Carter H. Harrison

A Summer's Outing
AND
THE OLD MAN'S STORY

BY

CARTER H. HARRISON.

CHICAGO:
DIBBLE PUBLISHING CO.
1891.

COPYRIGHTED BY
DIBBLE PUBLISHING CO
1891
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

G. M. D. LIBBY
PRINTER AND ELECTROTYPER
CHICAGO

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained.

The cover of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

PREFACE.

"A Summer's Outing" comprises letters hastily written while the writer was on the wing. Being printed in the Chicago Tribune they were favorably received by many friends, who have urged their being published in book form, as a thing now needed by would-be tourists to the Yellowstone National Park and to Alaska. To this end they were revised and somewhat enlarged. If the little book be of little value, the apology is offered that it will be, too, of little cost.

"The Old Man's Story" is thrown in as filling between two covers, and need not be read except by those who find an idle hour hard to dispose of.

Carter H. Harrison.

231 Ashland Boulevard,
Chicago, May 6th, 1891.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.

THE WRITER INDULGES IN FANCIES.

The summer outing is a fad—a necessity of fashion. Reigning beauty bares its brow on ocean waves and climbs mountain heights, courting sun-kisses. Jaunty sailor hats and narrow visored caps are donned, that the amber burning of the summer's excursion may be displayed at early assemblies of heraldic Four Hundred. Anglo-mania has taught at least one good lesson—that the russet cheek of romping health is more kiss-tempting than the rose-in-cream of beauty lolling on downy cushions. Elite closes its massive doors and draws down front window shades; Paterfamilias sweats in his struggle to force a balance to the credit side, and mothers and daughters sit at back windows in glare of sunlight, wooing sun-beams, while notices of "Out of town" are already placarded on front stoops.

The summer outing is urged by honest doctors, with the admission that change of air and scene is oftentimes worth more than all the nostrums doled out over apothecaries' counters. Motion is nature's first inexorable law. A tiny drop of water is pressed between two plates of glass, apparently rendering the slightest motion impossible. The microscope fills it with scores or hundreds of beings full of life and energy, disporting in pleasure or waging deadly battle. Around us and about us nothing is still. The grasses grow in refreshing green and spring beneath the feet, but ere the wane of day, wither and crackle under the tread. Flowers bloom in beauty and within the hour fade in ugliness. The rock ribs of earth expand and contract under tidal commands of sun and moon, and continents lift from, or are sinking beneath briny oceans.

The gleaming sun, so rounded in glowing calmness as he gently circles across the vaulted sky, is a raging mass of countless millions boiling, dashing, burning jets, in any one of which fiery Vesuvius would be lost as a dim spark. Myriads of starry spheres flecking the midnight sky, are mighty suns tortured by inconceivable convulsions. Far off beyond them the telescopic lens dips up from limitless space countless suns, all boiling, roaring and raging in unending, monstrous motion.

Motion evolves change. Change goes on everywhere, declares science! Change, cries orthodoxy, is universal save in One—the everlasting, unchangeable maker of all things! Orthodoxy tells us that man—man the soul—, was made in God's image and was by him pronounced good. The "good" in God's eye must be perfect. We know that man—the soul man—grows—the perfect therefore grows and perfection becomes more perfect. A Paradox! So is that mathematical truth that two parallel lines drawn towards infinity, meet.

The deathless soul emanates from God. Is the question irreverent? May not the Eternal who started then and keeps all things moving and growing—may not He grow in perfection? May not the Omnipotent become more potent, the Omniscient wiser? Being given to digression, I give this in advance to save the reader one later on.

In obedience to fashion's and nature's law, I would put myself in motion and would seek change. I will take an "outing" in this summer of A.D. 1890.

My daughter, a school girl, will go with me. The old and those growing old, should attach to themselves the young. Old tree trunks in tropical climes wrap themselves in thrifty growing vines. The green mantle wards off the sun's hot rays, and prevents to some extent too rapid evaporation. Gray-haired grandfathers oftentimes delight to promenade with toddling grandchildren. This is good for momentary divertissement, but for steady regimen it is a mistake. Callow childhood furnishes not to the old, proper companionship. The unfledged but intense vitality of the one may sap the slow-running current of the other, and reduce it to the lower level—to second childhood. Age should tie to itself ripening youth. Then heart and springtide is absorbed by the older, and ripe experience given to the younger in exchange.

We resolve to do the Yellowstone National Park, by way of the Northern Pacific Railroad, thence onward to Puget Sound and Alaska to return by the Canadian Pacific. We hope for health, pleasure and brain food. I shall write of our goings and comings, that my friends at home may through our eyes feel that they are voyaging with us.

A beautiful or grand scene is doubly enjoyed when one feels he may through a letter have hundreds see what he sees and as he sees. They become his companions and hold sweet communion with him, though thousands of miles may lie between them. This is sympathy, and sympathy makes the joy of life. The tete-a-tete between lovers "beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale," is delicious. But not more sweet than the communion between the orator and the mighty audience which he sways and bends at will. He holds a tete-a-tete with each of his listeners.

Byron swore he "loved not the world, nor the world him." The bard was self-deceived. He wrote that he might win the sympathy of millions. Bayard Taylor told the writer once that he wrote from an irresistible impulse. His warm, generous nature yearned for the sympathy of a reading world. I shall write that a few hundred may see through my eyes—may feel when my heart beats, and for a few brief hours may be in sympathy with me. Some one possibly may sneer "Cacoethes Scribendi." Catch the retort, "Honi soit qui Mal-y-pense."

LETTER I.

A RUN THROUGH PRETTY WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. BEAUTIFUL ST. PAUL. JEALOUSY BETWEEN TWIN CITIES. AN INDIGNANT ST. PAUL DEMOCRAT AND A CARELESS SEATTLE MAN. DAKOTA AND THE DIRTY MISSOURI RIVER. A DISSERTATION ON WASTE OF LAND AND DESTRUCTION OF TREES. THE BAD LANDS. THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER. GATEWAY TO NATIONAL PARK AND ITS GUARDIAN EAGLE.

Mammoth Hot Springs, July 17, 1890.

We left Chicago by the Wisconsin Central Railroad for St. Paul. From the beginning the run was interesting, especially to one who remembers what the country was thirty-five years ago—an almost flat prairie of tangled grass, in which the water was held as in a morass, promising but little to the ambitious earth-tiller. I recall a remark of Senator Douglas when the future of our flat prairies was being discussed in my presence thirty-five years ago: "People do not realize that the drainage problem is being now daily solved. The leader of a herd of cattle browsing the prairies, is an engineer, and his followers faithful laborers in making ditches. When going to and from their grazing grounds, they march in line and tread down paths which make no mean drains. The cattle of Illinois are annually lifting millions of acres out of the swamp into good arable lands."

As soon as the Des Plaines was crossed, good farms began, and comfortable farm houses were always in sight; oats bent and waved in light green, and corn stood sturdy in emerald, where a third of a century ago, even in July, a pedestrian was compelled to step from ant-hill to ant-hill to keep his ankles dry. Copses of young wood relieved the monotony of too much flatness, and in a few hours after our start, pretty lakes shimmered in the sinking sun light, and sweetly homelike villas were ever in view. We crossed the Wisconsin line, and hill and vale or gentle undulations with wooded heights and flowing streams, and villages and saw mills enlivened the journey.

TERRACES AT MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 16.)

In the distant future when population shall become abundant, and tasteful homesteads shall replace somewhat speculative shanties, few countries of the world will be more pleasingly rural than southern and middle Wisconsin.

Books should be carried by the tourist in his trunk, and newspapers should be religiously discarded throughout the run to St. Paul. The country traversed opens many a pleasing page during the summer months, and glowing pictures are spread before him on nature's living canvass. He unfortunately loses much when the curtain of night is drawn over God's own impartial book: the book which never misleads if carefully read and studiously digested.

At St. Paul we had some hours to ride about the pretty town, before boarding the Northern Pacific railroad for our long journey to Puget's Sound. This great road has the singular characteristic of having double termini at each end, and between each of the twins there exists a feud rarely found except between cities engaged in actual war with each other.

Athens and Sparta hated each other not as do St. Paul and Minneapolis. Just now, owing to the taking of the census, there is blood in the eye of every St. Paulite. An elderly gentleman introduced himself to me the other day at the station. After a while he said: "It is a —— shame the way the United States is treating St. Paul. I am a Democrat, sir, and can stand a little stuffing of the ballot-box, but I draw the line there. I can't stand the stuffing of the census. We are willing to concede to Minneapolis 10,000 more population than we have, but Harrison ought to be turned out of office for running it up to 40,000. It is a fraud, sir—a miserable Republican fraud. We will be revenged, sir, and will show our teeth next fall and don't you forget it." I sympathized with him and felt like marching to Washington at once to send my cousin Ben back to Hoosierdom.

In the National Park I saw at four different hotels the names of Mr. —— Mrs. —— and two little blanks. There was a bracket after the names, but the writer had evidently forgotten to write in the address. The name preceding his on the first book was from Boston. At the next place the preceding person was from New York, and again from some other city. The fourth day at dinner I was introduced to the head of the family. He was from Seattle. I asked him why it was he had not put in his address, declaring I would tell it on him at Tacoma. "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed, "have I done that?" He rushed back to the register and wrote "Seattle" as big as a John Hancock. The next time we met in a crowd, I twitted him about the thing. He then declared he must have left out the address instinctively from a natural aversion to being known to come from any spot so close to Tacoma. Considerable jealousy of St. Paul on the part of her twin city is natural, for it is a beautiful town. Its residences on the hills are very fine, and their locations lovely beyond those of all but few cities. The entire town was very clean, and in the hill portion bright and cheerful. The residences are generally surrounded by considerable grounds, filled with trees and shrubbery, in much variety and in luxuriant growth. The young girl with me fell so completely in love with the clean, pretty place, that she declared, if she ever got married it would be to a St. Paul man.

The run through Minnesota is as if through a great park. Everything is green and bright. Copse, meadow and field are as fresh as a May morning. The natural location of frequent wooded clumps, of prairie openings and of lakes, could hardly be improved by a landscape engineer. We passed the great wheat fields of Dakota at night, but I thought there was far less of barren plain and alkali patches as we approached the Missouri river, than I saw there seven years ago.

How different the feelings with which we approached the Missouri from those experienced as we drew near the Mississippi! One cannot get up a feeling of respect for the tortuous, treacherous, muddy, long and snake-like ditch. One takes off his hat to the Father of Waters, but feels like kicking, if he had a place to kick, this lengthy, nasty thing. No one can see any real use for it, except as a tributary to and feeder of the Mississippi. It has not and never had a placid infancy. Several of its upper feeders are beautiful, clear, rapid, purling streams. But some of them apparently without rhyme or reason suddenly become flowing mud. One dashes on a train along one and wishes he could alight to cast a fly for a speckled beauty. The road takes a turn around a mountain spur, and lo! the crystal stream has become liquid mud, to prepare itself, I suppose, for the mucky thing it will soon join. Possibly and probably, these transformations are owing to a miner's camp and a placer washing on the other side of the spur.

North Dakota has not become settled along the railroad, after quitting the great wheat belt, as I expected. Farms are very scattered, and when seen are small and wear an air of neglect. Yet the native plains are cheerful looking and roll off in green undulations. The Forest Commissioners, if there be any, must find some more hardy species of trees than those now used to enable them to grow brakes for warding off the winds and blizzards. The railroad people have planted many trees, but they do not thrive. They seem alive about the roots, but dead after reaching one or two feet. Possibly a blanket of snow lies about the roots in winter and protects them; but the alternation of cold and hot winds apparently kills the sap as it rises higher up. Government should inaugurate a thorough system of arboriculture, inviting and encouraging a real science.

The Socialists say the Nation should own the land. To a certain degree the Socialists are right. The fountain of land ownership is in the Government. It should maintain such ownership to a certain extent throughout all time. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Government is and should be the lord of the domain, and should never part with such control as may prevent private owners from destroying the land which is to be the heritage of the people to the latest generation. It should forbid and prevent a waste of land. To this end it should force the husbanding of all resources for the improvement of that which is to support the people for all time. No private owner should be allowed to destroy wantonly that which comes from mother earth. What comes from the bosom of the land, and is not essential to feed and maintain the cultivator, should be given back to it. A man should be fined who burns manure. Man should not cut timber to such an extent as to reduce a necessary rainfall. Commissioners should determine from scientific data, how much of forest is necessary in fixed districts of the country, and when so determined no one should be permitted to cut a tree without replacing it by a young one. In the Old World millions of acres are now worthless which once supported teeming populations; all because they have been denuded of trees. Nearly all European countries as well as India are now, and have been for some years, earnestly endeavoring to check this evil. Commissioners of Forestry, earnest and educated men, have been appointed. Schools of Forestry are fostered by the state. The betterment has been so marked, that the ordinary pleasure seeking traveler sees a wonderful change between visits separated by twenty or thirty years. America has countless millions of acres scarcely capable of supporting a human being, which could be made to wave in cereals or grow fat in edible roots, if only trees were grown to induce a somewhat regular rainfall.

The arid plains of the Great West have the richest of known soils, if a little human sweat mixed with water in sufficient quantity could be kneaded into it. Government as the lord paramount of its domain, should force the growing of trees and should prevent the destruction of timber wherever the same is necessary to keep up or improve the land. It has parted with the title to the soil, but still retains the power to use it for its own support. It levies and collects taxes from lands as the paramount owner. The same power exists to prevent the waste of that from which its taxes spring or through which its people may live.

"No one is a man," says the Arab maxim, "until he has planted a tree, dug a well, and grown a boy." The nation is an aggregation of men and should follow the maxim. The statesman who devises a good system of taxation is entitled to the praises of all men, but he is but a pigmy to the man who turns sterile deserts into places of plenty, or who make many blades of grass grow where now only one springs up. I am ready to bow down before the man who will maintain and improve the soil of our Eastern States, or will shower over the West a copious rainfall.

Bismark was disappointing. It has not improved as could have been expected since we helped to lay the corner-stone of its Capitol seven years ago.

BAD LANDS OR "MAUVAISES TERRES."

The "bad lands" are as God-forsaken in appearance as they were years since. There the very earth has been burned and the Evil One seems to have set his foot-print on every rod. Men do live in them, but more blessed is he who dies in genial surroundings! What a hold upon us has the love of life! So short and such a bauble! How worthless when robbed, as it must be in this bleak tract, of every concomitant of the joyful! Only the All-powerful can reclaim the soil of the "bad lands," and not until a cataclysm has carried it 1,000 fathoms beneath the sea, will it be fitted for sunlight and ready to support life. It has been burned up with the coals and lignites which underlaid the surface. After striking the Yellowstone Valley the ride westward becomes pretty. The mountains are bold, with fine outlines, often lifting in picturesque precipices from the water's edge. Great strata of coal are frequently seen stretching in level parallel lines for considerable distances. Snow appears in seams and gorges on the loftiest heights. While not offering as grand displays as are seen in one or two points of other across-the-continent roads, the Northern Pacific presents more varied scenery, and far more that is pleasing and restful to the eye, than any other except the Canadian Pacific.

To most travelers much of the scenery of the Northern Pacific until Helena is reached is monotonous. But to one disposed to be a student of nature and a lover of its varied forms, many instructive lessons can be conned from the car window, and many pleasing pictures hastily enjoyed. The Yellowstone, along whose banks the road runs for three hundred and fifty miles, is a cheerful stream. When first reached it is muddy, but after the mouths of one or two large affluents have been passed it becomes clear and limpid. Its flow is almost constantly rapid and turbulent. But few still reaches are seen, and these are rarely over a mile or so in length. On one or the other bank considerable mountains lift from the water's edge, in lofty, clear-cut precipices. The upper slopes have but few trees and rarely any clumps or masses, but offer much variety in earth coloring. Light brown, sometimes deepening into chocolate, is the dominant tone. There are frequent stretches of yellow, here and there flecked with patches or bands of venetian red. This latter sometimes takes a tint so bright as to merit being called vermilion.

At Livingston, a thousand and odd miles from St. Paul, we left the Northern Pacific, and by a narrow-gauge road continued up the Yellowstone, fifty-one miles to Cinnabar; thence by Park coaches, wagonettes and surreys, eight miles along the wildly rushing Gardner river, and through a narrow defile hemmed in by lofty precipices beneath frowning crags—the gateway to the park—to the "Mammoth Hot Springs." Near the gateway on a lofty pinnacled rock, so slender as at first to be mistaken for the trunk of a huge tree, sat an eagle upon its eyrie, keeping watch and ward over the entrance to the people's pleasure ground. The bird's nest is built of loose sticks laid upon the rocky point, which is not broader than a good-sized tree stump. How it withstands the dash of storms, which often rage through the narrow pass, is a marvel. Yet it has been there for many years, and each year sends forth its young brood. I regret to say this eagle is not the genuine American screamer, which so grandly spreads its wings upon the daddy's dollar, but is the great white-headed fish-hawk. He is easily mistaken for the bald eagle, but is smaller and a somewhat sociable bird, building his home near by those of others of his species. The true eagle is sullen and solitary, and chooses his eyrie many miles removed from his fellows. Indeed he spurns all fellowship with his kind.

All tourists delight to look at the "Devils Slide" in the Gardner canyon. It is from five to six hundred feet high, a few feet broad, between thin slate dykes, and as smooth as a toboggan way. As there is no record that the father of lies was acquainted with sand paper, there is a peculiar pleasure in imagining the grinding away of the seat of his trousers, while he was polishing down his coaching slide. In spite of what the preachers say, there is no doubt that man, woman and child hate the devil, and are delighted by any evidence of annoyance to him.

LETTER II.

THE NATIONAL PARK, "THE WONDERLAND OF THE GLOBE." THE HOME OF THE EVIL ONE. STEAM VENTS. GEYSERS. THE GROTTO. THE GIANT. THE BEE HIVE. THE CASTLE AND OLD FAITHFUL IN THE UPPER GEYSER BASIN.

Grand Canyon,
Yellowstone National Park, July 22.

American dudes of both sexes wandering about the world have been sorely perplexed because Uncle Sam has had no huge ships of war with which to display his grandeur in foreign ports, and no embassadorial residences in which Yankee heels may air themselves to advantage. When foreigners have made allusion to our poverty in this regard, and their own wealth of splendor, we have been forced to fall back upon the Yankee's retort, "Yes; but you hain't got no Niagary." Luckily but few of those who taunted us were aware that Niagara was simply located in the United States but did not belong to it. But now we can throw back at the effete denizens of other lands "the wonderland of the globe,"—The Yellowstone National Park—in which there is more of the marvelous sports of nature than exists in the entire outer world besides. We can tell them of these wonders, and can then say that these marvels are the Nation's, and that this park of over 3,500 square miles is maintained by the Nation for the people, for their amusement and recreation. It is to be regretted that more of the surplus which has been lying idle in the treasury vaults has not been expended to enable the people to better enjoy their wealth of wonders. The people may read of their treasures; they may see folios of illustrations, but no one can comprehend them without seeing them; no pen pictures can bring them before the eye of one who has not been here; no photograph can display their forms and then dye them in their wondrous colors; no painter can spread them upon canvas, for he would at once be put down as an artistic liar. The simple truth is an exaggeration, and a precise copy is a distortion of nature's molds.

THE EVIL SPIRIT'S ABODE.

No wonder the Indians have given this section of the country a wide berth, for well might they believe it the home of the evil spirit. One of them straying here might wander for days and never mount an elevated point without being able to count scores of columns of white steam lifting above the trees from different points of the forest, telling him of the wigwams of the evil one. If he stole along the valleys, he would come upon pools of water of crystal clearness tempting in appearance to the thirsty; some of them not larger than the blanket which covered his shoulders, others so large that the tepees of half his tribe would not cover their area; some mere jagged holes in the rock, others with rims a foot or so in height, and as regular as his pipe of peace. Here are some a few inches or a few feet in depth, with bottoms and sides painted in rainbow tints; there are others with deep sunken walls embossed and tufted, and dyed with the colors of the setting sun, and with dark throats so deep that they seem to be yawning from fathomless depths. Here they are as placid as the eye of the papoose hanging at the squaw mother's back. Our Indian pauses at the painted brink of one, dips his hand into the tempting fluid—jerks it back quickly, but perhaps not before it is scalded. There they boil up one, two, three or more feet and appear as though they would pour out a flood from below, but not a drop passes over the rim of the pool. The boiling motion is from volumes of steam working its way through the waters from the bowels of the earth and spreading upon the breeze. Boiling water elsewhere wastes itself away, but these pools boil and boil from year to year, and scarcely vary perceptibly in height. Our untutored tourist turns his eye upon the mountain bordering the valley, whose sides are so encrusted with geyserite deposit that it appears to have been formed of this material, and to have been erected by boiling springs; along its whitened side and far up on its crest are springs or vents, from which arise columns of lifting steam and the mountain seems to roar; startled, he hears close to his feet, a gurgling sound such as comes from an animal whose throat is newly cut. His eye seeks the spot whence comes this sound of death. He sees an orifice in the ground not large enough to take in his body, but from it comes the death rattle a hundred times louder than the largest buffalo could make when pierced about its heart. The Evil Spirit is slaying an animal so huge that if he were on the ground its tread would shake the earth.

A WONDERFUL PLATEAU.

He climbs over a mountain spur and sees spread before him a white plateau of several hundred acres. Jets of steam are pouring from a thousand points of its surface, some rising only a few feet, others lifting 500 feet into the air; here from fountains boiling merely, or spouting up to one, two, or more feet; there from simple vent holes in the nearly level surface of the plain. Some pour from fantastic forms—great stumps of trees with one side torn away; from piles of downy cushions; from great platters of biscuit, a part as white as dough, others crisp and brown; from ruined castles; from orifices bordered by mighty, parted, Ethiopian lips of whitish gray tone or painted red and brown. One is fashioned like an old time conical straw bee-hive. So well is the model copied, that no great stretch of imagination would be required to enable one to hear the buzz of busy honey makers swarming about it. Another is a rude cabin chimney with steam lifting from its top, in lieu of smoke curling from a woodman's fire.

He approaches one which might once have been a grotto, with stalagmites and stalactites forming its ribs and roof, but the superincumbent earth having been removed, the stony skeleton is laid bare, partly a dozen or more feet above the ground and partly sunken below. From its hollow pit comes a roaring sound not unlike the growl of a lion when feeding, only of a king of beasts many fold enlarged. He hears close by it a noise he takes to be the call of a familiar bird. There is no bird in sight, but near his feet in the rocky platform is a small vent he could close with his thumb; it is breathing, but its breath is high heated steam; its inspiration is a gentle gurgle, its expiration is the blue jay's call.

Its breath comes from deep below, from the lungs of the monster whose stertorous breathing is an indication that he is turning over in his hidden lair; and as he turns he belches forth a mouthful of steam and water through the grotto. He has evidently eaten something disagreeable and is sick in the regions of the maw, for up comes another and a larger mouthful; and then another and more, until he pours out his very insides in tons of boiling water. Through every opening of the grotto's frame, water and steam rush forth in mighty volume. Thousands of gallons to the minute lift in jets ten to thirty feet through each opening, and run in great streams to the crystal river a little way below. The monster bellows, the vents about the grotto's base whistle, the water splashes, and the steam rushes, scalding hot. After a while—perhaps in twenty or thirty minutes—all flowing ceases, and a column of steam pours out for perhaps an hour and lifts several hundred feet into the air.

"THE GIANT" IN ACTION.

While this strange action is being seen, close by, a rumbling noise is heard in the depths of "The Giant," 200 or 300 yards away. The noise increases, not unlike that of an approaching railroad train, and is soon accompanied by a discharge of water three or more feet in diameter at the geyser nozzle, lifted in an almost vertical column 150 to 200 feet high, all enveloped in a veil of steam. This pours through the top of a geyserite formation some ten feet high, and a dozen or fifteen from out to out—a monster stump, broken and jagged as if a monarch of the forest had been snapped off by a mighty storm blast.

THE GIANT, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 33.)

The flood drops all about in spray, veiling the lifted column, and is of such quantity that the river nearly seventy-five feet wide, is doubled in depth when the monster is in action.

Our accidental red tourist has lost his Indian stoicism, and wishes to see something more of the Devil's doings. The "Giant" having become silent, he steals along the white formation a few hundred yards, when, from a small hole in the ground, without any warning, up shoots a beautiful little geyser about twenty feet high, a perfect spreading jet d'eau, accompanied by no steam and lasting only perhaps a quarter of a minute. The action of this little jet over, every drop of its lifted water flows back into its mouth and disappears down its throat; but not for long, for it again shoots up in four minutes, and is so regular in its action, that it has been christened "Young Faithful."

The plateau here spoken of—"The upper geyser basin"—is two or more miles long and of irregular width, probably averaging a third of a mile. It is all white with encrusted geyserite deposit often giving out a hollow sound to the tread. This deposit varies in thickness from a few inches to several feet. It is grayish white, resembling tarnished frozen snow.

THE SPLENDID—200 FEET HIGH.

But see that noble column spouting 200 feet high in a somewhat slanting stream not far from a quarter of a mile away. Close by a smaller jet shoots obliquely, mingling its spray with the larger one. The tourist is too far removed to see the brilliant rainbow formed in the mingling spray. But let him wait some hours and he may visit it again to witness another active eruption from the "Splendid Geyser," which pours four times a day from a simple hole in the rock, and has as yet builded himself no geyserite nozzle. A short walk brings one to the "Devil's Punch Bowl," where the old Fiend takes his nocturnal nip, from a basin a few feet in diameter, inclosed by an embossed rim a foot high and as regular as the raised edge of a Dresden punch bowl, and always boiling and seething to keep the tipple hot and ready.

In this plateau are hundreds of pools of exquisite colorings, and scores of geysers lifting more or less regularly and at shorter or longer intervals; some of the intervals being of hours, others of days and others still measured only by minutes. The geysers are all named in accordance with a supposed resemblance of their formation to some known thing, or to the character, size or quality of their eruptions; "The Queen," "The King," "The Bee-hive," "The Castle," "The Princess," "Old Faithful," "The Excelsior," "The Splendid" and so on. The pools take their names generally from the colorings of their rims or sides, or of the water held in them, as "The Emerald," "The Amethyst," "The Sunset," "The Rainbow" and "The Morning Glory." Some of the pools are named from the nature of their boilings, others from the rock formation in their throats and about their sides; "The Biscuit Bowl," "The Snow-ball," "The Spouter." Many of the names are by no means far fetched. The "Biscuit Bowl," for example, resembles a mass of well formed monster breakfast rolls, some in whitened dough, others in all stages of brown from the half done to the well baked.

The tourist approaches a flattened cone, with a base 600 or 800 feet in circumference, and fifty feet high, surmounted by the ruins of an old castle. The owner of the "Castle" has been growling all day and emitting an unusual amount of steam. He is evidently preparing to erupt, which he does at intervals of several days. His terrific growlings increase as the day wears on, and angry spurts of boiling water accompanied by steam show he is getting his temper up to white heat. He has been quiet for an unusual time of late and when aroused, like Othello, he will be fearfully moved. He makes a few angry premonitory belches and bellows. The noise is accompanied by a trembling of the earth for hundreds of yards. A mass of water is then ejected from 50 to 100 feet up, mixed with steam in dense mass. The flow of water is of short duration; but is of thousands of tons, and is followed by an emission of steam large enough to run an ocean steamer. This steam escape can be heard for a mile or more, and sounds like the roar made by a Long Island Sound steamer blowing salt from its boilers. The noise is continuous for an hour; it gradually lessens, however, until it ceases entirely. Steam is then lazily emitted continuously, and a loud gurgling noise is constant deep down in the Geyser throat. This is more or less the case with nearly all of the geysers. A few, however, become so quiet, that very close attention is necessary to catch any boiling noise. The "Castle" geyser blows off for hours before his steam generators are cleaned.

IT SCARES THE WHITE MAN.

Our red cheeked tourist has stoicism, but he cannot stay over this Devil's kitchen long enough to see half of the mighty vents in action. One, which but rarely plays, shakes the very earth. A good white man, who flatters himself that he is a child of God and believes in sovereign reigning grace, is struck by it with awe akin to terror.

But there is one geyser which becomes familiar to the civilized tourist and seems to win from him a sort of affection, because of his conscientious behavior. His very regularity, however, would strike the more terror into the heart of the untutored red man. He has built his home under a mound 300 yards in circumference and twenty or so feet high at its apex, upon which he has cast a geyserite chimney ten to fifteen feet high and six or eight in diameter. This chimney he has ornamented within and without with huge tufted beads, and painted those within with rose and white, orange and brown, red and grey. These adjuncts, however, do not compare to those of many others, for some of them seem to have wrapped their throats in great pillows, hard as gypsum, but looking as soft and tufty as if made of swans down, while others have painted their inside linings with all the tints of the rainbow; and their crystal clear water seems to have caught the cerulean blue from the heavens and are holding it in solution.

But to return to this geyser; for nearly an hour he has been as quiet as a lamb, just enough of steam arising from his throat to show he is gently breathing. The steam breath gradually grows and is exhaled with more vigor. Presently he belches up a barrel or so of water which falls back into his throat. Then in a minute come two or three such little spasms, when up lifts a rounded column two or three feet in diameter, rising higher and higher in exact perpendicularity 150 feet high. The jet breaks more or less as it rises into pointed sprays, which, when there is no wind blowing, fall with almost precise regularity about the up going column.

WATCHES ARE SET BY IT.

In about five minutes the jet of water ceases, but is followed by considerable steam emissions for a quarter of an hour, when one can look down into his throat and see the crystal water ten to fifteen feet below the apex, and all quiet and still. So regular is the action of this geyser that one could, by watching it, almost dispense with a watch. He never plays in less than sixty-three minutes, and never delays action longer than seventy. Indeed, some of his most constant admirers declare these variations are the fault of watches, not of "Old Faithful." Thus he is named, and as such is known far and near. There are several of these geyser-basins scattered over the park from ten to twenty-five miles apart, the principal ones being the "Norris," the "Lower Geyser Basin" and the "Upper Geyser Basin." These are reached in succession on the tourist road from "Mammoth Hot Springs."

The regular tourist, starting from Mammoth Hotel, dines at the "Norris" and sleeps at the "Lower Basin." The next day, if he prefers to go on with his coach, he passes the "Excelsior," which is the hugest of all the geysers, and has been for two or three years nearly quiet, but this year is in tolerable eruption. It is a vast pool, possibly over two hundred feet in diameter. When quiet, water about twenty feet below the pool rim boils, seethes and tosses in horrible motion. It erupted just as our party reached it, but not in one of its grand actions. A mass of water possibly many feet in diameter was lifted fifty or more feet in the air. It is said that when in full eruption the height of the column is from two to three hundred feet. This I doubt. The mass of steam enveloping the jet is so great that the water column is entirely hidden, and has given rise to exaggeration on the part of those who have seen it at its best. The basin of the Excelsior is called "Hell's half acre," and it is by no means a misnomer, for the earth trembles, and the roar when the geyser is in action is that of an earthquake, while great stones are scattered about for several hundred feet. Close by it are the "Prismatic Springs" and the "Turquoise." The first is two or more hundred feet in diameter and is a placid mass of scalding water. It has various depths; in the center where very deep, it is of an indigo blue which shades off into a bluish green; then where very shallow, it runs off into yellow, orange, red and brown, while some circles are white. It is a marvel of beauty. The color of the Turquoise is precisely described by its name.

The whole park plateau is filled with hot springs, which are building up elevations with their deposit and mounting them as they build. The water is all clear as crystal, but holds in solution lime, iron, sulphur and other minerals, which it deposits sufficiently fast to encrust a key, horseshoe, or other piece of metal in three or four days with a solid enamel—say the sixteenth of an inch in thickness—and of the appearance of second-class white sugar.

The geysers eject, when in action, large quantities of water, but the springs, though boiling and spouting, and appearing to be lifting much water, flow over their rims in very small streams. As they flow they build up their margins, which are thus made almost exactly level. This gentle flow runs off in wavy ripples generally; not in little rivulets, but in thin sheets, depositing the solid matter they have held in solution while below, which is freed by the action of the atmosphere. In this way the springs lift themselves, and build lofty hills. The deposit when fresh is hard, but when dry becomes generally friable, though there are cases where it maintains great hardness. These deposits often times wear beautiful colors, and nearly always do so when being made or while under water. Some of the quiet pools are over 100 feet in diameter. The outer edges when shallow are of a deep brown, followed by a lighter brown or red, then blending into a yellow and followed by a yellow olive, and deepening as they sink into dark olive, while in the deep throats they are almost black. The water before it makes the deepest point, in some is of emerald greenness, in others of exquisite blue; along the steep sloping walls assuming a rich amethyst or tinted in exquisite sapphire.

All deposits take either a wavy or a tufted form, whether on gentle slopes or on perpendicular walls. Some steep walls are not unlike slightly tufted fleeces of wool. The tufts are of all sizes, from that of an orange up to others as large as a bushel basket. One can scarcely realize that these tufts are hard. They appear beneath the water to be as light and soft as newly fallen snow upon an evergreen bush. Some of them are creamy white, others yellow, orange and all shades of brown. In one of the Geyser basins is a large pool actually used by the hotel people as a laundry tub. If you will promise not to mention it I will confess two evidences on my part of weakness. I always shed tears at the theatres, and I washed some handkerchiefs in this boiling pool and they came out nicely white.

NATURE'S PAINT-POTS.

To many, the paint-pots at the "Lower Basin" are the most curious things seen in the park. Imagine somewhat rounded pits of all sizes from those a few inches in diameter to others of forty and even sixty feet across, filled with fine white mud or mortar, such as plasterers call putty, and used by them for hard finish. This is boiling and plopping (I coin this word) like mush in huge pots, or thick soap in mighty caldrons. In boiling, the big bubbles lazily lift several inches high, and more lazily burst with a muffled noise, and sputter dabs of thick paste several feet into the air. Falling upon the rim of the pool, these erect a wall—now smooth as a plastered wall—and then in rough grotesque finish. No mortar made up for a first-class plaster finish was ever tempered as is this natural paste. When dry and pulverized it is an almost impalpable powder. The paste is sometimes white, but more often is of a pale scotch gray. One large pool is half white or whitish grey, the other half of a delicate peach blow. In one pot the putty was a pretty pink salmon. Putting these three colors on a cardboard to dry, I found that much of the coloring disappeared after exposure to the atmosphere. At one basin between the Yellowstone canyon and the great Yellowstone Lake, the mortar is of dark mud, pure and simple, and is lifted many feet in the air, and falling, is sucked back into a monster throat with horrible gurgling sound. Go to a slaughter house to see a stuck pig breathing his last. Multiply his agonizing throes several hundred fold and a good idea can be had of the struggle of these hidden monsters. One of the mud geysers is said at times to be so violent in its action, that the earth trembles for a very considerable distance, when the monster is in full eruption. Curiously there will sometimes be found a pool of crystal pure water boiling or spouting not many feet away, and in one instance, close to a mud boiling pool is a large spring of pure cold water. One is tempted to wish to turn one of these into the mouth of the mud geyser to wash down its throat and ease its agony. Neither the mud nor the white mortar in these craters overflow, but bubble, sputter, and plop year after year. The particles are as impalpable as the fine ground paint upon an artist's easel.

All kinds of pools, geysers and paint-pots are heated more or less highly, all of them nearly up to, and some much above boiling point. The heating is not from the visible water being near to any fire or heated surface, but from super-heated steam, generated far below, being forced through the surface water. Sometimes only steam escapes through the surface orifices. These are called vents. The steam coming from some of these is so hot that the skin would be taken from the hand by a single instantaneous application. They seem to be a sort of safety valves from the great steam generators in the bowels of the earth. No wonder the Indian gives this country a clear berth, or that a good schoolmarm tourist constantly had on her lips Hades! Hades!! Hades!!! To be candid, I think she used the old fashioned word.

LETTER III.

MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. A WONDERFUL FORMATION. THE WHITE ELEPHANT. A THEORY ACCOUNTING FOR THE HOT SPRINGS AND GEYSERS. MUD GEYSERS. MARVELOUS COLORINGS OF SOME POOLS.

The tourist entering the National Park by way of Livingston through the Gardner Canyon, and rocky Gateway, at about sixty miles reaches the "Mammoth Hot Springs". Here he sees a surprising formation. Before him rises in terraces each from twenty to thirty feet high, a great white cataract looking mass, several hundred feet high, bulging out into the valley. The center projects with rounded contour far beyond the wings, which recede on either side, and to be seen must be skirted. The entire bent crest is not far from three miles in length. When first approached, it strikes the eye as a succession of water falls tumbling from terrace to terrace. To a second glance it appears a system of falls one above the other hardened into dirty ice. To one who has visited lofty snow clad mountains, an act of deliberation is required to prevent him believing that the terraces are a part of a glacier of more or less purity.

The crests of the different terraces are almost level—some of them apparently exactly so. They are built by water, and, water here levels as it builds, for if there be a depression it seeks it, and depositing the solid matter held in solution, levels it up with the rest. From the crest of the upper terrace runs back a plateau of silicious incrustation covering 300 to 400 acres. Scattered over this, are shallow pools of hot water of a bluish white tinge. About their shallow sides these pools have concentric, tinted borders, some a few inches wide, others of one or two feet. These are bent to conform to the irregular shape of the pools, one within the other, and are several deep. The borders differ from each other in color, being red, orange, yellow and brown and of intermediate shades.

Near the front bulge of the upper terrace, lifts the principal spring or pool on its individual terrace, high above the main plateau. It looks like a turret when seen from below. Flowing in thin sheets over the margin, sometimes a simple ooze, the water from each pool makes a deposit as it spreads over the surrounding surface. At the foot and in front of the great precipice, stand two isolated slender pillars of geyserite, one of them about forty feet high. They are hollow and are the cones or nozzles of extinct geysers. One is called the "Liberty Cap" the other the "Devil's Thumb." They lift sheer up from the level in front of the great formation, and are a sort of sentinels keeping watch and ward over the wonderful picture. A large part of the precipitous projection of each terrace is moist from slowly trickling water.

At the rear of the great plateau half hidden among scattered trees, is a long fissure in the solid rock foundation of the mountain slope. Through this has poured up hot water from below, building, as it flowed, a huge white formation two to three hundred feet long, ten to fifteen feet high, and about as broad, rounded and smooth on its crest. This is supposed to resemble an elephant in recumbent position and has been aptly named "The White Elephant." If one pauses to listen, he will hear a gurgling of running water down in the leviathan's inside, not unlike that made when its living namesake pours a draught of water from his trunk down into his throat. Here, as everywhere else in active spring formations, the sound of running water can be heard beneath the surface incrustation. In some instances the ear must be bent down to catch a gentle rippling; in others it deepens into a hoarse gurgle.

The silicious crest of all of the plateaux on which a person walks, gives out so hollow a sound, that one is apt to feel somewhat anxious lest it break beneath his weight. I suspect, however, if it should do so, the bottom would be found generally at only a few inches, and a crimped shoe would be the most injurious result. Occasionally, however, the crest may cover a deep pool, but not often. When a pool is very still a film of solid matter spreads over its margin as grease does over cool water. This attaches itself to the edge and spreads towards the center. Gentle ripples then overflow this but do not break it down, but thicken it by further deposits. Sometimes one sees these edges projecting well over a deep pool, and strong enough to bear up the weight of several men; some of these may at some time be the cause of very scalding accidents. The principal danger, however, to a moderately prudent tourist is to his shoe leather. One frequently steps into a little puddle after a geyser ceases to act, or walks into a thin sheet to see more closely the coloring of a pool. Either of such imprudences may cost a pair of good shoes. The safest course is to wear old ones for a ramble and to keep a good dry pair at the hotel.

THEORIES ABOUT THE FORMATIONS.

It may not be amiss to suggest some solution of the problems under which the silicious incrustations are produced and the active geysers act.

JUPITER TERRACE, MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS. (SEE PAGE 48.)

The entire Yellowstone Park is an elevated plateau thrown up by volcanic eruption, or more probably was left when the plains sank beneath the ocean, leaving the crumpled back bone of the continent pushed far above. The rocky ribs of earth were pitched here into a more or less vertical position, leaving seams and fissures running deep down into the bowels of the earth in the neighborhood of intense internal fires. Volcanic forces have left their marks throughout the Park. The hot springs and geysers are their feeble remnants.

On the mountain heights, melting snows and rains fill great lakes and copious flowing rivers. These send veins more or less large, or percolate down into the earth crust, supplying the intensely heated rocks with moisture for a vast volume of super-heated steam. The steam seeks an outlet through fissures made in the plutonic rocks by volcanic forces and through seams in the upper crumpled and pitched stratified formations. Passing through these latter this intensively heated steam erodes the softer rocks into throats, recesses and pockets, and taking up minerals in chemicals solution bears them upward, meeting the cooler crust and mingling with percolations from melting snows and rains, it becomes more or less condensed and pours out in small springs. These as they flow, deposit the silicious and other mineral matter held in solution, building up the lower side of the spring, until the rim is level. Thus the spring becomes a more or less rounded pool.

The over flow now becomes very gentle and even over the entire rim. The atmosphere reaches the whole of the overflow as it spreads over the surface of the ground and causes rapid precipitation. The constant outpour causes a constant lifting of the pool and of the incrustations about it. This spreading crust is in laminae or thin sheets. As the pool rim lifts, the weight of the column of water forces some of it between the sheets and carries it hot and rich in mineral and earthy solid matter to the outer edges of the formation, where it escapes to spread the incrustation wider and wider. The streams beneath the crust gradually wear away their channels leaving open spaces above them, which give out a hollow sound when one walks over them, and in them the rippling or gurgling of flowing water is to be heard more or less, beneath the crust.

When such underflowing streams cut a large enough channel, they frequently build up new small pools more or less removed from the parent spring. In other words one vein of hot water coming from below may be the source of several pools. Yet there are many only a few yards apart, which have sources far removed from each other, or at least the steam which supplies them with their heat and solid matter in solution, has passed through widely different and distant rock formations. This is shown by the different and distinct minerals which color the water and the formations deposited by them.

The water in one pool will be comparatively pure, while close by, is that of another strongly impregnated with sulphur, depositing great tufts in yellow and brown, and still another with red borders and olive throat full of oxide of iron. Here will be a pool beautifully green, with exquisitely tinted formations, proving that copper or arsenic are held in solution; and then within a half stone's throw is still another of intense cerulean blue and a third of most delicate sapphire.

In one of the paint pots, in the "Lower basin" not over forty feet in diameter, about half of the putty is pearl gray, while the other half is a rich peach blow. I said that the overflow of the pools was generally small. I recall several small ones and a few fully thirty or more feet in diameter, from which the overflow in a calm day was almost uniform from the entire veins, and nowhere thicker than a very thin sheet of glass. And in some instances the out put was so thin as to be a simple ooze. And yet in many of such pools the boiling action in the centre was great enough to lift bubbles and turbulations many inches high. In one pool called the "Spouter" there are constant large jets lifting from a few inches up to three or more feet, a wild fearful boiling and still only a small stream ran from it. And still others which boiled furiously but had no outflow at all. It is not improbable that from these latter there are water exists below the crusts, which have been lifted up as rims or pool margins. The bubbles and turbulations are not strictly speaking from boiling hot water, but from steam rushing up and striving to escape.

MARVELOUS COLORINGS.

No ordinary stretch of imagination will enable one who has not seen them to realize the variety and exquisiteness of the tints and colorings of many of the pools. The caves of Capri near Naples, furnish not a more wondrous blue, and the grottoes of tropical seas do not afford such variety. The tints are partly derived from the minerals held in solution by the water, but are probably owing more to the reflected tones of the geyserite formation surrounding the throats, walls and margins.

One can easily understand the solution of the problem resulting in the formation and actions of the pools, and of the building of the encrustations of the plateaux, which extend over hundreds of acres. But the actions of geysers are so weird and strange that science has probably not fully explained them. I confess myself too much of a tyro to fully comprehend the more scientific elucidation, which explains the action on chemical principles. I can, however, comprehend the more practical but possibly less scientific theory, which is sufficient for me and will probably also be so for the majority of my readers. The pools and hot springs are formed at all elevations in the valleys and on mountain slopes.

THEORIES AS TO GEYSER ACTION.

The Geysers are always in the valleys and generally contiguous to the lowest points. When lifted up they are probably so raised by their own energies as builders.

On the following page is a cut showing a section of the earth crust, running across a valley and up the mountain side. Along its lowest point flows rapidly a stream of cold clear water fed by melting snows and dews on mountains towering above and more or less distant.

"G" is a geyser cone. Below is the geyser throat or well sinking down to "W".

"S" is a shaft more or less vertical opening into the geyser well and running far down into the softer rocks to "C" a somewhat horizontal continuation leading into "R" a recess or pocket in the softer upper rocks of sufficient capacity in some cases to hold hundreds or thousands of tons of water.

"P" is another recess opening into "R" near its apex. These recesses or pockets have been scooped out by superheated steam pouring up from far below through plutonic rocks contiguous to living central fires. Such steam is generated from veins and percolations of water always sinking from the earth's surface and from moisture believed to exist in or about all rocks.

"D" "D" and "D" are reservoirs on the surface of the earth or beneath it high up on the mountains, perennially supplied by rains and melting snows.

"V" "V" "V" are veins through which water flows from reservoirs "D" "D" "D" into recess "R" at "X". These veins are also fed by percolations throughout the formations through which they run. "F" "F" are fissures or seams in the upper rocks running into and extending deep down in the primative or igneous rocks below, along which highly heated steam generated near the internal fires underlying earth's solid crust, rushes upward into recess or pocket "P". We will assume that there are no veins conveying cold water into this latter recess or pocket.

Now we assume also that at a given moment recesses "R" and "P" and shaft "S" and its continuation "C" are free or nearly free of water. Steam, however, is rushing from them and out of geyser "G" in hot, roaring volume. In recess "R" it is encountering cold water flowing in at "X" and rapidly loses its high temperature and is being condensed. As such condensation goes on, the horizontal continuation "C" is being filled. As it fills the escape of steam at "G" lessens rapidly, until continuation "C" becoming full of water, it ceases entirely or only a small amount lifts lazily up from the hot shaft "S". The inflow at "X" and condensation fills recess "R" with water more or less cool. The steam coming up through "F", "F" no longer having an escape, heats the water in "R" until it reaches a line "L" in recess "R," where it becomes so hot as no longer to condense steam or does it to a very small extent. The pressure of the high heated steam now stops a further inflow at "X" and forces the water upward into shaft "S" and is capable of sustaining the column at the geyser throat "W" and the column in veins "V" at a like height. Condensation having ceased the steam in "R" above "L" and in "P" becomes superheated and acquires enormous expansive power. Finally its energy is so vast that a sudden expansion or explosion takes place. The water at "L" is pressed enormously downward and the contents of recess "R" are forced upward through shaft "S" into the geyser well and then through the contracted nozzle at "G" in a mighty jet high into the open air. The action of suddenly expanded or exploded steam is spasmodic and immediate. All of the water in recess "R" is therefore rapidly thrown out at "G". The water gone, fearfully hot steam follows it through "G" until its spasmodic energy ceases almost if not quite as suddenly as it was at first aroused. Immediately the steam, now coming from recess "R" begins to go through the cooling process before described, until again the shaft is closed at "C" and again a repetition of the eruption is brought about.

This series of actions is more or less regular in all geysers. In old "Faithful" the round is completed in about sixty-three minutes. The recesses or pockets are of various sizes in different geysers requiring different periods of time to be filled. The time taken to empty them, and in some measure the height of the jets depend probably very largely upon the size of the throat and of the nozzle of the geysers. "Old Faithful" has a comparatively small nozzle. His jet continues for several minutes and mounts to a great height. The same is true of the "Splendid." "The Castle" spurts up a very much larger volume of water; but not nearly so high, from a huge throat and in very much less time. The "Excelsior" has a throat many feet in diameter, and ejects a column proportionately large. Its actions are not regular and indeed it is rather a water volcano than a geyser, throwing up large stones and gravel.

"Young Faithful" emits no steam. It is probably only a sort of adjunct of some of the violently boiling pools near by. Steam, which in some of these cause violent turbulations at regular intervals, forces water through lateral shafts up through this little gem. Its throat is very small. A considerable body of water passing from behind with only a moderate force, yet finding only the small throat, makes a jet of considerable height. Jets resembling it are frequently seen on low rocky cliffs on the sea shore, caused by the ocean swell passing into grottoes and caverns and forcing water up along small fissures through the overhanging rock, called "puffing holes". The foregoing theory of geyser action may not bear the test of close criticism, but it is probable that such criticism may be answered by hypotheses not here alluded to. At all events it may be sufficiently satisfactory for the ordinary mind.

LETTER IV.

HOW TO DO THE PARK. HOTELS AND VEHICLES. MY INNOCENTS. CHARMING SCENERY. NATURAL MEADOWS. WILD ANIMALS. BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS. DEBTS TO THE DEVIL. CAMP LIFE AND FISHING. WONDERFUL CANYON. PAINTED ROCKS. GLORIOUS WATERFALLS. NATURE GROTESQUE AND BEAUTIFUL.

Grand Canyon,
Yellowstone National Park, July 24, 1890.

I will say at the beginning of this letter, a few words as to how the Park's wonders can be seen. There are associations under leases from the Government and supposed to be under its control, which regulate the movements of regular tourists, in and through the park; one for transportation alone, and the other for feeding and housing.

The latter has five hotels, two of them completed—two others sufficiently so to house their guests. The completed houses are, one at "Mammoth Hot Springs," the other at "Grand Canyon." These are fairly appointed hotels and each is capable of nicely accommodating several hundred guests. Aside from these there are two where a tourist can live in comfort, provided he be not over fastidious. The largest and best hotel is at "Mammoth Hot Springs," at an elevation of 6,200 feet. The next best and next largest one is at "Grand Canyon," 7,500 feet up. Several other hotels are partially finished.

The transportation company has some seventy-five vehicles, two-thirds, if not three-fourths of them Concord stages and wagonettes carrying six to seven passengers, but capable of carrying three or four more by placing three on a seat; the other vehicles are four-passenger surreys. The coaches and wagonettes each have four horses, the surreys two. The tourist purchases tickets for the round trip. Forty dollars carries one from Livingston on the railroad to Mammoth Hot Springs and then around the park, occupying five and a quarter days. This includes hotel expenses. One thus sees everything in the grand tour, but somewhat hurriedly. However, quite a number stop over at the "Upper Geyser Basin" and at "Grand Canyon;" the stop-overs thus making room for those who had halted the day before. There are at this time tourists enough to start out each day from Mammoth Hot Springs about five coaches and several surreys all leaving at a fixed hour and reaching points of interests or other hotels close together, each vehicle maintaining its position in the line throughout the tour. Thus racing is prevented. A great mistake is made in keeping the vehicles in line too close together. For at times the dust on some of the roads is very deep, causing passengers in some of the vehicles to be choked and rendered very uncomfortable. It rains frequently throughout the park; but for this the tour would be almost unbearable. Our party was in this respect very fortunate.

The management very foolishly discourages individual stop-overs, but suggests a stage or surrey party to hold over the vehicle. This is expensive and parties are not always of one mind. I stopped and now stop over, taking my chances for a vacancy in a coach. This should be encouraged by the management, for a person can spend several days of pleasure and instruction at two, three or more points.

"Grand Canyon" from which this letter is started, would make a charming resort for parties for days, or even weeks, and two or three days should be taken to study the "Upper Geyser Basin." But the entire management is yet in an embryo state, and too great an endeavor is made to make both ends meet, with a profitable balance at the end of the season. Some travelers complain bitterly of the accommodations furnished at the hotels. They are, however, I suspect, of those who expect the comforts of home, or the luxuries of first-class city hotels where ever they go. Those who are prepared to make the most of life, and to pick up pleasure wherever to be found, can spend several weeks in the Park, without loss of flesh and with instruction regarding the sports and freaks of nature to be found no where else. The wonders are unique and the marvels unequaled elsewhere in the world.

Some tourists are so unfortunate as to arrive at the park when very large excursion parties from the East make their entry. Then the hotels become necessarily crowded. No prudent provision can make preparation for an extra hundred pouring in on top of the regular travel. At such times one is compelled to take a bed in a room with several others and may even be forced to crowd two in a bed. That happened once to our party. But none of the travelers had the small pox or itch, so no great harm resulted. By hugging the outer rail of a bed, instead of the bed fellow, the necessity of tumbling two in a bed is not altogether a catastrophe.

Besides those who make the regular tours, there are many who hire carriages and wagons at Cinnabar for a leisurely excursion, which may be longer or shorter to suit disposable time and the fullness of purses. Parties too, besides hiring carriages and horses, frequently take tents and enjoy a regular roughing life. We encountered many of these. Some were of a man and his family, others of two or three young men, and still others of men and ladies by the dozen or two, and in one instance thirty or forty were in the party. The large parties have a number of attendants who generally go ahead to prepare the camps for the night, while the tourists loiter along the way to inspect the marvels or to botanize. The small parties we saw, pitched their tents when practicable, near a trout stream, several of which furnished fine sport. Throughout the Park we noticed that at and about localities usually chosen for camping ground, warnings were nailed upon the trees, "Put out the fires." Destructive forest fires have resulted from carelessness of campers. Soldiers in pairs ride along several of the roads daily to see that these regulations are observed, and to prevent injurious results from non-observance. Twice we saw blue coats extinguishing smouldering fires left by reckless people.

My personal stage party up to this point, has been my daughter and some intelligent schoolmarms from New York, one of them, however, resenting the appellation of "schoolmarm." She is a principal. Woman-like, they seemed glad when I assumed command of the party. Queer, how even the brightest and most independent woman takes to a sort of master. Show me one who will not submit to the yoke, and ten to one she is one few men desire to boss. I call my party, "my Innocents," and all move with alacrity when I cry out, "Come girls!"

Between us, it has been several years since the youngest of them wore short dresses. I mean this in good part, for girls just getting into long skirts are very like the rinsing fluid into which the wash-woman dips her clean laundry, and called "blue water"—rather thin!

THE GROTTO, UPPER GEYSER BASIN.(SEE PAGE 31.)

All my Innocents are good, but can stand a straight shot in sensible English. One quotes with a sigh the remark of a friend, who when in the park, had but one word—the word translated "sheol" in the revised version. Quotation marks are convenient when one wishes to say something a little naughty. The Rev. Thomas Beecher, who is one of our daily party, but not in our coach, and who by the way is something of a wag, and is not averse to having a learned theological discussion with one who, like himself, was intended for an Evangelist, speaking of the huge amount of solid matter brought here above ground, declares he must look up Bob Ingersoll to tell him the Devil is making some mighty big holes down below. For my part if the Devil is doing all this, I shall begin to cultivate high respect for him as an artist, and would only ask him not to let the bottom drop out until my friends to the third and fourth generation may come and see. After them it matters not. Let the deluge come. It is evident from the names given to many points about the park that the Devil's friends have done much of the christening in this region.

Now, having to some extent touched upon the marvelous antics of Nature in Uncle Sam's domain, I will say something of those things nearly as interesting, and which make this tour charming as a simple road excursion. The park is full of beauties. The drives are often through delightful pine forests. The trees are small, but straight as arrows, tall and lading the air with delicious perfumes. Many hundred, or rather hundreds of thousands of acres are dead: Some from forest fires, but in many cases apparently from a species of blight, possibly from a failure of nourishment in the thin soil on the mountain slopes for the trees after they have attained any size. Tracks of fierce mountain storms are frequently seen; miles upon miles of forests are thrown down, the trees all lying in one direction, showing that the devastation was done by straight running winds, and not by tornadoes.

There are noble mountains constantly towering above us, although we are ourselves sometimes nearly nine thousand feet above the sea, and never after leaving Mammoth Hot Springs, under 7000. Many of the mountains have bands of snow stretching far below their pinnacles, and some of them are properly entitled, snow-capped. The mountains and slopes are fairly well treed; and the small plains or plateaux show beautiful downs bordered with forest and cut by copses. These downs are green and so smooth in the distance that it is difficult to realize that man has had nothing to do with laying them out. Several level valleys are very pretty and when seen from eminences remind one of valleys over which people go into ecstasies in foreign lands. If there were here a church spire, and there a mill and a sprinkling of hamlets, they would be as happy valleys as the vaunted ones abroad.

The utter absence of habitations on the long drives is a striking peculiarity. The roads being tolerably good and entirely artificial, makes one expect to see hamlets, and he involuntarily finds himself looking for a farm house, when the coach emerges from a forest, and comes upon a broad stretch of clean looking well grassed native meadow land. A turn of a mountain spur along a crystal stream, which has deepened into a pool, suggests a mill pond, and that a water wheel will soon come into view. A grassy plain all sun-lighted causes one to look for a herd of cattle lazily lying in a wooded copse on its margin. But no habitation other than the regular hotels, are to be found within the wonder land.

The park is comparatively a free and safe home for many varieties of wild animals. Guns and pistols are forbidden, except to the soldiers and to the scouts who are a sort of a police corps, whose duty is to see that trespassers do not enter upon the Government preserve. Elk, deer, mountain sheep, bear black and cinnamon, buffalo and other animals indigenous to the Rocky mountains, range freely over the hills without molestation; and beaver build their dams close by the hotels. How many buffalo are yet denizens of the park, I could not definitely learn, but was told that there are from fifty to a hundred. Squirrels and chipmunks are very numerous in several varieties, and very gentle. The bear are becoming too numerous for the safety of such animals as they prey upon. On this account the scouts are destroying many of them.

I said there are no domestic animals, except a few about the hotels. The result is, the grasses are fine and the flowers in great profusion and very beautiful—patches of larkspur as blue as indigo, acres of lupin of various tints, generally blue and lilac with eyes of white; gentians so rich and purple that one feels that they have been dipped in Tyrian dyes; sunflowers and buttercups, making acres look as if they had been sprinkled with gold; and many other beautiful flowers, whose names I know not. But one thistle I must not forget to mention. It is short and heavy from the ground, not unlike the edible thistle of Japan, with leaves and stalks of flesh colored pink, bleached into a sort of mixture of white, green and rose, with clustered flowers in compact head of exquisite rose and pink. It is a rarely beautiful flower. One flower of delicate lavender, thickly strewn along branching spikes, was wholly unknown to all of our party and is acknowledged of great beauty. Its leaf and small flowers lead me to think it a wild hollyhock.

STUPENDOUS SOUNDS OF FALLING FLOODS.

As I sit at my window the roar of the glorious Yellowstone falls filling my ear, I look out across the deep river canyon, to an upper plateau of several thousands of acres of beautiful meadow, some miles away, with here and there a copse of young pines, and all fringed by rich forest, and feel I should see a herd of fallow deer wandering over some ancient, lordly park. It is true that my glass shows that much of the velvety softness of the down is from green sagebush, which is so softened down by the distance that from here it resembles well cut grass. It is very beautiful.

Guide books tell us not to drink the water. I think their writers were in collusion with the hotel management to force guests to buy lager and apollinaris at 50 cents a bottle. By the way, there is on the first days drive an apollinaris spring. It seems to me the simon pure thing. We drank freely of it at the spring and afterwards from bottles carried for several hours. One of the bottles was tightly corked, and, when opened, popped as if well charged. At another spring—a little thing immediately on the edge of the road on the Beaver river and in the cool and beautiful Beaver canyon, we had soda water flavoured with lime juice. At least, it reminded me very distinctly of soda water with which the juice of the lime had been mingled in Ceylon. The bar-tenders in the "Flowery Isle" call it "lemon squoze." It was our favorite beverage in hot Colombo. Both of these springs are small, but from them could be bottled many cases a day. A gentleman in the party who has drank only Apollinaris since he came into the Park, tasted from my bottle and declared it quite equal to the pure stuff. Feeling the need of an alterative, I twice drank several glasses from a hot spring with decided benefits; and have partaken freely throughout the tour of the springs (except those whose brilliant green showed them largely impregnated with arsenic or copper,) and with no perceptible injurious effects. The hotel people are inclined to disparage the waters of the springs generally, and discourage their use, thereby and possibly for that purpose, largely increasing the consumption of lager and bottled waters, which sell at fifty cents a bottle. The enormous number of empty bottles along the road sides and at the hotels testify to the thirst and timidity of the traveling public. The coach drivers call the empty bottles along the road "dead soldiers." The "peg" i.e. whisky soda is the bane of the European in India. The disposition to make "dead soldiers" in the National Park very probably does more harm to the tourist than the native waters would if judiciously used.

When the government does its duty—makes abundant roads and bridges about its marvelous domain here, and analyzes thoroughly its hot springs—I doubt not there will be found many of them of great hygienic value, and sanitariums will be established to make the park a blessing to the afflicted of the country.

One good housewife whom I met frequently at the different halting-places, sighed deeply at the enormous waste of hot water, declaring there was enough here to laundry all America, and to wash the poor of all our big cities. The good people tell us everything was made for man. I doubt it. He is not worth the good things lavished upon him. He is a part of the mighty plan and will be followed after the next cataclysm by beings as much above him as he is above the chimpanzee. But if the good people be correct, Congress ought to take immediate steps to enable the people more fully to utilize the mighty Hygea located within the bounds of this park.

Surrounded by bare and bleak mountains and hot and arid plains, here at this elevation rains are abundant, and dews are sufficient; trees clothe mountain top and slope; grass is green and fattening, and flowers deck the open downs and shade the forest land. And yet the air is dry and beneficial to all except those whose lungs require an atmosphere less light. We have seen several consumptives who have come here for their health. The rarified atmosphere makes their breathing very laborious and painful. Possibly in the early stages of the disease, benefits may be derived from a sojourn here, but in its later stages, the poor victims suffer fearfully. The majority of those whom we have seen here for health, are camping out and seem to be having a good time. They have their horses, and spend their time fishing and riding.

On the road from the lower Geyser basin to Grand Canyon we halted at a little rivulet to water our stock. The stream cut its way deep down in a grassy plain, and was so narrow that one could easily jump over it. A small camping party had just pitched its tents close by. While the tent lines were being stretched, the gentleman of the party came to the rivulet near us to angle for his supper. He cast his fly a few times, when there was a "rise" to it not twenty feet from our coach, and a two pound beauty, speckled and plump was landed. I envied the camper.

In some localities in the Yellowstone, and especially in and about the great lake, parasites so infest the fish as to unfit them for the table. The infected fish, however, are easily known and may be discarded, while the good are retained. A gentleman who has fished throughout the park informed me, that as a rule, the fish were good. Like the trout in all the Rocky mountains and Pacific regions, the fish caught here lack the delicate flavour of the brook trout taken in the Adirondacks and throughout the New England States.

We regret we could not visit the Great Yellowstone Lake. The hotels there being unfinished, the regular stage route does not yet take it in. It is at an altitude of 7700 feet, and is over twenty miles long from the North-west to the South-east and fifteen from North-east to South-west, covering an area of 150 or more square miles. It is very irregular in its form and said to be a beautiful sheet. Excepting the lake in the Andes it is much the largest lake in the world at so great elevation. A large hotel is being erected on its margin. When finished it will make a very attractive addition to the Park tour, and will furnish a stop over for days or weeks to those who have time at their command.

One is surprised to find how quickly he becomes fatigued by a short climb, until his lungs become accustomed to the rare medium he is taking in. One old man, I need not name, stepped jauntily by the side of a pretty schoolmarm and swore he was 32, but the climb of a mile made him, with blushes which tinged the cuticle of his bald head, acknowledge he was past 65. He was somewhat relieved, when he saw how the sweet innocent was panting at his side.

There is here what I am told exists nowhere else in the world—a mountain of glass—volcanic obsidian—monster masses resembling the molten opaque blocks left by the Chicago great fire in the ruins of a glass warehouse. We drove along a road of shivered glass. The engineers built fires over great obsidian bowlders, and then threw cold water from the stream close by over the heated mass, breaking it into glass gravel. Chipmunks of several varieties, gray pine squirrels, hop about barking within a few feet of one; robins are almost as gentle as sparrows, and bears come down near to one of the hotels nightly to be fed for the amusement of the tourists. Beavers have their dams close by our hotel and can at dusk be seen swimming about and feeding. A small herd of buffalos, since we have been here, rushed across the road just in front of an excursion party, giving the stage horses a fright and nearly creating a panic. No gun is allowed in the park, except to the military and scouts, and no one can kill an animal, except when driven to it for want of necessary food. Two companies of soldiers patrol the regular routes to enforce the regulations and to serve as voluntary guides for the ladies of the daily parties. They forbid the smallest specimen to be carried off. I had even to hide the little dabs of mud I took from a paint-pot. Uncle Sam is cultivating good nature among men and beasts within this, his unique domain. Even the devil may grow good-natured, and may cut up his didos and antics after a while only for the people's amusement.

THE CLIMAX OF GRANDEUR AND BEAUTY.

Having told you of the freaks and sports of nature which make the more striking marvels of this wonderland; and having spoken of the softer and sweeter characteristics of the Park, I now come to what the majority of the travelers consider its gem.

A Soudanese wise man is said to have swallowed the tale of Jonah and the whale without making a wry face, but grew fighting mad when asked to believe the story of snow and ice in northern lands. The genii might easily send a man through a whale's belly, but Allah himself could not make water hard and dry. So it is easy to tell of the monstrosities of the park, and hope for credence. They are simply monstrosities—the work of demoniac power, and are credible. But who can make another believe that huge precipices, one and two thousand feet high, have been painted with all the colors of the setting sun; that the rainbow has settled upon miles of rocks and left its sweet tints upon their rugged sides? And yet this and these are true of the Yellowstone canyon.

We approached it from the South on a road running near the river. On a pretty grassy bank we rode along the stream, here over a hundred yards wide, rolling swiftly yet smoothly along in green depths, preparing to make its two plunges into the chasm below. Swift and swifter it hurried onward in quickened dignity. Presently the rock walls on either side grew contracted to a hundred or so feet, and then the green stream rushed in smooth slope to a gateway of eighty feet in width, through which, with parabolic swoop, it leaps 112 feet with such depth on its brink, that the deep-emerald green is not lost till it strikes a ledge at the bottom, where a large part of the falling sheet is shot off at an angle into the air, half as high up as the fall itself. The two sides of the river at the brink of the fall rush against precipitous walls and are bent and curled upwards into a veil six or eight feet high over the green center—a veil of countless millions of crystal drops—over the main stream of emerald more than half hidden in a mighty shower of diamonds. Standing immediately on the edge, one can imagine how Niagara's Horseshoe would look if one could get within a few feet of it. This fall is not very lofty nor wide, but is one of the most beautiful in the world. The river after the first fall rushes in foamy swirl a half mile further, between cliffs which on either side lift 1,500 feet high, and growing higher and higher, and then with one wild leap plunges 300 feet into the rocky gorge below.

As it drops the emerald and the diamond struggle for supremacy, but the brighter crystal gains the ascendency before all is lost in the lace-like mist which envelopes the depths. The whole when seen from a little distance looks as light as a gem-decked veil of lace, but so vast is the body of the water which makes the leap, and so great the fall, that to one standing a mile away, with a point of land intervening between him and the fall, shutting off the noise of the splashing water, there comes a deep and mellow bass, richer than any I ever heard before made by a water fall. It is not an angry tone like Niagara's roar, but is as deep and mellow as distant rolling thunder when heard in a mountain gorge.

These falls are beautiful in the extreme, but the beholder soon forgets them in wonder of the canyon which bends between the towering cliffs for four miles. Far under him, at least 1500 feet down, the river leaps and tears, now in green, and then in snowy foam, between precipices at whose feet no human foot ever did or can safely tread. The rocks lift on either side in mighty buttresses like giant cathedral walls. Standing out before the walls are towers and pointed spires of most artistic form, all painted in exquisite tints. The upper walls are of yellow and orange hue, with here and there towers and bulwarks of chalky white or of black lava over which is a film of venetian red. The upper yellow walls, sink and contract between the lifting buttresses, which at their base are of lava black, running first into dark umber, and then into chocolate bordered with black and stained with red, often so bright as to be vermillion. In some places the main walls are broken down, where some long-ago slide has carried their steepness into the river below, but with slopes far too steep for human tread. Some of these slopes are orange and yellow as if coated with sulphur; others are painted in vertical bands of brown and red, with between them narrow stripes of pearl gray and yellow, and of orange stretching for hundreds of feet, and at one point for a half mile in extent; one of these slopes look as if a banner with these several colors, had been spread over it, and then being removed, the colors of the drapery had been left upon the soft velvety rock. The buttresses and spires lift now fifteen to a hundred feet apart, and then they are spread so that the golden wall between shows 150 to 200 feet. All of the colors except the yellow seem to be in and of the rock. The yellow looks as if made by blowing thousands of tons of flowers of sulphur upon the walls, the flowers having clung when the wall had some incline, but having dropped off from the vertical rock.

These painted rocks extend along the canyon for about four miles; then the gorge grows more somber and dark, and so continues some twenty miles. This lower part seems to be of a harder rock. It was cut through myriads of ages ago and has grown darkly gray, while the painted part is of a much later period and is of soft rocks—so soft that they seem to be composed of somewhat indurated volcanic ash, sulphur being the predominating mass. The red coloring is from oxide of iron. These blending together make other tints. Burnt Umber, often deepened into a rich chocolate is the dominating one. The buttresses are of a harder yet still a rather soft lava, of a yellowish brown tint near the summits, red and brown below, and finally towards their bases almost black. Sometimes there are slopes of white lime and several towers, nearly 2,000 feet high sheer up from the river, are so white that one could think them chalk. Half way down the heights are great points, like the sharpened spires of a cathedral, colored as if a mighty pot of venetian red had been emptied over them and had run in streaks down the rocky sides. Had an artist tried to sell me a picture of these cliffs, before I had seen them, in no way exaggerated in coloring, I would have called him a fraud, and would have thought he had taken me for a fool. I have seen now and then pictures which I considered daubs, which I now know did not in the least overdo Nature in its freak of rock-painting. I quit the park glad that I came, but feel that the rush and labor of going through it would hardly repay a second hasty visit, at least for several years. Yet I can recall no excursion of the same length in any part of the world half so full of surprises. Could we have made it leisurely, our enjoyment would have been greatly enhanced. We have met some tourists who think the labor and annoyance of the thing over-balance the profit and pleasure. Burns says "Man was made to mourn." In my weary round, I have frequently been convinced that about half of the travelers of the world were made to growl, or at least half think they fail to show their "raisin" unless they do growl.

Equanimity of temper is the most valuable of all human characteristics for happiness. It is absolutely necessary to the traveler, who desires to learn much, and to enjoy what he sees. A plain traveling suit on one's back, a resolution to make the most of every thing in one's mind, and the least possible luggage to carry, are the three indispensables for a good traveler. The park people may not do all they should for the public; indeed, I fear they have many short-comings, but I for one, am very glad they are here, and that they do as much as they do.

THE BISCUIT BOWL POOL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 35.)

The hotels at Mammoth Hot Springs and at Yellowstone canyon are large, each capable of housing two or three hundred guests. The beds are clean and soft, the table fair and the attendance quite good. I have only one complaint to make. At the first named hotel they will insist on a brass band's tooting a good part of the time. The noise it made was execrable. There is no such thing as bad music, it is either music or it is noise. At Norris, the hotel is poor and the managers impolite. At the Lower and at the Upper Geyser Basin, the houses are unfinished, and the rooms not sufficient in number, but the people do their best to please. This endeavor should cover a multitude of sins.

LETTER V.

WE LEAVE THE PARK SATISFIED. HELENA. ITS GOLD BEARING FOUNDATIONS. BROADWATER. A MAGNIFICENT NATATORIUM. A WILD RIDE THROUGH TOWN. CROSSING THE ROCKIES. SPOKANE. A BUSY TOWN. MIDNIGHT PICNIC. FINE AGRICULTURAL COUNTRY. SAGE BUSH A BLESSING. PICTURESQUE RUN OVER THE CASCADES. ACRES OF MALT LIQUORS. TACOMA. A STARTLING VISION OF MT. RENIER (TACOMA). WASHINGTON, A GREAT STATE.

Tacoma, Washington, July 31, 1890.

Familiarity is said to breed contempt; certainly it robs strange things of much that at first seems marvelous. On our return from the excursion around the Park, the formation at Mammoth Hot Springs had lost much of that which on our first visit struck us as so wonderful and charming. We had seen other things greatly more wonderful with which to compare them. The encrustations seemed not so white and the colorings of the water had lost some of their prismatic variety and perfection.

The impressions made upon the mind by Niagara grow on succeeding visits. A storm at sea arouses no less awe because several have been before passed through. Niagara and the ocean are in eternal motion. Motion irresistably suggests change, and change precludes monotony. One does not lose his feeling of awe, after looking for many times upon the towering heights of the Yungfrau or of Kinchinjinga. Their inaccessible peaks and eternal snows repel every disposition to close communion. I doubt not, however, if a safe railroad could be run up to mighty Everest's loftiest pinnacle, that tourists would snap their fingers at the world's monarch when standing in warm furs 29,000 feet above the sea.

The still and apparently unchangeable incrustations at Mammoth Hot Springs, were looked upon on our final visit without awe or surprise. A large party of us left the hotel for Cinnabar closely packed in the coaches and surreys on a bright sunny afternoon, glad we had seen the wonderland, but quite satisfied to leave our labors behind us. As we dashed down the defile near the park line, we doffed our hats and bade adieu to the eagle sitting on its eyrie as we had seen him on our entrance. The downward ride was quite rapid, and some of us who had been drawn into somewhat close communion during the past week were almost sorry when we so soon reached Livingston—some to go eastward and others westward, all to part most probably forever.

From Livingston to Helena the run was made at night. We found the latter a bustling place and well worth a visit. There is an air about a mining camp which can be seen in no old country, and Helena though now full of city airs yet has many of the characteristics of the camp. Its foundations rest upon gold bearing earth, and even now in digging cellars, quite in the town, pay dirt is found. Nearly the entire site of the city has been dug over by the miner. It was in one of its gulches, now a street, that a prospector wearied out by unsuccessful tramps and reduced to his last dollar, stuck in his pick to try for a "last chance." He had no expectation of reward, but dug down in sheer desperation before going off a pauper. The result was "The last chance mine," one of the richest ever discovered.

We stopped at the Helena hotel and found it quite equal to any in large eastern cities.

The Broadwater Hotel, however, some three to four miles out of town, is now the lion of the place. It is a cottage-built house, with 200 fine rooms, all finished in hardwoods and elegantly furnished. Its bathrooms, with huge porcelain tubs and large dressing-rooms attached to each, are especially fine and the baths are said to be medicinally good.

THE SWIMMING BATH OF THE WORLD.

But these dwindle when compared with its huge swimming bath. The natatorium building is about 350 feet long by 150, with a roof 100 feet high, supported by light arches in single spans. The tank is 300 feet by 100; at one end about four feet deep, and running to ten or more at the other. Natural hot and cold waters pour over a precipice of cyclopean masses of granite at one end, about fifty feet wide and forty high. This precipice is pierced by three large openings over which the water pours in great sheets, and so artistically that one would easily believe it a series of natural falls. The flow is so large that the tank is replenished several times a day. The temperature was to me rather high—about 80 degrees. A swim in its deep waters, however, was very fine. The whole is lighted by day through windows high up, of cathedral glass in different tints, terra cotta predominating. The hotel, with its 200 rooms, and the tank-house and grounds are illuminated at night by incandescent lights. We saw it only by day, but could easily imagine how beautiful it must look and how gay a scene it must offer when 300 or 400 people are in at night—men and gay ladies. Very decorous bathing suits are furnished to bathers, and those bringing their own, are compelled to have them of conventional modesty. I was told that 300 bathers of an evening is not an unusual number, and that it is largely frequented during nine months of the year and by the very best people of the city. The charge is fifty cents for an entrance, so as to keep out the riff-raff. Col. Broadwater has expended half a million on the house and grounds, bringing his hot water from a mineral hot spring some four miles up a gorge, and a large supply of cold pure water also from the hills. The hotel was full. We took lunch with the Colonel and some friends, and found it like everything else, first class. A steam and an electric motor road leads from the city to the hotel. By the way, why do the street car people not put in electrical motors in Chicago? At St. Paul, Helena and Spokane we have ridden upon them and were delighted. A car looks as if it were out fishing with a fishing rod springing from its top, bent just as if it were playing a gamy fish.

The hospitalities of the Broadwater very nearly cost us our connection at the railroad. We gave ourselves but little time, expecting to find a carriage ordered to be in waiting at the electric road city terminus. It was not there and we walked to our hotel to find we had but eleven minutes to get our luggage on a carriage and to reach the railroad station a mile and a half away. The porter said it was impossible to reach it in time. We ordered our traps brought down and rushed to our rooms for our small pieces. At the office were a crowd of newly arrived travelers. I called to the clerk saying I had no time to pay hotel bills. He smiled. Taking advantage of his good humor we mounted the carriage telling the driver to make the train or die. He said he would land us on the train or in—naming a rather hot place. He tore through the town at a full gallop. People in shop doors looked at us and smiled. Possibly they suspected an old gray beard was getting away with a young girl. The jehu and his horses were plucky. The station house as we drove up hid the train from us, and hid us from it. We turned the building, the train was well in motion, the engineer checked up but the train continued to move. We jumped down; the driver threw our trunk into the baggage car; I landed my valise on the platform of the next car; my daughter got her satchel on the next and she climbed up on the third. I caught on and climbed the fourth and threw the fare to the driver. Quite a crowd of people about the station admired our pluck, and when our driver yelled out "Hurrah for Chicago" a generous response went up from a score or more of throats. Success is admired everywhere, but out west it is the cure all. Every man at that station would at that moment have voted for me for—pound master. Shortly after leaving Helena the climb is commenced in scaling the real Rocky Mountains. The road bends and winds over many magnificent curves and loops, rapidly climbing upward. Now we look far above us, at a locomotive slowly creeping along the mountain side, and we look down upon the road we had a few moments before puffed along, but already hundreds of feet immediately under us. The mountains towered above us, covered by great black precipices, and mighty detached rocks standing alone or in groups. This is the true backbone of the continent, and the black scattered rocks might be vertebrae pushing through the worn cuticle. We could understand here why these are called the rocky mountains. Rough towers and jagged turrets black with the weather wear of ages are the salient features of the heights and slopes. Here they are in great groups, there isolated. Now they are compacted into massive precipices, frowning and repellent, and then scattered as if dropped by icebergs. They are, however, not mighty loose boulders, but are moored to and are a part of the mountain's foundation rocks.

We crossed some lofty trestle bridges and looked down upon a stream thick with mud from a gold washing camp near by. At length we reached the summit. Our extra locomotive was side tracked and we breathed an atmosphere perceptibly different from that we had left on the eastern side of the range. We were now upon the Pacific slope.

We halted for a few minutes at Missoula. The fine valley was bathed in the glowing red of sunset. We lost at night much beautiful wooded scenery which I once before enjoyed so much. To one simply going to Puget Sound it is worth while to stop over at Missoula and then to run down Clark's Fork by day. But we wished to have a full day at our next stopping place.

Of all the cities we have seen, the busiest was Spokane—pronounced as if there were no "e" at the end and the "a" quite broad. Seven years ago I was there. Then it had but 800 dwellers. Now there are in the neighborhood of 25,000. There are several streets with elegant business blocks, finished or being completed, of four, five, and six stories in height, comparing favorably with those of any Eastern city in architectural design and finish. The heart of the city reminds one of Chicago the spring after the great fire, and the people seem to have the same pluck, and energy, and confidence that so marked our people at that time. Some of the private houses on the steep, hugely-bowldered slope of a high hill on one side of the city are models of elegance. We visited two which were real chefs d'oeuvres of architectural design—one a Swiss chalet, the other Mooresque in design. Everything was after the original models, even to much of the furniture. I have never seen except in some model houses abroad such complete specimens. The outside of several others which we did not visit are quite as fine. Mrs. Cutter, the proud mother of the architect, exhibited her house with great hospitality, and Mrs. Moore seemed to feel that she had no right to hide her gem of a residence.

At evening we were invited to a fete champetre on a fine lake some forty miles north of the city and 800 feet elevated above it. About 300 of the elite of the town went out by rail, danced, and had supper, returning to town by 1 o'clock in the morning. The young girl with me enjoyed it greatly. A severe cold just caught forbade my appreciating anything but the sweet, sincere hospitality shown us. Judge Kinnaird, the son of one of the friends of my early Kentucky boyhood, got us the entree of Spokane's "four hundred." This is destined to continue a thriving city, but lots at $1,000, four miles from the heart of the city, will burn badly some real estate speculators. It is said a mining trade of nearly $50,000 a day naturally belongs to the town. I fear, however, there will be a bursting of a bubble when the burnt district shall be restored. A large trade will be necessary to support the great number of mechanics and laborers now lifting the town from its ashes. Hotel Spokane is a very large and good house.

OLD FAITHFUL, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 36.)

Very fine crops are grown in the Spokane Valley. The crops of oats and wheat sown for hay was being harvested and proved a very heavy yield. Washington claims she will harvest over 20,000,000 bushels of wheat this year. I was surprised to see fine fields of grain on the rolling plains in the great bend of the Columbia river. I remember speaking of the richness of this soil in the "Race with the Sun," but thought artificial irrigation would be necessary to make it yield. This year there are fine crops where only nature's watering can ever be availed of. One of the stations, quite removed from any water course, has grown into a thriving town, showing that the country around is prosperous.

I suspect that a fair rainfall cannot be relied upon from year to year. It will, however, become more and more reliable, for it has been the rule throughout the world and probably through all ages, that rains follow cultivation, and man's presence and industry calls down Heaven's aid. The answer of Hercules to the cartman would be the reply of Ceres as well to the prayers of her votaries.

The ash colored sage bush was thought by the early men of the great plains to be poison to the land. It however was one of God's bounties to man. It prevented the soil from being blown away and where it grew the most lavishly, is now found to be the best of soils. Sage bush not only keeps the winds away, but when dead and rotten fills up sand pockets with material rich for all of the small grains. The people of the Yakima valley on the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains, boast that theirs is the garden spot of the Pacific country. They certainly do produce fine fruits, melons and garden vegetables, but I have not been struck favorably with the outlook of the locality in either of my trips through the land.

The run from Ellensburg over the Cascades is a magnificent ride. The enormous mass of forest, prevents many extended views, but those seen are very fine. Every break in the forests would reveal lofty mountains' slopes clothed in forests of marvelous richness, and now and then snowy heights would tower aloft. Once a fine view of Renier is caught, the monarch of the grand range. Robed in his snowy ermine he stands out a sceptered hermit wrapped in his isolation. Seen from the sound he is one of the most picturesque peaked mountains of the world, and from all inland points of view he is a grand towering mass of ever living snow and ice.

ARKANSAS HOT SPRINGS, RIVALED.

Having done considerable hard work on the trip so far, we resolved to take a rest at the hot springs, three and-a-half hours from Tacoma, on Green River. Three years ago my boys and I fished here pleasantly for several days. The place is unpretentious, but the waters possess apparently the same properties as those of the Arkansas hot springs. The place is some fourteen hundred and fifty feet above Tacoma. During our present three days stop, an overcoat has been comfortable in the evenings, and we sleep under three blankets. A cold batch of air drops down the valley from Mount Reniers (Tacoma calls him Mount Tacoma; Renier is his name), 14,400 feet of snowy peak, driving away all summer sultriness. A bath in the medicinal waters of seven minutes and then a pack causes the perspiration to flow from one quite as heavily as the same course would do in Arkansas. Before leaving home I had a large and painful carbuncle on the back of my neck. The sign of the cross was cut deeply into it, and as it healed it proved a nest-egg for several smaller jewels near by. These I cauterized with pure carbolic in the park, but still they annoyed me much. Four baths here have at least temporarily dried them up. Men who came here three or four weeks ago on crutches from rheumatism, are walking about freely and feel themselves able to buckle down to work.

A WONDERFUL GROWTH OF TIMBER.

A sight of the magnificent cedar and fir forests here would amply repay an Easterner for a day's stop-over. I have been among them before several times, yet at each visit they surprise me as they did at first. Fifty thousand shingles are made from a single cedar. I counted twenty-one firs on a space considerably less than a quarter of an acre. The owner, a sawyer, assured me they would cut over five thousand feet of board each. He owns a quarter of a section about his mill and expects to market 15,000,000 feet of lumber from his land. He said the railroad company had cut 30,000,000 feet from its right of way of 400 feet by ten miles in this locality. I saw on a quarter of an acre a cluster of twenty odd trees from four and-a-half feet to over six in diameter and 300 high. They ran up about 150 feet before reaching a limb. Mighty logs lie upon the ground so thickly that even a good woodsman can walk but little over a mile an hour. Cedar logs, moss-covered and sodden, stretch 100 feet in the tangled undergrowth, and have lain there so long that one often sees a fir tree, growing with its roots straddled over them 50 to 100 years old.

We were pleased to find among the guests of the springs one of Chicago's fairest daughters, now living at Tacoma, whose pulled-candy tresses three years ago out-glistened the fiber of her bridal veil, and whose eyes are bluer than the turquoise in her talismanic ring. I like little unpretentious Green River, Hot Springs, even if its table is not of the Delmonico order.

MALT LIQUORS IN THE ORIGINAL PACKAGE.

A pretty drop of fourteen hundred and odd feet through wild rocky gorges and thickly treed glades, along the rapid green waters of the river, in which trout abound, between lofty heights, brought us to the world-famous hop yards of the Puyallup Valley. What masses of green lift upon the closely-set hop-poles! I involuntarily cried "Prosit und Gesundheit" as we whizzed through them. Twenty-three or four years ago, the first hop root was planted in the soil of this marvelous valley. Now in this valley and others in this locality, two hundred and fifty thousand acres are giving forth each year crops unknown in any other hop land. Two thousand pounds to the acre are not unusual, and some yields have been nearly if not quite double that. Thousands of barrels of malt liquors were green about us in original packages.

When we alighted at Tacoma, from which I date this letter, I was most agreeably surprised to find that Mr. Winston and his two fair daughters were on the same train. They had intended going with us into the Yellowstone Park, but were unavoidably detained. They have done the Park more rapidly than we did and here overtook us. To-morrow we will be fellow-passengers for Uncle Sam's ice-bound Eldorado, Alaska. Tacoma has been and is growing with great rapidity. A great suburb covers a wide slope on the upper end of the town, which at night, when I was here three years ago, had the appearance of a Titanic camp-fire. Fires gleamed along great logs; fires burnt on sides and tops of lofty stumps, and fires belched forth from burning trees fifty and more feet from the ground. Diagonal auger holes had been bored near the root into the heart of a tree. Two holes meet at the heart thus causing a draught. Fire was put in, igniting the inflammable pitch, always richest near the ground. It then bored its way up the heart to break out as from a flue, often a hundred feet from the roots.

Tacoma was a cluster of shanties with a small population, barely among the thousands, seven years ago. It was a dusty, scattered, ungainly big village of 12,000 three years ago. Now the census gives it about 40,000 population. The Northern Pacific company is filling the five-mile flat marsh along the Puyallup River which empties into the bay, in front of the town. A large part of this belongs to the Indian Reservation, and is covered by several feet of water during the high tides, which come up the Sound. The filling is being done by a powerful pumping dredge, which pours each day a vast quantity of sand and silt from the deeper part of the river upon the flats to be filled. My friends Christy and Wise of the Illinois Club, Chicago, are part owners of the powerful dredge, and I suspect are making a big thing of it. The reclaimed land will, when high and dry, be worth millions, and will be the seat of the best business portion of the future city. The generous way in which this great railroad company has taken possession of and is appropriating the fat of this place reminds one forcibly of what is or may be going on in a city between this and the Atlantic. Columbian World's Fair Commissioners, Directors, and City Councils may possibly be sometimes just a little too generous, as Congresses are and have been. The people may sometimes permit their patriotic fervor to make them somewhat unobservant of the wide reach and tenacious grasp of monopoly. Corporations are said to have no souls. Railroad corporations are as voracious as their iron horses and have consciences as cold as their iron rails.

The big hotel here is now crowded with travelers, the most of them just returned from or about to sail for Alaska. Cots are doubled up in many rooms. The wide veranda, overlooking the sound, last night was full of gay promenaders from many quarters of the Union; they enjoyed very fair music from the house band, while they watched with delight the unique spectacle of what appeared to be a new moon arising in the east with its crescent bent downward instead of upward. Fair Luna arose to us immediately over the sharp rounded pinnacle of lofty Mount Tacoma. She presented a narrow silver crescent—a mere thread at first, but waxing by a rapid crescendo movement, she showed her first, her second, and her third quarter, and then her full rounded self in all of her cold glory many degrees up in the sky. The proud mountain having played his short role of eclipsing a planet at once sank into gray nothingness. It seemed a pity the moon's movement was so rapid. She is a cold, fickle jade and is said to be from rim to core hard in eternal frost. It was but fitting she should rest awhile on yonder pinnacled home of eternal ice and snow.

During the afternoon of yesterday after our arrival, all of the mountain's lower mass, more than two-thirds of its height, was absolutely invisible, veiled in translucent, unclouded haze. No one could have guessed a mountain was there, but high up some four to five thousand feet of his ice-locked lofty summit hung like a gigantic balloon, thinly silvered and delicately burnished, floating on airy nothingness some ten degrees above the horizon. To those who have never seen this effect of a snow-clad mountain, the picture was startling and to all was weird in the extreme. Few mountain chiefs in the world are seen to such advantage as Tacoma from this point on a clear day. The beholder standing on a level of the sea sees the whole of the cone in all of the majesty of fourteen thousand four hundred and odd feet, over 6,000 feet of this being clothed in eternal snow. We were lucky in seeing the floating summit yesterday, for a change of wind has since then brought the smoke from forest fires down into the valley to-day, and a compass is necessary to fix the great mountain's exact location. He may keep himself impenetrably veiled for several weeks. If I be not mistaken, I was told he was invisible last year for nearly if not quite three months.

Mr. Clint Snowden, the Secretary of the Board of Trade, has been our cicerone, as the board was our host, in showing us about the city to-day. Its growth one could scarcely comprehend from the information as the increase of population. Seeing has shown the naked truth. The great kindness to me in the past of friends in Seattle has made me rather a Seattler. But I tremble lest it may not be able to keep pace with its pushing rival. Will the country be able to support two big cities? I have great faith in the country. Three years ago I said there would be a mighty empire along the Pacific slope—that is, a mighty part of the great Nation of the continent. Each visit here more and more impresses me that my prophecy will be fulfilled. I recalled the fact that we once thought it an outrage that "the Father of his country" should have his state-namesake off in an out of the way corner of the country, and that corner a mountainous mass of worthless land; but now one can realize that Washington will be the most picturesque state in the Union, and when America becomes densely populated, it will be one of the richest. The yield of all kinds; lumber, coal, hops, wheat and oats, fish and fruits will this year equal that of many of the eastern states. The state will ere many years have gone by, prove a magnificent namesake of the Father of his country.

Dust is one of the most serious impedimenta of the Pacific slope; for three months of the year it makes one's throat and lungs a sort of mortar bed, but the soil which so easily turns to impalable powder and in such quantities as to be almost solid along some of the roads, is of marvelous richness. The trees are nearly as imposing monarchs as are the mountains; the flowers are as beautiful as the rivers are clear and pearly; the fruits are glorious and the climate is delicious. Though the noon-day sun is so hot as to make a broad-brimmed hat or an umbrella a necessity, yet the nights are so cold that one gets chilled under less than three blankets. Speaking of fruits, we must say that excepting in the Caucasus the world has no equal for the cherries of this locality—so pulpy and so big. A peddler selling some, captured his purchaser when he cried out: "But, then, sir; them's cherries, not apples." While writing this the sun marches deeply into the West. We must soon board the steamer which sails before day to-morrow.

LETTER VI.

THRIVING AND PICTURESQUE SEATTLE. TWO CURIOUS MEETINGS. VICTORIA AND ITS FLOWERS. ESQUIMAULT AND THE WARSPITE. TWO BROKEN HEARTED GIRLS. CHARMING SAIL ON THE INLAND SEA. PICTURESQUE MOUNTAINS. GROWTH OF ALASKA. WHALES AND THEIR SPORTS. NATIVE ALASKANS. THEIR HOMES, HABITS, FOOD, FEASTS AND WILD MUSIC. BASKETS AND BLANKETS. SALMON FISHERIES. MINES AND DOGS.

Steamer Queen, Aug. 10, 1890.

I wrote voluminously from the Yellowstone National Park, quite at large on the run on the Northern Pacific railroad, and expected to make a big letter on the Alaskan excursion. But I am discouraged. If all the pencils seen making copious notes and extracting from route and other books on this steamer were preparing letters, and if a like proportion on the other regular steamers do the same, then the thing will be written into the ground during this season alone. I will, however, commence a short letter; the humor of my pen may make it a long one.

We boarded the "Queen" at Tacoma the night of the 31st of July. Before morning we cleared the port, and at six landed at Seattle for a two hours stop. It was too early for us to see any of our friends, but giving us time to mark the wonderful growth of the last three years. In my last, the possibility of Tacoma taking the lead of Seattle was expressed. When one sees the elegant houses going up or gone up here since the fire of a year ago; looks over the hills which were three years since clothed with forests but now are covered with beautiful residences; drives over paved streets where he so short a time since was choked by dust; and glides in cable and electric cars smoothly up grades which make a walk laborious and caused the horses in his carriage to pant and blow—when one sees all these things and recalls the pluck of these people when they let the world know they wanted no help from outside when their city lay in ashes, then he feels Tacoma will have a mighty struggle even with the Northern Pacific's help to catch and lead Seattle.

The Tacoma people claim that the United States census gives them the larger population. This the Seattleite denies, and I suspect with justice. He claims his city will have over 43,000 population, all within the compact boundaries of the town, and several thousands in the suburbs. Many may be there helping to build the place up out of its ashes. The greater proportion of them will probably remain permanently, for Seattle has a great trade. Before the fire a year ago it was rather over crowded. The large warehouses and hotels now gone up, are not in advance of the demand. I was, the day before while driving about Tacoma, almost a Tacoma man. But as our ship bent out of her rival's harbor, I was again a Seattler.

The view of the city perched upon its terraced hills is very imposing from the bay, and recalls a long ago prospect from the sea at Genoa. While the Queen was steaming out of the bay into the open sound, I mounted to the hurricane deck for a parting view of the picturesque place. At the foot of the upper gang way I paused to let a gentleman and lady pass me on their descent from above. The gentleman held out his hand saying "Mr. Harrison, I think; we never met but once before. We were vis-a-vis at the dinner table in Colombo, Ceylon. My wife and I had just landed from the "Rome" on our way from Australia. You were about to embark on her for Suez." Indeed if I be not mistaken I got the state room he had vacated. Mr. Sargent and his wife, had a few days ago arrived at San Francisco from Japan and were then on their way to Alaska before going to their home in New Haven, from which they had been absent for several years. This meeting made a singular co-incidence with another of the day before at Tacoma. As I was crossing the rotunda of the Tacoma hotel, a stranger accosted me, and at the same time held out his hand, saying "This is Mr. Harrison of Chicago, is it not?" I replied "Yes". "We never met but once Mr. Harrison, and that was at the supper table at Agra, India. We sat side by side and talked of the Taj." This gentleman was from New York and was too, on his way to Alaska. He had just come from the East and had expected to sail on the Queen, but not being able to secure a berth, was about to go aboard the George W. Elder, which had been crippled on a rock the week before, and sailed from Tacoma the evening of the 31st. It was pleasant thus to meet these people—utter strangers to each other, whom I had encountered on the other side of the world. It is remarkable how often such chance meetings come to voyagers in distant regions. It shows how the love of travel grows upon one. Seeing begets a desire for seeing. A large number of our fellow passengers on this excursion have been world wanderers.

We tied to the pier at Port Townsend for a couple of hours. We had time for a hasty run over the town and to measure the march of its improvement during the past three years. It has grown very considerably and improved much. Its people make huge calculations as to its future, but have no expectation of their town being a rival of the other two cities. It has been the port of entry for the Sound, which has given it considerable advantages. This exclusive privilege it will hereafter have to share with one or both of the others. Back of it lies the unexplored Olympian mountains, in which many think rich gold mines will be found. If this should be the case, then Port Townsend will forge ahead.

Our far northern excursion is now coming to a close. We have done Alaska and are again sailing through British waters. Vancouver Isle stretches to our right. We can easily imagine that a turn of a headland may reveal the Warspite, with her guns, throwing 300-pound shot, ready to knock us into pi should our Yankee inclinations tempt us to give a too short twist on the lion's tail. By the way, the ironclad bearer of the Admiral's broad pennant, is a ferocious looking monster.

Having three hours at our command before dark on our arrival at Victoria the first of the month, we drove about the staid and orderly town, drinking in air laden with the breath of honeysuckle embowering lattice and cottage; exclaiming in delight at sight of roses hanging in mighty clusters and festooning porches and verandas, or lifting their faces six inches from out to out on strong stems in the gardens; and having our eyes refreshed by parterres of dahlias, nasturtiums, feverfews, and many delicate flowers in white or of every tint. This town was evidently settled directly from England. The love evinced for cottage adornment would have been lost in a passage through the Canuck settlements of the East. The sweet embowered cottage is an English institution, as thoroughly as is "magna charta." Wherever either exists we know it to be a heritage from the seagirt isle.

THE FAIRY-LIKE HARBOR OF THE BRITISH FLEET.

Our drive brought us about six o'clock to Esquimault, the fairy-like harbor of the British fleet of the North Pacific. What a little gem it is! A rounded patch of sea, a few hundred yards in diameter, lifted up and dropped thirty fathoms deep among well-wooded, sloping hills and connected by a short, deep channel less than a hundred feet wide, with the mighty ocean. This channel is in fact a gateway with smooth granite buttresses, of bowlder-like surface, lifting a few feet above high tide. These buttresses were built by no human hand, but were born of the molten mass poured up from the earth's fiery center. The very globe shook and reeled in volcanic spasms at their birth. Here, in this quiet little harbor, thoroughly protected from the outer sea, lay the fearful man of war Warspite, a sleeping Titan, surrounded by several others less formidable, but yet of ugly dimensions. Close by the entrance of the harbor is a great dry dock, in which American vessels have been courteously repaired. Near this is a little hamlet where one can get a fair meal and can take rowing boat to visit the great ships.

The drive from town to the harbor is very charming; through pretty woods, on good roads, overlooking green arms of the sea which run back into the hills, in crystal clearness. One can well say these sea-creeks run back into the hills, for the incoming tides send currents up them of great strength. Pretty villas are built along the well kept roads, and acres of wild roses scent the air, while the red barked Arbutis leans over the cool streams with knarled bronze like arms and branches. The excursion steamers all anchor at Victoria long enough to permit tourists to take this and other drives.

When we reached the neighborhood of the man-of-war, it was so late that we had no expectation of going aboard, but our hackman desirous of putting in as much time as possible, and a boatsman in want of a job assured us we would be received aboard the Warspite. A large number of her 600 complement were leaning over the bulwarks, and gold lace and brass buttons shone upon the eyes of our two young girls. Their little hearts fluttered as no glacier of the Arctic zone could have made them do. Ah! what a wondrous spell the glitter on the shoulders of soldier or sailor works upon the female heart! Even the married woman of our party had a heightened color as we approached the gangway of the mighty ship. Fancy the two broken hearts of the girls and the composed, sad face of the matron when a sailor came down the gangway to inform us the hour for visitors was past, that no one was received after five o'clock. One of the men of our party told him the next time we came we would board his ship from the deck of the "Chicago." He laughed. There is no taint of a quarrel between the brave tars of an English and an American man-of-war. We rowed slowly away. The music from the band poured down upon us from the decks and was caught in sweet echo by the hills around. How I pitied the girls! They are just on the edge of society, and what tales they could have told their schoolmates! Chicago's late representative at the Court of the Shah of Persia smiled as only one who had been at a court could smile. But the girls uttered sighs which smote the writer's too sympathetic soul.

WHEN WE GOBBLE UP CANADA.

The Warspite lies at Esquimault (up here called Squimal) ready to shake the icebergs of Behring Sea. A word to President Harrison and Secretary Blaine: Don't tell England that our blood is up to fighting heat, until we are ready to gobble down Canada and the Canadian Pacific railway at a mouthful. It can be done and not at the expense of a very wry face. Then let England roam about the oceans to her hearts content, while we Yankees will play base-ball with a continent for our grounds, with basemen and shortstops between the two oceans, and out-fielders on the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic seas.

SAILING THROUGH THE ISLES OF THE PACIFIC.

We are now on our tenth day from Tacoma. The ship will reach her home Tuesday, the twelfth day, having sailed over 2,100 miles; some ten hours of this was in the open Pacific, from Glacier Bay to Sitka, and then from that port south to Clarence Strait. The remainder of the distance was in the interior channels, and across perhaps a half-dozen short openings into the sea. The several channels have fixed names and are of various breadths, from 200 or 300 yards to four or five miles. Sometimes we were next the broad continent, but often small islands lay between the straits and the mainland, with large islands or smaller ones several deep, towards the sea. The sailing along the watery road was plain and easy except in two narrow straits, where the ship had to slow up frequently, while she bent in and out to avoid rocks. These are taken partly as cut-offs and partly for the beauty of the scenery. The islands are all mountains lifted from the water; all are more or less tree-clad, with peaks on the tallest, rocky, jagged, and oftentimes with streamers of snow stretching downward in their upper gorges.

Vancouver Island is 300 miles long, covered by a broad, lofty range of mountains in pile behind pile, broken and in some instances with heads wrapped in perpetual snow. North of this along the way are four irregularly shaped long islands, around each of which a good steamer would require nearly a day to sail. These, too, are a mass of rugged, jagged, sharply pointed and peaked mountains in very confused mass, with no valleys, but with narrow gorges and small flats, along many of which pour pellucid streams from snowy heights. Seen from the south, the mountains are green up to a height of two or more thousand feet, with rocky summits flecked with snow or banded in the long downward gorges. Viewed from the north, the snow often lies in broad fields and always is in greater profusion then when seen from other points of the compass. The smaller island mountains are not so lofty, but are beyond the dignity of hills, being from 1,500 to 2,000 and some of them 3,000 feet high.

AWE-INSPIRING MOUNTAINS.

To the eastward the mainland presents one continuous mass of mountains; never in even ranges, but all broken, toothed and needled, with foothills next the water green and rounded. The loftier masses behind shoot their rocky height into the blue sky from 3,000 to nearly 5,000 feet above the sea. Flecks and bands of snow are never absent from these, and often the smooth upper heights are wrapped in pure mantles of white.

GRAND CANYON FROM THE BRINK. YELLOWSTONE CANYON. (SEE PAGE 77.)

Into the mainland enter many crooked, deep inlets antlered in form, the counterparts of the fiords of Norway with this difference, those of Norway have generally lofty precipices lifting directly from the water; here there are fewer precipices. The mountains, however, lift up very steep, with wooded slopes, but permitting their pinnacles to be seen. Some prospectors abroad told us that the scenery on these fiords was majestic in the extreme. And well it may be, for nearly all of the inlets are flanked by notched and peaked mountains, shooting into the sky with shoulders and necks wrapped in eternal frosts. When our great Republic shall have its boundary lines marked only by oceans and seas, then these bold highlands should be set apart as a continental park for the free people of the Western hemisphere.

The mountains of both mainland and islands are thoroughly picturesque, with rugged upper members topped out in sharp points and rocky pinnacles, such as are seen nowhere in the old states of our country and but rarely in the new ones or in any of the old Territories. There are no deciduous or hardwood trees, and but few hardwood shrubs. Firs, balsams, and hemlocks cover the mountain sides, and cedars sometimes are seen in the small flats next the sea or up the gullies. The forests on mountains slopes are of small trees, and no track of the fire fiend is ever seen. The air is so humid along the entire outer sea coast from the mouth of the Columbia to Behring Strait that one cannot avail himself of forest fires to help clear the land. Should the trees be deadened and fall, they would lie sodden and wet until destroyed by sluggish rot, while tangled undergrowth and young forests would spring up in almost impenetrable maze. On many mountain slopes more than half of the trees are dead but still standing, while often are seen great belts of bare, dead trunks, with not a single live one, but a green carpet of fresh after-growth spreading over the ground. The soil is so thin upon the rocky mass of the mountain that sustenance is not afforded for any but young and vigorous forests. After a few years' growth the living die to make a soil for larger ones to come. Thus ever do the young feed upon the old. A man works, accumulates and dies, for his children to feed upon his hoarded fat, perhaps to squander it in riotous living. One frequently sees here the footprints of avalanches which have swept the accumulations of long years, trees and soil, into the sea or gorges, leaving the rock bare as it was in its primal upheaval. So, too, misfortunes and unavoidable shocks sweep away the heritage of worthy sons from worthy sires.

THE RUINS OF MIGHTY FORESTS.

On the more gentle slopes and in the small valleys of Alaska, fallen timber builds up a rich soil. The trees, however, lie for many years piled one upon another, the newer upon the older, and all heavily covered with moss and yielding to slow decay. When decayed, they make a soil so uneven in surface that a walk over it is an arduous task. When a tree falls it lies and moulders for long years; heavy, rich moss wraps it as in thick blankets. In this way the ground becomes covered by hummocks several feet high. These hummocks are as thick as graves in an old cemetery. We saw an upturned tree back of Sitka ten to twelve feet in diameter some distance from its roots. Saplings ten inches in diameter were growing among its upturned roots fifteen feet from the ground. Moss six inches thick lay like a winding sheet about the trunk. Half of the lower trunk had been slabbed off, I suspect by natives for material for their carved wood work, for it was perfectly sound.

Another large tree lay prone at great length. A fir over three feet in diameter was sitting astride it, sending its roots down to the ground on either side. A trail running across it made it necessary to cut down into the old trunk. The wood left at the bottom was perfectly sound. Again I saw a large tree perched some feet up upon an old stump, its roots having found the ground down in the hollow. The majority of the large trees on the flats have grotesque trunks for several feet from the ground, showing that they had been distorted by old trunks, in whose moss-covered sides the seed from which they sprang had germinated. The air is so full of moisture that moss soon covers a fallen tree and furnishes the best bed for sprouting the delicate seed of coniferae. The expense of clearing such land as might be fitted for cultivation will retard for a long time any agricultural pursuits in Alaska. A well-posted man assured me it would cost $600 per acre.

Live stock would thrive here if lands could be opened. Grasses are rich and luxuriant, and the few horses and cows seen were sleek and fat. But I do not think from what we saw and heard that either as an agricultural or as a grazing country Alaska ever will or can be a success. Cauliflowers, lettuce, potatoes, and several other garden vegetables looked well at Sitka and Fort Wrangel but in small patches. A few beds of poppies and daisies were very fine, and several other flowers were brightly yellow in the little gardens.

"THERE SHE BLOWS!"

We have had charming weather—the Captain says the best trip of the season. Several of our passengers give your correspondent credit for being the mascot of the party—a compliment very complacently accepted. The good, sunny days have not only enabled us to enjoy hugely the beautiful and often sublime scenery, but have given us many opportunities for studying some of the mannerisms of the leviathans of the deep. We have seen many whales, several times ten to twenty at once, and at close range. They rolled themselves in grand dignity up out of the water a few hundred yards from us, and, slowly bending, threw their flukes several feet into the air. Then they would spurt great geysers ten or more feet high, making a noise not unlike that made by elephants when blowing dust over themselves, but far louder. Indeed, when some blew a hundred yards away from us, it sounded like a somewhat continuous emission from a steam stack.

To-day several fine fellows were very near us, and one apparently young one threw himself several feet entirely into the air. He seemed from twelve to eighteen feet long. The passengers thought it a baby whale sporting for the amusement of its dam. But a glass happening to catch him on the fly it was discovered he had a decided snout. Some of us then decided it to be a Greenland shark, which has an underjaw provided with very sharp, rather protruding teeth, with which it scoops out of a whale great chunks of blubber. Close by where it leaped a large whale lifted its fluke almost perpendicularly out of the water and thrashed it into foam. This was kept up for several hundred yards till we got too far away to see it well. This we are told is sometimes done in a kind of wanton sport, but I suspect in this instance the monster was trying to defend itself from one of its inveterate enemies. At any rate our passengers were afforded a very unusual sight.

THE NATIVE ALASKANS.

Of the animated nature, however, exhibited for our amusement and study, the native Alaskans were the most interesting part. They are very improperly called Indians, being of a distinct race from the American red men. I went into several shacks or native houses. They are built by the natives, and under no outside advice or architectural interference. I saw the manner of arrangement of their little stock of furniture. I saw them preparing their food and eating their meals; heard them talk, and watched the play of their features when trading and when having some sport. I thought I saw cropping out everywhere decided Japanese characteristics. It is difficult to name or enumerate the points of resemblance. But they exist, and are to me far more marked than any resemblance between the Japanese and the Chinese, who are supposed by most ethnologists to be of cognate families. These people are to me degraded descendants of the land of the rising sun who entered America through the Aleutian Isles.

The Alaskan shacks are generally located near the water, in somewhat orderly rows, one behind the other. They usually, as far as I could see, consist of a single room occupying the entire house. At or near the center of the building is a square, covered with dirt when the house is raised up, or if the house be low down, then on the ground, whereon the fire burns. Around this square is a somewhat raised platform, as in a Japanese house; on this, the different members of the family, or the several families have their separate locations, with their boxes, beds and other individual property. Frequently the room is thirty to forty feet square, and houses ten, twenty, and often forty or more people. These are members of a large family or of a sub-tribe. By the way a woman is frequently chief of a tribe, and one reads over the door in large letters the name of "Blank (a woman) chief." The Indians seem to evince a sort of boastfulness in the numberings on their houses, which at Sitka run from 3,000 or 4,000 up to five and six. It is barely possible this may be a part of a system of enumeration running through several colonies or tribes, and throughout the land wherever such tribes live. But a white man living in the territory told us it arose from the native desire to look big and to appear as one of a great multitude.

The individual possessions of the different members of a family, are kept in boxes and piled upon them. I looked into several of these boxes. Every thing was thrown in pell-mell—shoes, skins, scarfs, tools, pails and even iron pots and axes. The packing of a box looked as if it had been done in a hurry. The women and children when indoors were found, except at meal time, squatted about the several platforms. When at meals they were huddled on their haunches on the earthen square about the open fire. There are no chimneys to the houses. The fire being built in the center of the squares, the smoke goes out as in Japan through openings in the center of the roof, and to a considerable extent through the doors. About and above the openings in the roof are a sort of screen which may be shifted according to the direction of the wind.

In several small shacks at Juneau, old fashioned iron stoves were seen, with stove pipes leading above the roof. The inside of a shack is an omnium gatherum, not only of people of both sexes and of all ages, but of fishing nets, axes and saws, boat paddles, and blocks on which wooden work was being done. Dried fish and pelts stretched are on the walls and hanging from the roof poles.

The natives are very dark and swarthy, and have rather a yellow tinge in their complexions than red; have large heads and huge, broad, flat, stolid faces, long bodies, short, ill-shaped legs, and ungainly gaits. The habit of squatting when at rest, and when propelling their canoes and fishing, has developed unduly the upper body at the great expense of the lower limbs. They obtain their livelihood from the sea, and spend much more than half of their waking hours in their dugouts. They have no thwarts in their canoes to sit upon, but squat down upon the bottom, or bend on their knees. This causes the legs to dwindle when young and to become decidedly crooked. This, too, is the cause of their decidedly shambling gait when walking. They do not look bright, but are skilled in all things they understand, and learn with great rapidity, not by imitation as the Chinese do, but from inborn aptitude like that of the Japanese. Their blankets, made of the wool of the mountain goat, are marvels of closely woven fabrics, and their baskets of a kind of tough grass are as close as the finest Panama hats and very harmoniously colored. They carve fairly in wood, their totems and small ware being quite artistic. In silver ornamentation they excel. Blankets are the medium of exchange; not the native ornamental blankets, but those introduced by the Hudson Bay people. The old traders bought furs, and pelts, paying for them in woolen blankets. A pile of furs was worth so many blankets. From what I can learn the skill of a native trader has always been in his ability to demand a large number of blankets for his goods, and then to maintain as long as possible the stolidity of his countenance, during the higgling necessary to meet the views of the shrewd Hudson Bay fellow. About the places we visited only silver coin is taken in trade, and a native man or woman rarely drops a peg from the price first demanded.

THE HOME AT SITKA.

At a school, "The Home," in Sitka, under the control of a church organization in the States, are a large number of girls and boys of all sizes. They are neat, intelligent in feature, recite fluently and feelingly simple speeches and verses, and sing sweetly and as if they felt not only the sense but the harmony of their hymns. A band of twenty youths plays brass instruments well and with great precision in time. They have all pleasant low voices and the girls exceedingly sweet ones. I noticed the same characteristics among some wholely uneducated and semi-savage women when singing to a wild uncouth dance of the men.

A party of about sixty of a certain family returned in canoes from berrying while we were in Sitka. They went through uncouth motions while in the boats and then danced in savage grotesqueness on the shore, where they were received by the men and women of other families in wild glee. It was a berry "potlach" or feast. The women's voices could be heard singing in low, weird but sweet monotone. After dancing and distributing pieces of calico among certain of the berrying people, a party of over a hundred entered a large shack, closing the door to us white outsiders. There they went through some long ceremonies. I managed to get inside and for a few minutes was not disturbed. All were squatted around the great room, in the center of which was a fire, the smoke going out of an aperature in the roof. When I entered all were singing in so low a tone that it could almost be termed crooning. The whole thing was weird and wild, but the singing was not lacking in untutored melody. Some other tourists seeing me get in also entered, opening the door so widely that the wind drove the smoke back into the room. A sort of head man who was next the fire leading the song, got angry—gave the word, when all got up hurriedly, and each taking a large basket or bowl full of berries went off to their respective homes.

From what I could learn, a whole sub-tribe takes boats and visits some locality possibly a day or more's sail away, where the berry crop is known to be good. They remain until their canoes are well filled. When they return some of the men stand up in the canoes arrayed in showy colored calico or other bright stuff—and shout and sing and wildly gesticulate. By this, those in the village at once understand whether or not the excursion has been successful. In accordance therewith the returning party is met on the landing. If unsuccessful with dirges and lamentations. If successful with a "potlatch," a species of joyous fete.

The party we saw were in high feather. Bedizened fellows stood in the prows of the boats, going through gesticulations and contortions which, had they been white men, would have overturned the treacherous dugouts. They shouted and chanted in wild glee. Their songs were returned from the shore. There were forty to sixty in the returning party. As soon as their keels touched the strand, they poured out, a few in uncouth antics, but the bulk of them in solemn decorousness. When landed one two or more sang in wild weird tones, the women joining in the chorus. After going through certain formalities, presents were given to members of the returning party, of coin, and of strips or pieces one or more yards long of calico in red or other bright colors. Then the singing was continued, and the berries were removed from the canoes and carried into a large shack where other ceremonies were gone through. No white people were allowed to enter. A couple of natives stood guard at the door, and grufly if not angrily turned off all who attempted to gain ingress. The ceremonies were continued within for two or three hours. It was at the later end of this that I gained admission, as above stated, while the attention of the guards was removed.

The whole thing seemed very ridiculous, especially when one remembered that at best only a few bushels of huckleberries were the occasion of the rejoicing. Our Grecco-maniacs, however, should not deem the thing small. For according to Homer, the immediate success of the demigods of Greece—the heroes who gyrated in that wonderful tempest-in-a-tea-pot, the Trojan war, did quite as silly things over just as pitiful successes. After all, too, it is not the size of a thing which makes it valuable, but the size the possessor thinks it possesses. A bushel of huckleberries to an Alaskan is quite as large, as a schooner load of wheat would be to old Hutch, or a dozen car load of pigs would be to P.D.A.

THE DELICACIES OF THE TABLE.

I went into a house at Juneau; a woman and several children with one man were squatted around the fire taking their dinners. This consisted of a large dried salmon. A woman held it in her hand before the hot fire, screening her hand by a fold of the fish. When it was cooked on one side enough to burn her hand, she turned another fold and when satisfied with her culinary art, tore it apart in a large wooden bowl. The fish was in fact scarcely at all cooked, but was simply made very hot. This, however, seemed satisfactory to the feasters. Each member of the family tore a piece off with fingers or teeth. The hands of the young girls were soaked with the oil exuding from the hot and fat salmon. They wiped them clean several times during the meal upon their luxuriant tresses, which hung down their backs in massive braids. I think I must have a good-natured face, for I have never in any land offended when making such domiciliary visits. In this instance the woman wished me to join them in their feast, assuring me it was good. At least I so took the words with the expressions of face used. They had no bread of any sort. After they had sufficiently filled themselves, each took a long draught of water, from a native wooden pail.

Salmon is the staple article of food, and hangs drying by the scores and hundreds on racks in front of each shack or house and upon the walls within. The fish on the racks seemed small, possibly such are reserved for home consumption, while the larger ones had been sold to the canneries. The Alaskan salmon, however, is not a large one. It must be fattening food, for men and women are generally plump and the children as rounded as well-fed pigs. The little ones are as frisky and happy as in Japan, which I thought the paradise of babies. I was struck by the full rounded paunches of the little ones. This, too, is remarkable among their little cousins in the land of the rising sun; possibly a result of fish diet. During the summer season the Indians consume large quantities of berries—blue or huckleberries and salmon berries. The English call the latter, cloud berry in Norway. I saw a basket full of a white clustered root in front of a shack; a sort of bunch of small seed like bulbs compacted into a single bulb, very white, not unlike a mass of snow-drops glued together into a ball walnut-sized. I asked a woman who was washing them if they were good. She grinned and put a handful into her mouth as answer, at the same time handing me some. They tasted like a starchy paste made from impalpable flour. I asked the name. She replied "Chinook (Indian) lice." They cannot pronounce the "r," but Chinese-like substitute "l" for it.

Another delicacy is a kind of very small fish egg, deposited by a sort of herring on fine twigs of hemlock placed by the natives in certain places in the sea for the purpose. The eggs are clustered on the twigs until they are as big as one's thumb, thousands upon thousands, upon a small branched limb. The branches are hung up to dry. When used they are soaked in fresh water and the eggs stripped off by the hand. The eggs when soaked swell till they seem perfectly fresh. I asked the woman I saw soaking them if they were good. A smile from ear to ear illumined her face; she offered me some and then opened her capacious mouth into which she threw a handful which she crushed with evident delight. Though of an enquiring mind, I abstained heroically from accepting the proffered hospitality. Had the eggs been fried I doubt not they would have made a good dish. The dry ones were shriveled and as dead looking as the roe in a smoked herring, yet when soaked they seemed as plump and fresh as if just taken from the mother fish.

GUM-CHEWING AMONG THE NATIVES.

When selling berries to the ship passengers the women are either all the while eating of their goods or are chewing some kind of gum, generally the latter. Why should not Alaska's 400 chew gum as well as our own. One of their fashions is very grotesque. We saw several women with their faces, necks, arms and hands stained almost black. Whether this was done for ornamentation, or as a sort of mourning badge, I could not definitely learn. Both solutions were given us by people residing among them. If the latter, it furnished another evidence of Japanese origin. A Japanese married woman blackens her teeth, and plucks her eye brows and lashes to make herself unattractive, as a proof of her love for her lord. These women carry out the same idea when in sorrow. Their grief is certainly much more economical than in politer lands where, robes de deul are both nobby and costly.

At each town visited by us lines of women with some men were crouched down on their haunches, with their wares for sale; dressed skins, carved wood, spoons, totems, and uncouth images of animals; baskets beautifully woven of a kind of grass, very close, very strong, and decorated in bold, natural colors. They have what so many untutored but somewhat self-cultured half savage people have, a thorough conception of harmony of color. At first, to our cultivated estheticism, the coloring used by them is too glaring, but when toned down by time, or when seen at a little distance, no civilized people can surpass them.

The baskets made by the people of a sort of strong grass probably mixed with some kind of bark, are very strong and so closely woven, that they will hold water. They can be folded tightly without breaking the fiber. I had considerable difficulty in getting a native to part with an old one. It would seem they recognize the softness lent by age. I offered several women two or three times as much for old ones, which they had in use, as they asked for new ones. The one I succeeded in getting was from a woman who had no new ones for sale. It probably had held rather unsavory messes, but its coloring is exquisitely soft and mellow. A passenger asked what I wanted with the dirty thing. Its soft tone being pointed out, she spent over an hour going from shack to shack fruitlessly endeavoring to obtain one.

The same difference is observable between old and new Turkish rugs. Their beauty is not in the texture or weight but in the harmony of color, which no European has yet been able to surpass, if equal. The high art of France has not yet learned to create in large ungraceful figures the result found in rugs laboriously made by the half civilized people of Eastern Turkey and of the Caucasus. The French attain it only by grouping small figures of graceful design. The Thlinkets are the most numerous of the native tribes, and are the ones which so resemble the Japanese. A Thlinket when playing merchant to the tourist visitors offers his wares with an utter indifference and apparently never drops a tittle from his first price. If you purchase he or she seems pleased; if you decline his air is of one utterly indifferent. We saw a large number at work about the Treadwell mines in different capacities, and in drilling and quarrying the quartz. They seem to work as well as the average white man.

By the way, the Treadwell mine is an extraordinary thing. Gold-bearing quartz is quarried like common stone. The vein, if it can be so termed, is 500 feet wide, open upon the surface and extending to an unknown depth. It is of low grade ore, yielding only from four to eight dollars per ton, but is so easily reached and worked with such cheapness that many think it the most valuable mine in the world. The mine runs 240 stamps, being the largest number in existence under one roof. It is controlled by so close a corporation that the yield is never divulged and its value is a secret. It is said, however, that an offer of $15,000,000 to $20,000,000 has been refused. Its machinery is almost if not entirely run by water power furnished by a mountain stream tumbling from a lofty height immediately behind and over the mine. It is on Douglas Island, which is separated from the main land at Juneau by a channel about a mile in width.

Other paying mines are being worked about Juneau, and promising claims have been located in many parts of the Territory. The seal produce of the land is too well known to need any comment, but it will probably surprise the majority of our people when they learn that the salmon crop of last year was of about 750,000 cases. Each case I believe, holds two dozen cans. When one considers the fact that the waste of fish at the great packing canneries is enormous, not more than half of an eight pound sock-eye salmon—the best of all—being used, and then considers the number caught by the natives for themselves and for their dogs, we can easily marvel at the vast schools which frequent these Northern waters. The waste spoken of is not because more cannot be saved, but because the middle part of the fish cans best and is saved with a minimum of labor. The back with its fin is removed by one stroke of the knife, then the same is done with the belly. The head and tail is then cut so deep into the body that only four pounds of an eight-pounder is left. This is divided into four equal parts. One part is then rolled and pressed by the hand into a can. The cans are closed and placed in great vats, where they are boiled. When about done they are taken out and pricked to let the air out, and again soldered. They go again into vats to be boiled an hour and a half. This long cooking in air-tight cans causes the bones to be absorbed without wasting the juices and flavor of the fish. When this is done, each can is again examined and any one at all puffed up is again pricked to let all air escape and is again boiled. They are then cooled for boxing. Some canneries on the Pacific pack from forty all the way up to a hundred thousand fish a day.

I spoke of dogs. There are a great many in the Indian villages. They are all more or less mixed of Esquimaux breed. They exceed the number of children, are all wolf-like, and are on the best of terms with the people. It is amusing to set one of them to barking, especially if the bark be of the howl kind, for immediately it is caught up by his nearest neighbor and carried on until every dog in the camp is squatting on his haunches and lifting his voice to its highest pitch. The medley of sounds, from the pup's quaver through the whole gamut of different ages to the sober howls of the grandfather, is very droll, especially when the hearer sees the performers in their dead earnestness. They lift their heads and look so solemn, and howl in so lugubrious a key, that one feels that in this dogish art at least they are unequaled by the canines of any other part of the world.

LETTER VII.

STEAMING UP THE ICE-PACKED FIORDS AND CHANNELS OF THE ARCTIC COUNTRY OWNED BY UNCLE SAM. SALMON CANNERIES. CANOE BUILDING BY NATIVES. ASCENT OF THE "MUIR" GLACIER, 300 FEET ABOVE WATER. FANTASTIC ICE FORMATIONS AT TAKOU. SUMMER AND WINTER CLIMATES. IMPUDENT CROWS AND ORATORICAL RAVENS.

Steamer Queen,
Gulf of Georgia, Aug. 10.

The salmon canneries of Alaska are not all in the neighborhood of the towns at which the excursion steamer calls, but are at or near every considerable stream which flows into the straits, channels and inlets. The instinct of the fish send them at regular seasons into fresh water, where and near which, they are caught in vast numbers. Other steamers, some of them carrying passengers and requiring a week longer to make the trip, call at stated times at several places, to which the Queen does not go, to take on and unload freight. The natives are the principal fishermen using, both nets and hooks from their trim canoes. These are dug out from a single log, some barely holding a man, others carrying with safety fifty or more. A log of two feet diameter will make a canoe nearly twice as large at its waist. When dug out to a thin shell almost as light as birch bark, the frame is filled with water, into which hot stones are thrown until the wooden walls are thoroughly steamed, hot and pliable. Sticks of different lengths, the longest at the canoe waist, are then set into the frame, which is spread out into a fine, cutter-shaped keel. A high prow and somewhat raised stern are cut out of the log or set into it. Some of the crafts present finely modeled keels. The shell of a canoe holding over sixty people, is often less than a half inch thick, and so light that two people can easily pull it high on dry land. The native squats in the bottom of his canoe and paddles it with great speed.

We saw a boat not twenty feet long, the whole filled to the top with light firewood. On this were perched two men, three women, a dog, a small tent, and the cooking utensils of the family. They were sailing from Juneau to another village several miles away. A native gets into his canoe as lightly and carefully as if he were treading on eggs. In this instance, the boat sank until its upper line was not four inches out of water. We expected to see it swamped, for there was a light wind and a few white caps. We watched it with our glasses until safely landed at a village several miles away. The natives, of villages quite distant from the towns at which the steamers call, bring their wives, dogs, and household utensils, together with what they may have to sell in the curio line to these places on the day the steamers are due. They pitch their tents on the shore not far from the steamboat pier, draw their canoes upon the strand above high water mark, and seem as much at home as if regularly domiciled. They remain as long as they see a chance for trade and then fold their tents and silently steal away. They require only a few minutes to get themselves and their worldly possessions aboard their little dugouts. At Juneau there were several of these temporary inhabitants. They all embarked after sundown, and with the long twilight were able to reach their permanent abodes before well-set dark.

The people catch fish at or near their respective villages. The canneries each have a small steambarge, which is sent to several villages daily to pick up the catch. In this way the salmon are landed at the packing-places when perfectly fresh. The Alaskan salmon is as a rule small, averaging only about six pounds, while "sock eye" of the Frazer River run evenly at eight pounds, and the Columbia River furnishes an average of nearly twenty pounds. Large fish, however, were brought to our steward, also magnificent halibut, which the passengers enjoyed greatly. One soon becomes satiated with salmon on the Pacific Coast. It is as thoroughly an every day food, as is the hog and hominy on a southern plantation. Except to the Indian, it does not seem to be as good for a steady diet as the southerner's homely fare. Several other varieties of salt water fish furnish a less surfeiting every day food than this famous beauty. We hailed with pleasure, the change to halibut given us by our steward when we reached Alaska. No where is this solid denizen of the sea, found in better kelter than up here.

A PICTURE OF SITKA.

Our ship on the excursion stops at Seattle and Port-Townsend, in Washington; Victoria and Nanaimo, on Vancouver's Island; and at Fort Wrangle, Juneau, and Sitka, in Alaska; at each long enough to afford passengers full time to satisfy themselves. Juneau is the largest place owing to the rich mines in the vicinity. All have large canneries near by, which employ natives, many of whom have acquired considerable property. A native woman, widow to a white trader, and her daughter were passengers from Juneau to Chilkat. She is a sort of Merchant, continuing the business of her defunct husband. She bore herself most decorously in her half mourning, and seemed quite able to steer her own bark through the remaining voyage of life. She is reputed to be worth several thousand dollars, and manages her affairs shrewdly. Her eligibility was suggested to the late friend of Persia's shah. His eyes rested more fondly upon her plump daughter, who displayed much agility and a trim ankle when she descended the gangway in a high sea out side of Chilkat.

Sitka has one of the prettiest sites and harbors in the world, and its climate just now is simply delicious. It is built on slightly rising ground on a bay running some miles from the sea, with beautiful little islands, clustered in large number in front of the town. These lift with rounded rocky foundations naked and water-washed at low tide, but are clothed in rich green shrubbery above high water mark. They would make an exquisite water park for a large city. Over one edge of this park lifts a few miles away, Mount Edgecumbe, a perfect volcanic cone about 3,000 feet high. Its lower two thirds are clothed in green. Its upper third, beneath its broad extinct crater, is of rich red rock. Long points of the red run down into the green, while points of the green run up into the red. It reminds one much of famous Fuji-yama in Japan. The god-mountain of Japan is over four times as high, but Edgecumbe is seen so close that the contrast does not entirely belittle it.

Around and behind Sitka are lofty foot hills clothed in forests, making a perfect amphitheater, while behind them rear pointed, rocky mountains more or less snow flecked. The town is on the great island of Baranoff, which is a mass of pinnacled mountains, the northern slopes of which are always white with sheets of snow. When we sailed, a few days before, northward through Prince Frederick Sound, these mountains formed a wonderfully beautiful background. Prince Frederick Sound is about twenty by thirty odd miles. All around it lie grand mountains of exceeding ruggedness on their highest peaks, but green below, with stripes, bands and patches of white. Through a break to the south the sound stretches some miles further, backed by the Baranoff range, rising in innumerable sharply pointed pinnacles, and about their shoulders as purely white as loftiest Alpine heights. All the mountains are comparatively uncovered when seen on their southern, western, and eastern exposures, while those seen from the north although not more lofty, are clothed in blankets of white, as if to protect them from the northern blasts.

The entire Alaskan trip presents a constant succession of gorgeous scenery, and if the weather be fine, it is worth the time taken and the cost in money to one who loves the picturesque and enjoys the rugged grandeur of nature, even if they were no grand glaciers. The time is not far distant, when commodious hotels will be maintained in these northern possessions as summer resorts. Many people will then spend weeks in them, and with the aid of small excursion barges will find health and delights.

An intelligent man who has resided for several years in Sitka, assured me he much preferred its winter climate to that of southern Ohio, where he had grown up to mature manhood. The average winter climate is rather milder than that of Washington, but with no extreme of cold. The frequent rainy days during the summer are a great draw back to the pleasure of excursion tourists. The chances are decidedly that he will find everything wet when he arrives. Our party was one of the lucky ones. The air was clear and balmy. The sun made a parasol agreeable to the ladies. I lolled for an hour on the stoop of a deserted house, with my head in shade, but my body and lower limbs warmed by a delicious sun bath, while my eyes feasted upon the glorious picture spread before me of mountain peak and green slopes, and gently rippling water as the tide slowly crept up the soft beach of the little bay behind the town.

Except when sailing across four entrances or broad straits running out to the open sea, the entire voyage to and from Alaska, usually is and always may be through straits, canals, and fiords so thoroughly protected from the ocean's angry waters that the smallest steamer can hardly feel a toss. On this excursion of ours, the briny depths below us were often as smooth as glass, reflecting the mountains, as from a mirror. As the swell from our steamer would roll off in smooth, rounded and diverging lines, they would weave fantastic forms, upon their mirror like surface, of green forest, rugged rocks, or snow caps. Towards the land beyond the effect of the swell, the mountains would often be so perfectly delineated upon the mirror, that a photograph of them would show them as distinctly below as above. The picture could be turned upside down with but little detriment to the view. Near the steamer the rounded crest of the swell would reflect long weird lines of forest, which would spread out behind us as the swell sank to a lower level.

At night millions of small fish, probably herrings, would be disturbed in their schools, and fluttering and hurrying from the ship's prow would make the water blaze in brilliant phosphorescence. Now and then a large fish would dart through these schools, leaving behind him a bright wake of flame. As he dashed through them, the herrings would scatter their flame work into myriads of sparkling diamonds. When our ship would push into the school, the alarm seemed to be given to quite a distance in the mass. The dense pack of little fellows forward the ship's bow, would break the sea into chaotic burning mass, as they sped in haste before the great monster chasing them. The line to the right and left then bent aft, weaving the sea into a waving network of fire. Farther off the brightness was toned down to a glistening shimmer, and then was lost in the distance. The schools we saw were moving in great lines in the direction we were sailing. They were composed of millions of little finny flutterers.

PANORAMA ON LAND AND WATER.

Frequently as we sailed over the placid sea, little diving ducks would flap the waters in a race from the ship's hull, and when a hundred feet off would dive for a score or more feet, perfectly satisfied that by their dive they had hidden their tracks from the mighty monster. Droves of porpoise rolled about us, and now and then one would race with us for a mile or so and seem really to understand and enjoy the contest. Asiatic crows cawed around us when we were ashore most familiarly, and with the cute impudence, so characteristic of his brethren in Eastern Asia. When we landed at Muir Glacier, a young school marm and I wandered along the shore then bare from the receding tide, up to the icy precipice. A couple of crows espied us and flew about us cawing, and finally perched on a rock close by. I told the fair one that these birds instinctively saw that we were to be caught by the incoming tide or under an ice fall, and were awaiting a feast. Their cawing was so constant, that she become superstitious, and declared she could not stand it. I had to shy a pebble at them to allay her timidity. The crow is a familiar bird up here, but the raven is an Alaskan institution. If I be not mistaken he is held by the natives in a sort of veneration. He is twice or more as large as our crow; has a huge roman nosed beak, which occasionally snaps with a report nearly as loud as the snaps of a pelican's bill. His coat is of shiny, burnished bottle green black, and his eye has an expression queerly mixed of vacuous imbecility, and cunning impudent rascality. He is a genuine stump speaker, and as fond of his own orations as a famous eastern after dinner talker is of his pretty speeches.

When we strolled in the deep shade of the dense forest behind Sitka, some of these impudent fellows settled in adjoining trees and held dialogues and debates, possibly upon our human characteristics. They would harange and then seem to crack coarse jokes, when one of them would almost laugh in low gutturals, not unlike the gurgling of water running from a two gallon jug. A wag among us declared they were making ward stump-speeches, and was willing to wager that if ravens language could be understood, we should find that some of the jokes were utterly unfit for polite ears. Those we saw were rather jolly good fellows, and were not of the family of which one appeared to Edgar Poe in his hashish dreams.

I said that the simple, beautiful scenery presented by the Alaskan excursion, well repays the loss of time and money expended upon it. Many of the mountain-flanked channels are wonderfully beautiful. The Linn or Chilkat Canal is surpassed by nothing of the sort we have ever seen. It is about four miles wide and probably 30 long. On either side tower mountains, say 3,000 feet high, rising from the water like great receding buttresses, clothed thickly in forest below, with scattered copses toward the upper slopes, and flecked with openings of low shrubbery in pale green, artistically contrasting with the dark tone of firs and spruce. All are topped by rocks, those near us gray, and the most distant ones of an undertone of purple, while in the far distance, the mountains on either shore become first blue-gray, and then blend off into sweet opalescent tints. Over and above all, towered at no great distance mighty snow fields and glaciered heights. Crillon, Fairweather, and La Peronse to the west cut the clear blue sky with their points 15,000 and nearly 16,000 feet above us; mantels of clouds here and there fell about their titanic shoulders, and light veils of mist wound and unwound about them just under their snowy pinnacles. Into this glorious fiord we steamed to its head at Chilkat, and then back to enter Glacier Bay, the acme of Alaska's wonderful exhibitions.

Fully nine Alaskan tourists out of ten go for its glaciers, which are seen in a magnitude and grandeur inducing one to pass as scarcely worthy of notice, the best of any other country which is possible of approach. They are seen in icy hardness on distant summits shortly after passing the boundary of British Columbia. They increase in frequency as one goes further north, until on a clear and cloudless day one is scarcely ever out of sight. The first visited by us was that at the head of Takou inlet south of Juneau. It is comparatively small, less than a mile wide at its foot, but running back several miles. Its foot presents a perpendicular wall of ice 150 to 200 feet high, rising out of water several hundred feet deep. Its face is irregular; here supported by icy buttresses, and there sinking back into icy recesses; now with irregular pilasters and projections of soft snowy appearance and then with broken columns, recesses, and caves of every tint of blue from the flitting opalescent to transparent ultra-marine and deep indigo.

FANTASTIC GRANDEUR OF THE GLACIERS.

Now is seen a mass of closely welded crystals of diamond whiteness glistening under the kiss of the sun, like monster piles of precious gems; then a huge broken and fissured wall compactly studded with turquoise and amethysts and gems so green as to be almost emeralds forming the icy cliffs. Loud reports as of rifle guns would fill the ear, coming from the cracking behind of the solid moving mass as it pushed onward in its descent. Hark! A rattle of musketry! You look and see a mere hat full of snowy ice tumbling from the upper edge. As it falls it becomes a cart full, a house full, and then with a report as loud as that of a heavy cannon, a section of the wall's face separates from the mass behind and tumbles into the deep water with a splash which scatters spray one or two hundred feet around, and the air is filled as with the bellowing of thunder echoed from projecting ice walls and from the lofty mountains hemming in the narrow inlet. The fallen mass disappears below the surface. But look! See that monster lifting from the water a half hundred feet away from where the tumbling ice fell! It is a dome-like pinnacle of ice. Up it rises slowly, revealing the most exquisite tints as its shoulders broaden; ten feet, twenty, fifty, aye, nearly a hundred feet! For a moment it poses a solidified mass of ultramarine. Sparkling waters pour in cascades from its uplifted dome. But see! It leans a little; it leans a little more; and tumbles with a mighty noise and sends geysers up to the brink of the icy precipice and wide around for several hundred feet. As its upper member or crest topples over, a huge section many times more bulky than the part we had seen above water, lifts, and then lies stretched three or more hundred feet, and exposed above the surface nearly thirty feet. The huge mass of possibly a hundred thousand tons weight came only to a small extent from the icy wall standing before and above us; but the fissure above extended—three or more hundred feet down into the glacier below water, and rested on the ground. For one end was covered with mud and for many feet was deeply stained.

An officer of the ship declared this was the finest exhibition of the sort he had ever seen, and that the iceberg thus made and now slowly floated out by the receding tide weighed far more than a hundred thousand tons. Our ship was lying with its bow toward the glacier not a thousand feet away. The vessel rocked and reeled from stem to stern as the great waves made by the glacier avalanche rolled under her. We lay there two hours listening to constant reports and seeing a succession of ice slides. While so resting for the enjoyment of passengers, the captain was laying in ice enough for his next round trip. Icebergs of all sizes, from those weighing only a ton up to others half as big as the steamer, were floating all about us. Some of crystal whiteness and as clear as the lens of a telescope. Others were of every tone of blue, deepening sometimes into translucent olive. The most of the bergs were of delicious purity, but a few were full of mud brought from the bed hundreds of feet under water. In some were seen good sized cobble stones; in one a boulder weighing probably a quarter of a ton. Sailors in a boat picked from these masses chunks of perfect clearness, passed grappling ropes under them, and then hoisted them by the steam derrick upon the main deck. Sometimes the piece seen above water was not larger than a barrel, but when lifted into full view it weighed one, two or more tons. For every foot of ice seen in an iceberg above water eight lie below. Thus when a berg floated close to us showing thirty feet above water, it had, if of even form, 240 feet below.

CLIMBING THE FAMOUS "MUIR."

Some of the passengers felt uneasy, fearing another mighty tumble might occur immediately in front of us, and that the mass might shoot outward below water, and might come up beneath, or uncomfortably close to us. The captain, however, stood upon the bridge ready to send his ship rapidly backward should anything look untoward. The engines were kept in gentle motion holding our bow steadily toward the glacier precipice. The captain, by the way, thinks the Takou the most interesting of the approachable glaciers. The ice gathered was of great solidity. It did not break under an ice pick in straight cleavage, but irregularly, showing its peculiar characteristic of being formed, not from water simply freezing, but from snow compacted under irresistible pressure. Two chunks of perhaps each two tons weight lay between decks supplying the entire ship's wants for four or five days. It may have been imagination, but I thought this ice more agreeable for eating than that made by ordinary process. It was more friable and broke and crumbled in the mouth in shorter pieces and not in long spiculae as ordinary ice does.

We passed on our run close to several other huge glaciers, some of them running quite down to the water; among them the "Stephens" which though very large, reaches the sea in a slope and not with a perpendicular precipice. We, however, stopped only at the celebrated "Muir." We lay in front of it from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.—a half hour in rather dangerous proximity, and then anchored a mile off for passengers to land and climb its banks. The Muir presents a precipice to the head of the inlet nearly 300 feet high and over a mile long. Two years ago it bent outward with a very decided convex front; last year it was nearly straight. Now it is a very open horseshoe. We took soundings when the Queen lay a thousand feet from the front and found under us 720 feet. It possibly shallows considerably close to the wall, say to 400 feet. The glacier is certainly over 200 feet high; this makes, with what is under water, 600 feet. But give it the low estimate of an average across the inlet of 400 feet. It moves steadily downward forty feet a day, and gradually recedes. Thus it will be found that it tumbles into the sea a mass of ice, 40 x 5280 x 400 feet, or of at least 84,000,000 cubic feet a day.

After wandering for several hours over the surface of the glacier, along a sort of granite road way varying in depth from a few inches up to very many feet thick lying upon it; among blocks of granite weighing tons brought down upon the solid frozen river; across narrow crevices, into whose depths we could look a hundred feet down, into pure ice of all tints of blue from the pearl blue of a southern sky to ultramarine and indigo—tints so beautiful that one involuntarily groaned in pleased admiration; along chasms where our iron-pointed alpenstocks were necessary to prevent a slip, which would have sent us down into glacial graves; looking over pinnacles, domes and valleys of ice in confused profusion; over grotesque forms, over which no one person could safely go, but a dozen attached to each other by ropes, with shoes iron-nailed, might with hazard venture. Then up and before us spread the mighty glacier, 25 miles by 30, fed by many smaller ones. Morains of rock lifted above the surface in long even lines running back for miles, showing the edge of each of the frozen rivers, which have united to make the mighty single one.

The theory explaining the medial moraines of glaciers, is that two or more glaciers come down the gorges and upper valleys of the mountain. Each of these gather up broken rock and mountain debris on their two sides. When two such glaciers meet and run into and form one, then the inner lateral moraines unite and are borne along by the enlarged glacier. As it flows these two morains, now become "medial," are apparently pressed upward to and upon the surface. This, however, is probably only apparent, for the ice melting under the summer sun's heat, simply leaves the rock debris on the surface.

The Muir is the result of several upper feeding glaciers. Each two uniting formed from their inner lateral moraines, one medial. Several medial ones are observable on the surface of the great glacier, some of them uniting lower down, when the bed of the icy stream becomes contracted—where the valley becomes narrow. Several medial moraines retain their individual line until the great precipice is reached. The mass of the debris forming a moraine is of comparatively small broken granite; not broken and rounded by glacial action, but simply irregular pieces thrown off from granite precipices high in the mountains by frost forces. Now and then a few rounded pebbles, and small boulders are seen, worn on the under surface of upper glacier streams. Quite a number of very large masses of granite are being borne down by the Muir moraines. One I estimated to weigh several tons. Its cleavage sides and edges were fresh and sharp as if it were just broken from its parent rock.

The medial morains on some of the glaciers seen at a distance, have a singular effect. They can be seen in long apparently parallel lines and seemingly close enough together, to be the walls of a long smooth road. A wag declared that one of them was the road from an Indian village to the little red school house in an upper valley.

After exploring the surface of the glacier, we found that the tide having reached its ebb, we could approach the foot of the ice-precipice. Three of us had approached it somewhat nearly before when the tide was but half out. We walked up the shingly shore through stranded icebergs of all sizes, and hundreds in number. Some were not larger than a barrel, others larger than a railroad car, and of all intermediate sizes. Now we threaded our way through a cordon of huge blocks as clear as crystal, from which we chipped with the spikes of our alpenstocks, chunks delicious to eat. Then we were among others of various tints, colored by the earthy matter caught by them when flowing near to or upon the valley bed. One mass weighing probably a thousand tons was resting upon a point so small as to be a mere pivot. I cut from it a smooth rounded cobble stone for a paper weight, and was glad when my task was finished, for I was somewhat uneasy lest the slight hammering might topple over the bulky mass.

We reached the foot of the glacier. Here the picture was wonderfully fine. The ice-precipice from which so many newly broken bergs had tumbled, was far more beautiful than when seen from several hundred yards away. We looked into grottoes many yards recessed into the frozen cliff. Here in one was every shade of blue; all tints of green were resplendent in another; and then the sun would discolor these shades, and weave them into the sweet tones which paint an opal's cheek. Now an upper member of a newly broken recess under the sun rays sparkled as a million diamonds, and then another looked like a mass of crystalized olive tints. From out of a deep grotto at the base of the cliff flowed a strong river, which had been pent within its icy house, and now reaching the free air bounded and rushed to join the mighty sea.

Since our arrival in the morning the tide had fallen fully twenty feet, taking away considerable support from the hanging mass, so that the fall of icebergs was almost continuous. The thunder while so close to a tumbling mass was terrific and sublime. The inlet was full of bergs, so that the ship in turning out had to pick its way carefully. How exquisitely beautiful they were as they glistened in the sun's rays, displaying their iridescent crystals! As we steamed out of the inlet among a scattered ice floe we thought we had seen all that a grand glacier could present. Imagine our surprise when we had gone about ten miles to find ourselves at the entrance to another inlet which was packed almost solidly with icebergs. With our glasses we could see the huge "Pacific glacier," about thirty miles away, with a precipice of ice 600 to 800 feet high and five miles long. Although it was quite three times as far from us as the "Muir", yet its icy front showed to us higher out of water. The inlet running up to it was literally packed with ice, into which no steamer, unless armored for Arctic seas, would dare to venture.

A passenger lately taken on, who had spent a season prospecting in this immediate neighborhood, assured us that the fall of ice from this glacier was absolutely continuous, and that masses would tumble a half mile long. He had seen one floating three miles long. He admitted he had no means of measuring it, and gave us the result of a rather hasty guess. He said it stranded at each low tide, but would be lifted at each flood and was by degrees broken up sufficiently to get out of the inlet. "Why," said this passenger, "the Muir is a baby by the side of the Pacific. For every iceberg coming from the one five hundred come from the other." The statement was credible, for while just above this inlet the strait had only scattered bergs, below it was almost a pack of ice. The majority of the icebergs, which had fallen from the Muir, were melted away before reaching the mouth of the Pacific inlet. Looking up this, the icebergs seemed almost in solid mass; of all sizes from a few feet broad, to others covering a quarter of an acre; and from a few feet in height up to twenty, thirty and forty. Out side of the inlet and below its mouth, monster masses were all about us, some of them hundreds of feet across and several fully fifty feet above water.