III.
Yellowstone National Park, Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908: We left Old Faithful Inn this morning with some regrets. One could spend several days there with profit. The inn itself is comfortable and the surroundings attractive. We have had the misfortune to be overtaken by a party of excursionists, who entered the Park from the west. An excursionist is an uninteresting traveler. He is apt to be some one who is traveling because the rates are cheap. The regular tourists were very much put out by the overcrowding. But if one wants to be alone, or with a few friends, he must not follow the beaten paths of the Park.
There are many ways of traveling in vogue. The easiest way is by the stages of the transportation company, which owns and operates the hotels. In the hotels one is apt to get a good bed and, sometimes, a bath. The food served in the diningrooms is of the conventional hotel variety. All the supplies are brought into the Park in heavy freight wagons. Most of the things are taken out of cans, but a few fresh vegetables are supplied from gardens cultivated by the hotel company. The milk also is fresh, drawn from cows kept in the Park. Cheaper modes of travel and subsistence are supplied by camping outfits. One company maintains a series of permanent camps, and others use movable camps, carrying all their bedding and their utensils with them from place to place. But whichever way one travels, he is apt to pick up many friends. Friendships, in fact, are easily made in the Park. For the time they seem very real, and partings at the end of a journey seem almost like partings with old friends. It all comes from the fact that the people one meets here are, for the time being, all the people there are in this little miniature world.
But we are still leaving Old Faithful Inn, so far as this letter is concerned. The regrets that many felt in leaving the inn were increased by the disagreeableness of the weather outside. It was a miserable rainy morning. It drizzled all the time and, intermittently, there were downpoursof water. It fell to my lot to ride on the outside of the coach, with the driver, which is a very choice seat in fair weather. When it is rainy, the ladies, and the ladies’ men always prefer to ride inside. But there is so much chattering inside, often about nothing, that a quiet man prefers to be outside, even in the rain. The driver is a good fellow. He does not talk much. He is too intent on watching his horses moving on a slippery road, often around abrupt curves. The four fine chestnut horses were real good company, so intelligent and so willing and so eager. It was hard work this morning to pull the coach, for there was a gradual ascent, from one hundred to two hundred feet to the mile. Plenty of clear water was running in the mountain streams. We crossed the continental divide, at an elevation of about 8,300 feet, but we soon recrossed the line and found ourselves once more on the Atlantic slope. The driver pointed out many objects of interest, among them Shoshone Lake, resting in the laps of mountain peaks, a beautiful body of water. But the persons inside the coach seemed oblivious to many things, except the mileposts which they counted, audibly, with great regularity—therewere thirty-four of them to count to the next lodging place. And it rained all the time!
It was on this part of the journey that I learned most about the animal life in the Park. It was one of the things in which the driver was interested. There is all manner of life in the Park, from weasels to antlered deer and bear, and in the air, birds from the tiniest creatures picking their livings in the pine trees, to the stately waterfowls that strut about in seven league boots. All the birds and animals; all the creatures that crawl and burrow in the earth, or that fly in the air, are protected by the omnipotent arm of the government in Washington. The soldiers who patrol the Park are the only ones who are allowed to bring guns into the preserve. Not a shot is fired to break the stillness of the surroundings. The squirrels romp in the tree tops and the beavers carry on their prodigious works just as they did before there was a man on this continent. Here the foxes have holes in the ground and the birds have nests in the trees, and there is no one to disturb them. The results are wonderful. The birds and animals hardly know what fear is, they seemso greatly unconcerned about the presence of passing people. Here they find
“No enemyBut winter and rough weather,”
and of these they find a great deal during the winter months. The tinges of winter are already in the air, even in August, for winter comes early on this high elevation and when it comes it is severe, the mercury falling to forty degrees below zero and the snow piling up to depths of ten or twelve feet.
On our thirty-four mile journey we were shown many objects of interest, pools the bottoms of which rival the rarest flowers and gems in their colorings. But also some ugly things, mud geysers, filthy and bad smelling. At noon we halted for luncheon at one end of the Yellowstone Lake, and some persons took boats, making the rest of the day’s journey by water. We reached the Lake Hotel at about four o’clock in the afternoon, tired enough to appreciate the comforts and hospitalities of the place. This hotel is one of the best in the Park, lighted by electricity and heated with steam, the rooms all cheerful ones. The meals in the dining room, also, were good. The lake itself is a wonderful bodyof water, considering its extent and its elevation. The tops of the mountains stand all around it. It lies in the hollows formed between mountain ranges. But aside from these features, it is not more interesting than other bodies of water.
After the rains, the sun went down in mountain splendors. How good it seemed to see the light flooding through the breaking clouds! We have been very anxious about the sun for tomorrow is our day at the Canyon of the Yellowstone and there, if anywhere, one needs the sun to bring out the colors. I have heard so much about this Canyon, since coming to the Park, and read so much about it before coming here, that I am very anxious to see it and to measure it with my expectations. So far, I must confess, nothing has exceeded my expectations, and much has fallen far below them. The things as they are, often play havoc with the things as we have imagined them.