The Two Great Canyons: Excerpts From Letters Written on a Western Journey

Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth Springs Hotel, August 14, 1908: We have reached the first hotel station on the tour of the Yellowstone National Park, which, according to the legend on the arch over the entrance, has been set aside “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” We left Minneapolis on the night train and found ourselves the next morning in the wheat country, on the state lines of Minnesota and North Dakota. In the wheat country there is nothing impressive, except the magnificent distances. As far as the eye can reach, and that is very far, one sees a level expanse, covered with wheat, some in the shock and some still on the stalk. The towns, also, lack impressiveness. Most of them are mere wheat stations. Fargo and Bismarck and Mandan are, however, not without commercial and historic interest.

At Bismarck, I recalled what Mr. Bryce wrote in “The American Commonwealth.” He was present, in 1883, when the corner stone of the state house was laid, with imposing ceremonies, General U. S. Grant and “Sitting Bull” being among the honored guests. Mr. Bryce records that one of the orators upon that occasion remarked that Bismarck was destined to “be the metropolitan hearth of the world’s civilization.” Mr. Bryce says he asked why the state house was “not in the city,” but “a mile off, on the top of a hill in the brown and dusty prairie,” and he was told, by the enthusiastic spirits of the place, that in a few years that hill would be the center of the city that was to be. But the state house still stands out of town. Many hopes in real estate are unrealized, but let us hope they have only been deferred. A hundred years from now all the open country may be teeming with populations. In much of the wheat country there are no country homes, only places in which the wheat growers live long enough to plant and to gather their crops. The wheat fields end in the Bad Lands, and these would not be so interesting, were they not so dreary. On the Little Missouri one begins to see patches of alfalfa. It was on this river that Theodore Roosevelt ranched, equipped with a college diploma and his indomitable spirit. One ascends gradually into the mountains, up the Yellowstone River, to Livingston, where they break the transcontinental journey for the Yellowstone National Park trip. It is fifty-five miles from Livingston to Gardner and five or six miles from Gardner to the Mammoth Springs Hotel, the last five miles being covered by stages.

The hotel is crowded. People are coming and going. They jostle each other and rush about frantically, looking for baggage and worried about many things. Those who have “done” the Park are anxious to get away, and those who are about to “do it” are as anxious to be on their way. All sorts and conditions of people are here, the aged and the young, the rich and the poor, women always predominating in numbers and in activity. The postal card fad is at its height here. The postage that is paid on these trifles ought to pay the government a dividend on the money it has invested in the Park.

II.

Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful Inn, August 15: It has been raining in the Park. The weather has been lowering before a blustering wind, with snow and sleet. People sat shivering in the stage coaches today, but they tell us we are more fortunate than those who have been compelled to make the journey in the dust. Mr. Jones and Mr. Pope came in dusters, but they have donned their overcoats, instead. Every one who has made the tour of the Park thinks he can tell you all about it, but the truth is that no one knows anything about the weather here, it is so variable and there is so much of it. It is clearing now and every one is buoyant. It is sunshine after a storm that makes people happy, especially the women. They like sunshine.

This inn is an interesting point in the journey. It is built entirely out of logs, seven stories high, at the peak. It has great fire places and a rustic dining room, where the food begins to taste “shippy.” In these places one’s appetite always craves the things that are not placed before you. Resort hotels are the most contrary places in the world. The name of the inn is taken from that of the geyser, the largest now in action in the Park basin, Old Faithful, so named because it gives an exhibition every hour. The water is thrown a hundred feet in the air and the spray that accompanies it, and the vapor, are beautiful to see. The basin, in front of the hotel, is filled with miniature geysers and in whichever direction one looks he can see vapor rising from crevices. In many places the crust is thin and treacherous. Some of the pools have the most delicate formations and the most exquisite colorings, comparable with nothing except the colors in precious stones. Some are green and some are blue and some are like morning glories. The smell of sulphur is in the air. There are also the ugly things, mud geysers, unwholesome holes bubbling with and spouting out mud, like toads. Some people insist on seeing every crevice. They tramp about until they are all tired out. That is what they call “doing” the Park. The poor Park, and the poorer mortals! But to me it seems easier and better to sit down quietly and absorb the spirit of things. The mountains clad with the green timber, the rich blue sky, fleeced with delicate clouds, over all. It is a great joy to be in the midst of these natural wonders. Why weary one’s self with the details? Why make it a place of weariness? It is a great picture gallery of the gods. Here they have left unfinished the work of creation. But people go through it, rushing about it as about bargain counters in the stores.

III.

Yellowstone National Park, Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908: We left Old Faithful Inn this morning with some regrets. One could spend several days there with profit. The inn itself is comfortable and the surroundings attractive. We have had the misfortune to be overtaken by a party of excursionists, who entered the Park from the west. An excursionist is an uninteresting traveler. He is apt to be some one who is traveling because the rates are cheap. The regular tourists were very much put out by the overcrowding. But if one wants to be alone, or with a few friends, he must not follow the beaten paths of the Park.

There are many ways of traveling in vogue. The easiest way is by the stages of the transportation company, which owns and operates the hotels. In the hotels one is apt to get a good bed and, sometimes, a bath. The food served in the dining rooms is of the conventional hotel variety. All the supplies are brought into the Park in heavy freight wagons. Most of the things are taken out of cans, but a few fresh vegetables are supplied from gardens cultivated by the hotel company. The milk also is fresh, drawn from cows kept in the Park. Cheaper modes of travel and subsistence are supplied by camping outfits. One company maintains a series of permanent camps, and others use movable camps, carrying all their bedding and their utensils with them from place to place. But whichever way one travels, he is apt to pick up many friends. Friendships, in fact, are easily made in the Park. For the time they seem very real, and partings at the end of a journey seem almost like partings with old friends. It all comes from the fact that the people one meets here are, for the time being, all the people there are in this little miniature world.

But we are still leaving Old Faithful Inn, so far as this letter is concerned. The regrets that many felt in leaving the inn were increased by the disagreeableness of the weather outside. It was a miserable rainy morning. It drizzled all the time and, intermittently, there were downpours of water. It fell to my lot to ride on the outside of the coach, with the driver, which is a very choice seat in fair weather. When it is rainy, the ladies, and the ladies’ men always prefer to ride inside. But there is so much chattering inside, often about nothing, that a quiet man prefers to be outside, even in the rain. The driver is a good fellow. He does not talk much. He is too intent on watching his horses moving on a slippery road, often around abrupt curves. The four fine chestnut horses were real good company, so intelligent and so willing and so eager. It was hard work this morning to pull the coach, for there was a gradual ascent, from one hundred to two hundred feet to the mile. Plenty of clear water was running in the mountain streams. We crossed the continental divide, at an elevation of about 8,300 feet, but we soon recrossed the line and found ourselves once more on the Atlantic slope. The driver pointed out many objects of interest, among them Shoshone Lake, resting in the laps of mountain peaks, a beautiful body of water. But the persons inside the coach seemed oblivious to many things, except the mileposts which they counted, audibly, with great regularity--there were thirty-four of them to count to the next lodging place. And it rained all the time!

It was on this part of the journey that I learned most about the animal life in the Park. It was one of the things in which the driver was interested. There is all manner of life in the Park, from weasels to antlered deer and bear, and in the air, birds from the tiniest creatures picking their livings in the pine trees, to the stately waterfowls that strut about in seven league boots. All the birds and animals; all the creatures that crawl and burrow in the earth, or that fly in the air, are protected by the omnipotent arm of the government in Washington. The soldiers who patrol the Park are the only ones who are allowed to bring guns into the preserve. Not a shot is fired to break the stillness of the surroundings. The squirrels romp in the tree tops and the beavers carry on their prodigious works just as they did before there was a man on this continent. Here the foxes have holes in the ground and the birds have nests in the trees, and there is no one to disturb them. The results are wonderful. The birds and animals hardly know what fear is, they seem so greatly unconcerned about the presence of passing people. Here they find

“_No enemy But winter and rough weather_,”

and of these they find a great deal during the winter months. The tinges of winter are already in the air, even in August, for winter comes early on this high elevation and when it comes it is severe, the mercury falling to forty degrees below zero and the snow piling up to depths of ten or twelve feet.

On our thirty-four mile journey we were shown many objects of interest, pools the bottoms of which rival the rarest flowers and gems in their colorings. But also some ugly things, mud geysers, filthy and bad smelling. At noon we halted for luncheon at one end of the Yellowstone Lake, and some persons took boats, making the rest of the day’s journey by water. We reached the Lake Hotel at about four o’clock in the afternoon, tired enough to appreciate the comforts and hospitalities of the place. This hotel is one of the best in the Park, lighted by electricity and heated with steam, the rooms all cheerful ones. The meals in the dining room, also, were good. The lake itself is a wonderful body of water, considering its extent and its elevation. The tops of the mountains stand all around it. It lies in the hollows formed between mountain ranges. But aside from these features, it is not more interesting than other bodies of water.