stranger looks about him in silent amazement, wondering how long Nature has been displaying her erratic moods after the fashion exhibited here, now smiling with winning tenderness, and now frowning with implacable sternness. He sees everywhere evidences of great antiquity, and beholds objects which must date from time incalculably remote, but there is no recorded history extant of this strange region. The original Indian inhabitants of the Park were a very peculiar people, – a sort of gnome race, – a tribe individually of Liliputian size, who lived in natural caves, of which there are many in the hills, where rude and primitive implements of domestic use belonging to the aborigines have been found. They do not seem to have possessed even the customary legends of savage races concerning their surroundings and their origin. This tribe, the former dwellers here, were called the Sheep-eating Indians, because they lived almost solely upon the flesh, and clothed themselves in the skins, of the big-horn sheep of these mountains, – an animal which is found running wild in more or less abundance throughout the whole northern range of the Rocky Mountains, even where it reaches into Alaska. These natives are represented to have been a timid and harmless people, without iron tools or weapons of any sort, except bows and arrows, to which may be added hatchets and knives formed of the flint-like volcanic glass indigenous to the Park. They were an isolated people from the very nature of their country, which was nearly inaccessible at all seasons, and entirely so during the long and severe winters.
Other native tribes were debarred from this region through superstitious fear, induced by the incomprehensible demonstrations of Nature exhibited in boiling springs, spouting geysers, and the trembling earth, accompanied by subterranean explosions. This seemed to them to be evidence of the wrath of the Great Spirit, angered, perhaps, by their unwelcome presence. The Sheep-eaters, born among these scenes, gave no special heed to them, and rather fostered an idea which prevented others from interfering with the surrounding game, and which also gave them immunity from the otherwise inevitable oppression of a stronger and more aggressive people than themselves. As civilization advanced westward, or rather as the white man found his way thither, this Yellowstone tribe gradually dwindled away or became united with the Shoshones of Iowa. Their individuality seems now to have been entirely lost, not a trace of them, even, being discernible, according to more than one intelligent writer upon the subject.
No Indians of any tribe are now permitted in the reservation, otherwise, lazy as these aborigines are, they would soon make reckless havoc among the fine collection of wild animals which is gathered here. The Indians are all in the annual receipt of money and ample food supplies from the government; and the killing of extra game and selling the hides would furnish them with only so many more dollars to be expended for whiskey and tobacco. These tribes have no idea of economy, or care for the future. The reliance they place upon government supplies promotes a spirit of recklessness and extravagance. If their potato crop fails, or partial famine sets in from some extraordinary cause, it finds them utterly unprepared to meet the exigency. Oftentimes it is found that the government rations and supplies have been sold, and the money received therefor lavishly squandered.
CHAPTER III
Norris Geyser Basin. – Fire beneath the Surface. – A Guide’s Ideas. – The Curious Paint Pot Basin. – Lower Geyser Basin. – Boiling Springs of Many Colors. – Mountain Lions at Play. – Midway Geyser Basin. – “Hell’s Half Acre.” – In the Midst of Wonderland. – Old Faithful. – Other Active Geysers. – Erratic Nature of these Remarkable Fountains.
A pleasant drive of twenty miles in a southerly direction from the Hot Springs Hotel, through the wildest sort of scenery, over mountain roads and beside gorgeous cañons, will take the visitor to the Norris Geyser Basin, a spot which promptly recalled to the writer somewhat similar scenes witnessed at the aboriginal town of Ohinemutu, in the northern part of New Zealand. Clouds of sulphurous vapor constantly hang alike over both places, produced by a similar cause, though the scene here is far more vivid and demonstrative. This whole basin is dotted by hot water springs and fumaroles, which maintain an incessant hissing, spluttering, and bubbling, night and day, through the twelve months of the year. The water which issues from these sources is of various colors, according to the impregnating principle which prevails, the yellow sulphur vats being especially conspicuous to the sight and offensive to the smell. What a strange, weird place it is! No art could successfully imitate these extravagances of Nature. Some of the rills are cool, others are boiling hot; some are white, some pink or red, and one large basin, fifty feet across, is called the Emerald Pool, because of its intensely green color; yet it appears to be quite pure and transparent when a sample is taken out and examined. Each spring seems to be entirely independent of the rest, though all are situated so near to each other. An almost constant tremor of the earth is realized throughout this immediate region, as though only a thin crust separated the visitor from an active volcano beneath his feet; and, notwithstanding the various scientific theories, who can say that such is not actually the case?
“I know all about the idea that these eruptions of boiling water, steam, and sulphurous gases are produced by chemical action,” said our guide. “I’ve heard lots of scientific men talk about the subject, but I don’t believe nothing of the sort.”
“And why not?” we asked.
“Do you believe,” he said, “that chemical action in the earth could create power enough, first to bring water to 212° of heat, and then force it two hundred feet into the air a number of times every day in a column four or five feet in diameter, and keep it up for quarter of an hour at a time?”
“Well, it does seem somewhat problematical,” we were forced to answer.
“After living here summer and winter for six years,” he said, “I have seen enough to satisfy me that there is a great sulphurous fire far down in the earth below us, which, if the steam and power it accumulates did not find vent through the hundreds of surface outlets distributed all over the Park, would seek one by a grand volcanic outburst.”
“Put your hand on the ground just here,” he continued, as we walked over a certain spot where our footfall caused a reverberation and trembling of the soil.
“It is almost too hot for the flesh to bear,” we said, quickly withdrawing our hand.
“Too hot! I should say so. Now I don’t believe anything but a burning fire can produce such heat as that,” he added, with an expression of the face which seemed to imply, “I don’t believe you do either.”
“The original volcanic condition of this whole region seems also to argue in favor of your deductions,” we replied.
“That’s just what I tell ’em,” continued the guide. “Them big fires that first did the business for this neighborhood are still smouldering down below. You may bet your life on that.”
This rather startling idea is emphasized by a smoking vent close at hand, which is also constantly sending forth superheated steam and sulphurous gases, like the extinct volcano of Solfatara, near Naples. Sulphur crystals strew the ground, and are heaped up in small yellow mounds. Not far away an intermittent geyser bursts forth every sixty seconds from a deep hole in the rock-bed of the basin, showing a stream of water six inches in diameter, and sending the same skyward thirty or forty feet. Here also is a powerful geyser called the Monarch, which leaps into action with great regularity once in twenty-four hours, throwing a triple stream to the height of a hundred and thirty feet, and continuing to do so for the space of fifteen or twenty minutes. Beneath the sun’s rays all the colors of the prism are reflected in this vertical column of water, and not infrequently the distinct arch of a rainbow is suspended like a halo about its crown. Nature, even in her most fantastic caprice, is always beautiful.
There are several other high-reaching and powerful geysers in this vicinity, but we will not weary the reader by pausing to describe them.
Gibbon Paint Pot Basin is next visited, being a most curious area, measuring some twenty acres, more or less, situated in a heavily-wooded district, not far from Gibbon Cañon. Here is a most strange collection of over five hundred springs of boiling, splashing, exploding mud, exhibiting many distinct colors, which gives rise to the name it bears. One pot is of an emerald green, another is as blue as turquoise, a third is as red as blood, a fourth is of orange yellow, another is of a rich