remainswhich it encloses. The Cliff Cities National Park, when it finally comesinto existence, will include among its exhibits a considerable group ofprehistoric shrines of great value and unusual popular interest. "The Indians of to-day, " writes William Boone Douglass, "guard withgreat tenacity the secrets of their shrines. Even when the locationshave been found they will deny their existence, plead ignorance of theirmeaning, or refuse to discuss the subject in any form. " Nevertheless, they claim direct descent from the prehistoric shrine-builders, many ofwhose shrines are here found among others of later origin. CHACO CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT For fourteen miles, both sides of a New Mexican canyon sixty-five milesequidistant from Farmington and Gallup are lined with the ruins of verylarge and prosperous colonies of prehistoric people. Most of thebuildings were pueblos, many of them containing between fifty and ahundred rooms; one, known to-day as Pueblo Bonito, must have containedtwelve hundred rooms. These ruins lie in their original desolation; little excavation, and norestoration has yet been done. Chaco Canyon must have been the centre ofa very large population. For miles in all directions, particularlywestward, pueblos are grouped as suburbs group near cities of to-day. It is not surprising that so populous a desert neighborhood requiredextensive systems of irrigation. One of these is so well preserved thatlittle more than the repair of a dam would be necessary to make it againeffective. MONTEZUMA CASTLE NATIONAL MONUMENT Small though it is, Montezuma Castle is justly one of the mostcelebrated prehistoric ruins in America. Its charming proportions, andparticularly its commanding position in the face of a lofty precipice, make it a spectacle never to be forgotten. It is fifty-four miles fromPrescott, Arizona. This structure was a communal house which originally containedtwenty-five rooms. The protection of the dry climate and of the shallowcave in which it stands has well preserved it these many centuries. Mostof the rooms are in good condition. The timbers, which plainly show thehacking of the dull primeval stone axes, are among its most interestingexhibits. The building is crescent-shaped, sixty feet in width and aboutfifty feet high. It is five stories high, but the fifth story isinvisible from the front because of the high stone wall of the façade. The cliff forms the back wall of the structure. Montezuma's Castle is extremely old. Its material is soft calcareousstone, and nothing but its sheltered position could have preserved it. There are many ruined dwellings in the neighborhood. TONTO NATIONAL MONUMENT Four miles east of the Roosevelt Dam and eighty miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, are two small groups of cliff-dwellings which together form theTonto National Monument. The southern group occupies a cliff cavern ahundred and twenty-five feet across. The masonry is above the average. The ceilings of the lower rooms are constructed of logs laid lengthwise, upon which a layer of fibre serves as the foundation for the four-inchadobe floor of the chamber overhead. There are hundreds of cliff-dwellings which exceed this in charm andinterest, but its nearness to an attraction like the Roosevelt Dam andglimpses of it which the traveller catches as he speeds over the ApacheTrail make it invaluable as a tourist exhibit. Thousands who are unableto undertake the long and often arduous journeys by trail to the greaterruins, can here get definite ideas and a hint of the real flavor ofprehistoric civilization in America. WALNUT CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT Thirty cliff-dwellings cling to the sides of picturesque Walnut Canyon, eight miles from Flagstaff, Arizona. They are excellently preserved. Thelargest contains eight rooms. The canyon possesses unusual beautybecause of the thickets of locust which fringe the trail down from therim. One climbs down ladders to occasional ruins which otherwise areinaccessible. Because of its nearness to Flagstaff several thousandpersons visit this reservation yearly. GILA CLIFFS NATIONAL MONUMENT Fifty miles northeast of Silver City, New Mexico, a deep rough canyon inthe west fork of the Gila River contains a group of four cliff-dwellingsin a fair state of preservation. They lie in cavities in the base of anoverhanging cliff of grayish-yellow volcanic rock which at one timeapparently were closed by protecting walls. When discovered byprospectors and hunters about 1870, many sandals, baskets, spears, andcooking utensils were found strewn on the floors. Corn-cobs are all thatvandals have left. XIX DESERT SPECTACLES The American desert, to eyes attuned, is charged with beauty. Few whosee it from the car-window find it attractive; most travellers quicklylose interest in its repetitions and turn back to their novels. A littleintimacy changes this attitude. Live a little with the desert. See it inits varied moods--for every hour it changes; see it at sunrise, atmidday, at sunset, in the ghostly night, by moonlight. Observe itslife--for it is full of life; its amazing vegetation; its variedoutline. Drink in its atmosphere, its history, its tradition, itsromance. Open your soul to its persuading spirit. Then, insensibly butswiftly, its flavor will enthrall your senses; it will possess you. Andonce possessed, you are charmed for life. It will call you again andagain, as the sea calls the sailor and the East its devotees. This alluring region is represented in our national parks system byreservations which display its range. The Zion National Monument, theGrand Canyon, and the Mesa Verde illustrate widely differing phases. Thehistorical monuments convey a sense of its romance. There remain a fewto complete the gamut of its charms. THE RAINBOW BRIDGE NATIONAL MONUMENT Imagine a gray Navajo desert dotted with purple sage; huge mesas, deepred, squared against the gray-blue atmosphere of the horizon; pinnacles, spires, shapes like monstrous bloody fangs, springing from the sands; afloor as rough as stormy seas, heaped with tumbled rocks, red, yellow, blue, green, grayish-white, between which rise strange yellowish-greenthorny growths, cactus-like and unfamiliar; a pathless waste, strewnwith obsidian fragments, glaring in the noon sun, more confusing thanthe crooked mazes of an ancient Oriental city. Imagine shapeless masses of colored sandstone, unclimbable, barring theway; acres of polished mottled rock tilted at angles which defycrossing; unexpected canyons whose deep, broken, red and yellowprecipices force long detours. And everywhere color, color, color. It pervades the glowing floor, theuprising edifices. The very air palpitates with color, insistent, irresistible, indefinable. This is the setting of the Rainbow Bridge. Scarcely more than a hundred persons besides Indians, they tell me, haveseen this most entrancing spectacle, perhaps, of all America. The way inis long and difficult. There are only two or three who know it, even ofthose who have been there more than once, and the region has noinhabitants to point directions among the confusing rocks. There is nowater, nor any friendly tree. [Illustration: ROOSEVELT PARTY IN MONUMENT VALLEY] [Illustration: RAINBOW BRIDGE IN FULL PERSPECTIVE] The day's ride is wearying in the extreme in spite of its fascinations. The objective is Navajo Mountain, which, strange spectacle in thisdesert waste, is forested to its summit with yellow pine above asurrounding belt of juniper and pinyon, with aspen and willows, wildroses, Indian paint-brush, primrose, and clematis in its lower valleys. Below, the multicolored desert, deep cut with the canyons which carryoff the many little rivers. Down one of these wild and highly colored desert canyons among whosevivid tumbled rocks your horses pick their course with difficulty, yousuddenly see a rainbow caught among the vivid bald rocks, a slender archso deliciously proportioned, so gracefully curved among its sharpsurroundings, that your eye fixes it steadfastly and your heart boundswith relief; until now you had not noticed the oppression of thisangled, spine-carpeted landscape. From now on nothing else possesses you. The eccentricity of the goingconstantly hides it, and each reappearance brings again the joy ofdiscovery. And at last you reach it, dismount beside the small clearstream which flows beneath it, approach reverently, overwhelmed with astrange mingling of awe and great elation. You stand beneath itsenormous encircling red and yellow arch and perceive that it is thesupport which holds up the sky. It is long before turbulent emotionpermits the mind to analyze the elements which compose its extraordinarybeauty. Dimensions mean little before spectacles like this. To know that thespan is two hundred and seventy-eight feet may help realization at home, where it may be laid out, staked and looked at; it exceeds a block ofFifth Avenue in New York. To know that the apex of the rainbow's curveis three hundred and nine feet above your wondering eyes means nothingto you there; but to those who know New York City it means the height ofthe Flatiron Building built three stories higher. Choose a building ofequal height in your own city, stand beside it and look up. Then imagineit a gigantic monolithic arch of entrancing proportions and fascinatingcurve, glowing in reds and yellows which merge into each otherinsensibly and without form or pattern. Imagine this fairy unrealityoutlined, not against the murk which overlies cities, but against a skyof desert clarity and color. All natural bridges are created wholly by erosion. This was carved froman outstanding spur of Navajo sandstone which lay crosswise of thecanyon. Originally the stream struck full against this barrier, swungsideways, and found its way around the spur's free outer edge. The endwas merely a matter of time. Gradually but surely the stream, sand-ladenin times of flood, wore an ever-deepening hollow in the barrier. Finallyit wore it through and passed under what then became a bridge. Butmeantime other agencies were at work. The rocky wall above, alternatelyhot and cold, as happens in high arid lands, detached curved, flattenedplates. Worn below by the stream, thinned above by the destructiveprocesses of wind and temperature, the window enlarged. In time theRainbow Bridge evolved in all its glorious beauty. Not far away isanother natural bridge well advanced in the making. The Rainbow Bridge was discovered in 1909 by William Boone Douglass, Examiner of Surveys in the General Land Office, Santa Fé. Following isan abstract of the government report covering the discovery: "The information had come to Mr. Douglass from a Paiute Indian, Mike'sBoy, who later took the name of Jim, employed as flagman in the surveyof the three great natural bridges of White Canyon. Seeing the whiteman's appreciation of this form of wind and water erosion, Jim told of agreater bridge known only to himself and one other Indian, located onthe north side of the Navajo Mountain, in the Paiute Indian reservation. Bending a twig of willow in rainbow-shape, with its ends stuck in theground, Jim showed what his bridge looked like. "An effort was made to reach the bridge in December. Unfortunately Jimcould not be located. On reaching the Navajo trading-post, Oljato, nothing was known of such a bridge, and the truth of Jim's statement wasquestioned. "The trip was abandoned until August of the following year, when Mr. Douglass organized a second party at Bluff, Utah, and under Jim'sguidance, left for the bridge. At Oljato the party was augmented byProfessor Cummings, and a party of college students, with John Wetherillas packer, who were excavating ruins in the Navajo Indian Reservation. As the uninhabited and unknown country of the bridge was reached, travel became almost impossible. All equipment, save what was absolutelyindispensable, was discarded. The whole country was a maze of boxcanyons, as though some turbulent sea had suddenly solidified in rock. Only at a few favored points could the canyon walls be scaled even byman, and still fewer where a horse might clamber. In the slopingsandstone ledges footholds for the horses must be cut, and even thenthey fell, until their loss seemed certain. After many adventures theparty arrived at 11 o'clock, A. M. , August 14, 1909. "Jim had indeed made good. Silhouetted against a turquoise sky was anarch of rainbow shape, so delicately proportioned that it seemed as ifsome great sculptor had hewn it from the rock. Its span of 270 feetbridged a stream of clear, sparkling water, that flowed 310 feet belowits crest. The world's greatest natural bridge had been found as Jim haddescribed it. Beneath it, an ancient altar bore witness to the fact thatit was a sacred shrine of those archaic people, the builders of theweird and mysterious cliff-castles seen in the Navajo National Monument. "The crest of the bridge was reached by Mr. Douglass and his threeassistants, John R. English, Jean F. Rogerson, and Daniel Perkins, bylowering themselves with ropes to the south abutment, and climbing itsarch. Probably they were the first human beings to reach it. "No Indian name for the bridge was known, except such descriptivegeneric terms as the Paiute 'The space under a horse's belly between itsfore and hind legs, ' or the 'Hole in the rock' (nonnezoshi) of theNavajo, neither of which was deemed appropriate. While the question of aname was still being debated, there appeared in the sky, as if inanswer, a beautiful rainbow, the 'Barahoni' of the Paiutes. "The suitability of the name was further demonstrated by a superstitionof the Navajos. On the occasion of his second visit, the fall of thesame year, Mr. Douglass had as an assistant an old Navajo Indian namedWhite Horse, who, after passing under the bridge, would not return, butclimbed laboriously around its end. On being pressed for an explanation, he would arch his hand, and through it squint at the sun, solemnlyshaking his head. Later, through the assistance of Mrs. John Wetherill, an experienced Navajo linguist, Mr. Douglass learned that the formationsof the type of the bridge were symbolic rainbows, or the sun's path, andone passing under could not return, under penalty of death, without theutterance of a certain prayer, which White Horse had forgotten. The agedNavajo informant would not reveal the prayer for fear of the 'LightningSnake. '" If your return from Rainbow Bridge carries you through Monument Valleywith its miles of blazing red structures, memory will file still anotheramazing sensation. Some of its crimson monsters rise a thousand feetabove the grassy plain. NATURAL BRIDGES NATIONAL MONUMENT Not many miles north of the Rainbow Bridge, fifty miles from Monticelloin southern Utah, in a region not greatly dissimilar in outline, andonly less colorful, three natural bridges of large size have beenconserved under the title of the Natural Bridges National Monument. Here, west of the Mesa Verde, the country is characterized by long, broad mesas, sometimes crowned with stunted cedar forests, droppingsuddenly into deep valleys. The erosion of many thousands of centurieshas ploughed the surface into winding rock-strewn canyons, great andsmall. Three of these canyons are crossed by bridges stream-cut throughthe solid rock. The largest, locally known as the Augusta Bridge, is named Sipapu, Gateof Heaven. It is one of the largest natural bridges in the world, measuring two hundred and twenty-two feet in height, with a span of twohundred and sixty-one feet. It is a graceful and majestic structure, soproportioned and finished that it is difficult, from some points ofview, to believe it the unplanned work of natural forces. One crosses iton a level platform twenty-eight feet wide. The other two, which are nearly its size, are found within five miles. The Kachina, which means Guardian Spirit, is locally called the CarolineBridge. The Owachomo, meaning Rock Mound, is locally known as the EdwinBridge. The local names celebrate persons who visited them soon afterthey were first discovered by Emery Knowles in 1895. They may be reached by horse and pack-train from Monticello, or Bluff, Utah. One of the five sections of the reservation conserves two largecaves. DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT The Age of Reptile developed a wide variety of monsters in the centralregions of the continent from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico. Thedinosaurs of the Triassic and Jurassic periods sometimes had giganticsize, the Brontosaurus attaining a length of sixty feet or more. Thefemur of the Brachiosaurus exceeded six feet; this must have been thegreatest of them all. The greater dinosaurs were herbivorous. The carnivorous species were notremarkable for size; there were small leaping forms scarcely larger thanrabbits. The necessity for defense against the flesh-eaters developed, in the smaller dinosaurs, extremely heavy armor. The stegosaur carriedhuge plates upon his curved back, suggesting a circular saw; his longpowerful tail was armed with sharp spikes, and must have been adangerous weapon. Dinosaurs roamed all over what is now called ourmiddle west. In those days the central part of our land was warm and swampy. Fresh-water lagoons and sluggish streams were bordered by low forests ofpalms and ferns; one must go to the tropics to find a correspondinglandscape in our times. The waters abounded in reptiles and fish. Hugewinged reptiles flew from cover to cover. The first birds were evolvingfrom reptilian forms. The absorbing story of these times is written in the rocks. The lifeforms were at their full when the sands were laid which to-day is thewide-spread layer of sandstone which geologists call the Morrisonformation. Erosion has exposed this sandstone in several parts of thewestern United States, and many have been the interesting glimpses ithas afforded of that strange period so many millions of years ago. In the Uintah Basin of northwestern Utah, a region of bad lands crossedby the Green River on its way to the Colorado and the Grand Canyon, theMorrison strata have been bent upward at an angle of sixty degrees ormore and then cut through, exposing their entire depth. The country isextremely rough and bare. Only in occasional widely separated bottomshas irrigation made farming possible; elsewhere nothing grows upon thebald hillsides. Here, eighteen miles east of the town of Vernal, eighty acres of theexposed Morrison strata were set aside in 1915 as the Dinosaur NationalMonument. These acres have already yielded a very large collection ofskeletons. Since 1908 the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh has beengathering specimens of the greatest importance. The only completeskeleton of a dinosaur ever found was taken out in 1909. The work ofquarrying and removal is done with the utmost care. The rock ischiselled away in thin layers, as no one can tell when an invaluablerelic may be found. As fast as bones are detached, they are covered withplaster of Paris and so wrapped that breakage becomes impossible. Twoyears were required to unearth the skeleton of a brontosaurus. The extraordinary massing of fossil remains at this point suggests thatfloods may have swept these animals from a large area and lodged theirbodies here, where they were covered with sands. But it also is possiblethat this spot was merely a favorite feeding-ground. It may be thatsimilarly rich deposits lie hidden in many places in the wide-spreadMorrison sandstone which some day may be unearthed. The bones ofdinosaurs have been found in the Morrison of Colorado near Boulder. PETRIFIED FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT For a hundred and twenty-five or thirty miles southwest of the GrandCanyon, the valley of the Little Colorado River is known as the PaintedDesert. It is a narrow plain of Carboniferous and Triassic marls, shales, sandstones, and conglomerates, abounding in fossils, the mostarid part of Arizona; even the river's lower reaches dry up for a partof each year. But it is a palette of brilliant colors; it will bedifficult to name a tint or shade which is not vividly represented inthis gaudy floor and in the strata of the cliffs which define itsnorthern and eastern limits. Above and beyond these cliffs lies thatother amazing desert, the Navajo country, the land of the Rainbow Bridgeand the Canyon de Chelly. I have mentioned the Painted Desert because it is shaped like a longnarrow finger pointed straight at the Petrified Forests lying justbeyond its touch. Here the country is also highly colored, but verydifferently. Maroon and tawny yellow are the prevailing tints of themarls, red and brown the colors of the sandstones. There is a rollingsandy floor crisscrossed with canyons in whose bottoms grow stuntedcedars and occasional cottonwoods. Upon this floor thousands ofpetrified logs are heaped in confusion. In many places the strongsuggestion is that of a log jam left stranded by subsiding floods. Nearly all the logs have broken into short lengths as cleanly cut as ifsawn, the result of succeeding heat and cold. Areas of petrified wood are common in many parts of the Navajo countryand its surrounding deserts. The larger areas are marked on theGeological Survey maps, and many lesser areas are mentioned in reports. There are references to rooted stumps. The three groups in the PetrifiedForest National Monument, near the town of Adamana, Arizona, were chosenfor conservation because they are the largest and perhaps the finest; atthe time, the gorgeously colored logs were being carried away inquantities to be cut up into table-tops. As a matter of fact, these are not forests. Most of these trees grewupon levels seven hundred feet or more higher than where they now lieand at unknown distances; floods left them here. [Illustration: THE PETRIFIED FOREST OF ARIZONA Showing the formation in colored strata. The logs seen on the groundgrew upon a level seven hundred feet higher] [Illustration: PETRIFIED TRUNK FORMING A BRIDGE OVER A CANYON The trunk is 111 feet long. The stone piers were built to preserve it] The First Forest, which lies six miles south of Adamana, containsthousands of broken lengths. One unbroken log a hundred and eleven feetlong bridges a canyon forty-five feet wide, a remarkable spectacle. Inthe Second Forest, which lies two miles and a half south of that, andthe Third Forest, which is thirteen miles south of Adamana and eighteenmiles southeast of Holbrook, most of the trunks appear to lie in theiroriginal positions. One which was measured by Doctor G. H. Knowlton ofthe Smithsonian Institution was more than seven feet in diameter and ahundred and twenty feet long. He estimates the average diameters atthree or four feet, while lengths vary from sixty to a hundred feet. The coloring of the wood is variegated and brilliant. "The state ofmineralization in which most of this wood exists, " writes ProfessorLester F. Ward, paleobotanist, "almost places them among the gems orprecious stones. Not only are chalcedony, opals, and agates found amongthem, but many approach the condition of jasper and onyx. " "Thechemistry of the process of petrifaction or silicification, " writesDoctor George P. Merrill, Curator of Geology in the National Museum, "isnot quite clear. Silica is ordinarily looked upon as one of the mostinsoluble of substances. It is nevertheless readily soluble in alkalinesolutions--_i. E. _, solutions containing soda or potash. It is probablethat the solutions permeating these buried logs were thus alkaline, andas the logs gradually decayed their organic matter was replaced, molecule by molecule, by silica. The brilliant red and other colors aredue to the small amount of iron and manganese deposited together withthe silica, and super-oxydized as the trunks are exposed to the air. The most brilliant colors are therefore to be found on the surface. " The trees are of several species. All those identified by DoctorKnowlton were Araucaria, which do not now live in the northernhemisphere. Doctor E. C. Jeffrey, of Harvard, has described one genusunknown elsewhere. To get the Petrified Forest into full prospective it is well to recallthat these shales and sands were laid in water, above whose surface theland raised many times, only to sink again and accumulate new strata. The plateau now has fifty-seven hundred feet of altitude. "When it is known, " writes Doctor Knowlton, "that since the close ofTriassic times probably more than fifty thousand feet of sediments havebeen deposited, it is seen that the age of the Triassic forests ofArizona can only be reckoned in millions of years--just how many itwould be mere speculation to attempt to estimate. It is certain, also, that at one time the strata containing these petrified logs werethemselves buried beneath thousands of feet of strata of later ages, which have in places been worn away sufficiently to expose thetree-bearing beds. Undoubtedly other forests as great or greater thanthose now exposed lie buried beneath the later formations. " A very interesting small forest, not in the reservation, lies nine milesnorth of Adamana. PAPAGO SAGUARO NATIONAL MONUMENT The popular idea of a desert of dry drifting sand unrelieved except atoccasional oases by evidences of life was born of our early geographies, which pictured the Sahara as the desert type. Far different indeed isour American desert, most of which has a few inches of rainfall in theearly spring and grows a peculiar flora of remarkable individuality andbeauty. The creosote bush seen from the car-windows shelters a fewgrasses which brown and die by summer, but help to color the landscapethe year around. Many low flowering plants gladden the desertspringtime, and in the far south and particularly in the far southwestare several varieties of cactus which attain great size. The frequenterof the desert soon correlates its flora with its other scenic elementsand finds all rich and beautiful. In southwestern Arizona and along the southern border of California thisstrange flora finds its fullest expression. Here one enters a newfairy-land, a region of stinging bushes and upstanding monsters liftingungainly arms to heaven. In 1914, to conserve one of the many richtracts of desert flora, President Wilson created the Papago SaguaroNational Monument a few miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Its two thousandand fifty acres include fine examples of innumerable desert species infullest development. Among these the cholla is at once one of the most fascinating and themost exasperating. It belongs to the prickly pear family, but thereresemblance ceases. It is a stocky bush two or three feet high coveredwith balls of flattened powerful sharp-pointed needles which willpenetrate even a heavy shoe. In November these fall, strewing the groundwith spiny indestructible weapons. There are many varieties of chollasand all are decorative. The tree cholla grows from seven to ten feet inheight, a splendid showy feature of the desert slopes, and the home, fortress, and sure defense for all the birds who can find nest-roombehind its bristling breastwork. The Cereus thurberi, the pipe-organ, or candelabrum cactus, as it isvariously called, grows in thick straight columns often clumped closelytogether, a picturesque and beautiful creation. Groups range from a fewinches to many feet in height. One clump of twenty-two stems has beenreported, the largest stem of which was twenty feet high and twenty-twoinches in diameter. Another of picturesque appeal is the bisnaga or barrel cactus, of whichthere are many species of many sizes. Like all cacti, it absorbs waterduring the brief wet season and stores it for future use. A specimen thesize of a flour-barrel can be made to yield a couple of gallons ofsweetish but refreshing water, whereby many a life has been saved in thesandy wastes. But the desert's chief exhibit is the giant saguaro, the Cereusgiganteus, from which the reservation got its name. This stately cactusrises in a splendid green column, accordion-plaited and decorated withstar-like clusters of spines upon the edges of the plaits. The largerspecimens grow as high as sixty or seventy feet and throw out atintervals powerful branches which bend sharply upward; sometimes thereare as many as eight or nine of these gigantic branches. No towering fir or spreading oak carries a more princely air. A forestof giant saguaro rising from a painted desert far above the tangle ofcreosote-bush, mesquite, cholla, bisnaga, and scores of other strangegrowths of a land of strange attractions is a spectacle to stir theblood and to remember for a lifetime. COLORADO NATIONAL MONUMENT On the desert border of far-western Colorado near Grand Junction is aregion of red sandstone which the erosion of the ages has carved intoinnumerable strange and grotesque shapes. Once a great plain, then agroup of mesas, now it has become a city of grotesque monuments. Thosewho have seen the Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs can imagineit multiplied many times in size, grotesqueness, complexity, and area;such a vision will approximate the Colorado National Monument. The tworegions have other relations in common, for as the Garden of the Godsflanks the Rockies' eastern slopes and looks eastward to the greatplains, so does the Colorado National Monument flank the Rockies'western desert. Both are the disclosure by erosion of similar strata ofred sandstone which may have been more or less continuous before thegreat Rockies wrinkled, lifted, and burst upward between them. The rock monuments of this group are extremely highly colored. They risein several neighboring canyons and some of them are of great height andfantastic design. One is a nearly circular column with a diameter of ahundred feet at the base and a height of more than four hundred feet. Caves add to the attractions, and there are many springs among thetangled growths of the canyon floors. There are cedars and pinyon trees. The region abounds in mule-deer and other wild animals. CAPULIN MOUNTAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT After the sea-bottom which is now our desert southwest rose for the lasttime and became the lofty plateau of to-day, many were the changes bywhich its surface became modified. Chief of these was the erosion whichhas washed its levels thousands of feet below its potential altitude andcarved it so remarkably. But it also became a field of wide-spreadvolcanic activity, and lavas and obsidians are constantly encounteredamong its gravels, sands, and shales. Many also are the cones of deadvolcanoes. Capulin Mountain in northeastern New Mexico near the Colorado line is avery ancient volcano which retains its shape in nearly perfectcondition. It was made a national monument for scientific reasons, butit also happily rounds out the national parks' exhibit of the influenceswhich created our wonderful southwest. Its crater cone is composedpartly of lava flow, partly of fine loose cinder, and partly of cementedvolcanic ash. It is nearly a perfect cone. Capulin rises fifteen hundred feet from the plain to an altitude ofeight thousand feet. Its crater is fifteen hundred feet across andseventy-five feet deep. To complete the volcanic exhibit many blistercones are found around its base. It is easily reached from two railroadsor by automobile. XX THE MUIR WOODS AND OTHER NATIONAL MONUMENTS National monuments which commemorate history, conserve forests, anddistinguish conspicuous examples of world-making dot other parts of theUnited States besides the colorful southwest. Their variety is great andthe natural beauty of some of them unsurpassed. Their number should be much greater. Every history-helping explorationof the early days, from Cortreal's inspection of the upper Atlanticcoast in 1501 and Ponce de Leon's exploration of Florida eleven yearslater, from Cabrillo's skirting of the Pacific coast in 1542 andVancouver's entrance into Puget Sound in 1792, including every earlyexpedition from north and south into the country now ours and everyexploration of the interior by our own people, should be commemorated, not by a slab of bronze or marble, but by a striking and appropriatearea set apart as a definite memorial of the history of this nation'searly beginnings. These areas should be appropriately located upon or overlooking someimportant or characteristic landmark of the explorations or events whichthey commemorated, and should have scenic importance sufficient toattract visitors and impress upon them the stages of the progress ofthis land from a condition of wilderness to settlement and civilization. Nor should it end here. The country is richly endowed, from the Atlanticto the Pacific, with examples of Nature's amazing handicraft in themaking of this continent, the whole range of which should be fullyexpressed in national reservations. Besides these, examples of our northeastern forests, the pines of thesouthern Appalachians, the everglades of Florida, the tangled woodlandsof the gulf, and other typical forests which perchance may have escapedthe desolation of civilization, should be added to the splendid forestreserves of the national parks of the West, first-grown as Nature madethem, forever to remain untouched by the axe. Thus will the national parks system become the real national museum forto-day and forever. There follows a brief catalogue of the slender and altogether fortuitousbeginnings of such an exhibit. MUIR WOODS NATIONAL MONUMENT One of the last remaining stands of original redwood forest easilyaccessible to the visitor is the Muir Woods in California. It occupies apicturesque canyon on the slope of Mount Tamalpais, north of the GoldenGate and opposite San Francisco, from which it is comfortably reached byferry and railroad. It was rescued from the axe by William Kent ofCalifornia, who, jointly with Mrs. Kent, gave it to the nation as anexhibit of the splendid forest which once crowded the shores of SanFrancisco Bay. It is named after John Muir, to whom this grove was afavorite retreat for many years. It exhibits many noble specimens of the California redwood, Sequoiasempervirens, cousin of the giant sequoia. Some of them attain a heightof three hundred feet, with a diameter exceeding eighteen feet. Theystand usually in clusters, or family groups, their stems erect aspillars, their crowns joined in a lofty roof, rustling in the Pacificwinds, musical with the songs of birds. Not even in the giant sequoiagroves of the Sierra have I found any spot more cathedral-like thanthis. Its floor is brown and sweet-smelling, its aisles outlined by thetread of generations of worshippers. Its naves, transepts, alcoves, andsanctuaries are still and dim, yet filled mysteriously with light. The Muir Woods is a grove of noble redwoods, but it is much more. Apartfrom its main passages, in alcove, gateway, and outlying precinct it isan exhibit of the rich Californian coast forest. The Douglas fir herereaches stately proportions. Many of the western oaks display theirmanifold picturesqueness. A hundred lesser trees and shrubs add theirgrace and variety. The forest is typical and complete. Though small inscope it is not a remnant but naturally blends into its surroundings. The shaded north hill slopes carry the great trees to the ridge line;the southern slope exhibits the struggle for precedence with themountain shrubs. At the lower end one bursts out into the grass countryand the open hills. Every feature of the loveliest of all forests is athand: the valley floor with its miniature trout-stream overhung withfragrant azaleas; the brown carpet interwoven with azaleas and violets. There is the cool decoration of many ferns. [Illustration: _From a photograph by Tibbitts_ CATHEDRAL ISLE OF THE MUIR WOODS] The straight-growing redwoods compel a change of habit in the treesthat would struggle toward a view of the sky. Mountain-oaks and madronaare straight-trunked and clear of lower branches. There is rivalry ofthe strong and protection for the weak. The grove is, in truth, a complete expression in little of Nature'sforest plan. The characteristics of the greater redwood forests whichrequire weeks or months to compass and careful correlation to bring intoperspective, here are exhibited within the rambling of a day. The MuirWoods is an entity. Its meadow borders, its dark ravines, its valleyfloor, its slopes and hilltops, all show fullest luxuriance and perfectproportion. The struggle of the greater trees to climb the hills isexemplified as fully as in the great exhibits of the north, which spreadover many miles of hill slope; here one may see its range in half anhour. The coloring, too, is rich. The rusty foliage and bark, the brightergreen of the shrubs, the brown carpet, the opal light, stirs the spirit. The powerful individuality of many of its trees is the source ofnever-ending pleasure. There is a redwood upon the West Fork which hasno living base, but feeds, vampire-like, through another's veins; or, if you prefer the figure of family dependence so strikingly exemplifiedin these woods, has been rescued from destruction by a brother. The baseof this tree has been completely girdled by fire. Impossible to drawsubsistence from below, it stands up from a burned, naked, slenderfoundation. But another tree fell against it twenty-five or thirty feetabove the ground, in some far past storm, and lost its top; this treepours its sap into the veins of the other to support its noble top. Thetwin cripples have become a single healthy tree. One of the most striking exhibits of the Muir Woods is its tangle ofCalifornia laurel. Even in its deepest recesses, the bays, as they arecommonly called, reach great size. They sprawl in all directions, bendat sharp angles, make great loops to enter the soil and root again;sometimes they cross each other and join their trunks; in one instance, at least, a large crownless trunk has bent and entered head first thestem of still a larger tree. There are greater stands of virgin redwoods in the northern wildernessof California which the ruthless lumberman has not yet reached but isapproaching fast; these are inland stands of giants, crowded likebattalions. But there is no other Muir Woods, with its miniatureperfection. DEVIL'S POSTPILE NATIONAL MONUMENT Southeast of craggy Lyell, mountain climax and eastern outpost of theYosemite National Park, the Muir Trail follows the extravagantlybeautiful beginnings of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River througha region of myriad waters and snow-flecked mountains. Banner Peak, Ritter Mountain, Thousand Island Lake, Volcanic Ridge, ShadowLake--national park scenery in its noblest expression, but not yetnational park. A score of miles from Lyell, the trail follows the river into a volcanicbottom from whose forest rises the splendid group of pentagonal basalticcolumns which was made a national monument in 1911 under the title ofthe Devil's Postpile. Those who know the famous Giant's Causeway of theIrish coast will know it in kind, but not in beauty. The enormous uplift which created the Sierra was accompanied on both itsslopes by extensive volcanic eruptions, the remains of which arefrequently visible to the traveller. The huge basaltic crystals of theDevil's Postpile were a product of this volcanic outpouring; they formeddeep within the hot masses which poured over the region for milesaround. Their upper ends have become exposed by the erosion of the agesby which the cinder soil and softer rock around them have been wornaway. The trail traveller comes suddenly upon this splendid group. It iselevated, as if it were the front of a small ridge, its posts standingon end, side by side, in close formation. Below it, covering the frontof the ridge down to the line of the trail, is an enormous talus mass ofbroken pieces. The appropriateness of the name strikes one at the firstglance. This is really a postpile, every post carefully hewn to pattern, all of nearly equal length. The talus heap below suggests that hisSatanic Majesty was utilizing it also as a woodpile, and had sawn manyof the posts into lengths to fit the furnaces which we have been taughtthat he keeps hot for the wicked. Certainly it is a beautiful, interesting, and even an imposingspectacle. One also thinks of it as a gigantic organ, whose many hundredpipes rise many feet in air. Its lofty position, seen from the viewpointof the trail, is one of dignity; it overlooks the pines and firssurrounding the clearing in which the observer stands. The trees on thehigher level scarcely overtop it; in part, it is outlined against thesky. "The Devil's Postpile, " writes Professor Joseph N. LeConte, Muir'ssuccessor as the prophet of the Sierra, "is a wonderful cliff ofcolumnar basalt, facing the river. The columns are quite perfect prisms, nearly vertical and fitted together like the cells of a honeycomb. Mostof the prisms are pentagonal, though some are of four or six sides. Thestanding columns are about two feet in diameter and forty feet high. Atthe base of the cliff is an enormous basalt structure, but, wherever thebed-rock is exposed beneath the pumice covering, the same formation canbe seen. " An error in the proclamation papers made the official title of thismonument the Devil Postpile, and thus it must legally appear in allofficial documents. The reservation also includes the Rainbow Fall of the San Juan River, one of the most beautiful waterfalls of the sub-Sierra region, besidessoda springs and hot springs. This entire reservation was originallyincluded in the Yosemite National Park, but was cut out by anunappreciative committee appointed to revise boundaries. It is to behoped that Congress will soon restore it to its rightful status. DEVIL'S TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT A structure similar in nature to the Devil's Postpile, but vastlygreater in size and sensational quality, forms one of the most strikingnatural spectacles east of the Rocky Mountains. The Devil's Tower isunique. It rises with extreme abruptness from the rough Wyoming levelsjust west of the Black Hills. It is on the banks of the Belle FourcheRiver, which later, encircling the Black Hills around the north, findsits way into the Big Cheyenne and the Missouri. This extraordinary tower emerges from a rounded forested hill ofsedimentary rock which rises six hundred feet above the plain; from thetop of that the tower rises six hundred feet still higher. It is visiblefor a hundred miles or more in every direction. Before the coming of thewhite man it was the landmark of the Indians. Later it served a usefulpurpose in guiding the early explorers. To-day it is the point which draws the eye for many miles. The visitorapproaching by automobile sees it hours away, and its growth upon thehorizon as he approaches is not his least memorable experience. It hasthe effect at a distance of an enormous up-pointing finger which hasbeen amputated just below the middle joint. When near enough to enableone to distinguish the upright flutings formed by its closely joinedpentagonal basaltic prisms, the illusion vanishes. These, bending inwardfrom a flaring base, straighten and become nearly perpendicular as theyrise. Now, one may fancy it the stump of a tree more than a hundred feetin diameter whose top imagination sees piercing the low clouds. Butclose by, all similes become futile; then the Devil's Tower can belikened to nothing but itself. This column is the core of a volcanic formation which doubtless once hada considerably larger circumference. At its base lies an immense talusof broken columns which the loosening frosts and the winter gales areconstantly increasing; the process has been going on for untoldthousands of years, during which the softer rock of the surroundingplains has been eroded to its present level. One may climb the hill and the talus. The column itself cannot beclimbed except by means of special apparatus. Its top is nearly flat andelliptical, with a diameter varying from sixty to a hundred feet. PINNACLES NATIONAL MONUMENT [Illustration: _From a photograph by Tibbitts_ PINNACLES NATIONAL MONUMENT] [Illustration: _From a photograph by N. H. Darion_ THE DEVIL'S TOWER] Forty miles as the crow flies east of Monterey, California, in a spurof the low Coast Range, is a region which erosion has carved into manyfantastic shapes. Because of its crowded pointed rocks, it has been setapart under the title of the Pinnacles National Monument. For more thana century and a quarter it was known as Vancouver's Pinnacles becausethe great explorer visited it while his ships lay at anchor in MontereyBay, and afterward described it in his "Voyages and Discoveries. " It isunfortunate that the historical allusion was lost when it became anational reservation. Two deep gorges, bordered by fantastic walls six hundred to a thousandfeet high, and a broad semi-circular, flower-grown amphitheatre, constitute the central feature. Deep and narrow tributary gorges furnishmany of the curious and intricate forms which for many years have madethe spot popular among sightseers. Rock masses have fallen upon the sidewalls of several of these lesser gorges, converting them intopicturesque winding tunnels and changing deep alcoves into caves whichrequire candles to see. It is a region of very unusual interest and charm. SHOSHONE CAVERN NATIONAL MONUMENT On the way to the Yellowstone National Park by way of the Wyomingentrance at Cody, and three miles east of the great Shoshone Dam, alimestone cave has been set apart under the title of the Shoshone CavernNational Monument. The way in is rough and precipitous and, afterentering the cave, a descent by rope is necessary to reach the chambersof unusual beauty. One may then journey for more than a mile throughgalleries some of which are heavily incrusted with crystals. LEWIS AND CLARK CAVERN NATIONAL MONUMENT Approaching the crest of the Rockies on the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Lewis and Clark Cavern is passed fifty miles before reaching Butte. Its entrance is perched thirteen hundred feet above the broad valley ofthe Jefferson River, which the celebrated explorers followed on theirwestward journey; it overlooks fifty miles of their course. The cavern, which has the usual characteristics of a limestone cave, slopes sharply back from its main entrance, following the dip of thestrata. Some of its vaults are decorated in great splendor. Thedepredations of vandals were so damaging that in 1916 its entrance wasclosed by an iron gate. This cavern is the only memorial of the Lewis and Clark expedition inthe national parks system; there is no record that the explorers enteredit or knew of its existence. Two hundred and thirty miles east of the Cavern, Clark inscribed hisname and the date, July 25, 1806, upon the face of a prominent butteknown as Pompey's Pillar. This would have been a far more appropriatemonument to the most important of American explorations than thelimestone cave. In fact, the Department of the Interior once attemptedto have it proclaimed a national monument; the fact that it lay withinan Indian allotment prevented. The entire course of this greatexpedition should be marked at significant points by appropriatenational monuments. WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK In the southwestern corner of South Dakota, on the outskirts of theBlack Hills, is one of the most interesting limestone caverns of thecountry. It was named Wind Cave because, with the changes of temperatureduring the day, strong currents of wind blow alternately into and out ofits mouth. It has many long passages and fine chambers gorgeouslydecorated. It is a popular resort. The United States Biological Survey maintains a game-preserve. JEWEL CAVE NATIONAL MONUMENT Northwest of Wind Cave, thirteen miles west and south of Custer, SouthDakota boasts another limestone cavern of peculiar beauty, through whoseentrance also the wind plays pranks. It is called Jewel Cave becausemany of its crystals are tinted in various colors, often verybrilliantly. Under torchlight the effect is remarkable. Connecting chambers have been explored for more than three miles, andthere is much of it yet unknown. OREGON CAVES NATIONAL MONUMENT In the far southwestern corner of Oregon, about thirty miles south ofGrant's Pass, upon slopes of coast mountains and at an altitude of fourthousand feet, is a group of large limestone caves which have been setapart by presidential proclamation under the title of the Oregon CavesNational Monument. Locally they are better known as the Marble Halls ofOregon. There are two entrances at different levels, the passages and chambersfollowing the dip of the strata. A considerable stream, the outlet ofthe waters which dissolved these caves in the solid limestone, passesthrough. The wall decorations, and, in some of the chambers, thestalagmites and stalactites, are exceedingly fine. The vaults andpassages are unusually large. There is one chamber twenty-five feetacross whose ceiling is believed to be two hundred feet high. MOUNT OLYMPUS NATIONAL MONUMENT For sixty miles or more east and west across the Olympian Peninsula, which is the forested northwestern corner of Washington and the UnitedStates between Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean, stretch the OlympianMountains. The country is a rugged wilderness of tumbled ranges, grownwith magnificent forests above which rise snowy and glaciered summits. Its climax is Mount Olympus, eight thousand one hundred feet inaltitude, rising about twenty-five miles equidistant from the Strait ofJuan de Fuca upon the north and the Pacific Ocean upon the west. The entire peninsula is extremely wild. It is skirted by a road alongits eastern and part of its northern edges, connecting the water-fronttowns. Access to the mountain is by arduous trail. The reservationcontains nine hundred and fifty square miles. Although possessingunusual scenic beauty, it was reserved for the purpose of protecting theOlympic elk, a species peculiar to the region. Deer and other wildanimals also are abundant. WHEELER NATIONAL MONUMENT High under the Continental Divide in southwestern Colorado near Creede, a valley of high altitude, grotesquely eroded in tufa, rhyolite, andother volcanic rock, is named the Wheeler National Monument in honor ofCaptain George Montague Wheeler, who conducted geographical explorationsbetween 1869 and 1879. Its deep canyons are bordered by lofty pinnaclesof rock. It is believed that General John C. Fremont here met thedisaster which drove back his exploring-party of 1848, fragments ofharness and camp equipment and skeletons of mules having been found. VERENDRYE NATIONAL MONUMENT The first exploration of the northern United States east of the RockyMountains is commemorated by the Verendrye National Monument at the OldCrossing of the Missouri River in North Dakota. Here rises CrowhighButte, on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, an eminence commanding awide view in every direction. Verendrye, the celebrated French explorer, started from the north shoreof Lake Superior about 1740 and passed westward and southward into theregions of the great plains. He or his sons, for the records of theirjourneys are confusing, passed westward into Montana along a coursewhich Lewis and Clark paralleled in 1806, swung southward in theneighborhood of Fort Benton, and skirted the Rockies nearly to themiddle of Wyoming, passing within a couple of hundred miles of theYellowstone National Park. Crowhigh Butte is supposed to have given the Verendryes their firstextensive view of the upper Missouri. The butte was long a landmark toguide early settlers to Old Crossing. SULLY'S HILL NATIONAL PARK Congress created the Sully's Hill National Park in North Dakota in 1904in response to a local demand. Its hills and meadows constitute a museumof practically the entire flora of the State. The United StatesBiological Survey maintains there a wild-animal preserve for elk, bison, antelope, and other animals representative of the northern plains. SITKA NATIONAL MONUMENT On Baranoff Island, upon the southeastern shore of Alaska, is areservation known as the Sitka National Monument which commemorates animportant episode in the early history of Alaska. On this tract, whichlies within a mile of the steamboat-landing at Sitka, formerly stood thevillage of the Kik-Siti Indians who, in 1802, attacked the settlement ofSitka and massacred the Russians who had established it. Two yearslater the Russians under Baranoff recovered the settlement from theIndians, contrary to the active opposition of Great Britain, andestablished the title which they afterward transferred to the UnitedStates. Graves of some of those who fell in the later battle may beseen. The reservation is also a fine exhibit of the forest and flora of theAlexander Archipelago. Sixteen totem-poles remain from the old nativedays. OLD KASAAN NATIONAL MONUMENT Remains of the rapidly passing native life of the Alexander Archipelagoon the southeast coast of Alaska are conserved in the Old KasaanNational Monument on the east shore of Prince of Wales Island. Thevillage of Old Kasaan, occupied for many years by the Hydah tribe andabandoned a decade or more ago, contains several community houses ofsplit timber, each of which consists of a single room with a commonfireplace in the middle under a smoke-hole in the centre of the roof. Cedar sleeping-booths, each the size of an ordinary piano-box, are builtaround the wall. The monument also possesses fifty totem-poles, carved and richlycolored. * * * * * Of the thirty-six national monuments, twenty-four are administered bythe National Parks Service, ten by the Department of Agriculture, andtwo by the War Department. Congress made the assignments to theDepartment of Agriculture on the theory that, as these monumentsoccurred in forests, they could be more cheaply administered by theForest Service; but, as many of the other monuments and nearly all thenational parks also occur in forests, the logic is not apparent, andthese monuments suffer from disassociation with the impetus andmachinery of the National Park Service. The Big Hole Battlefield National Monument, about fifty-five milessouthwest of Butte, Montana, was assigned to the War Department becausea battle took place there in 1877 between a small force of United Statestroops and a large force of Indians. [Illustration: MAP OF YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA] [Illustration: PROPOSED ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK AND THE SEQUOIA ANDGENERAL GRANT NATIONAL PARKS, CALIFORNIA] [Illustration: THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO] [Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON] [Illustration: CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, OREGON] [Illustration: YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING The proposed Jackson Hole addition is enclosed by a broken line south ofboundary] [Illustration: GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA] [Illustration: MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO] [Illustration: GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, ARIZONA] [Illustration: ZION NATIONAL MONUMENT, UTAH]