CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XIV.NATURAL HISTORY OF GEYSERS AND OTHER THERMAL SPRINGS.In Icelandic speech the wordgeysermeans simplyrager, and is applied indiscriminately to all turbulent fountains of water or mud. The most violent and noisy "rager" on the island being the great intermittent spouting spring near Haukadal, it naturally gained for itself the title, The Geyser; and being the earliest known and most remarkable fountain of the kind, its native common name was adopted in other languages as the generic name for all springs of its class.The history of this great, but no longer the greatest geyser, begins in the early part of the fifteenth century, when its eruptions are mentioned in Icelandic records. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Bishop of Skalholt noticed its daily discharges. A hundred years later Olafsen and Povelsen described it as having three or four eruptions a day, some of them attaining the height of 300 feet,including, doubtless, the uprush of vapor. The depth of its tube was then 72 feet; now it is commonly given as 74, though Commander Forbes, R. N., claims that it is not so deep by ten feet. In 1774 Von Troil estimated the height of the ejected column at 92 feet. Seventeen years later, Stanley gave 96 feet as its greatest height. Forty yards west of the Geyser this traveller found a rival, called the Strokr, (in English, the Churn,) playing to the height of 130 feet. The same year, 1789, an earthquake destroyed the mechanism of the Strokr, converting it into a quiet reservoir of boiling water, whereupon its name was transferred to the present Strokr, which then became especially active and noisy. In 1804 the Geyser had regained somewhat of its ancient power, erupting every six hours to the height of 200 feet; and the original Strokr had repaired its tube so that it could lift a column to nearly the same height and sustain it for a much longer period. During the next five years the power of the Geyser fell off a half, and its paroxysms became much less frequent—Hooker estimating its column, in 1809, at 100 feet, and Mackenzie, a year later, at 90 feet, its eruptions taking place every thirty hours. At the same time the Strokr played every ten or twelve hours, sixty feet high, for the space of thirty minutes. In 1815 the periods had changed again,the Geyser erupting every six hours, to an average height of 80 feet,—the jets occasionally reaching 150 feet, while the Strokr had prolonged its quiet intervals to twenty-four hours. Of late years the Geyser's violent eruptions seldom occur oftener than once in thirty hours, and do not exceed 100 feet in altitude, and generally averaging 70 or 80 feet. Between these eruptions are usually two minor spirts, attaining from 30 to 50 feet. The Strokr is exceedingly irregular in its operation, and generally requires a dose of turf to bring on an exhibition.A grand eruption of the Geyser has been admirably described by Commander Forbes."Twice during the night," he says, "I was aroused by the unearthly complaints ofTheGeyser; but beyond the vast clouds of vapor which invariably follow each detonation, and a gentle overflowing of the basin, they were false alarms. As morning was breaking it sounded an unmistakable 'reveille,' which would have roused the dead: and I had barely time to take up my position at the brink of the old 'Strokr' before full power was turned on. Jet succeeded jet with fearful rapidity, earth trembled and the very cone itself seemed to stagger under the ordeal. Portions of its sides, rent with the uncontrollable fury it had suddenly generated, were ripped off and flew up in volleys, soaring high abovewater and steam, whilst the latter rolled away in fleecy clouds before the light north wind, and catching the rays of the morning sun just glistening over the Jökul tops in the East, was lustrous white as the purest snow. Discharge succeeded discharge in rapid succession for upwards of four minutes, when, apparently exhausted and its basin empty, I scrambled up to the margin, intending to have a good look down the tube, which I imagined must also be empty; but the water was still within a few feet of the brink, and boiling furiously. Hastening back to my former position, the basin filled rapidly, and I was just in time to witness the most magnificent explosion of all. Everything seemed to depend on this superhuman effort, and a solid, unbroken column of water twenty-five feet in circumference, was hurled upwards, attaining an altitude very near 100 feet. Here the column paused for a moment before reversing its motion, then fell listless and exhausted through the volumes which followed it into its throbbing cup, again to undergo its fiery ordeal at the threshold of the infernal regions."Grand as this display must have been, it was but a momentary spasm, a feeble effort compared with the terrific force which sustains the Giant's river-volume, with a steady uprush two hundred feet high, for the space of three hours and a half.There are many, perhaps scores, of geysers in the Firehole Basin, which—even in midsummer, when their action is weakest—far surpass the glory of Iceland.But what is the origin of the power that sustains these wonderful eruptions? And what is the cause of its intermittent action? Fortunately these questions are not only answerable, but the answers are susceptible of demonstration, as Professor Tyndall has shown in his admirable lectures on heat considered as a mode of motion, wherein he gives the following lucid description of the mechanism and development of the Great Geyser of Iceland: in principle the description applies equally to the geysers of Firehole Basin, and all other springs of the kind."It consists of a tube seventy-four feet deep and ten feet in diameter. The tube is surmounted by a basin which measures from north to south fifty-two feet across, and from east to west sixty feet. The interior of the tube and basin is coated with a beautiful smooth silicious plaster, so hard as to resist the blows of a hammer; and the first question is, how was this wonderful tube constructed—how was this perfect plaster laid on? Chemical analysis shows that the water holds silica in solution, and the conjecture might therefore arise that the waterhad deposited the silica against the sides of the tube and basin. But this is not the case: the water deposits no sediment; no matter how long it may be kept, no solid substance is separated from it. It may be bottled up and preserved for years as clear as crystal, without showing the slightest tendency to form a precipitate. To answer the question in this way would moreover assume that the shaft was formed by some foreign agency, and that the water merely lined it. The geyser basin, however, rests upon the summit of a mound about forty feet high, and it is evident from mere inspection that the mound has been deposited by the geyser. But in building up this mound the spring must have formed the tube which perforates the mound, and hence the conclusion that the geyser is the architect of its own tube.If we place a quantity of geyser water in an evaporating basin the following takes place: in the centre of the basin the liquid deposits nothing, but at the sides where it is drawn up by capillary attraction, and thus subjected to speedy evaporation, we find silica deposited. Round the edge a ring of silica is laid on, and not until the evaporation has continued a considerable time do we find the slightest turbidity in the middle of the water. This experiment is the microscopic representative of what occursin Iceland. Imagine the case of a simple thermal silicious spring, whose waters trickle down a gentle inclosure; the water thus exposed evaporates speedily, and silica is deposited. This deposit gradually elevates the side over which the water passes until finally the latter has to take another course. The same takes place here, the ground is elevated as before, and the spring has to move forward. Thus it is compelled to travel round and round, discharging its silica and deepening the shaft in which it dwells, until finally, in the course of ages, the simple spring has produced this wonderful apparatus which has so long puzzled and astonished both the traveller and the philosopher."The time required for the construction of the Great Geyser tube has been estimated by Commander Forbes as ten or eleven centuries, on the following grounds: a bunch of grass, placed under a little fall made by the ejected water, receives, in twenty-four hours, a coating of silica the thickness of a thin sheet of paper, or about one five-hundredth part of an inch. At this rate it would take 1036 years to build up the 762 inches, which, according to his measurement, is the depth of the tube. In evidence of the probable truth of this estimate he makes note of the following facts: first, there is no notice of this fountain in the early history of the colonizationof the island 986 years ago, at which time the tube would have been only three feet deep, and its eruptions too slight to attract attention; second, 436 years afterwards, when the tube would have been twenty-six feet deep, and the eruptions proportionately important, the Geyser is mentioned; third, accurate records of all occurrences were kept by the early inhabitants, and if so remarkable a phenomenon had existed at the time, it could not have been left unnoticed.The phenomena attending a geyser-eruption—the filling of the basin with water, the agitation of the water, with deafening detonations, the escape of steam, and so on—have been sufficiently described in the preceding chapters. Their causes have been ingeniously explained by Professor Bunsen, who succeeded in determining the temperature of the geyser-tube, throughout its entire length, a few minutes before an eruption. The annexed diagram shows on the left the observed temperatures of the water at different depths, and on the right the temperatures at which water would boil, taking into account the pressure of the atmosphere increased by the presence of the superincumbent column of water. The degrees have been changed from Centigrade to our familiar Fahrenheit standard, disregarding fractions.It will be observed that in no part of the tube does the water reach the boiling point. The nearest approach to it is at A, thirty feet from the bottom; out even here the water is some four degrees below the temperature at which it could boil. How then is an eruption possible?Professor Tyndall's explanation is in substance this: Suppose that by the entrance of steam from the ducts near the bottom of the tube the geyser column is elevated six feet, a height quite within the limits of actual observation; the water at A is therebytransferred to B. Its boiling point at A is 255°, and its actual temperature is 251°; but at B its boiling point is only 249°, hence when transferred from A to B, the heat which it possesses is in excess of that necessary to make it boil. This excess of heat is instantly applied to the generation of steam; the column is thus lifted higher, and the water below is relieved of pressure, and its boiling point lowered. More steam is generated; this lifts the column still higher, and compels the generation of more and more steam, until the whole upper portion of the column bursts into ebullition, and the water, mixed with steam-clouds, is projected into the atmosphere, and we have the geyser eruption in all its grandeur.One confirmation of this theory of Bunsen's is that small stones suspended in the lower part of the geyser-tube are not thrown out during an eruption; and a stronger confirmation lies in the fact that all the peculiarities of geyser action can be imitated. Professor Tyndall uses for this purpose an apparatus consisting of a tube of iron six feet long, surmounted by a basin, and heated by fires underneath. To imitate, as far as possible, the conditions of the geyser, he encircles the tube with a second fire, two feet from the bottom. As the water in the tube becomes heated, the phenomena of geysereruption are repeated in miniature with beautiful regularity. By stopping the mouth of the tube with a cork, the enforced explosions of the Strokr are reproduced; and by similar simple devices the action of all other eruptive springs may be accurately imitated.All through the Firehole Basin and around Yellowstone Lake are many extinct geysers; sometimes, as in the case of Old Faithful, an active geyser is surrounded by a number of deserted cones, the remains of ancient "roarers." What occasions their decline? Earthquakes may, and no doubt frequently do, derange their mechanism, as observed in the old Strokr. But most of them probably die a natural death, from old age and decrepitude."A moment's reflection," says Professor Tyndall, "will suggest that there must be a limit to the operations of the geyser. When the tube has reached such an altitude that the water in the depths below, owing to the increased pressure, cannot attain its boiling point, the eruptions of necessity cease. The spring, however, continues to deposit its silica, and often forms aLaug, or cistern. Some of these, in Iceland, are forty feet deep. Their beauty, according to Bunsen, is indescribable. Over the surface curls a light vapor; the water is of the purest azure, and tints with its lovely hue the fantastic incrustationson the cistern walls; while at the bottom is often seen the mouth of the once mighty geyser. There are in Iceland vast, but now extinct geyser operations. Mounds are observed whose shafts are filled with rubbish, the water having forced a passage underneath and retired to other scenes of action. We have, in fact, the geyser in its youth, manhood, old age, and death here presented to us. In its youth as a simple thermal spring; in its manhood, as an eruptive column; in its old age, as the tranquilLaug; while its death is recorded by the ruined shaft and mound, which testify the fact of its once active existence."All that Professor Tyndall describes so eloquently of Iceland, exists in our Grand National Park in infinitely greater variety, and magnitude, and splendor. And much more: Iceland has no Gardiner's River. To find the nearest approach to the marvels of White Mountain Hot Spring, we must go to the opposite side of the globe—to New Zealand. In the celebrated Lake District of the North Island is a region of hot springs, far exceeding in extent and variety all the others in the world, save those of the Yellowstone. First of all, says Hochstetter, the most marvellous of the Rotomahana marvels is the Te Tarata—the Tattooed Rock—with its terraced marble steps projecting into the lake. Thespring lies about eighty feet above the lake, on a fern-clad hill-slope, in a crater-like excavation, with steep reddish sides, from thirty to forty feet high, and open only toward the lake. The basin of the spring is about eighty feet long and sixty wide, filled to the brim with perfectly transparent water, which in its snow-white basin appears of a beautiful blue, like the blue turquoise. Immense clouds of steam curl up from the surface, obstructing the view, but the noise of boiling and seething is always audible. The water is slightly salt, but not unpleasant to the taste, chemically neutral, and possesses petrifying, or rather incrusting qualities, in a high degree. The deposit is silicious, like that of the Iceland springs and the springs around Yellowstone Lake, not calcareous, like those of Gardiner's River; yet the system of terraces built up by the deposit on the hill-slope has the same appearance of a cataract plunging over a series of natural shelves and suddenly turned to stone. The deposits cover an area of about three acres, a mere trifle compared with the square miles of similar formations on Gardiner's River and in the Yellowstone Basin.In the same neighborhood is a system of bubbling mud-pools, miniature copies of those on the Yellowstone above the falls. The principal group, lying ina ravine nearly a quarter of a mile long, is described by Dr. Hochstetter as follows:"The entrance to the ravine is overgrown with a thicket and rather difficult of access; it also requires considerable caution, as suspicious places have to be passed, where the visitor is in danger of being swallowed up in heated mud. Inside, the ravine has the appearance of a volcanic crater. The bare walls, utterly destitute of vegetation, are terribly fissured and torn, and odd-looking rocky serratures, threatening every moment to break loose, loom up like dismal spectres from red, white and blue fumarole-clay—evidently the last remains of decomposed rocks. The bottom of the ravine is of fine mud, scattered with blocks of silicious deposit, like cakes of floating ice after a thaw. Here, a big caldron of mud is simmering; there, lies a deep basin of boiling water; next to this is a terrible hole, emitting hissing jets of steam, and further on are mud-cones from two to five feet high, vomiting hot mud from their craters with dull rumblings, and imitating on a small scale the play of large fire volcanoes." The gay colors of the Yellowstone mud-springs are frequently exhibited in the volcanic lake district of New Zealand, and so indeed are most of the other phenomena we have been studying, though on a far less magnificent scale. For example, the grandest"Firehole basin" on the island occupies the Shallow valley of a little stream the Waikato, for the distance of a mile. It is but a cabinet exhibition comparatively, yet the learned geologist of theNovaraexpedition grows eloquent in his description of it. "In the morning a dense fog lay upon the Waikato, but it soon vanished, the sun shone brightly into the valley, and now—what a sight! In its swift course, forming rapids after rapids, the Waikato was plunging through the deep valley between steep-rising mountains; its floods whirling and foaming round two small rocky islands in the middle of the river, were dashing with a loud uproar through the defile of the valley. Along its banks white clouds of steam were ascending from hot cascades falling into the river, and from basins full of boiling water shut in by a white mass of stone. Yonder a steaming fountain was rising and falling; now there sprung from another place a second fountain; this also ceased in its turn; then two commenced playing simultaneously, one quite low at the river bank, the other opposite on a terrace; and thus the play continued with endless changes, as though experiments were being made with grand waterworks, to see whether the fountains were all in perfect order, and whether the waterfalls had a sufficient supply. I began to count the places where a boiling waterbasin was visible, or where a cloud of steam indicated the existence of one. I counted seventy-six points, without, however, being able to survey the whole region, and among them were numerous intermittent geyser-like fountains with periodical eruptions of water."ill194THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.The picture is admirably drawn, but could the artist have done so well with the stupendous chasm of the Grand Cañon? or the thousand volcanic vents of Firehole Basin with their deafening detonations, their immeasurable evolutions of water and steam? It is possible, but scarcely probable. The incomprehensible grandeur of the scene would have awed, astounded, bewildered him, and like our Yellowstone explorers, he would have despaired of grouping the myriad marvels into one grand effect, and contented himself with setting down a few details of form and color.In following the exploration of the Yellowstone country and Firehole Basin, the reader has doubtless observed, in the passage from the quiet springs of Gardiner's River to the erupting fountains further on, that there is a complete change in the nature of the deposits. The mounds and terraces built up by the former have for their basislime, those of the lattersilica. Dr. Hayden attributes the calcareous deposits to the deep bed of limestone underlying thesprings, but not all waters have the power of disolving lime so freely, nor could ordinary water take from the trachytic lavas below the silicious springs around Yellowstone Lake and in the Firehole Basin, the silica that appears so abundantly in their deposits. There must be other forces at work. What are they? "Both kinds of springs," says Dr. Hochstetter, in his chapter on New Zealand springs, "owe their origin to the water permeating the surface and sinking through fissures into the bowels of the earth, where it becomes heated by the still existing volcanic fires. High-pressure steam is thus generated, which, accompanied by volcanic gases—such as muriatic acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid—rises again toward the colder surface and is there condensed into hot water. The overheated steam and the gases decompose the rock beneath, dissolving certain ingredients which are deposited on the surface. According to Bunsen's ingenious observations, a chronological succession takes place in the coöperation of the gases. The sulphurous acid acts first. It is generated where rising sulphur vapor comes in contact with glowing masses of rock. Wherever vapors of sulphurous acid are constantly formed, there acid-springs or solfataras arise. Incrustations of alum are very common in such places, arising from theaction of sulphuric acid on the alumina and alkali of the lavas; another product of the decomposition of the lavas is gypsum, or sulphate of lime, the residuum being a more or less ferruginous fumarole clay, the material of the mud-pools. After the sulphurous acid comes sulphuretted hydrogen, produced by the action of steam on sulphids; and by the mutual decomposition of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphurous acid sulphur is formed, the characteristic precipitate in all solfataras, while the deposition of silica is either entirely wanting or quite inconsiderable, and the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen is but rarely noticed. These acid springs have no periodical outbursts of water.In course of time the source of sulphurous acid becomes exhausted, and sulphuretted hydrogen alone remains active. The acid reaction of the soil disappears, yielding to an alkaline reaction by the formation of sulphids. At the same time carbonic acid begins to act upon the rocks, and the alkaline bi-carbonates thus produced dissolve the silica, which on the evaporation of the water is deposited in the form of opal or quartz or silicious earth, and thus the shell of the springs is formed, on the structure of which the periodicity of the outburst depends.... The deposition of silica in quantities sufficient for the formation of this spring-apparatusin the course of years, takes place only in the alkaline springs. Their water is either neutral or has a slightly alkaline reaction. Silica, common salt, carbonates and sulphates are the chief ingredients dissolved in it. In the place of sulphurous acid the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen is sometimes observed in these springs.... By the gradual cooling of the volcanic rocks under the surface of the earth the hot springs themselves gradually die out, for they too are but a transient phenomenon in the eternal change of created things."CHAPTER XV.MR. EVERTS'S THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS OF PERIL.On the day that I found myself separated from the company, and for several days previous, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of pine forest, and occasional large tracts of fallen timber frequently rendering our progress almost impossible. Whenever we came to one of these immense windfalls, each man engaged in the pursuit of a passage through it, and it was while thus employed, and with the idea that I had found one, that I strayed out of sight and hearing of my comrades. We had had a toilsome day. It was quite late in the afternoon. As separations like these had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and I rode on, fully confident of soon rejoining the company, or of finding their camp. I came up with the pack-horse, which Mr. Langford afterwards recovered, and tried to drive him along. But failing to do so, and my eyesight being defective, I spurred forward, intending to return with assistance from the party. Thisincident tended to accelerate my speed. I rode on in the direction which I supposed had been taken, until darkness overtook me in the dense forest. This was disagreeable enough, but caused me no alarm. I had no doubt of being with the party at breakfast the next morning. I selected a spot for comfortable repose, picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep.The next morning I rose at early dawn, saddled and mounted my horse, and took my course in the supposed direction of the camp. Our ride of the previous day had been up a peninsula jutting into the lake, for the shore of which I started, with the expectation of finding my friends camped on the beach. The forest was quite dark, and the trees so thick, that it was only by a slow process I could get through them at all. In searching for the trail I became somewhat confused. The falling foliage of the pines had obliterated every trace of travel. I was obliged frequently to dismount, and examine the ground for the faintest indications. Coming to an opening, from which I could see several vistas, I dismounted for the purpose of selecting one leading in the direction I had chosen, and leaving my horse unhitched, as had always been my custom, walked a few rods into the forest. While surveying the ground my horse took fright, and I turnedaround in time to see him disappearing at full speed among the trees. That was the last I ever saw of him. It was yet quite dark. My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing-tackle, matches—everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass were attached to the saddle.I did not yet realize the possibility of a permanent separation from the company. Instead of following up the pursuit of their camp, I engaged in an effort to recover my horse. Half a day's search convinced me of its impracticability. I wrote and posted in an open space several notices, which, if my friends should chance to see, would inform them of my condition and the route I had taken, and then struck out into the forest in the supposed direction of their camp. As the day wore on without any discovery, alarm took the place of anxiety at the prospect of another night alone in the wilderness, and this time without food or fire. But even this dismal foreboding was cheered by the hope that I should soon rejoin my companions, who would laugh at my adventure, and incorporate it as a thrilling episode into the journal of our trip. The bright side of a misfortune, as I found by experience, even under the worst possible circumstances, always presents some features of encouragement. When Ibegan to realize that my condition was one of actual peril, I banished from my mind all fear of an unfavorable result. Seating myself on a log, I recalled every foot of the way I had travelled since the separation from my friends, and the most probable opinion I could form of their whereabouts was, that they had, by a course but little different from mine, passed by the spot where I had posted the notices, learned of my disaster, and were waiting for me to rejoin them there, or searching for me in that vicinity. A night must be spent amid the prostrate trunks before my return could be accomplished. At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long day of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the angry barking of coyotes, and the prolonged, dismal howl of the gray wolf. These sounds, familiar by their constant occurrence throughout the journey, were now full of terror, and drove slumber from my eye-lids, but above allthis, however, was the hope that I should be restored to my comrades the next day.Early the next morning I rose unrefreshed, and pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt how calamity can elevate the mind, in the formation of the resolution "not to perish in that wilderness."The hope of finding the party still controlled my plans. I thought, by traversing the peninsula centrally, I would be enabled to strike the shore of the lake in advance of their camp, and near the point of departure for the Madison. Acting upon this impression, I rose from a sleepless couch, and pursued my way through the timber-entangled forest. A feeling of weakness took the place of hunger. Conscious of the need of food, I felt no cravings. Occasionally, while scrambling over logs and through thickets, a sense of faintness and exhaustion wouldcome over me, but I would suppress it with the audible expression, "This won't do; Imustfind my company." Despondency would sometimes strive with resolution for the mastery of my thoughts. I would think of home—of my daughter—and of the possible chance of starvation, or death in some more terrible form; but as often as these gloomy forebodings came, I would strive to banish them with reflections better adapted to my immediate necessities. I recollect at this time discussing the question, whether there was not implanted by Providence in every man a principle of self-preservation equal to any emergency which did not destroy his reason. I decided this question affirmatively a thousand times afterwards in my wanderings, and I record this experience here, that any person who reads it, should he ever find himself in like circumstances, may not despair. There is life in the thought. It will revive hope, allay hunger, renew energy, encourage perseverance, and, as I have proved in my own case, bring a man out of difficulty, when nothing else can avail.It was mid-day when I emerged from the forest into an open space at the foot of the peninsula. A broad lake of beautiful curvature, with magnificent surroundings, lay before me, glittering in the sunbeams. It was full twelve miles in circumference.A wide belt of sand formed the margin which I was approaching, directly opposite to which, rising seemingly from the very depths of the water, towered the loftiest peak of a range of mountains apparently interminable. The ascending vapor from innumerable hot springs, and the sparkling jet of a single geyser added the feature of novelty to one of the grandest landscapes I ever beheld. Nor was the life of the scene less noticeable than its other attractions. Large flocks of swans and other waterfowl were sporting on the quiet surface of the lake; otters in great numbers performed the most amusing aquatic evolutions; mink and beaver swam around unscared, in most grotesque confusion. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep stared at me, manifesting more surprise than fear at my presence among them. The adjacent forest was vocal with the songs of birds, chief of which were the chattering notes of a species of mocking-bird, whose imitative efforts afforded abundant merriment. Seen under favorable circumstances, this assemblage of grandeur, beauty, and novelty would have been transporting; but jaded with travel, famishing with hunger, and distressed with anxiety, I was in no humor for ecstasy. My tastes were subdued and chastened by the perils which environed me. I longed for food, friends, and protection. Associated with my thoughts, however, wasthe wish that some of my friends of peculiar tastes could enjoy this display of secluded magnificence, now, probably, for the first time beheld by mortal eyes.The lake was at least one thousand feet lower than the highest point of the peninsula, and several hundred feet below the level of Yellowstone Lake. I recognized the mountain which overshadowed it as the landmark which, a few days before, had received from General Washburn the name of Mount Everts; and as it is associated with some of the most agreeable and terrible incidents of my exile, I feel that I have more than a mere discoverer's right to the perpetuity of that christening. The lake is fed by innumerable small streams from the mountains, and the countless hot springs surrounding it. A large river flows from it, through a cañon a thousand feet in height, in a southeasterly direction, to a distant range of mountains, which I conjectured to be Snake River; and with the belief that I had discovered the source of the great southern tributary of the Columbia, I gave it the name of Bessie Lake, after the"Sole daughter of my house and heart."During the first two days, the fear of meeting with Indians gave me considerable anxiety; but,when conscious of being lost, there was nothing I so much desired as to fall in with a lodge of Bannocks or Crows. Having nothing to tempt their cupidity, they would do me no personal harm, and, with the promise of reward, would probably minister to my wants and aid my deliverance. Imagine my delight, while gazing upon the animated expanse of water, at seeing sail out from a distant point a large canoe containing a single oarsman. It was rapidly approaching the shore where I was seated. With hurried steps I paced the beach to meet it, all my energies stimulated by the assurance it gave of food, safety, and restoration to friends. As I drew near to it it turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragonwings as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my condition. But night was fast approaching, and darkness would come with it. While looking for a spot where I might repose in safety, my attention was attracted to a small green plant of so lively a hue as to form a striking contrast with the deep pine foliage. For closer examinationI pulled it up by the root, which was long and tapering, not unlike a radish. It was a thistle. I tasted it; it was palatable and nutritious. My appetite craved it, and the first meal in four days was made on thistle-roots. Eureka! I had found food. No optical illusion deceived me this time; I could subsist until I rejoined my companions. Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour!Overjoyed at this discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would permit. The savage beast was snuffing and growling below, apparentlyon the very spot I had just abandoned. I answered every growl with a responsive scream. Terrified at the delay and pawing of the beast, I increased my voice to its utmost volume, broke branches from the limbs, and, in the impotency of fright, madly hurled them at the spot whence the continued howlings proceeded.Failing to alarm the animal, which now began to make the circuit of the tree, as if to select a spot for springing into it, I shook, with a strength increased by terror, the slender trunk until every limb rustled with the motion. All in vain. The terrible creature pursued his walk around the tree, lashing the ground with his tail, and prolonging his howlings almost to a roar. It was too dark to see, but the movements of the lion kept me apprised of its position. Whenever I heard it on one side of the tree I speedily changed to the opposite—an exercise which, in my weakened state, I could only have performed under the impulse of terror. I would alternately sweat and thrill with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces and devoured by this formidable monster. All my attempts to frighten it seemed unavailing. Disheartened at its persistency, and expecting every moment it would take the deadly leap, I tried to collect my thoughts, and prepare for the fatal encounter which I knew must result.Just at this moment it occurred to me that I would try silence. Clasping the trunk of the tree with both arms, I sat perfectly still. The lion, at this time ranging round, occasionally snuffing and pausing, and all the while filling the forest with the echo of his howlings, suddenly imitated my example. This silence was more terrible, if possible, than the clatter and crash of his movements through the brushwood, for now I did not know from what direction to expect his attack. Moments passed with me like hours. After a lapse of time which I cannot estimate, the beast gave a spring into the thicket and ran screaming into the forest. My deliverance was effected.Had strength permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in a slumber so profound that I did not awake until after daylight. The experience of the night seemed like a terrible dream; but the broken limbs which in the agony of consternation I had thrown from the tree, and the rifts made in the fallen foliage by my visitant in his circumambulations, were too convincingevidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me—whether I would ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured to death at the stake.I was roused from this train of reflections by a marked change in the atmosphere. One of those dreary storms of mingled snow and rain, common to these high latitudes, set in. My clothing, which had been much torn, exposed my person to its "pitiless peltings." An easterly wind, rising to a gale, admonished me that it would be furious and of long duration. None of the discouragements I had met with dissipated the hope of rejoicing my friends; but foreseeing the delay, now unavoidable, I knew that my escape from the wilderness must be accomplished, if at all, by my own unaided exertions.This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for a half-starved man.Taking advantage of a lull in the elements, on the morning of the third day I rose early and started in the direction of a large group of hot springs which were steaming under the shadow of Mount Everts. The distance I travelled could not have been less than ten miles. Long before I reached the wonderful cluster of natural caldrons, the storm had recommenced. Chilled through, with my clothing thoroughly saturated, I lay down under a tree upon the heated incrustation until completely warmed. My heels and the sides of my feet were frozen. As soon as warmth had permeated my system, and I had quieted my appetitewith a few thistle-roots, I took a survey of my surroundings, and selected a spot between two springs sufficiently asunder to afford heat at my head and feet. On this spot I built a bower of pine branches, spread its incrusted surface with fallen foliage and small boughs, and stowed myself away to await the close of the storm. Thistles were abundant, and I had fed upon them long enough to realize that they would, for a while at least, sustain life. In convenient proximity to my abode was a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot, and in which, from time to time, I cooked my roots.This establishment, the best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days—the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual steam bath. At first this was barely preferable to the storm, but I soon became accustomed to it, and before I left, though thoroughly parboiled, actually enjoyed it.I had little else to do during my imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my timewas given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. They had companions in suffering and sympathy. Each could bear his share of the burden of misery which it fell to my lot to bear alone, and make it lighter from the encouragement of mutual counsel and aid in a cause of common suffering. Selfish as the thought may seem, there was nothing I so much desired as a companion in misfortune. How greatly it would alleviate my distress! What a relief it would be to compare my wretchedness with that of a brother sufferer, and with him devise expedients for every exigency as it occurred! I confess to the weakness, if it be one, of having squandered much pity upon myself during the time I had little else to do.Nothing gave me more concern than the want of fire. I recalled everything I had ever read or heard of the means by which fire could be produced; but none of them were within my reach. An escape without it was simply impossible. It was indispensable as a protection against nightattacks from wild beasts. Exposure to another storm like the one just over would destroy my life, as this one would have done, but for the warmth derived from the springs. As I lay in my bower anxiously awaiting the disappearance of the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot or more, and impressed with the belief that for want of fire I should be obliged to remain among the springs, it occurred to me that I would erect some sort of monument, which might, at some future day, inform a casual visitor of the circumstances under which I had perished. A gleam of sunshine lit up the bosom of the lake, and with it the thought flashed upon my mind that I could, with a lens from my opera-glasses, get fire from Heaven. Oh, happy, life-renewing thought! Instantly subjecting it to the test of experiment, when I saw the smoke curl from the bit of dry wood in my fingers, I felt, if the whole world were offered me for it, I would cast it all aside before parting with that little spark. I was now the happy possessor of food and fire. These would carry me through. All thoughts of failure were instantly abandoned. Though the food was barely adequate to my necessities—a fact too painfully attested by my attenuated body—I had forgotten the cravings of hunger, and had themeans of producing fire. I said to myself, "I will not despair."My stay at the springs was prolonged several days by an accident that befell me on the third night after my arrival there. An unlucky movement while asleep broke the crust on which I reposed, and the hot steam, pouring upon my hip, scalded it severely before I could escape. This new affliction, added to my frost-bitten feet, already festering, was the cause of frequent delay and unceasing pain through all my wanderings. After obtaining fire, I set to work making preparations for as early departure as my condition would permit. I had lost both knives since parting from the company, but I now made a convenient substitute by sharpening the tongue of a buckle which I cut from my vest. With this I cut the legs and counters from my boots, making of them a passable pair of slippers, which I fastened to my feet as firmly as I could with strips of bark. With the ravellings of a linen handkerchief, aided by the magic buckle-tongue, I mended my clothing. Of the same material I made a fish-line, which, on finding a piece of red tape in one of my pockets better suited to the purpose, I abandoned as a "bad job." I made of a pin that I found in my coat a fish-hook, and, by sewing up the bottoms ofmy boot-legs, constructed a very good pair of pouches to carry my food in, fastening them to my belt by the straps.Thus accountered, on the morning of the eighth day after my arrival at the springs I bade them a final farewell, and started on my course directly across that portion of the neck of the peninsula between me and the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was a freshness in the atmosphere truly exhilarating. As I wandered musingly along, the consciousness of being alone, and having surrendered all hope of finding my friends, returned upon me with crushing power. I felt, too, that those friends, by the necessities of their condition, had been compelled to abandon all efforts for my recovery. The thought was full of bitterness and sorrow. I tried to realize what their conjectures were concerning my disappearance; but could derive no consolation from the long and dismal train of circumstances they suggested. Weakened by a long fast, and the unsatisfying nature of the only food I could procure, I know that from this time onward to the day of my rescue, my mind, though unimpaired in those perceptions needful to self-preservation, was in a condition to receive impressions akin to insanity. I was constantly travellingin dream-land, and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being, which, while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition, fed my imagination with vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influences, and often tried to shake them off, but they would ever return with increased force, and I finally reasoned myself into the belief that their indulgence, as it afforded me pleasure, could work no harm while it did not interfere with my plans for deliverance. Thus I lived in a world of ideal happiness, and in a world of positive suffering at the same time.A change in the wind and an overcast sky, accompanied by cold, brought with them a need of warmth. I drew out my lens and touchwood, but alas! there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famishing man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, andglad was I when the approaching dawn enabled me to commence retracing my steps to Bessie Lake. I arrived there at noon, built my first fire on the beach, and remained by it, recuperating for the succeeding two days.The faint hope that my friends might be delayed by their search for me until I could rejoin them now forsook me altogether. I made my arrangements independent of it. Either of three directions I might take would effect my escape, if life and strength held out. I drew upon the sand of the beach a map of these several courses with reference to my starting-point from the lake, and considered well the difficulties each would present. All were sufficiently defined to avoid mistake. One was to follow Snake River a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge; another, to cross the country between the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake and the Madison Mountains, by scaling which I could easily reach the settlements in the Madison Valley; and the other, to retrace my journey over the long and discouraging route by which I had entered the country. Of these routes the last mentioned seemed the least inviting, probably because I had so recently traversed it, and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals andviolent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so most unwisely, as will hereafter appear, I adopted it.Filling my pouches with thistle-roots, I took a parting survey of the little solitude that had afforded me food and fire the preceding ten days, and with something of that melancholy feeling experienced by one who leaves his home to grapple with untried adventures, started for the nearest point on Yellowstone Lake. All that day I travelled over timber-heaps, amid tree tops, and through thickets. At noon I took the precaution to obtain fire. With a brand which I kept alive by frequent blowing, and constant waving to and fro, at a late hour in the afternoon, faint and exhausted, I kindled a fire for the night on the only vacant spot I could find amid a dense wilderness of pines. The deep gloom of the forest, in the spectral light which revealed on all sides of me a compact and unending growth of trunks and an impervious canopy of sombre foliage; the shrieking of night-birds; the super naturally human scream of the mountain lion, the prolonged howl of the wolf, made me insensible to all other forms of suffering.The burn on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few moments would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terrors yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony I longed for day!A bright and glorious morning succeeded the dismal night, and brought with it the conviction that I had been the victim of uncontrollable nervous excitement. I resolved henceforth to banish it altogether, and, in much better spirits than I anticipated, resumed my journey towards the lake. Another day of unceasing toil among the tree-tops and thicketsovertook me, near sunset, standing upon a lofty headland jutting into the lake, and commanding a magnificent prospect of the mountains and valley over an immense area. In front of me, at a distance of fifty miles away, in the clear blue of the horizon, rose the arrowy peaks of the Three Tetons. On the right, and apparently in close proximity to the eminence I occupied, rolled the picturesque range of the Madison, scarred with clefts, ravines, gorges, and cañons, each of which glittered in the sunlight or deepened in shadow as the fitful rays of the descending luminary glanced along their varied rocky irregularities. Above where I stood were the lofty domes of Mounts Langford and Doane, marking the limits of that wonderful barrier which had so long defied human power in its efforts to subdue it. Rising seemingly from the promontory which favored my vision was the familiar summit of Mount Everts, at the base of which I had dwelt so long, and which still seemed to hold me within its friendly shadow. All the vast country within this grand enclosure of mountains and lake, scarred and seamed with the grotesque ridges, rocky escarpments, undulating hillocks, and miniature lakes, and steaming with hot springs, produced by the volcanic forces of a former era, lay spread out before me like a vast panorama.I doubt if distress and suffering can ever entirelyobliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, I effected a most difficult and arduous descent of the abrupt and stony headland to the beach of the lake. The sand was soft and yielding. I kindled a fire, and removing the stiffened slippers from my feet, attached them to my belt, and wandered barefoot along the sandy shore to gather wood for the night. The dry, warm sand was most grateful to my lacerated and festering feet, and for a long time after my wood-pile was supplied, I sat with them uncovered. At length, conscious of the need of every possible protection from the freezing night atmosphere, I sought my belt for the slippers, and one was missing. In gathering the wood it had become detached and was lost. Darkness was closing over the landscape, when, sorely disheartened with the thought of passing the night with one foot exposed to a freezing temperature, I commenced a search for the missing slipper. I knew I could not travel a day without it. Fearful that it had dropped into the lake, and been carried by some recurrent wave beyond recovery, my search for an hour among fallen trees and bushes, up the hill-side and alongthe beach, in darkness and with flaming brands, at one moment crawling on hands and feet into a brush-heap, another peering among logs and bushes and stones, was filled with anxiety and dismay. Success at length rewarded my perseverance, and no language can describe the joy with which I drew the cause of so much distress from beneath the limb that, as I passed, had torn it from my belt. With a feeling of great relief I now sat down in the sand, my back to a log, and listened to the dash and roar of the waves. It was a wild lullaby, but had no terrors for a worn-out man. I never passed a night of more refreshing sleep. When I awoke my fire was extinguished save a few embers, which I soon fanned into a cheerful flame. I ate breakfast with some relish, and started along the beach in pursuit of a camp, believing that if successful I should find directions what to do, and food to sustain me. The search which I was making lay in the direction of my pre-arranged route to the Madison Mountains, which I intended to approach at their lowest point of altitude.Buoyed by the hope of finding food and counsel, and another night of undisturbed repose in the sand, I resumed my journey along the shore, and at noon found the camp last occupied by my friends on the lake. I struck their trail in the sand some time beforeI came to it. A thorough search for food in the ground and trees revealed nothing, and no notice to apprise me of their movements could be seen. A dinner-fork, which afterwards proved to be of infinite service in digging roots, and a yeast-powder can, which would hold half a pint, and which I converted into a drinking-cup and dinner-pot, were the only evidences that the spot had ever been visited by civilized man. "Oh!" thought I, "why did they forget to leave me food!" It never occurred to me that they might have cached it, as I have since learned they did, in several spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point farther down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to procure fire, which, in the usual manner, I carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, andvery soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semicircle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was none I felt more seriously than the loss of my buckle-tongue knife, my pin fish-hook, and tape fish-line.The grandeur of the burning forest surpasses description. An immense sheet of flame, following to their tops the lofty trees of an almost impenetrable pine forest, leaping madly from top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvellous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, cracking, crashing, and snapping of falling limbs and burning foliage was deafening. On, on, on travelled the destructive element, until it seemed as if the whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtoppingtrees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation.Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range. Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must travel to reach it, I left the lake and pushed into the midst of its intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh courage and determination; but long before I arrived at the base of the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountabledifficulties. It presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or cañon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable—down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was.While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a passage or return to the Yellowstone, I experienced one of those strange hallucinations which many of my friends have misnamedinsanity, but which to me was Providence. An old clerical friend, for whose character and counsel I had always cherished peculiar regard, in some unaccountable manner seemed to be standing before me, charged with advice which would relieve my perplexity. I seemed to hear him say, as if in a voice and with the manner of authority:"Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and the idea of scaling these rocks is madness.""Doctor," I rejoined, "the distance is too great. I cannot live to travel it.""Say not so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible—it is your only chance.""Doctor, I am rejoiced to meet you in this hour of distress, but doubt the wisdom of your counsel. I am within seventy miles of Virginia. Just over these rocks, a few miles away, I shall find friends. My shoes are nearly worn out, my clothes are in tatters, and my strength is almost overcome. As a last trial, it seems to me I can but attempt to scale this mountain or perish in the effort, if God so wills.""Don't think of it. Your power of endurance will carry you through. I will accompany you.Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself and God will help you."Overcome by these and other persuasions, and delighted with the idea of having a travelling companion, I plodded my way over the route I had come, intending at a certain point to change it so as to strike the river at the foot of the lake. Stopping after a few miles of travel, I had no difficulty in procuring fire, and passed a comfortable night. When I resumed my journey the next day the sun was just rising. Whenever I was disposed, as was often the case, to question the wisdom of the change of routes, my old friend appeared to be near with words of encouragement, but his reticence on other subjects both surprised and annoyed me. I was impressed at times, during the entire journey, with the belief that my return was a fatal error, and if my deliverance had failed should have perished with that conviction. Early this day I deflected from my old route and took my course for the foot of the lake, with the hope, by constant travel, to reach it the next day. The distance was greater than I anticipated. Nothing is more deceptive than distance in these high latitudes. At the close of each of the two succeeding days, my point of destination was seemingly as far from me as at the moment I took leave of the MadisonRange, and when, cold and hungry, on the afternoon of the fourth day, I gathered the first food I had eaten in nearly five days, and lay down by my fire near the debouchure of the river, I had nearly abandoned all hope of escape.At daybreak I was on the trail down the river. The thought I had adopted from the first, "I will cot perish in this wilderness," often revived my sinking spirits, when, from faintness and exhaustion, I felt but little desire for life. Once, while struggling through a field of tangled trunks which seemed interminable, at one of the pauses I found myself seriously considering whether it was not preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found the tip of a gull's wing; it was fresh. I made a fire upon the spot, mashed the bones with a stone, and consigning them to my camp kettle, the yeast-powderbox, made half a pint of delicious broth. The remainder of that day and the night ensuing were given to sleep.I lost all sense of time. Days and nights came and went, and were numbered only by the growing consciousness that I was gradually starving. I felt no hunger, did not eat to appease appetite, but to renew strength. I experienced but little pain. The gaping sores on my feet, the severe burn on my hip, the festering crevices at the joints of my fingers, all terrible in appearance, had ceased to give me the least concern. The roots which supplied my food had suspended the digestive power of the stomach, and their fibres were packed in it in a matted, compact mass.Not so with my hours of slumber. They were visited by the most luxurious dreams. I would apparently visit the most gorgeously decorated restaurants of New York and Washington; sit down to immense tables spread with the most appetizing viands; partake of the richest oyster stews and plumpest pies; engage myself in the labor and preparation of curious dishes, and with them fill range upon range of elegantly furnished tables until they fairly groaned beneath the accumulated dainties prepared by my own hands. Frequently the entire night would seem to have been spent ingetting up a sumptuous dinner. I would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the moderncuisine, and in my disturbed slumbers would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries.It was a cold, gloomy day when I arrived in the vicinity of the falls. The sky was overcast and the snow-capped peaks rose chilly and bleak through the biting atmosphere. The moaning of the wind through the pines, mingling with the sullen roar of the falls, was strangely in unison with my own saddened feelings. I had no heart to gaze upon a scene which a few weeks before had inspired me with rapture and awe. One moment of sunshine was of more value to me than all the marvels amid which I was famishing. But the sun had hid his face and denied me all hope of obtaining fire. The only alternative was to seek shelter in a thicket. I penetrated the forest a long distance before finding one that suited me. Breaking and crowding my way into its very midst, I cleared a spot large enough to recline upon, interlaced the surrounding brushwood, gathered the fallen foliage into a bed, and lay down with a prayer for sleep and forgetfulness. Alas! neither came. The coldness increasedthrough the night. Constant friction with my hands and unceasing beating with my legs and feet saved me from freezing. It was the most terrible night of my journey, and when, with the early dawn, I pulled myself into a standing posture, it was to realize that my right arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize upon the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great cañon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrating powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, fed it with every dry stick and broken tree-top I could find, and without motion, and almost without sense, remained beside it several hours. The great falls of the Yellowstone were roaring within three hundred yards, and the awful cañon yawned almost at my feet; but they had lost all charm for me. In fact, I regarded them as enemies which had lured me to destruction, and felt a sullen satisfaction in morbid indifference.My old friend and adviser, whose presence I had felt more than seen the last few days, now forsookme altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many travelling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet—complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote consequences. I would try to silence him with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose—he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with right good will, doing many things for their seeming comfort which, had I felt myself alone, would have remained undone. They appeared to be perfectly helpless of themselves; would do nothing for me or for each other. I often wondered, while they ate and slept so much, thatthey did not aid in gathering wood and kindling fires. As a counterpoise to their own inertia, whenever they discovered languor in me on necessary occasions, they were not wanting in words of encouragement and cheer. I recall as I write, an instance where, by prompt and timely interposition, the representative of the stomach saved me from a death of dreadful agony. One day I came to a small stream issuing from a spring of mild temperature on the hill-side, swarming with minnows. I caught some with my hands, and ate them raw. To my taste they were delicious. But the stomach refused them, accused me of attempting to poison him, and would not be reconciled until I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment.ill236IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.A gradual mental introversion grew upon me as physical weakness increased. The grand and massive scenery which, on the upward journey, had aroused every enthusiastic impulse of my nature, was now tame and spiritless. My thoughts were turned in upon myself—upon the dreadful fate which apparently lay just before me—and the possible happiness of the existence beyond. All doubt of immortality fled in the light of present realities. So vivid were my conceptions of the future that at times I longed for death, not less as the beginning of happiness than as a release from misery. Led on by these reflections, I would recall the varied incidents of my journey—my escape from the lion, from fire, my return from the Madison Range—and in all of them I saw how much I had been indebted to that mysterious protection which comes only from the throne of the Eternal. And yet, starving, foot-sore, half blind, worn to a skeleton, was it surprising that I lacked the faith needful to buoy me above the dark waters of despair, which I now felt were closing around me?In less serious moods, as I struggled along, my thoughts would revert to the single being on whom my holiest affections centred—my daughter. What a tie was that to bind me to life! Oh! could I be restored to her for a single hour, long enough for parting counsel and blessing, it would be joy unspeakable! Long hours of painful travel were relieved of physical suffering by this absorbing agony of the mind, which, when from my present standpoint I contrast it with the personal calamities of my exile, swells into mountains.To return from this digression. At many of thestreams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large herds of deer, elk, antelope, occasionally a bear, and many smaller animals. Numerous flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans inhabited the lakes and rivers. But with no means of killing them, their presence was a perpetual aggravation. At all the camps of our company I stopped and recalled many pleasant incidents associated with them.One afternoon, when approaching "Tower Falls," I came upon a large hollow tree, which, from the numerous tracks surrounding it, and the matted foliage in the cavity, I recognized as the den of a bear. It was a most inviting couch. Gathering a needful supply of wood and brush, I lighted a circle of piles around the tree, crawled into the nest, and passed a night of unbroken slumber. I rose the next morning to find that during the night the fires had communicated with the adjacent forest, and burned a large space in all directions, doubtless intimidating the rightful proprietor of the nest, and saving me from another midnight adventure.At "Tower Falls" I spent the first half of aday in capturing a grasshopper, and the remainder in a fruitless effort to catch a mess of trout. In the agony of disappointment, I resolved to fish no more. A spirit of rebellion seized me. I determined that thistles should thenceforth be my only sustenance. "Why is it," I asked of myself, "that in the midst of abundance, every hour meeting with objects which would restore strength and vigor and energy, every moment contriving some device to procure the nourishment my wasting frame required, I should meet with these repeated and discouraging failures?" Thoughts of the early teaching of a pious mother suppressed these feelings. Oh! how often have the recollections of a loved New England home, and the memories of a happy childhood, cheered my sinking spirits, and dissipated the gathering gloom of despair! There were thoughts and feelings and mental anguishes without number, that visited me during my period of trial, that never can be known to any but my God and myself. Bitter as was my experience, it was not unrelieved by some of the most precious moments I have ever known.Soon after leaving "Tower Falls," I entered the open country. Pine forests and windfalls were changed for sage brush and desolation, with occasional tracts of stunted verdure, barren hillsides,exhibiting here and there an isolated clamp of dwarf trees, and ravines filled with the rockydebrisof adjacent mountains. My first camp on this part of the route, for the convenience of getting wood, was made near the summit of a range of towering foot-hills. Towards morning a storm of wind and snow nearly extinguished my fire. I became very cold; the storm was still raging when I arose, and the ground white with snow. I was perfectly bewildered, and had lost my course of travel. No visible object, seen through the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current. Fortunately, after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the cañon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky cañon, in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often, while clinging tothe jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore from the bruises I had received, I reached my fire; the storm, still raging, had nearly extinguished it. I found a few embers in the ashes, and with much difficulty kindled a flame. Here, on this bleak mountain side, as well as I now remember, I must have passed two nights beside the fire, in the storm. Many times during each night I crawled to the little clump of trees to gather wood, and brush, and the broken limbs of fallen tree-tops. All the sleep I obtained was snatched from the intervals which divided these labors. It was so harassed with frightful dreams as to afford little rest. I remember, before I left this camp, stripping up my sleeves to look at my shrunken arms. Flesh and blood had apparently left them. The skin clung to the bones like wet parchment. A child's hand could have clasped them from wrist to shoulder. "Yet," thought I, "it is death to remain; I cannot perish in this wilderness."Taking counsel of this early formed resolution, I hobbled on my course through the snow, which was rapidly disappearing before the rays of the warm sun. Well knowing that I should find no thistlesin the open country, I had filled my pouches with them before leaving the forest. My supply was running low, and there were yet several days of heavy mountain travel between me and Botelers' Ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made no further complaint.Two or three days before I was found, while ascending a steep hill, I fell from exhaustion into the sage brush, without the power to rise. Unbuckling my belt, as was my custom, I soon fell asleep. I have no idea of the time I slept, but upon awaking I fastened my belt, scrambled to my feet, and pursued my journey. As night drew on I selected a camping-place, gathered wood into a heap, and felt for my lens to procure fire. It was gone. If the earth had yawned to swallow me I would not have been more terrified. The only chance for life was lost. The last hope had fled. I seemed to feel the grim messenger who had been so long pursuingme knocking at the portals of my heart as I lay down by the side of the wood-pile, and covered myself with limbs and sage brush, with the dreadful conviction that my struggle for life was over, and that I should rise no more. The floodgates of misery seemed now to be opened, and it rushed in a living tide upon my soul. With the rapidity of lightning, I ran over every event of my life. Thoughts doubled and trebled upon me, until I saw, as if in vision, the entire past of my existence. It was all before me, as if painted with a sunbeam, and all seemingly faded like the phantoms of a vivid dream.As calmness returned, reason resumed her empire. Fortunately, the weather was comfortable. I summoned all the powers of my memory, thought over every foot of the day's travel, and concluded that the glass must have become detached from my belt while sleeping. Five long miles over the hills must be retraced to regain it. There was no alternative, and before daylight I had staggered over half the distance. I found the lens on the spot where I had slept. No incident of my journey brought with it more of joy and relief.Returning to the camp of the previous night, I lighted the pile I had prepared, and lay down for a night to rest. It was very cold, and towardsmorning commenced snowing. With difficulty I kept the fire alive. Sleep was impossible. When daylight came, I was impressed with the idea that I must go on despite the storm. A flash—momentary but vivid—came over me, that I should be saved. Snatching a lighted brand, I started through the storm. In the afternoon the storm abated and the sun shone at intervals. Coming to a small clump of trees, I set to work to prepare a camp. I laid the brand down which I had preserved with so much care, to pick up a few dry sticks with which to feed it, until I could collect wood for a camp-fire, and in the few minutes thus employed it expired. I sought to revive it, but every spark was gone. Clouds obscured the sun, now near the horizon, and the prospect of another night of exposure without fire became fearfully imminent. I sat down with my lens and the last remaining piece of touchwood I possessed to catch a gleam of sunshine, feeling that my life depended on it. In a few moments the cloud passed, and with trembling hands I presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefullyup wards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and comfort my desolate lodgings.I resumed my journey the next morning, with the belief that I should make no more fires with my lens. I must save a brand, or perish. The day was raw and gusty; an east wind, charged with storm, penetrated my nerves with irritating keenness. After walking a few miles the storm came on, and a coldness unlike any other I had ever felt seized me. It entered all my bones. I attempted to build a fire, but could not make it burn. Seizing a brand, I stumbled blindly on, stopping within the shadow of every rock and clump to renew energy for a final conflict for life. A solemn conviction that death was near, that at each pause I made my limbs would refuse further service, and that I should sink helpless and dying in my path, overwhelmed me with terror. Amid all this tumult of the mind, I felt that I had done all that man could do. I knew that in two or three days more I could effect my deliverance, and I derived no little satisfaction from the thought that, as I was now in the broad trail, my remains would be found, and my friends relieved of doubt as to my fate. Once only the thought flashed across my mind that I should be saved, and I seemed to hear a whispered commandto "struggle on." Groping along the side of a hill, I became suddenly sensible of a sharp reflection, as of burnished steel. Looking up, through half-closed eyes, two rough but kindly faces met my gaze."Are you Mr. Everts?""Yes. All that is left of him.""We have come for you.""Who sent you?""Judge Lawrence and other friends.""God bless him, and them, and you! I am saved!" and with these words, powerless of further effort, I fell forward into the arms of my preservers, in a state of unconsciousness. I was saved. On the very brink of the river which divides the known from the unknown, strong arms snatched me from the final plunge, and kind ministrations wooed me back to life.Baronet and Prichette, my two preservers, by the usual appliances, soon restored me to consciousness, made a camp upon the spot, and while one went to Fort Ellis, a distance of seventy miles, to return with remedies to restore digestion and an ambulance to convey me to that post, the other sat by my side, and with all the care, sympathy, and solicitude of a brother, ministered to my frequent necessities. In two days I was sufficiently recoveredin strength to be moved twenty miles down the trail to the cabin of some miners who were prospecting in that vicinity. From these men I received every possible attention which their humane and generous natures could devise. A good bed was provided, game was killed to make broth, and the best stores of their larder placed at my command. For four days, at a time when every day's labor was invaluable in their pursuit, they abandoned their work to aid in my restoration. Owing to the protracted inaction of the system, and the long period which must transpire before Prichette's return with remedies, my friends had serious doubts of my recovery.The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered—a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. He was on his way to find a brother. He listened to the story of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough, weather-beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity, brightening in a moment, he exclaimed:"Why, Lord bless you, if that is all, I have thevery remedy you need. In two hours' time all shall be well with you."He left the cabin, returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear which he had killed a few hours before. From this he rendered out a pint measure of oil. I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from pain, with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery.In a day or two I took leave of my kind friends, with a feeling of regret at parting, and of gratitude for their kindness as enduring as life.Meeting the carriage on my way, I preceded to Boseman, where I remained among old friends, who gave me every attention until my health was sufficiently restored to allow me to return to my home at Helena.My heartfelt thanks are due to the members of the expedition, all of whom devoted seven, and some of them twelve days to the search for me before they left Yellowstone Lake; and to Judge Lawrence, of Helena, and the friends who co-operated with him in the offer of reward which sent Baronet and Prichette to my rescue.My narrative is finished. In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of theYellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shadow of Mount Everts; to thread unscared the mazy forests, retrace the dreary journey to the Madison Range, and with enraptured fancy gaze upon the mingled glories and terrors of the great falls and marvellous cañon, and to enjoy, in happy contrast with the trials they recall, their power to delight, elevate, and overwhelm the mind with wondrous and majestic beauty.

CHAPTER XIV.NATURAL HISTORY OF GEYSERS AND OTHER THERMAL SPRINGS.In Icelandic speech the wordgeysermeans simplyrager, and is applied indiscriminately to all turbulent fountains of water or mud. The most violent and noisy "rager" on the island being the great intermittent spouting spring near Haukadal, it naturally gained for itself the title, The Geyser; and being the earliest known and most remarkable fountain of the kind, its native common name was adopted in other languages as the generic name for all springs of its class.The history of this great, but no longer the greatest geyser, begins in the early part of the fifteenth century, when its eruptions are mentioned in Icelandic records. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Bishop of Skalholt noticed its daily discharges. A hundred years later Olafsen and Povelsen described it as having three or four eruptions a day, some of them attaining the height of 300 feet,including, doubtless, the uprush of vapor. The depth of its tube was then 72 feet; now it is commonly given as 74, though Commander Forbes, R. N., claims that it is not so deep by ten feet. In 1774 Von Troil estimated the height of the ejected column at 92 feet. Seventeen years later, Stanley gave 96 feet as its greatest height. Forty yards west of the Geyser this traveller found a rival, called the Strokr, (in English, the Churn,) playing to the height of 130 feet. The same year, 1789, an earthquake destroyed the mechanism of the Strokr, converting it into a quiet reservoir of boiling water, whereupon its name was transferred to the present Strokr, which then became especially active and noisy. In 1804 the Geyser had regained somewhat of its ancient power, erupting every six hours to the height of 200 feet; and the original Strokr had repaired its tube so that it could lift a column to nearly the same height and sustain it for a much longer period. During the next five years the power of the Geyser fell off a half, and its paroxysms became much less frequent—Hooker estimating its column, in 1809, at 100 feet, and Mackenzie, a year later, at 90 feet, its eruptions taking place every thirty hours. At the same time the Strokr played every ten or twelve hours, sixty feet high, for the space of thirty minutes. In 1815 the periods had changed again,the Geyser erupting every six hours, to an average height of 80 feet,—the jets occasionally reaching 150 feet, while the Strokr had prolonged its quiet intervals to twenty-four hours. Of late years the Geyser's violent eruptions seldom occur oftener than once in thirty hours, and do not exceed 100 feet in altitude, and generally averaging 70 or 80 feet. Between these eruptions are usually two minor spirts, attaining from 30 to 50 feet. The Strokr is exceedingly irregular in its operation, and generally requires a dose of turf to bring on an exhibition.A grand eruption of the Geyser has been admirably described by Commander Forbes."Twice during the night," he says, "I was aroused by the unearthly complaints ofTheGeyser; but beyond the vast clouds of vapor which invariably follow each detonation, and a gentle overflowing of the basin, they were false alarms. As morning was breaking it sounded an unmistakable 'reveille,' which would have roused the dead: and I had barely time to take up my position at the brink of the old 'Strokr' before full power was turned on. Jet succeeded jet with fearful rapidity, earth trembled and the very cone itself seemed to stagger under the ordeal. Portions of its sides, rent with the uncontrollable fury it had suddenly generated, were ripped off and flew up in volleys, soaring high abovewater and steam, whilst the latter rolled away in fleecy clouds before the light north wind, and catching the rays of the morning sun just glistening over the Jökul tops in the East, was lustrous white as the purest snow. Discharge succeeded discharge in rapid succession for upwards of four minutes, when, apparently exhausted and its basin empty, I scrambled up to the margin, intending to have a good look down the tube, which I imagined must also be empty; but the water was still within a few feet of the brink, and boiling furiously. Hastening back to my former position, the basin filled rapidly, and I was just in time to witness the most magnificent explosion of all. Everything seemed to depend on this superhuman effort, and a solid, unbroken column of water twenty-five feet in circumference, was hurled upwards, attaining an altitude very near 100 feet. Here the column paused for a moment before reversing its motion, then fell listless and exhausted through the volumes which followed it into its throbbing cup, again to undergo its fiery ordeal at the threshold of the infernal regions."Grand as this display must have been, it was but a momentary spasm, a feeble effort compared with the terrific force which sustains the Giant's river-volume, with a steady uprush two hundred feet high, for the space of three hours and a half.There are many, perhaps scores, of geysers in the Firehole Basin, which—even in midsummer, when their action is weakest—far surpass the glory of Iceland.But what is the origin of the power that sustains these wonderful eruptions? And what is the cause of its intermittent action? Fortunately these questions are not only answerable, but the answers are susceptible of demonstration, as Professor Tyndall has shown in his admirable lectures on heat considered as a mode of motion, wherein he gives the following lucid description of the mechanism and development of the Great Geyser of Iceland: in principle the description applies equally to the geysers of Firehole Basin, and all other springs of the kind."It consists of a tube seventy-four feet deep and ten feet in diameter. The tube is surmounted by a basin which measures from north to south fifty-two feet across, and from east to west sixty feet. The interior of the tube and basin is coated with a beautiful smooth silicious plaster, so hard as to resist the blows of a hammer; and the first question is, how was this wonderful tube constructed—how was this perfect plaster laid on? Chemical analysis shows that the water holds silica in solution, and the conjecture might therefore arise that the waterhad deposited the silica against the sides of the tube and basin. But this is not the case: the water deposits no sediment; no matter how long it may be kept, no solid substance is separated from it. It may be bottled up and preserved for years as clear as crystal, without showing the slightest tendency to form a precipitate. To answer the question in this way would moreover assume that the shaft was formed by some foreign agency, and that the water merely lined it. The geyser basin, however, rests upon the summit of a mound about forty feet high, and it is evident from mere inspection that the mound has been deposited by the geyser. But in building up this mound the spring must have formed the tube which perforates the mound, and hence the conclusion that the geyser is the architect of its own tube.If we place a quantity of geyser water in an evaporating basin the following takes place: in the centre of the basin the liquid deposits nothing, but at the sides where it is drawn up by capillary attraction, and thus subjected to speedy evaporation, we find silica deposited. Round the edge a ring of silica is laid on, and not until the evaporation has continued a considerable time do we find the slightest turbidity in the middle of the water. This experiment is the microscopic representative of what occursin Iceland. Imagine the case of a simple thermal silicious spring, whose waters trickle down a gentle inclosure; the water thus exposed evaporates speedily, and silica is deposited. This deposit gradually elevates the side over which the water passes until finally the latter has to take another course. The same takes place here, the ground is elevated as before, and the spring has to move forward. Thus it is compelled to travel round and round, discharging its silica and deepening the shaft in which it dwells, until finally, in the course of ages, the simple spring has produced this wonderful apparatus which has so long puzzled and astonished both the traveller and the philosopher."The time required for the construction of the Great Geyser tube has been estimated by Commander Forbes as ten or eleven centuries, on the following grounds: a bunch of grass, placed under a little fall made by the ejected water, receives, in twenty-four hours, a coating of silica the thickness of a thin sheet of paper, or about one five-hundredth part of an inch. At this rate it would take 1036 years to build up the 762 inches, which, according to his measurement, is the depth of the tube. In evidence of the probable truth of this estimate he makes note of the following facts: first, there is no notice of this fountain in the early history of the colonizationof the island 986 years ago, at which time the tube would have been only three feet deep, and its eruptions too slight to attract attention; second, 436 years afterwards, when the tube would have been twenty-six feet deep, and the eruptions proportionately important, the Geyser is mentioned; third, accurate records of all occurrences were kept by the early inhabitants, and if so remarkable a phenomenon had existed at the time, it could not have been left unnoticed.The phenomena attending a geyser-eruption—the filling of the basin with water, the agitation of the water, with deafening detonations, the escape of steam, and so on—have been sufficiently described in the preceding chapters. Their causes have been ingeniously explained by Professor Bunsen, who succeeded in determining the temperature of the geyser-tube, throughout its entire length, a few minutes before an eruption. The annexed diagram shows on the left the observed temperatures of the water at different depths, and on the right the temperatures at which water would boil, taking into account the pressure of the atmosphere increased by the presence of the superincumbent column of water. The degrees have been changed from Centigrade to our familiar Fahrenheit standard, disregarding fractions.It will be observed that in no part of the tube does the water reach the boiling point. The nearest approach to it is at A, thirty feet from the bottom; out even here the water is some four degrees below the temperature at which it could boil. How then is an eruption possible?Professor Tyndall's explanation is in substance this: Suppose that by the entrance of steam from the ducts near the bottom of the tube the geyser column is elevated six feet, a height quite within the limits of actual observation; the water at A is therebytransferred to B. Its boiling point at A is 255°, and its actual temperature is 251°; but at B its boiling point is only 249°, hence when transferred from A to B, the heat which it possesses is in excess of that necessary to make it boil. This excess of heat is instantly applied to the generation of steam; the column is thus lifted higher, and the water below is relieved of pressure, and its boiling point lowered. More steam is generated; this lifts the column still higher, and compels the generation of more and more steam, until the whole upper portion of the column bursts into ebullition, and the water, mixed with steam-clouds, is projected into the atmosphere, and we have the geyser eruption in all its grandeur.One confirmation of this theory of Bunsen's is that small stones suspended in the lower part of the geyser-tube are not thrown out during an eruption; and a stronger confirmation lies in the fact that all the peculiarities of geyser action can be imitated. Professor Tyndall uses for this purpose an apparatus consisting of a tube of iron six feet long, surmounted by a basin, and heated by fires underneath. To imitate, as far as possible, the conditions of the geyser, he encircles the tube with a second fire, two feet from the bottom. As the water in the tube becomes heated, the phenomena of geysereruption are repeated in miniature with beautiful regularity. By stopping the mouth of the tube with a cork, the enforced explosions of the Strokr are reproduced; and by similar simple devices the action of all other eruptive springs may be accurately imitated.All through the Firehole Basin and around Yellowstone Lake are many extinct geysers; sometimes, as in the case of Old Faithful, an active geyser is surrounded by a number of deserted cones, the remains of ancient "roarers." What occasions their decline? Earthquakes may, and no doubt frequently do, derange their mechanism, as observed in the old Strokr. But most of them probably die a natural death, from old age and decrepitude."A moment's reflection," says Professor Tyndall, "will suggest that there must be a limit to the operations of the geyser. When the tube has reached such an altitude that the water in the depths below, owing to the increased pressure, cannot attain its boiling point, the eruptions of necessity cease. The spring, however, continues to deposit its silica, and often forms aLaug, or cistern. Some of these, in Iceland, are forty feet deep. Their beauty, according to Bunsen, is indescribable. Over the surface curls a light vapor; the water is of the purest azure, and tints with its lovely hue the fantastic incrustationson the cistern walls; while at the bottom is often seen the mouth of the once mighty geyser. There are in Iceland vast, but now extinct geyser operations. Mounds are observed whose shafts are filled with rubbish, the water having forced a passage underneath and retired to other scenes of action. We have, in fact, the geyser in its youth, manhood, old age, and death here presented to us. In its youth as a simple thermal spring; in its manhood, as an eruptive column; in its old age, as the tranquilLaug; while its death is recorded by the ruined shaft and mound, which testify the fact of its once active existence."All that Professor Tyndall describes so eloquently of Iceland, exists in our Grand National Park in infinitely greater variety, and magnitude, and splendor. And much more: Iceland has no Gardiner's River. To find the nearest approach to the marvels of White Mountain Hot Spring, we must go to the opposite side of the globe—to New Zealand. In the celebrated Lake District of the North Island is a region of hot springs, far exceeding in extent and variety all the others in the world, save those of the Yellowstone. First of all, says Hochstetter, the most marvellous of the Rotomahana marvels is the Te Tarata—the Tattooed Rock—with its terraced marble steps projecting into the lake. Thespring lies about eighty feet above the lake, on a fern-clad hill-slope, in a crater-like excavation, with steep reddish sides, from thirty to forty feet high, and open only toward the lake. The basin of the spring is about eighty feet long and sixty wide, filled to the brim with perfectly transparent water, which in its snow-white basin appears of a beautiful blue, like the blue turquoise. Immense clouds of steam curl up from the surface, obstructing the view, but the noise of boiling and seething is always audible. The water is slightly salt, but not unpleasant to the taste, chemically neutral, and possesses petrifying, or rather incrusting qualities, in a high degree. The deposit is silicious, like that of the Iceland springs and the springs around Yellowstone Lake, not calcareous, like those of Gardiner's River; yet the system of terraces built up by the deposit on the hill-slope has the same appearance of a cataract plunging over a series of natural shelves and suddenly turned to stone. The deposits cover an area of about three acres, a mere trifle compared with the square miles of similar formations on Gardiner's River and in the Yellowstone Basin.In the same neighborhood is a system of bubbling mud-pools, miniature copies of those on the Yellowstone above the falls. The principal group, lying ina ravine nearly a quarter of a mile long, is described by Dr. Hochstetter as follows:"The entrance to the ravine is overgrown with a thicket and rather difficult of access; it also requires considerable caution, as suspicious places have to be passed, where the visitor is in danger of being swallowed up in heated mud. Inside, the ravine has the appearance of a volcanic crater. The bare walls, utterly destitute of vegetation, are terribly fissured and torn, and odd-looking rocky serratures, threatening every moment to break loose, loom up like dismal spectres from red, white and blue fumarole-clay—evidently the last remains of decomposed rocks. The bottom of the ravine is of fine mud, scattered with blocks of silicious deposit, like cakes of floating ice after a thaw. Here, a big caldron of mud is simmering; there, lies a deep basin of boiling water; next to this is a terrible hole, emitting hissing jets of steam, and further on are mud-cones from two to five feet high, vomiting hot mud from their craters with dull rumblings, and imitating on a small scale the play of large fire volcanoes." The gay colors of the Yellowstone mud-springs are frequently exhibited in the volcanic lake district of New Zealand, and so indeed are most of the other phenomena we have been studying, though on a far less magnificent scale. For example, the grandest"Firehole basin" on the island occupies the Shallow valley of a little stream the Waikato, for the distance of a mile. It is but a cabinet exhibition comparatively, yet the learned geologist of theNovaraexpedition grows eloquent in his description of it. "In the morning a dense fog lay upon the Waikato, but it soon vanished, the sun shone brightly into the valley, and now—what a sight! In its swift course, forming rapids after rapids, the Waikato was plunging through the deep valley between steep-rising mountains; its floods whirling and foaming round two small rocky islands in the middle of the river, were dashing with a loud uproar through the defile of the valley. Along its banks white clouds of steam were ascending from hot cascades falling into the river, and from basins full of boiling water shut in by a white mass of stone. Yonder a steaming fountain was rising and falling; now there sprung from another place a second fountain; this also ceased in its turn; then two commenced playing simultaneously, one quite low at the river bank, the other opposite on a terrace; and thus the play continued with endless changes, as though experiments were being made with grand waterworks, to see whether the fountains were all in perfect order, and whether the waterfalls had a sufficient supply. I began to count the places where a boiling waterbasin was visible, or where a cloud of steam indicated the existence of one. I counted seventy-six points, without, however, being able to survey the whole region, and among them were numerous intermittent geyser-like fountains with periodical eruptions of water."ill194THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.The picture is admirably drawn, but could the artist have done so well with the stupendous chasm of the Grand Cañon? or the thousand volcanic vents of Firehole Basin with their deafening detonations, their immeasurable evolutions of water and steam? It is possible, but scarcely probable. The incomprehensible grandeur of the scene would have awed, astounded, bewildered him, and like our Yellowstone explorers, he would have despaired of grouping the myriad marvels into one grand effect, and contented himself with setting down a few details of form and color.In following the exploration of the Yellowstone country and Firehole Basin, the reader has doubtless observed, in the passage from the quiet springs of Gardiner's River to the erupting fountains further on, that there is a complete change in the nature of the deposits. The mounds and terraces built up by the former have for their basislime, those of the lattersilica. Dr. Hayden attributes the calcareous deposits to the deep bed of limestone underlying thesprings, but not all waters have the power of disolving lime so freely, nor could ordinary water take from the trachytic lavas below the silicious springs around Yellowstone Lake and in the Firehole Basin, the silica that appears so abundantly in their deposits. There must be other forces at work. What are they? "Both kinds of springs," says Dr. Hochstetter, in his chapter on New Zealand springs, "owe their origin to the water permeating the surface and sinking through fissures into the bowels of the earth, where it becomes heated by the still existing volcanic fires. High-pressure steam is thus generated, which, accompanied by volcanic gases—such as muriatic acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid—rises again toward the colder surface and is there condensed into hot water. The overheated steam and the gases decompose the rock beneath, dissolving certain ingredients which are deposited on the surface. According to Bunsen's ingenious observations, a chronological succession takes place in the coöperation of the gases. The sulphurous acid acts first. It is generated where rising sulphur vapor comes in contact with glowing masses of rock. Wherever vapors of sulphurous acid are constantly formed, there acid-springs or solfataras arise. Incrustations of alum are very common in such places, arising from theaction of sulphuric acid on the alumina and alkali of the lavas; another product of the decomposition of the lavas is gypsum, or sulphate of lime, the residuum being a more or less ferruginous fumarole clay, the material of the mud-pools. After the sulphurous acid comes sulphuretted hydrogen, produced by the action of steam on sulphids; and by the mutual decomposition of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphurous acid sulphur is formed, the characteristic precipitate in all solfataras, while the deposition of silica is either entirely wanting or quite inconsiderable, and the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen is but rarely noticed. These acid springs have no periodical outbursts of water.In course of time the source of sulphurous acid becomes exhausted, and sulphuretted hydrogen alone remains active. The acid reaction of the soil disappears, yielding to an alkaline reaction by the formation of sulphids. At the same time carbonic acid begins to act upon the rocks, and the alkaline bi-carbonates thus produced dissolve the silica, which on the evaporation of the water is deposited in the form of opal or quartz or silicious earth, and thus the shell of the springs is formed, on the structure of which the periodicity of the outburst depends.... The deposition of silica in quantities sufficient for the formation of this spring-apparatusin the course of years, takes place only in the alkaline springs. Their water is either neutral or has a slightly alkaline reaction. Silica, common salt, carbonates and sulphates are the chief ingredients dissolved in it. In the place of sulphurous acid the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen is sometimes observed in these springs.... By the gradual cooling of the volcanic rocks under the surface of the earth the hot springs themselves gradually die out, for they too are but a transient phenomenon in the eternal change of created things."

NATURAL HISTORY OF GEYSERS AND OTHER THERMAL SPRINGS.

In Icelandic speech the wordgeysermeans simplyrager, and is applied indiscriminately to all turbulent fountains of water or mud. The most violent and noisy "rager" on the island being the great intermittent spouting spring near Haukadal, it naturally gained for itself the title, The Geyser; and being the earliest known and most remarkable fountain of the kind, its native common name was adopted in other languages as the generic name for all springs of its class.

The history of this great, but no longer the greatest geyser, begins in the early part of the fifteenth century, when its eruptions are mentioned in Icelandic records. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Bishop of Skalholt noticed its daily discharges. A hundred years later Olafsen and Povelsen described it as having three or four eruptions a day, some of them attaining the height of 300 feet,including, doubtless, the uprush of vapor. The depth of its tube was then 72 feet; now it is commonly given as 74, though Commander Forbes, R. N., claims that it is not so deep by ten feet. In 1774 Von Troil estimated the height of the ejected column at 92 feet. Seventeen years later, Stanley gave 96 feet as its greatest height. Forty yards west of the Geyser this traveller found a rival, called the Strokr, (in English, the Churn,) playing to the height of 130 feet. The same year, 1789, an earthquake destroyed the mechanism of the Strokr, converting it into a quiet reservoir of boiling water, whereupon its name was transferred to the present Strokr, which then became especially active and noisy. In 1804 the Geyser had regained somewhat of its ancient power, erupting every six hours to the height of 200 feet; and the original Strokr had repaired its tube so that it could lift a column to nearly the same height and sustain it for a much longer period. During the next five years the power of the Geyser fell off a half, and its paroxysms became much less frequent—Hooker estimating its column, in 1809, at 100 feet, and Mackenzie, a year later, at 90 feet, its eruptions taking place every thirty hours. At the same time the Strokr played every ten or twelve hours, sixty feet high, for the space of thirty minutes. In 1815 the periods had changed again,the Geyser erupting every six hours, to an average height of 80 feet,—the jets occasionally reaching 150 feet, while the Strokr had prolonged its quiet intervals to twenty-four hours. Of late years the Geyser's violent eruptions seldom occur oftener than once in thirty hours, and do not exceed 100 feet in altitude, and generally averaging 70 or 80 feet. Between these eruptions are usually two minor spirts, attaining from 30 to 50 feet. The Strokr is exceedingly irregular in its operation, and generally requires a dose of turf to bring on an exhibition.

A grand eruption of the Geyser has been admirably described by Commander Forbes.

"Twice during the night," he says, "I was aroused by the unearthly complaints ofTheGeyser; but beyond the vast clouds of vapor which invariably follow each detonation, and a gentle overflowing of the basin, they were false alarms. As morning was breaking it sounded an unmistakable 'reveille,' which would have roused the dead: and I had barely time to take up my position at the brink of the old 'Strokr' before full power was turned on. Jet succeeded jet with fearful rapidity, earth trembled and the very cone itself seemed to stagger under the ordeal. Portions of its sides, rent with the uncontrollable fury it had suddenly generated, were ripped off and flew up in volleys, soaring high abovewater and steam, whilst the latter rolled away in fleecy clouds before the light north wind, and catching the rays of the morning sun just glistening over the Jökul tops in the East, was lustrous white as the purest snow. Discharge succeeded discharge in rapid succession for upwards of four minutes, when, apparently exhausted and its basin empty, I scrambled up to the margin, intending to have a good look down the tube, which I imagined must also be empty; but the water was still within a few feet of the brink, and boiling furiously. Hastening back to my former position, the basin filled rapidly, and I was just in time to witness the most magnificent explosion of all. Everything seemed to depend on this superhuman effort, and a solid, unbroken column of water twenty-five feet in circumference, was hurled upwards, attaining an altitude very near 100 feet. Here the column paused for a moment before reversing its motion, then fell listless and exhausted through the volumes which followed it into its throbbing cup, again to undergo its fiery ordeal at the threshold of the infernal regions."

Grand as this display must have been, it was but a momentary spasm, a feeble effort compared with the terrific force which sustains the Giant's river-volume, with a steady uprush two hundred feet high, for the space of three hours and a half.There are many, perhaps scores, of geysers in the Firehole Basin, which—even in midsummer, when their action is weakest—far surpass the glory of Iceland.

But what is the origin of the power that sustains these wonderful eruptions? And what is the cause of its intermittent action? Fortunately these questions are not only answerable, but the answers are susceptible of demonstration, as Professor Tyndall has shown in his admirable lectures on heat considered as a mode of motion, wherein he gives the following lucid description of the mechanism and development of the Great Geyser of Iceland: in principle the description applies equally to the geysers of Firehole Basin, and all other springs of the kind.

"It consists of a tube seventy-four feet deep and ten feet in diameter. The tube is surmounted by a basin which measures from north to south fifty-two feet across, and from east to west sixty feet. The interior of the tube and basin is coated with a beautiful smooth silicious plaster, so hard as to resist the blows of a hammer; and the first question is, how was this wonderful tube constructed—how was this perfect plaster laid on? Chemical analysis shows that the water holds silica in solution, and the conjecture might therefore arise that the waterhad deposited the silica against the sides of the tube and basin. But this is not the case: the water deposits no sediment; no matter how long it may be kept, no solid substance is separated from it. It may be bottled up and preserved for years as clear as crystal, without showing the slightest tendency to form a precipitate. To answer the question in this way would moreover assume that the shaft was formed by some foreign agency, and that the water merely lined it. The geyser basin, however, rests upon the summit of a mound about forty feet high, and it is evident from mere inspection that the mound has been deposited by the geyser. But in building up this mound the spring must have formed the tube which perforates the mound, and hence the conclusion that the geyser is the architect of its own tube.

If we place a quantity of geyser water in an evaporating basin the following takes place: in the centre of the basin the liquid deposits nothing, but at the sides where it is drawn up by capillary attraction, and thus subjected to speedy evaporation, we find silica deposited. Round the edge a ring of silica is laid on, and not until the evaporation has continued a considerable time do we find the slightest turbidity in the middle of the water. This experiment is the microscopic representative of what occursin Iceland. Imagine the case of a simple thermal silicious spring, whose waters trickle down a gentle inclosure; the water thus exposed evaporates speedily, and silica is deposited. This deposit gradually elevates the side over which the water passes until finally the latter has to take another course. The same takes place here, the ground is elevated as before, and the spring has to move forward. Thus it is compelled to travel round and round, discharging its silica and deepening the shaft in which it dwells, until finally, in the course of ages, the simple spring has produced this wonderful apparatus which has so long puzzled and astonished both the traveller and the philosopher."

The time required for the construction of the Great Geyser tube has been estimated by Commander Forbes as ten or eleven centuries, on the following grounds: a bunch of grass, placed under a little fall made by the ejected water, receives, in twenty-four hours, a coating of silica the thickness of a thin sheet of paper, or about one five-hundredth part of an inch. At this rate it would take 1036 years to build up the 762 inches, which, according to his measurement, is the depth of the tube. In evidence of the probable truth of this estimate he makes note of the following facts: first, there is no notice of this fountain in the early history of the colonizationof the island 986 years ago, at which time the tube would have been only three feet deep, and its eruptions too slight to attract attention; second, 436 years afterwards, when the tube would have been twenty-six feet deep, and the eruptions proportionately important, the Geyser is mentioned; third, accurate records of all occurrences were kept by the early inhabitants, and if so remarkable a phenomenon had existed at the time, it could not have been left unnoticed.

The phenomena attending a geyser-eruption—the filling of the basin with water, the agitation of the water, with deafening detonations, the escape of steam, and so on—have been sufficiently described in the preceding chapters. Their causes have been ingeniously explained by Professor Bunsen, who succeeded in determining the temperature of the geyser-tube, throughout its entire length, a few minutes before an eruption. The annexed diagram shows on the left the observed temperatures of the water at different depths, and on the right the temperatures at which water would boil, taking into account the pressure of the atmosphere increased by the presence of the superincumbent column of water. The degrees have been changed from Centigrade to our familiar Fahrenheit standard, disregarding fractions.

It will be observed that in no part of the tube does the water reach the boiling point. The nearest approach to it is at A, thirty feet from the bottom; out even here the water is some four degrees below the temperature at which it could boil. How then is an eruption possible?

Professor Tyndall's explanation is in substance this: Suppose that by the entrance of steam from the ducts near the bottom of the tube the geyser column is elevated six feet, a height quite within the limits of actual observation; the water at A is therebytransferred to B. Its boiling point at A is 255°, and its actual temperature is 251°; but at B its boiling point is only 249°, hence when transferred from A to B, the heat which it possesses is in excess of that necessary to make it boil. This excess of heat is instantly applied to the generation of steam; the column is thus lifted higher, and the water below is relieved of pressure, and its boiling point lowered. More steam is generated; this lifts the column still higher, and compels the generation of more and more steam, until the whole upper portion of the column bursts into ebullition, and the water, mixed with steam-clouds, is projected into the atmosphere, and we have the geyser eruption in all its grandeur.

One confirmation of this theory of Bunsen's is that small stones suspended in the lower part of the geyser-tube are not thrown out during an eruption; and a stronger confirmation lies in the fact that all the peculiarities of geyser action can be imitated. Professor Tyndall uses for this purpose an apparatus consisting of a tube of iron six feet long, surmounted by a basin, and heated by fires underneath. To imitate, as far as possible, the conditions of the geyser, he encircles the tube with a second fire, two feet from the bottom. As the water in the tube becomes heated, the phenomena of geysereruption are repeated in miniature with beautiful regularity. By stopping the mouth of the tube with a cork, the enforced explosions of the Strokr are reproduced; and by similar simple devices the action of all other eruptive springs may be accurately imitated.

All through the Firehole Basin and around Yellowstone Lake are many extinct geysers; sometimes, as in the case of Old Faithful, an active geyser is surrounded by a number of deserted cones, the remains of ancient "roarers." What occasions their decline? Earthquakes may, and no doubt frequently do, derange their mechanism, as observed in the old Strokr. But most of them probably die a natural death, from old age and decrepitude.

"A moment's reflection," says Professor Tyndall, "will suggest that there must be a limit to the operations of the geyser. When the tube has reached such an altitude that the water in the depths below, owing to the increased pressure, cannot attain its boiling point, the eruptions of necessity cease. The spring, however, continues to deposit its silica, and often forms aLaug, or cistern. Some of these, in Iceland, are forty feet deep. Their beauty, according to Bunsen, is indescribable. Over the surface curls a light vapor; the water is of the purest azure, and tints with its lovely hue the fantastic incrustationson the cistern walls; while at the bottom is often seen the mouth of the once mighty geyser. There are in Iceland vast, but now extinct geyser operations. Mounds are observed whose shafts are filled with rubbish, the water having forced a passage underneath and retired to other scenes of action. We have, in fact, the geyser in its youth, manhood, old age, and death here presented to us. In its youth as a simple thermal spring; in its manhood, as an eruptive column; in its old age, as the tranquilLaug; while its death is recorded by the ruined shaft and mound, which testify the fact of its once active existence."

All that Professor Tyndall describes so eloquently of Iceland, exists in our Grand National Park in infinitely greater variety, and magnitude, and splendor. And much more: Iceland has no Gardiner's River. To find the nearest approach to the marvels of White Mountain Hot Spring, we must go to the opposite side of the globe—to New Zealand. In the celebrated Lake District of the North Island is a region of hot springs, far exceeding in extent and variety all the others in the world, save those of the Yellowstone. First of all, says Hochstetter, the most marvellous of the Rotomahana marvels is the Te Tarata—the Tattooed Rock—with its terraced marble steps projecting into the lake. Thespring lies about eighty feet above the lake, on a fern-clad hill-slope, in a crater-like excavation, with steep reddish sides, from thirty to forty feet high, and open only toward the lake. The basin of the spring is about eighty feet long and sixty wide, filled to the brim with perfectly transparent water, which in its snow-white basin appears of a beautiful blue, like the blue turquoise. Immense clouds of steam curl up from the surface, obstructing the view, but the noise of boiling and seething is always audible. The water is slightly salt, but not unpleasant to the taste, chemically neutral, and possesses petrifying, or rather incrusting qualities, in a high degree. The deposit is silicious, like that of the Iceland springs and the springs around Yellowstone Lake, not calcareous, like those of Gardiner's River; yet the system of terraces built up by the deposit on the hill-slope has the same appearance of a cataract plunging over a series of natural shelves and suddenly turned to stone. The deposits cover an area of about three acres, a mere trifle compared with the square miles of similar formations on Gardiner's River and in the Yellowstone Basin.

In the same neighborhood is a system of bubbling mud-pools, miniature copies of those on the Yellowstone above the falls. The principal group, lying ina ravine nearly a quarter of a mile long, is described by Dr. Hochstetter as follows:

"The entrance to the ravine is overgrown with a thicket and rather difficult of access; it also requires considerable caution, as suspicious places have to be passed, where the visitor is in danger of being swallowed up in heated mud. Inside, the ravine has the appearance of a volcanic crater. The bare walls, utterly destitute of vegetation, are terribly fissured and torn, and odd-looking rocky serratures, threatening every moment to break loose, loom up like dismal spectres from red, white and blue fumarole-clay—evidently the last remains of decomposed rocks. The bottom of the ravine is of fine mud, scattered with blocks of silicious deposit, like cakes of floating ice after a thaw. Here, a big caldron of mud is simmering; there, lies a deep basin of boiling water; next to this is a terrible hole, emitting hissing jets of steam, and further on are mud-cones from two to five feet high, vomiting hot mud from their craters with dull rumblings, and imitating on a small scale the play of large fire volcanoes." The gay colors of the Yellowstone mud-springs are frequently exhibited in the volcanic lake district of New Zealand, and so indeed are most of the other phenomena we have been studying, though on a far less magnificent scale. For example, the grandest"Firehole basin" on the island occupies the Shallow valley of a little stream the Waikato, for the distance of a mile. It is but a cabinet exhibition comparatively, yet the learned geologist of theNovaraexpedition grows eloquent in his description of it. "In the morning a dense fog lay upon the Waikato, but it soon vanished, the sun shone brightly into the valley, and now—what a sight! In its swift course, forming rapids after rapids, the Waikato was plunging through the deep valley between steep-rising mountains; its floods whirling and foaming round two small rocky islands in the middle of the river, were dashing with a loud uproar through the defile of the valley. Along its banks white clouds of steam were ascending from hot cascades falling into the river, and from basins full of boiling water shut in by a white mass of stone. Yonder a steaming fountain was rising and falling; now there sprung from another place a second fountain; this also ceased in its turn; then two commenced playing simultaneously, one quite low at the river bank, the other opposite on a terrace; and thus the play continued with endless changes, as though experiments were being made with grand waterworks, to see whether the fountains were all in perfect order, and whether the waterfalls had a sufficient supply. I began to count the places where a boiling waterbasin was visible, or where a cloud of steam indicated the existence of one. I counted seventy-six points, without, however, being able to survey the whole region, and among them were numerous intermittent geyser-like fountains with periodical eruptions of water."

ill194

THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.

THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.

THE GREAT CAÑON AND LOWER FALLS OF THE YELLOWSTONE.

The picture is admirably drawn, but could the artist have done so well with the stupendous chasm of the Grand Cañon? or the thousand volcanic vents of Firehole Basin with their deafening detonations, their immeasurable evolutions of water and steam? It is possible, but scarcely probable. The incomprehensible grandeur of the scene would have awed, astounded, bewildered him, and like our Yellowstone explorers, he would have despaired of grouping the myriad marvels into one grand effect, and contented himself with setting down a few details of form and color.

In following the exploration of the Yellowstone country and Firehole Basin, the reader has doubtless observed, in the passage from the quiet springs of Gardiner's River to the erupting fountains further on, that there is a complete change in the nature of the deposits. The mounds and terraces built up by the former have for their basislime, those of the lattersilica. Dr. Hayden attributes the calcareous deposits to the deep bed of limestone underlying thesprings, but not all waters have the power of disolving lime so freely, nor could ordinary water take from the trachytic lavas below the silicious springs around Yellowstone Lake and in the Firehole Basin, the silica that appears so abundantly in their deposits. There must be other forces at work. What are they? "Both kinds of springs," says Dr. Hochstetter, in his chapter on New Zealand springs, "owe their origin to the water permeating the surface and sinking through fissures into the bowels of the earth, where it becomes heated by the still existing volcanic fires. High-pressure steam is thus generated, which, accompanied by volcanic gases—such as muriatic acid, sulphurous acid, sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid—rises again toward the colder surface and is there condensed into hot water. The overheated steam and the gases decompose the rock beneath, dissolving certain ingredients which are deposited on the surface. According to Bunsen's ingenious observations, a chronological succession takes place in the coöperation of the gases. The sulphurous acid acts first. It is generated where rising sulphur vapor comes in contact with glowing masses of rock. Wherever vapors of sulphurous acid are constantly formed, there acid-springs or solfataras arise. Incrustations of alum are very common in such places, arising from theaction of sulphuric acid on the alumina and alkali of the lavas; another product of the decomposition of the lavas is gypsum, or sulphate of lime, the residuum being a more or less ferruginous fumarole clay, the material of the mud-pools. After the sulphurous acid comes sulphuretted hydrogen, produced by the action of steam on sulphids; and by the mutual decomposition of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphurous acid sulphur is formed, the characteristic precipitate in all solfataras, while the deposition of silica is either entirely wanting or quite inconsiderable, and the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen is but rarely noticed. These acid springs have no periodical outbursts of water.

In course of time the source of sulphurous acid becomes exhausted, and sulphuretted hydrogen alone remains active. The acid reaction of the soil disappears, yielding to an alkaline reaction by the formation of sulphids. At the same time carbonic acid begins to act upon the rocks, and the alkaline bi-carbonates thus produced dissolve the silica, which on the evaporation of the water is deposited in the form of opal or quartz or silicious earth, and thus the shell of the springs is formed, on the structure of which the periodicity of the outburst depends.... The deposition of silica in quantities sufficient for the formation of this spring-apparatusin the course of years, takes place only in the alkaline springs. Their water is either neutral or has a slightly alkaline reaction. Silica, common salt, carbonates and sulphates are the chief ingredients dissolved in it. In the place of sulphurous acid the odor of sulphuretted hydrogen is sometimes observed in these springs.... By the gradual cooling of the volcanic rocks under the surface of the earth the hot springs themselves gradually die out, for they too are but a transient phenomenon in the eternal change of created things."

CHAPTER XV.MR. EVERTS'S THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS OF PERIL.On the day that I found myself separated from the company, and for several days previous, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of pine forest, and occasional large tracts of fallen timber frequently rendering our progress almost impossible. Whenever we came to one of these immense windfalls, each man engaged in the pursuit of a passage through it, and it was while thus employed, and with the idea that I had found one, that I strayed out of sight and hearing of my comrades. We had had a toilsome day. It was quite late in the afternoon. As separations like these had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and I rode on, fully confident of soon rejoining the company, or of finding their camp. I came up with the pack-horse, which Mr. Langford afterwards recovered, and tried to drive him along. But failing to do so, and my eyesight being defective, I spurred forward, intending to return with assistance from the party. Thisincident tended to accelerate my speed. I rode on in the direction which I supposed had been taken, until darkness overtook me in the dense forest. This was disagreeable enough, but caused me no alarm. I had no doubt of being with the party at breakfast the next morning. I selected a spot for comfortable repose, picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep.The next morning I rose at early dawn, saddled and mounted my horse, and took my course in the supposed direction of the camp. Our ride of the previous day had been up a peninsula jutting into the lake, for the shore of which I started, with the expectation of finding my friends camped on the beach. The forest was quite dark, and the trees so thick, that it was only by a slow process I could get through them at all. In searching for the trail I became somewhat confused. The falling foliage of the pines had obliterated every trace of travel. I was obliged frequently to dismount, and examine the ground for the faintest indications. Coming to an opening, from which I could see several vistas, I dismounted for the purpose of selecting one leading in the direction I had chosen, and leaving my horse unhitched, as had always been my custom, walked a few rods into the forest. While surveying the ground my horse took fright, and I turnedaround in time to see him disappearing at full speed among the trees. That was the last I ever saw of him. It was yet quite dark. My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing-tackle, matches—everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass were attached to the saddle.I did not yet realize the possibility of a permanent separation from the company. Instead of following up the pursuit of their camp, I engaged in an effort to recover my horse. Half a day's search convinced me of its impracticability. I wrote and posted in an open space several notices, which, if my friends should chance to see, would inform them of my condition and the route I had taken, and then struck out into the forest in the supposed direction of their camp. As the day wore on without any discovery, alarm took the place of anxiety at the prospect of another night alone in the wilderness, and this time without food or fire. But even this dismal foreboding was cheered by the hope that I should soon rejoin my companions, who would laugh at my adventure, and incorporate it as a thrilling episode into the journal of our trip. The bright side of a misfortune, as I found by experience, even under the worst possible circumstances, always presents some features of encouragement. When Ibegan to realize that my condition was one of actual peril, I banished from my mind all fear of an unfavorable result. Seating myself on a log, I recalled every foot of the way I had travelled since the separation from my friends, and the most probable opinion I could form of their whereabouts was, that they had, by a course but little different from mine, passed by the spot where I had posted the notices, learned of my disaster, and were waiting for me to rejoin them there, or searching for me in that vicinity. A night must be spent amid the prostrate trunks before my return could be accomplished. At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long day of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the angry barking of coyotes, and the prolonged, dismal howl of the gray wolf. These sounds, familiar by their constant occurrence throughout the journey, were now full of terror, and drove slumber from my eye-lids, but above allthis, however, was the hope that I should be restored to my comrades the next day.Early the next morning I rose unrefreshed, and pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt how calamity can elevate the mind, in the formation of the resolution "not to perish in that wilderness."The hope of finding the party still controlled my plans. I thought, by traversing the peninsula centrally, I would be enabled to strike the shore of the lake in advance of their camp, and near the point of departure for the Madison. Acting upon this impression, I rose from a sleepless couch, and pursued my way through the timber-entangled forest. A feeling of weakness took the place of hunger. Conscious of the need of food, I felt no cravings. Occasionally, while scrambling over logs and through thickets, a sense of faintness and exhaustion wouldcome over me, but I would suppress it with the audible expression, "This won't do; Imustfind my company." Despondency would sometimes strive with resolution for the mastery of my thoughts. I would think of home—of my daughter—and of the possible chance of starvation, or death in some more terrible form; but as often as these gloomy forebodings came, I would strive to banish them with reflections better adapted to my immediate necessities. I recollect at this time discussing the question, whether there was not implanted by Providence in every man a principle of self-preservation equal to any emergency which did not destroy his reason. I decided this question affirmatively a thousand times afterwards in my wanderings, and I record this experience here, that any person who reads it, should he ever find himself in like circumstances, may not despair. There is life in the thought. It will revive hope, allay hunger, renew energy, encourage perseverance, and, as I have proved in my own case, bring a man out of difficulty, when nothing else can avail.It was mid-day when I emerged from the forest into an open space at the foot of the peninsula. A broad lake of beautiful curvature, with magnificent surroundings, lay before me, glittering in the sunbeams. It was full twelve miles in circumference.A wide belt of sand formed the margin which I was approaching, directly opposite to which, rising seemingly from the very depths of the water, towered the loftiest peak of a range of mountains apparently interminable. The ascending vapor from innumerable hot springs, and the sparkling jet of a single geyser added the feature of novelty to one of the grandest landscapes I ever beheld. Nor was the life of the scene less noticeable than its other attractions. Large flocks of swans and other waterfowl were sporting on the quiet surface of the lake; otters in great numbers performed the most amusing aquatic evolutions; mink and beaver swam around unscared, in most grotesque confusion. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep stared at me, manifesting more surprise than fear at my presence among them. The adjacent forest was vocal with the songs of birds, chief of which were the chattering notes of a species of mocking-bird, whose imitative efforts afforded abundant merriment. Seen under favorable circumstances, this assemblage of grandeur, beauty, and novelty would have been transporting; but jaded with travel, famishing with hunger, and distressed with anxiety, I was in no humor for ecstasy. My tastes were subdued and chastened by the perils which environed me. I longed for food, friends, and protection. Associated with my thoughts, however, wasthe wish that some of my friends of peculiar tastes could enjoy this display of secluded magnificence, now, probably, for the first time beheld by mortal eyes.The lake was at least one thousand feet lower than the highest point of the peninsula, and several hundred feet below the level of Yellowstone Lake. I recognized the mountain which overshadowed it as the landmark which, a few days before, had received from General Washburn the name of Mount Everts; and as it is associated with some of the most agreeable and terrible incidents of my exile, I feel that I have more than a mere discoverer's right to the perpetuity of that christening. The lake is fed by innumerable small streams from the mountains, and the countless hot springs surrounding it. A large river flows from it, through a cañon a thousand feet in height, in a southeasterly direction, to a distant range of mountains, which I conjectured to be Snake River; and with the belief that I had discovered the source of the great southern tributary of the Columbia, I gave it the name of Bessie Lake, after the"Sole daughter of my house and heart."During the first two days, the fear of meeting with Indians gave me considerable anxiety; but,when conscious of being lost, there was nothing I so much desired as to fall in with a lodge of Bannocks or Crows. Having nothing to tempt their cupidity, they would do me no personal harm, and, with the promise of reward, would probably minister to my wants and aid my deliverance. Imagine my delight, while gazing upon the animated expanse of water, at seeing sail out from a distant point a large canoe containing a single oarsman. It was rapidly approaching the shore where I was seated. With hurried steps I paced the beach to meet it, all my energies stimulated by the assurance it gave of food, safety, and restoration to friends. As I drew near to it it turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragonwings as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my condition. But night was fast approaching, and darkness would come with it. While looking for a spot where I might repose in safety, my attention was attracted to a small green plant of so lively a hue as to form a striking contrast with the deep pine foliage. For closer examinationI pulled it up by the root, which was long and tapering, not unlike a radish. It was a thistle. I tasted it; it was palatable and nutritious. My appetite craved it, and the first meal in four days was made on thistle-roots. Eureka! I had found food. No optical illusion deceived me this time; I could subsist until I rejoined my companions. Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour!Overjoyed at this discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would permit. The savage beast was snuffing and growling below, apparentlyon the very spot I had just abandoned. I answered every growl with a responsive scream. Terrified at the delay and pawing of the beast, I increased my voice to its utmost volume, broke branches from the limbs, and, in the impotency of fright, madly hurled them at the spot whence the continued howlings proceeded.Failing to alarm the animal, which now began to make the circuit of the tree, as if to select a spot for springing into it, I shook, with a strength increased by terror, the slender trunk until every limb rustled with the motion. All in vain. The terrible creature pursued his walk around the tree, lashing the ground with his tail, and prolonging his howlings almost to a roar. It was too dark to see, but the movements of the lion kept me apprised of its position. Whenever I heard it on one side of the tree I speedily changed to the opposite—an exercise which, in my weakened state, I could only have performed under the impulse of terror. I would alternately sweat and thrill with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces and devoured by this formidable monster. All my attempts to frighten it seemed unavailing. Disheartened at its persistency, and expecting every moment it would take the deadly leap, I tried to collect my thoughts, and prepare for the fatal encounter which I knew must result.Just at this moment it occurred to me that I would try silence. Clasping the trunk of the tree with both arms, I sat perfectly still. The lion, at this time ranging round, occasionally snuffing and pausing, and all the while filling the forest with the echo of his howlings, suddenly imitated my example. This silence was more terrible, if possible, than the clatter and crash of his movements through the brushwood, for now I did not know from what direction to expect his attack. Moments passed with me like hours. After a lapse of time which I cannot estimate, the beast gave a spring into the thicket and ran screaming into the forest. My deliverance was effected.Had strength permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in a slumber so profound that I did not awake until after daylight. The experience of the night seemed like a terrible dream; but the broken limbs which in the agony of consternation I had thrown from the tree, and the rifts made in the fallen foliage by my visitant in his circumambulations, were too convincingevidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me—whether I would ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured to death at the stake.I was roused from this train of reflections by a marked change in the atmosphere. One of those dreary storms of mingled snow and rain, common to these high latitudes, set in. My clothing, which had been much torn, exposed my person to its "pitiless peltings." An easterly wind, rising to a gale, admonished me that it would be furious and of long duration. None of the discouragements I had met with dissipated the hope of rejoicing my friends; but foreseeing the delay, now unavoidable, I knew that my escape from the wilderness must be accomplished, if at all, by my own unaided exertions.This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for a half-starved man.Taking advantage of a lull in the elements, on the morning of the third day I rose early and started in the direction of a large group of hot springs which were steaming under the shadow of Mount Everts. The distance I travelled could not have been less than ten miles. Long before I reached the wonderful cluster of natural caldrons, the storm had recommenced. Chilled through, with my clothing thoroughly saturated, I lay down under a tree upon the heated incrustation until completely warmed. My heels and the sides of my feet were frozen. As soon as warmth had permeated my system, and I had quieted my appetitewith a few thistle-roots, I took a survey of my surroundings, and selected a spot between two springs sufficiently asunder to afford heat at my head and feet. On this spot I built a bower of pine branches, spread its incrusted surface with fallen foliage and small boughs, and stowed myself away to await the close of the storm. Thistles were abundant, and I had fed upon them long enough to realize that they would, for a while at least, sustain life. In convenient proximity to my abode was a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot, and in which, from time to time, I cooked my roots.This establishment, the best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days—the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual steam bath. At first this was barely preferable to the storm, but I soon became accustomed to it, and before I left, though thoroughly parboiled, actually enjoyed it.I had little else to do during my imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my timewas given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. They had companions in suffering and sympathy. Each could bear his share of the burden of misery which it fell to my lot to bear alone, and make it lighter from the encouragement of mutual counsel and aid in a cause of common suffering. Selfish as the thought may seem, there was nothing I so much desired as a companion in misfortune. How greatly it would alleviate my distress! What a relief it would be to compare my wretchedness with that of a brother sufferer, and with him devise expedients for every exigency as it occurred! I confess to the weakness, if it be one, of having squandered much pity upon myself during the time I had little else to do.Nothing gave me more concern than the want of fire. I recalled everything I had ever read or heard of the means by which fire could be produced; but none of them were within my reach. An escape without it was simply impossible. It was indispensable as a protection against nightattacks from wild beasts. Exposure to another storm like the one just over would destroy my life, as this one would have done, but for the warmth derived from the springs. As I lay in my bower anxiously awaiting the disappearance of the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot or more, and impressed with the belief that for want of fire I should be obliged to remain among the springs, it occurred to me that I would erect some sort of monument, which might, at some future day, inform a casual visitor of the circumstances under which I had perished. A gleam of sunshine lit up the bosom of the lake, and with it the thought flashed upon my mind that I could, with a lens from my opera-glasses, get fire from Heaven. Oh, happy, life-renewing thought! Instantly subjecting it to the test of experiment, when I saw the smoke curl from the bit of dry wood in my fingers, I felt, if the whole world were offered me for it, I would cast it all aside before parting with that little spark. I was now the happy possessor of food and fire. These would carry me through. All thoughts of failure were instantly abandoned. Though the food was barely adequate to my necessities—a fact too painfully attested by my attenuated body—I had forgotten the cravings of hunger, and had themeans of producing fire. I said to myself, "I will not despair."My stay at the springs was prolonged several days by an accident that befell me on the third night after my arrival there. An unlucky movement while asleep broke the crust on which I reposed, and the hot steam, pouring upon my hip, scalded it severely before I could escape. This new affliction, added to my frost-bitten feet, already festering, was the cause of frequent delay and unceasing pain through all my wanderings. After obtaining fire, I set to work making preparations for as early departure as my condition would permit. I had lost both knives since parting from the company, but I now made a convenient substitute by sharpening the tongue of a buckle which I cut from my vest. With this I cut the legs and counters from my boots, making of them a passable pair of slippers, which I fastened to my feet as firmly as I could with strips of bark. With the ravellings of a linen handkerchief, aided by the magic buckle-tongue, I mended my clothing. Of the same material I made a fish-line, which, on finding a piece of red tape in one of my pockets better suited to the purpose, I abandoned as a "bad job." I made of a pin that I found in my coat a fish-hook, and, by sewing up the bottoms ofmy boot-legs, constructed a very good pair of pouches to carry my food in, fastening them to my belt by the straps.Thus accountered, on the morning of the eighth day after my arrival at the springs I bade them a final farewell, and started on my course directly across that portion of the neck of the peninsula between me and the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was a freshness in the atmosphere truly exhilarating. As I wandered musingly along, the consciousness of being alone, and having surrendered all hope of finding my friends, returned upon me with crushing power. I felt, too, that those friends, by the necessities of their condition, had been compelled to abandon all efforts for my recovery. The thought was full of bitterness and sorrow. I tried to realize what their conjectures were concerning my disappearance; but could derive no consolation from the long and dismal train of circumstances they suggested. Weakened by a long fast, and the unsatisfying nature of the only food I could procure, I know that from this time onward to the day of my rescue, my mind, though unimpaired in those perceptions needful to self-preservation, was in a condition to receive impressions akin to insanity. I was constantly travellingin dream-land, and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being, which, while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition, fed my imagination with vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influences, and often tried to shake them off, but they would ever return with increased force, and I finally reasoned myself into the belief that their indulgence, as it afforded me pleasure, could work no harm while it did not interfere with my plans for deliverance. Thus I lived in a world of ideal happiness, and in a world of positive suffering at the same time.A change in the wind and an overcast sky, accompanied by cold, brought with them a need of warmth. I drew out my lens and touchwood, but alas! there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famishing man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, andglad was I when the approaching dawn enabled me to commence retracing my steps to Bessie Lake. I arrived there at noon, built my first fire on the beach, and remained by it, recuperating for the succeeding two days.The faint hope that my friends might be delayed by their search for me until I could rejoin them now forsook me altogether. I made my arrangements independent of it. Either of three directions I might take would effect my escape, if life and strength held out. I drew upon the sand of the beach a map of these several courses with reference to my starting-point from the lake, and considered well the difficulties each would present. All were sufficiently defined to avoid mistake. One was to follow Snake River a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge; another, to cross the country between the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake and the Madison Mountains, by scaling which I could easily reach the settlements in the Madison Valley; and the other, to retrace my journey over the long and discouraging route by which I had entered the country. Of these routes the last mentioned seemed the least inviting, probably because I had so recently traversed it, and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals andviolent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so most unwisely, as will hereafter appear, I adopted it.Filling my pouches with thistle-roots, I took a parting survey of the little solitude that had afforded me food and fire the preceding ten days, and with something of that melancholy feeling experienced by one who leaves his home to grapple with untried adventures, started for the nearest point on Yellowstone Lake. All that day I travelled over timber-heaps, amid tree tops, and through thickets. At noon I took the precaution to obtain fire. With a brand which I kept alive by frequent blowing, and constant waving to and fro, at a late hour in the afternoon, faint and exhausted, I kindled a fire for the night on the only vacant spot I could find amid a dense wilderness of pines. The deep gloom of the forest, in the spectral light which revealed on all sides of me a compact and unending growth of trunks and an impervious canopy of sombre foliage; the shrieking of night-birds; the super naturally human scream of the mountain lion, the prolonged howl of the wolf, made me insensible to all other forms of suffering.The burn on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few moments would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terrors yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony I longed for day!A bright and glorious morning succeeded the dismal night, and brought with it the conviction that I had been the victim of uncontrollable nervous excitement. I resolved henceforth to banish it altogether, and, in much better spirits than I anticipated, resumed my journey towards the lake. Another day of unceasing toil among the tree-tops and thicketsovertook me, near sunset, standing upon a lofty headland jutting into the lake, and commanding a magnificent prospect of the mountains and valley over an immense area. In front of me, at a distance of fifty miles away, in the clear blue of the horizon, rose the arrowy peaks of the Three Tetons. On the right, and apparently in close proximity to the eminence I occupied, rolled the picturesque range of the Madison, scarred with clefts, ravines, gorges, and cañons, each of which glittered in the sunlight or deepened in shadow as the fitful rays of the descending luminary glanced along their varied rocky irregularities. Above where I stood were the lofty domes of Mounts Langford and Doane, marking the limits of that wonderful barrier which had so long defied human power in its efforts to subdue it. Rising seemingly from the promontory which favored my vision was the familiar summit of Mount Everts, at the base of which I had dwelt so long, and which still seemed to hold me within its friendly shadow. All the vast country within this grand enclosure of mountains and lake, scarred and seamed with the grotesque ridges, rocky escarpments, undulating hillocks, and miniature lakes, and steaming with hot springs, produced by the volcanic forces of a former era, lay spread out before me like a vast panorama.I doubt if distress and suffering can ever entirelyobliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, I effected a most difficult and arduous descent of the abrupt and stony headland to the beach of the lake. The sand was soft and yielding. I kindled a fire, and removing the stiffened slippers from my feet, attached them to my belt, and wandered barefoot along the sandy shore to gather wood for the night. The dry, warm sand was most grateful to my lacerated and festering feet, and for a long time after my wood-pile was supplied, I sat with them uncovered. At length, conscious of the need of every possible protection from the freezing night atmosphere, I sought my belt for the slippers, and one was missing. In gathering the wood it had become detached and was lost. Darkness was closing over the landscape, when, sorely disheartened with the thought of passing the night with one foot exposed to a freezing temperature, I commenced a search for the missing slipper. I knew I could not travel a day without it. Fearful that it had dropped into the lake, and been carried by some recurrent wave beyond recovery, my search for an hour among fallen trees and bushes, up the hill-side and alongthe beach, in darkness and with flaming brands, at one moment crawling on hands and feet into a brush-heap, another peering among logs and bushes and stones, was filled with anxiety and dismay. Success at length rewarded my perseverance, and no language can describe the joy with which I drew the cause of so much distress from beneath the limb that, as I passed, had torn it from my belt. With a feeling of great relief I now sat down in the sand, my back to a log, and listened to the dash and roar of the waves. It was a wild lullaby, but had no terrors for a worn-out man. I never passed a night of more refreshing sleep. When I awoke my fire was extinguished save a few embers, which I soon fanned into a cheerful flame. I ate breakfast with some relish, and started along the beach in pursuit of a camp, believing that if successful I should find directions what to do, and food to sustain me. The search which I was making lay in the direction of my pre-arranged route to the Madison Mountains, which I intended to approach at their lowest point of altitude.Buoyed by the hope of finding food and counsel, and another night of undisturbed repose in the sand, I resumed my journey along the shore, and at noon found the camp last occupied by my friends on the lake. I struck their trail in the sand some time beforeI came to it. A thorough search for food in the ground and trees revealed nothing, and no notice to apprise me of their movements could be seen. A dinner-fork, which afterwards proved to be of infinite service in digging roots, and a yeast-powder can, which would hold half a pint, and which I converted into a drinking-cup and dinner-pot, were the only evidences that the spot had ever been visited by civilized man. "Oh!" thought I, "why did they forget to leave me food!" It never occurred to me that they might have cached it, as I have since learned they did, in several spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point farther down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to procure fire, which, in the usual manner, I carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, andvery soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semicircle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was none I felt more seriously than the loss of my buckle-tongue knife, my pin fish-hook, and tape fish-line.The grandeur of the burning forest surpasses description. An immense sheet of flame, following to their tops the lofty trees of an almost impenetrable pine forest, leaping madly from top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvellous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, cracking, crashing, and snapping of falling limbs and burning foliage was deafening. On, on, on travelled the destructive element, until it seemed as if the whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtoppingtrees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation.Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range. Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must travel to reach it, I left the lake and pushed into the midst of its intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh courage and determination; but long before I arrived at the base of the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountabledifficulties. It presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or cañon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable—down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was.While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a passage or return to the Yellowstone, I experienced one of those strange hallucinations which many of my friends have misnamedinsanity, but which to me was Providence. An old clerical friend, for whose character and counsel I had always cherished peculiar regard, in some unaccountable manner seemed to be standing before me, charged with advice which would relieve my perplexity. I seemed to hear him say, as if in a voice and with the manner of authority:"Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and the idea of scaling these rocks is madness.""Doctor," I rejoined, "the distance is too great. I cannot live to travel it.""Say not so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible—it is your only chance.""Doctor, I am rejoiced to meet you in this hour of distress, but doubt the wisdom of your counsel. I am within seventy miles of Virginia. Just over these rocks, a few miles away, I shall find friends. My shoes are nearly worn out, my clothes are in tatters, and my strength is almost overcome. As a last trial, it seems to me I can but attempt to scale this mountain or perish in the effort, if God so wills.""Don't think of it. Your power of endurance will carry you through. I will accompany you.Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself and God will help you."Overcome by these and other persuasions, and delighted with the idea of having a travelling companion, I plodded my way over the route I had come, intending at a certain point to change it so as to strike the river at the foot of the lake. Stopping after a few miles of travel, I had no difficulty in procuring fire, and passed a comfortable night. When I resumed my journey the next day the sun was just rising. Whenever I was disposed, as was often the case, to question the wisdom of the change of routes, my old friend appeared to be near with words of encouragement, but his reticence on other subjects both surprised and annoyed me. I was impressed at times, during the entire journey, with the belief that my return was a fatal error, and if my deliverance had failed should have perished with that conviction. Early this day I deflected from my old route and took my course for the foot of the lake, with the hope, by constant travel, to reach it the next day. The distance was greater than I anticipated. Nothing is more deceptive than distance in these high latitudes. At the close of each of the two succeeding days, my point of destination was seemingly as far from me as at the moment I took leave of the MadisonRange, and when, cold and hungry, on the afternoon of the fourth day, I gathered the first food I had eaten in nearly five days, and lay down by my fire near the debouchure of the river, I had nearly abandoned all hope of escape.At daybreak I was on the trail down the river. The thought I had adopted from the first, "I will cot perish in this wilderness," often revived my sinking spirits, when, from faintness and exhaustion, I felt but little desire for life. Once, while struggling through a field of tangled trunks which seemed interminable, at one of the pauses I found myself seriously considering whether it was not preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found the tip of a gull's wing; it was fresh. I made a fire upon the spot, mashed the bones with a stone, and consigning them to my camp kettle, the yeast-powderbox, made half a pint of delicious broth. The remainder of that day and the night ensuing were given to sleep.I lost all sense of time. Days and nights came and went, and were numbered only by the growing consciousness that I was gradually starving. I felt no hunger, did not eat to appease appetite, but to renew strength. I experienced but little pain. The gaping sores on my feet, the severe burn on my hip, the festering crevices at the joints of my fingers, all terrible in appearance, had ceased to give me the least concern. The roots which supplied my food had suspended the digestive power of the stomach, and their fibres were packed in it in a matted, compact mass.Not so with my hours of slumber. They were visited by the most luxurious dreams. I would apparently visit the most gorgeously decorated restaurants of New York and Washington; sit down to immense tables spread with the most appetizing viands; partake of the richest oyster stews and plumpest pies; engage myself in the labor and preparation of curious dishes, and with them fill range upon range of elegantly furnished tables until they fairly groaned beneath the accumulated dainties prepared by my own hands. Frequently the entire night would seem to have been spent ingetting up a sumptuous dinner. I would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the moderncuisine, and in my disturbed slumbers would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries.It was a cold, gloomy day when I arrived in the vicinity of the falls. The sky was overcast and the snow-capped peaks rose chilly and bleak through the biting atmosphere. The moaning of the wind through the pines, mingling with the sullen roar of the falls, was strangely in unison with my own saddened feelings. I had no heart to gaze upon a scene which a few weeks before had inspired me with rapture and awe. One moment of sunshine was of more value to me than all the marvels amid which I was famishing. But the sun had hid his face and denied me all hope of obtaining fire. The only alternative was to seek shelter in a thicket. I penetrated the forest a long distance before finding one that suited me. Breaking and crowding my way into its very midst, I cleared a spot large enough to recline upon, interlaced the surrounding brushwood, gathered the fallen foliage into a bed, and lay down with a prayer for sleep and forgetfulness. Alas! neither came. The coldness increasedthrough the night. Constant friction with my hands and unceasing beating with my legs and feet saved me from freezing. It was the most terrible night of my journey, and when, with the early dawn, I pulled myself into a standing posture, it was to realize that my right arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize upon the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great cañon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrating powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, fed it with every dry stick and broken tree-top I could find, and without motion, and almost without sense, remained beside it several hours. The great falls of the Yellowstone were roaring within three hundred yards, and the awful cañon yawned almost at my feet; but they had lost all charm for me. In fact, I regarded them as enemies which had lured me to destruction, and felt a sullen satisfaction in morbid indifference.My old friend and adviser, whose presence I had felt more than seen the last few days, now forsookme altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many travelling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet—complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote consequences. I would try to silence him with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose—he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with right good will, doing many things for their seeming comfort which, had I felt myself alone, would have remained undone. They appeared to be perfectly helpless of themselves; would do nothing for me or for each other. I often wondered, while they ate and slept so much, thatthey did not aid in gathering wood and kindling fires. As a counterpoise to their own inertia, whenever they discovered languor in me on necessary occasions, they were not wanting in words of encouragement and cheer. I recall as I write, an instance where, by prompt and timely interposition, the representative of the stomach saved me from a death of dreadful agony. One day I came to a small stream issuing from a spring of mild temperature on the hill-side, swarming with minnows. I caught some with my hands, and ate them raw. To my taste they were delicious. But the stomach refused them, accused me of attempting to poison him, and would not be reconciled until I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment.ill236IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.A gradual mental introversion grew upon me as physical weakness increased. The grand and massive scenery which, on the upward journey, had aroused every enthusiastic impulse of my nature, was now tame and spiritless. My thoughts were turned in upon myself—upon the dreadful fate which apparently lay just before me—and the possible happiness of the existence beyond. All doubt of immortality fled in the light of present realities. So vivid were my conceptions of the future that at times I longed for death, not less as the beginning of happiness than as a release from misery. Led on by these reflections, I would recall the varied incidents of my journey—my escape from the lion, from fire, my return from the Madison Range—and in all of them I saw how much I had been indebted to that mysterious protection which comes only from the throne of the Eternal. And yet, starving, foot-sore, half blind, worn to a skeleton, was it surprising that I lacked the faith needful to buoy me above the dark waters of despair, which I now felt were closing around me?In less serious moods, as I struggled along, my thoughts would revert to the single being on whom my holiest affections centred—my daughter. What a tie was that to bind me to life! Oh! could I be restored to her for a single hour, long enough for parting counsel and blessing, it would be joy unspeakable! Long hours of painful travel were relieved of physical suffering by this absorbing agony of the mind, which, when from my present standpoint I contrast it with the personal calamities of my exile, swells into mountains.To return from this digression. At many of thestreams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large herds of deer, elk, antelope, occasionally a bear, and many smaller animals. Numerous flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans inhabited the lakes and rivers. But with no means of killing them, their presence was a perpetual aggravation. At all the camps of our company I stopped and recalled many pleasant incidents associated with them.One afternoon, when approaching "Tower Falls," I came upon a large hollow tree, which, from the numerous tracks surrounding it, and the matted foliage in the cavity, I recognized as the den of a bear. It was a most inviting couch. Gathering a needful supply of wood and brush, I lighted a circle of piles around the tree, crawled into the nest, and passed a night of unbroken slumber. I rose the next morning to find that during the night the fires had communicated with the adjacent forest, and burned a large space in all directions, doubtless intimidating the rightful proprietor of the nest, and saving me from another midnight adventure.At "Tower Falls" I spent the first half of aday in capturing a grasshopper, and the remainder in a fruitless effort to catch a mess of trout. In the agony of disappointment, I resolved to fish no more. A spirit of rebellion seized me. I determined that thistles should thenceforth be my only sustenance. "Why is it," I asked of myself, "that in the midst of abundance, every hour meeting with objects which would restore strength and vigor and energy, every moment contriving some device to procure the nourishment my wasting frame required, I should meet with these repeated and discouraging failures?" Thoughts of the early teaching of a pious mother suppressed these feelings. Oh! how often have the recollections of a loved New England home, and the memories of a happy childhood, cheered my sinking spirits, and dissipated the gathering gloom of despair! There were thoughts and feelings and mental anguishes without number, that visited me during my period of trial, that never can be known to any but my God and myself. Bitter as was my experience, it was not unrelieved by some of the most precious moments I have ever known.Soon after leaving "Tower Falls," I entered the open country. Pine forests and windfalls were changed for sage brush and desolation, with occasional tracts of stunted verdure, barren hillsides,exhibiting here and there an isolated clamp of dwarf trees, and ravines filled with the rockydebrisof adjacent mountains. My first camp on this part of the route, for the convenience of getting wood, was made near the summit of a range of towering foot-hills. Towards morning a storm of wind and snow nearly extinguished my fire. I became very cold; the storm was still raging when I arose, and the ground white with snow. I was perfectly bewildered, and had lost my course of travel. No visible object, seen through the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current. Fortunately, after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the cañon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky cañon, in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often, while clinging tothe jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore from the bruises I had received, I reached my fire; the storm, still raging, had nearly extinguished it. I found a few embers in the ashes, and with much difficulty kindled a flame. Here, on this bleak mountain side, as well as I now remember, I must have passed two nights beside the fire, in the storm. Many times during each night I crawled to the little clump of trees to gather wood, and brush, and the broken limbs of fallen tree-tops. All the sleep I obtained was snatched from the intervals which divided these labors. It was so harassed with frightful dreams as to afford little rest. I remember, before I left this camp, stripping up my sleeves to look at my shrunken arms. Flesh and blood had apparently left them. The skin clung to the bones like wet parchment. A child's hand could have clasped them from wrist to shoulder. "Yet," thought I, "it is death to remain; I cannot perish in this wilderness."Taking counsel of this early formed resolution, I hobbled on my course through the snow, which was rapidly disappearing before the rays of the warm sun. Well knowing that I should find no thistlesin the open country, I had filled my pouches with them before leaving the forest. My supply was running low, and there were yet several days of heavy mountain travel between me and Botelers' Ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made no further complaint.Two or three days before I was found, while ascending a steep hill, I fell from exhaustion into the sage brush, without the power to rise. Unbuckling my belt, as was my custom, I soon fell asleep. I have no idea of the time I slept, but upon awaking I fastened my belt, scrambled to my feet, and pursued my journey. As night drew on I selected a camping-place, gathered wood into a heap, and felt for my lens to procure fire. It was gone. If the earth had yawned to swallow me I would not have been more terrified. The only chance for life was lost. The last hope had fled. I seemed to feel the grim messenger who had been so long pursuingme knocking at the portals of my heart as I lay down by the side of the wood-pile, and covered myself with limbs and sage brush, with the dreadful conviction that my struggle for life was over, and that I should rise no more. The floodgates of misery seemed now to be opened, and it rushed in a living tide upon my soul. With the rapidity of lightning, I ran over every event of my life. Thoughts doubled and trebled upon me, until I saw, as if in vision, the entire past of my existence. It was all before me, as if painted with a sunbeam, and all seemingly faded like the phantoms of a vivid dream.As calmness returned, reason resumed her empire. Fortunately, the weather was comfortable. I summoned all the powers of my memory, thought over every foot of the day's travel, and concluded that the glass must have become detached from my belt while sleeping. Five long miles over the hills must be retraced to regain it. There was no alternative, and before daylight I had staggered over half the distance. I found the lens on the spot where I had slept. No incident of my journey brought with it more of joy and relief.Returning to the camp of the previous night, I lighted the pile I had prepared, and lay down for a night to rest. It was very cold, and towardsmorning commenced snowing. With difficulty I kept the fire alive. Sleep was impossible. When daylight came, I was impressed with the idea that I must go on despite the storm. A flash—momentary but vivid—came over me, that I should be saved. Snatching a lighted brand, I started through the storm. In the afternoon the storm abated and the sun shone at intervals. Coming to a small clump of trees, I set to work to prepare a camp. I laid the brand down which I had preserved with so much care, to pick up a few dry sticks with which to feed it, until I could collect wood for a camp-fire, and in the few minutes thus employed it expired. I sought to revive it, but every spark was gone. Clouds obscured the sun, now near the horizon, and the prospect of another night of exposure without fire became fearfully imminent. I sat down with my lens and the last remaining piece of touchwood I possessed to catch a gleam of sunshine, feeling that my life depended on it. In a few moments the cloud passed, and with trembling hands I presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefullyup wards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and comfort my desolate lodgings.I resumed my journey the next morning, with the belief that I should make no more fires with my lens. I must save a brand, or perish. The day was raw and gusty; an east wind, charged with storm, penetrated my nerves with irritating keenness. After walking a few miles the storm came on, and a coldness unlike any other I had ever felt seized me. It entered all my bones. I attempted to build a fire, but could not make it burn. Seizing a brand, I stumbled blindly on, stopping within the shadow of every rock and clump to renew energy for a final conflict for life. A solemn conviction that death was near, that at each pause I made my limbs would refuse further service, and that I should sink helpless and dying in my path, overwhelmed me with terror. Amid all this tumult of the mind, I felt that I had done all that man could do. I knew that in two or three days more I could effect my deliverance, and I derived no little satisfaction from the thought that, as I was now in the broad trail, my remains would be found, and my friends relieved of doubt as to my fate. Once only the thought flashed across my mind that I should be saved, and I seemed to hear a whispered commandto "struggle on." Groping along the side of a hill, I became suddenly sensible of a sharp reflection, as of burnished steel. Looking up, through half-closed eyes, two rough but kindly faces met my gaze."Are you Mr. Everts?""Yes. All that is left of him.""We have come for you.""Who sent you?""Judge Lawrence and other friends.""God bless him, and them, and you! I am saved!" and with these words, powerless of further effort, I fell forward into the arms of my preservers, in a state of unconsciousness. I was saved. On the very brink of the river which divides the known from the unknown, strong arms snatched me from the final plunge, and kind ministrations wooed me back to life.Baronet and Prichette, my two preservers, by the usual appliances, soon restored me to consciousness, made a camp upon the spot, and while one went to Fort Ellis, a distance of seventy miles, to return with remedies to restore digestion and an ambulance to convey me to that post, the other sat by my side, and with all the care, sympathy, and solicitude of a brother, ministered to my frequent necessities. In two days I was sufficiently recoveredin strength to be moved twenty miles down the trail to the cabin of some miners who were prospecting in that vicinity. From these men I received every possible attention which their humane and generous natures could devise. A good bed was provided, game was killed to make broth, and the best stores of their larder placed at my command. For four days, at a time when every day's labor was invaluable in their pursuit, they abandoned their work to aid in my restoration. Owing to the protracted inaction of the system, and the long period which must transpire before Prichette's return with remedies, my friends had serious doubts of my recovery.The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered—a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. He was on his way to find a brother. He listened to the story of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough, weather-beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity, brightening in a moment, he exclaimed:"Why, Lord bless you, if that is all, I have thevery remedy you need. In two hours' time all shall be well with you."He left the cabin, returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear which he had killed a few hours before. From this he rendered out a pint measure of oil. I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from pain, with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery.In a day or two I took leave of my kind friends, with a feeling of regret at parting, and of gratitude for their kindness as enduring as life.Meeting the carriage on my way, I preceded to Boseman, where I remained among old friends, who gave me every attention until my health was sufficiently restored to allow me to return to my home at Helena.My heartfelt thanks are due to the members of the expedition, all of whom devoted seven, and some of them twelve days to the search for me before they left Yellowstone Lake; and to Judge Lawrence, of Helena, and the friends who co-operated with him in the offer of reward which sent Baronet and Prichette to my rescue.My narrative is finished. In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of theYellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shadow of Mount Everts; to thread unscared the mazy forests, retrace the dreary journey to the Madison Range, and with enraptured fancy gaze upon the mingled glories and terrors of the great falls and marvellous cañon, and to enjoy, in happy contrast with the trials they recall, their power to delight, elevate, and overwhelm the mind with wondrous and majestic beauty.

MR. EVERTS'S THIRTY-SEVEN DAYS OF PERIL.

On the day that I found myself separated from the company, and for several days previous, our course had been impeded by the dense growth of pine forest, and occasional large tracts of fallen timber frequently rendering our progress almost impossible. Whenever we came to one of these immense windfalls, each man engaged in the pursuit of a passage through it, and it was while thus employed, and with the idea that I had found one, that I strayed out of sight and hearing of my comrades. We had had a toilsome day. It was quite late in the afternoon. As separations like these had frequently occurred, it gave me no alarm, and I rode on, fully confident of soon rejoining the company, or of finding their camp. I came up with the pack-horse, which Mr. Langford afterwards recovered, and tried to drive him along. But failing to do so, and my eyesight being defective, I spurred forward, intending to return with assistance from the party. Thisincident tended to accelerate my speed. I rode on in the direction which I supposed had been taken, until darkness overtook me in the dense forest. This was disagreeable enough, but caused me no alarm. I had no doubt of being with the party at breakfast the next morning. I selected a spot for comfortable repose, picketed my horse, built a fire, and went to sleep.

The next morning I rose at early dawn, saddled and mounted my horse, and took my course in the supposed direction of the camp. Our ride of the previous day had been up a peninsula jutting into the lake, for the shore of which I started, with the expectation of finding my friends camped on the beach. The forest was quite dark, and the trees so thick, that it was only by a slow process I could get through them at all. In searching for the trail I became somewhat confused. The falling foliage of the pines had obliterated every trace of travel. I was obliged frequently to dismount, and examine the ground for the faintest indications. Coming to an opening, from which I could see several vistas, I dismounted for the purpose of selecting one leading in the direction I had chosen, and leaving my horse unhitched, as had always been my custom, walked a few rods into the forest. While surveying the ground my horse took fright, and I turnedaround in time to see him disappearing at full speed among the trees. That was the last I ever saw of him. It was yet quite dark. My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing-tackle, matches—everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass were attached to the saddle.

I did not yet realize the possibility of a permanent separation from the company. Instead of following up the pursuit of their camp, I engaged in an effort to recover my horse. Half a day's search convinced me of its impracticability. I wrote and posted in an open space several notices, which, if my friends should chance to see, would inform them of my condition and the route I had taken, and then struck out into the forest in the supposed direction of their camp. As the day wore on without any discovery, alarm took the place of anxiety at the prospect of another night alone in the wilderness, and this time without food or fire. But even this dismal foreboding was cheered by the hope that I should soon rejoin my companions, who would laugh at my adventure, and incorporate it as a thrilling episode into the journal of our trip. The bright side of a misfortune, as I found by experience, even under the worst possible circumstances, always presents some features of encouragement. When Ibegan to realize that my condition was one of actual peril, I banished from my mind all fear of an unfavorable result. Seating myself on a log, I recalled every foot of the way I had travelled since the separation from my friends, and the most probable opinion I could form of their whereabouts was, that they had, by a course but little different from mine, passed by the spot where I had posted the notices, learned of my disaster, and were waiting for me to rejoin them there, or searching for me in that vicinity. A night must be spent amid the prostrate trunks before my return could be accomplished. At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long day of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the angry barking of coyotes, and the prolonged, dismal howl of the gray wolf. These sounds, familiar by their constant occurrence throughout the journey, were now full of terror, and drove slumber from my eye-lids, but above allthis, however, was the hope that I should be restored to my comrades the next day.

Early the next morning I rose unrefreshed, and pursued my weary way over the prostrate trunks. It was noon when I reached the spot where my notices were posted. No one had been there. My disappointment was almost overwhelming. For the first time, I realized that I was lost. Then came a crushing sense of destitution. No food, no fire; no means to procure either; alone in an unexplored wilderness, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest human abode, surrounded by wild beasts, and famishing with hunger. It was no time for despondency. A moment afterwards I felt how calamity can elevate the mind, in the formation of the resolution "not to perish in that wilderness."

The hope of finding the party still controlled my plans. I thought, by traversing the peninsula centrally, I would be enabled to strike the shore of the lake in advance of their camp, and near the point of departure for the Madison. Acting upon this impression, I rose from a sleepless couch, and pursued my way through the timber-entangled forest. A feeling of weakness took the place of hunger. Conscious of the need of food, I felt no cravings. Occasionally, while scrambling over logs and through thickets, a sense of faintness and exhaustion wouldcome over me, but I would suppress it with the audible expression, "This won't do; Imustfind my company." Despondency would sometimes strive with resolution for the mastery of my thoughts. I would think of home—of my daughter—and of the possible chance of starvation, or death in some more terrible form; but as often as these gloomy forebodings came, I would strive to banish them with reflections better adapted to my immediate necessities. I recollect at this time discussing the question, whether there was not implanted by Providence in every man a principle of self-preservation equal to any emergency which did not destroy his reason. I decided this question affirmatively a thousand times afterwards in my wanderings, and I record this experience here, that any person who reads it, should he ever find himself in like circumstances, may not despair. There is life in the thought. It will revive hope, allay hunger, renew energy, encourage perseverance, and, as I have proved in my own case, bring a man out of difficulty, when nothing else can avail.

It was mid-day when I emerged from the forest into an open space at the foot of the peninsula. A broad lake of beautiful curvature, with magnificent surroundings, lay before me, glittering in the sunbeams. It was full twelve miles in circumference.A wide belt of sand formed the margin which I was approaching, directly opposite to which, rising seemingly from the very depths of the water, towered the loftiest peak of a range of mountains apparently interminable. The ascending vapor from innumerable hot springs, and the sparkling jet of a single geyser added the feature of novelty to one of the grandest landscapes I ever beheld. Nor was the life of the scene less noticeable than its other attractions. Large flocks of swans and other waterfowl were sporting on the quiet surface of the lake; otters in great numbers performed the most amusing aquatic evolutions; mink and beaver swam around unscared, in most grotesque confusion. Deer, elk, and mountain sheep stared at me, manifesting more surprise than fear at my presence among them. The adjacent forest was vocal with the songs of birds, chief of which were the chattering notes of a species of mocking-bird, whose imitative efforts afforded abundant merriment. Seen under favorable circumstances, this assemblage of grandeur, beauty, and novelty would have been transporting; but jaded with travel, famishing with hunger, and distressed with anxiety, I was in no humor for ecstasy. My tastes were subdued and chastened by the perils which environed me. I longed for food, friends, and protection. Associated with my thoughts, however, wasthe wish that some of my friends of peculiar tastes could enjoy this display of secluded magnificence, now, probably, for the first time beheld by mortal eyes.

The lake was at least one thousand feet lower than the highest point of the peninsula, and several hundred feet below the level of Yellowstone Lake. I recognized the mountain which overshadowed it as the landmark which, a few days before, had received from General Washburn the name of Mount Everts; and as it is associated with some of the most agreeable and terrible incidents of my exile, I feel that I have more than a mere discoverer's right to the perpetuity of that christening. The lake is fed by innumerable small streams from the mountains, and the countless hot springs surrounding it. A large river flows from it, through a cañon a thousand feet in height, in a southeasterly direction, to a distant range of mountains, which I conjectured to be Snake River; and with the belief that I had discovered the source of the great southern tributary of the Columbia, I gave it the name of Bessie Lake, after the

"Sole daughter of my house and heart."

During the first two days, the fear of meeting with Indians gave me considerable anxiety; but,when conscious of being lost, there was nothing I so much desired as to fall in with a lodge of Bannocks or Crows. Having nothing to tempt their cupidity, they would do me no personal harm, and, with the promise of reward, would probably minister to my wants and aid my deliverance. Imagine my delight, while gazing upon the animated expanse of water, at seeing sail out from a distant point a large canoe containing a single oarsman. It was rapidly approaching the shore where I was seated. With hurried steps I paced the beach to meet it, all my energies stimulated by the assurance it gave of food, safety, and restoration to friends. As I drew near to it it turned towards the shore, and oh! bitter disappointment, the object which my eager fancy had transformed into an angel of relief stalked from the water, an enormous pelican, flapped its dragonwings as if in mockery of my sorrow, and flew to a solitary point farther up the lake. This little incident quite unmanned me. The transition from joy to grief brought with it a terrible consciousness of the horrors of my condition. But night was fast approaching, and darkness would come with it. While looking for a spot where I might repose in safety, my attention was attracted to a small green plant of so lively a hue as to form a striking contrast with the deep pine foliage. For closer examinationI pulled it up by the root, which was long and tapering, not unlike a radish. It was a thistle. I tasted it; it was palatable and nutritious. My appetite craved it, and the first meal in four days was made on thistle-roots. Eureka! I had found food. No optical illusion deceived me this time; I could subsist until I rejoined my companions. Glorious counterpoise to the wretchedness of the preceding half-hour!

Overjoyed at this discovery, with hunger allayed, I stretched myself under a tree, upon the foliage which had partially filled a space between contiguous trunks, and fell asleep. How long I slept I know not; but suddenly I was roused by a loud, shrill scream, like that of a human being in distress, poured, seemingly, into the very portals of my ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would permit. The savage beast was snuffing and growling below, apparentlyon the very spot I had just abandoned. I answered every growl with a responsive scream. Terrified at the delay and pawing of the beast, I increased my voice to its utmost volume, broke branches from the limbs, and, in the impotency of fright, madly hurled them at the spot whence the continued howlings proceeded.

Failing to alarm the animal, which now began to make the circuit of the tree, as if to select a spot for springing into it, I shook, with a strength increased by terror, the slender trunk until every limb rustled with the motion. All in vain. The terrible creature pursued his walk around the tree, lashing the ground with his tail, and prolonging his howlings almost to a roar. It was too dark to see, but the movements of the lion kept me apprised of its position. Whenever I heard it on one side of the tree I speedily changed to the opposite—an exercise which, in my weakened state, I could only have performed under the impulse of terror. I would alternately sweat and thrill with horror at the thought of being torn to pieces and devoured by this formidable monster. All my attempts to frighten it seemed unavailing. Disheartened at its persistency, and expecting every moment it would take the deadly leap, I tried to collect my thoughts, and prepare for the fatal encounter which I knew must result.Just at this moment it occurred to me that I would try silence. Clasping the trunk of the tree with both arms, I sat perfectly still. The lion, at this time ranging round, occasionally snuffing and pausing, and all the while filling the forest with the echo of his howlings, suddenly imitated my example. This silence was more terrible, if possible, than the clatter and crash of his movements through the brushwood, for now I did not know from what direction to expect his attack. Moments passed with me like hours. After a lapse of time which I cannot estimate, the beast gave a spring into the thicket and ran screaming into the forest. My deliverance was effected.

Had strength permitted, I should have retained my perch till daylight, but with the consciousness of escape from the jaws of the ferocious brute came a sense of overpowering weakness which almost palsied me, and made my descent from the tree both difficult and dangerous. Incredible as it may seem, I lay down in my old bed, and was soon lost in a slumber so profound that I did not awake until after daylight. The experience of the night seemed like a terrible dream; but the broken limbs which in the agony of consternation I had thrown from the tree, and the rifts made in the fallen foliage by my visitant in his circumambulations, were too convincingevidences of its reality. I could not dwell upon my exposure and escape without shuddering and reflecting that probably like perils would often occur under less fortunate circumstances, and with a more fatal issue. I wondered what fate was in reserve for me—whether I would ultimately sink from exhaustion and perish of starvation, or become the prey of some of the ferocious animals that roamed these vast fastnesses. My thoughts then turned to the loved ones at home. They could never know my fate, and would indulge a thousand conjectures concerning it, not the least distressing of which would be that I had been captured by a band of hostile Sioux, and tortured to death at the stake.

I was roused from this train of reflections by a marked change in the atmosphere. One of those dreary storms of mingled snow and rain, common to these high latitudes, set in. My clothing, which had been much torn, exposed my person to its "pitiless peltings." An easterly wind, rising to a gale, admonished me that it would be furious and of long duration. None of the discouragements I had met with dissipated the hope of rejoicing my friends; but foreseeing the delay, now unavoidable, I knew that my escape from the wilderness must be accomplished, if at all, by my own unaided exertions.This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly seized and killed it, and, plucking its feathers, ate it raw. It was a delicious meal for a half-starved man.

Taking advantage of a lull in the elements, on the morning of the third day I rose early and started in the direction of a large group of hot springs which were steaming under the shadow of Mount Everts. The distance I travelled could not have been less than ten miles. Long before I reached the wonderful cluster of natural caldrons, the storm had recommenced. Chilled through, with my clothing thoroughly saturated, I lay down under a tree upon the heated incrustation until completely warmed. My heels and the sides of my feet were frozen. As soon as warmth had permeated my system, and I had quieted my appetitewith a few thistle-roots, I took a survey of my surroundings, and selected a spot between two springs sufficiently asunder to afford heat at my head and feet. On this spot I built a bower of pine branches, spread its incrusted surface with fallen foliage and small boughs, and stowed myself away to await the close of the storm. Thistles were abundant, and I had fed upon them long enough to realize that they would, for a while at least, sustain life. In convenient proximity to my abode was a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot, and in which, from time to time, I cooked my roots.

This establishment, the best I could improvise with the means at hand, I occupied seven days—the first three of which were darkened by one of the most furious storms I ever saw. The vapor which supplied me with warmth saturated my clothing with its condensations. I was enveloped in a perpetual steam bath. At first this was barely preferable to the storm, but I soon became accustomed to it, and before I left, though thoroughly parboiled, actually enjoyed it.

I had little else to do during my imprisonment but cook, think, and sleep. Of the variety and strangeness of my reflections it is impossible to give the faintest conception. Much of my timewas given to devising means for escape. I recollected to have read, at the time of their publication, the narratives of Lieutenant Strain and Doctor Kane, and derived courage and hope from the reflection that they struggled with and survived perils not unlike those which environed me. The chilling thought would then occur, that they were not alone. They had companions in suffering and sympathy. Each could bear his share of the burden of misery which it fell to my lot to bear alone, and make it lighter from the encouragement of mutual counsel and aid in a cause of common suffering. Selfish as the thought may seem, there was nothing I so much desired as a companion in misfortune. How greatly it would alleviate my distress! What a relief it would be to compare my wretchedness with that of a brother sufferer, and with him devise expedients for every exigency as it occurred! I confess to the weakness, if it be one, of having squandered much pity upon myself during the time I had little else to do.

Nothing gave me more concern than the want of fire. I recalled everything I had ever read or heard of the means by which fire could be produced; but none of them were within my reach. An escape without it was simply impossible. It was indispensable as a protection against nightattacks from wild beasts. Exposure to another storm like the one just over would destroy my life, as this one would have done, but for the warmth derived from the springs. As I lay in my bower anxiously awaiting the disappearance of the snow, which had fallen to the depth of a foot or more, and impressed with the belief that for want of fire I should be obliged to remain among the springs, it occurred to me that I would erect some sort of monument, which might, at some future day, inform a casual visitor of the circumstances under which I had perished. A gleam of sunshine lit up the bosom of the lake, and with it the thought flashed upon my mind that I could, with a lens from my opera-glasses, get fire from Heaven. Oh, happy, life-renewing thought! Instantly subjecting it to the test of experiment, when I saw the smoke curl from the bit of dry wood in my fingers, I felt, if the whole world were offered me for it, I would cast it all aside before parting with that little spark. I was now the happy possessor of food and fire. These would carry me through. All thoughts of failure were instantly abandoned. Though the food was barely adequate to my necessities—a fact too painfully attested by my attenuated body—I had forgotten the cravings of hunger, and had themeans of producing fire. I said to myself, "I will not despair."

My stay at the springs was prolonged several days by an accident that befell me on the third night after my arrival there. An unlucky movement while asleep broke the crust on which I reposed, and the hot steam, pouring upon my hip, scalded it severely before I could escape. This new affliction, added to my frost-bitten feet, already festering, was the cause of frequent delay and unceasing pain through all my wanderings. After obtaining fire, I set to work making preparations for as early departure as my condition would permit. I had lost both knives since parting from the company, but I now made a convenient substitute by sharpening the tongue of a buckle which I cut from my vest. With this I cut the legs and counters from my boots, making of them a passable pair of slippers, which I fastened to my feet as firmly as I could with strips of bark. With the ravellings of a linen handkerchief, aided by the magic buckle-tongue, I mended my clothing. Of the same material I made a fish-line, which, on finding a piece of red tape in one of my pockets better suited to the purpose, I abandoned as a "bad job." I made of a pin that I found in my coat a fish-hook, and, by sewing up the bottoms ofmy boot-legs, constructed a very good pair of pouches to carry my food in, fastening them to my belt by the straps.

Thus accountered, on the morning of the eighth day after my arrival at the springs I bade them a final farewell, and started on my course directly across that portion of the neck of the peninsula between me and the southeast arm of Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was a freshness in the atmosphere truly exhilarating. As I wandered musingly along, the consciousness of being alone, and having surrendered all hope of finding my friends, returned upon me with crushing power. I felt, too, that those friends, by the necessities of their condition, had been compelled to abandon all efforts for my recovery. The thought was full of bitterness and sorrow. I tried to realize what their conjectures were concerning my disappearance; but could derive no consolation from the long and dismal train of circumstances they suggested. Weakened by a long fast, and the unsatisfying nature of the only food I could procure, I know that from this time onward to the day of my rescue, my mind, though unimpaired in those perceptions needful to self-preservation, was in a condition to receive impressions akin to insanity. I was constantly travellingin dream-land, and indulging in strange reveries such as I had never before known. I seemed to possess a sort of duality of being, which, while constantly reminding me of the necessities of my condition, fed my imagination with vagaries of the most extravagant character. Nevertheless I was perfectly conscious of the tendency of these morbid influences, and often tried to shake them off, but they would ever return with increased force, and I finally reasoned myself into the belief that their indulgence, as it afforded me pleasure, could work no harm while it did not interfere with my plans for deliverance. Thus I lived in a world of ideal happiness, and in a world of positive suffering at the same time.

A change in the wind and an overcast sky, accompanied by cold, brought with them a need of warmth. I drew out my lens and touchwood, but alas! there was no sun. I sat down on a log to await his friendly appearance. Hours passed; he did not come. Night, cold freezing night, set in, and found me exposed to all its terrors. A bleak hill-side sparsely covered with pines afforded poor accommodations for a half-clad, famishing man. I could only keep from freezing by the most active exertion in walking, rubbing, and striking my benumbed feet and hands against the logs. It seemed the longest, most terrible night of my life, andglad was I when the approaching dawn enabled me to commence retracing my steps to Bessie Lake. I arrived there at noon, built my first fire on the beach, and remained by it, recuperating for the succeeding two days.

The faint hope that my friends might be delayed by their search for me until I could rejoin them now forsook me altogether. I made my arrangements independent of it. Either of three directions I might take would effect my escape, if life and strength held out. I drew upon the sand of the beach a map of these several courses with reference to my starting-point from the lake, and considered well the difficulties each would present. All were sufficiently defined to avoid mistake. One was to follow Snake River a distance of one hundred miles or more to Eagle Rock bridge; another, to cross the country between the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake and the Madison Mountains, by scaling which I could easily reach the settlements in the Madison Valley; and the other, to retrace my journey over the long and discouraging route by which I had entered the country. Of these routes the last mentioned seemed the least inviting, probably because I had so recently traversed it, and was familiar with its difficulties. I had heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals andviolent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so most unwisely, as will hereafter appear, I adopted it.

Filling my pouches with thistle-roots, I took a parting survey of the little solitude that had afforded me food and fire the preceding ten days, and with something of that melancholy feeling experienced by one who leaves his home to grapple with untried adventures, started for the nearest point on Yellowstone Lake. All that day I travelled over timber-heaps, amid tree tops, and through thickets. At noon I took the precaution to obtain fire. With a brand which I kept alive by frequent blowing, and constant waving to and fro, at a late hour in the afternoon, faint and exhausted, I kindled a fire for the night on the only vacant spot I could find amid a dense wilderness of pines. The deep gloom of the forest, in the spectral light which revealed on all sides of me a compact and unending growth of trunks and an impervious canopy of sombre foliage; the shrieking of night-birds; the super naturally human scream of the mountain lion, the prolonged howl of the wolf, made me insensible to all other forms of suffering.

The burn on my hip was so inflamed that I could only sleep in a sitting posture. Seated with my back against a tree, the smoke from the fire almost enveloping me in its suffocating folds, I vainly tried, amid the din and uproar of this horrible serenade, to woo the drowsy god. My imagination was instinct with terror. At one moment it seemed as if, in the density of a thicket, I could see the blazing eyes of a formidable forest monster fixed upon me, preparatory to a deadly leap; at another I fancied that I heard the swift approach of a pack of yelping wolves through the distant brushwood, which in a few moments would tear me limb from limb. Whenever, by fatigue and weakness, my terrors yielded to drowsiness, the least noise roused me to a sense of the hideousness of my condition. Once, in a fitful slumber, I fell forward into the fire, and inflicted a wretched burn on my hand. Oh! with what agony I longed for day!

A bright and glorious morning succeeded the dismal night, and brought with it the conviction that I had been the victim of uncontrollable nervous excitement. I resolved henceforth to banish it altogether, and, in much better spirits than I anticipated, resumed my journey towards the lake. Another day of unceasing toil among the tree-tops and thicketsovertook me, near sunset, standing upon a lofty headland jutting into the lake, and commanding a magnificent prospect of the mountains and valley over an immense area. In front of me, at a distance of fifty miles away, in the clear blue of the horizon, rose the arrowy peaks of the Three Tetons. On the right, and apparently in close proximity to the eminence I occupied, rolled the picturesque range of the Madison, scarred with clefts, ravines, gorges, and cañons, each of which glittered in the sunlight or deepened in shadow as the fitful rays of the descending luminary glanced along their varied rocky irregularities. Above where I stood were the lofty domes of Mounts Langford and Doane, marking the limits of that wonderful barrier which had so long defied human power in its efforts to subdue it. Rising seemingly from the promontory which favored my vision was the familiar summit of Mount Everts, at the base of which I had dwelt so long, and which still seemed to hold me within its friendly shadow. All the vast country within this grand enclosure of mountains and lake, scarred and seamed with the grotesque ridges, rocky escarpments, undulating hillocks, and miniature lakes, and steaming with hot springs, produced by the volcanic forces of a former era, lay spread out before me like a vast panorama.

I doubt if distress and suffering can ever entirelyobliterate all sense of natural grandeur and magnificence. Lost in the wonder and admiration inspired by this vast world of beauties, I nearly forgot to improve the few moments of remaining sunshine to obtain fire. With a lighted brand in my hand, I effected a most difficult and arduous descent of the abrupt and stony headland to the beach of the lake. The sand was soft and yielding. I kindled a fire, and removing the stiffened slippers from my feet, attached them to my belt, and wandered barefoot along the sandy shore to gather wood for the night. The dry, warm sand was most grateful to my lacerated and festering feet, and for a long time after my wood-pile was supplied, I sat with them uncovered. At length, conscious of the need of every possible protection from the freezing night atmosphere, I sought my belt for the slippers, and one was missing. In gathering the wood it had become detached and was lost. Darkness was closing over the landscape, when, sorely disheartened with the thought of passing the night with one foot exposed to a freezing temperature, I commenced a search for the missing slipper. I knew I could not travel a day without it. Fearful that it had dropped into the lake, and been carried by some recurrent wave beyond recovery, my search for an hour among fallen trees and bushes, up the hill-side and alongthe beach, in darkness and with flaming brands, at one moment crawling on hands and feet into a brush-heap, another peering among logs and bushes and stones, was filled with anxiety and dismay. Success at length rewarded my perseverance, and no language can describe the joy with which I drew the cause of so much distress from beneath the limb that, as I passed, had torn it from my belt. With a feeling of great relief I now sat down in the sand, my back to a log, and listened to the dash and roar of the waves. It was a wild lullaby, but had no terrors for a worn-out man. I never passed a night of more refreshing sleep. When I awoke my fire was extinguished save a few embers, which I soon fanned into a cheerful flame. I ate breakfast with some relish, and started along the beach in pursuit of a camp, believing that if successful I should find directions what to do, and food to sustain me. The search which I was making lay in the direction of my pre-arranged route to the Madison Mountains, which I intended to approach at their lowest point of altitude.

Buoyed by the hope of finding food and counsel, and another night of undisturbed repose in the sand, I resumed my journey along the shore, and at noon found the camp last occupied by my friends on the lake. I struck their trail in the sand some time beforeI came to it. A thorough search for food in the ground and trees revealed nothing, and no notice to apprise me of their movements could be seen. A dinner-fork, which afterwards proved to be of infinite service in digging roots, and a yeast-powder can, which would hold half a pint, and which I converted into a drinking-cup and dinner-pot, were the only evidences that the spot had ever been visited by civilized man. "Oh!" thought I, "why did they forget to leave me food!" It never occurred to me that they might have cached it, as I have since learned they did, in several spots nearer the place of my separation from them. I left the camp in deep dejection, with the purpose of following the trail of the party to the Madison. Carefully inspecting the faint traces left of their course of travel, I became satisfied that from some cause they had made a retrograde movement from this camp, and departed from the lake at a point farther down stream. Taking this as an indication that there were obstructions above, I commenced retracing my steps along the beach. An hour of sunshine in the afternoon enabled me to procure fire, which, in the usual manner, I carried to my camping-place. There I built a fire, and to protect myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, andvery soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semicircle of burning trees. Among the disasters of this fire, there was none I felt more seriously than the loss of my buckle-tongue knife, my pin fish-hook, and tape fish-line.

The grandeur of the burning forest surpasses description. An immense sheet of flame, following to their tops the lofty trees of an almost impenetrable pine forest, leaping madly from top to top, and sending thousands of forked tongues a hundred feet or more athwart the midnight darkness, lighting up with lurid gloom and glare the surrounding scenery of lake and mountains, fills the beholder with mingled feelings of awe and astonishment. I never before saw anything so terribly beautiful. It was marvellous to witness the flash-like rapidity with which the flames would mount the loftiest trees. The roaring, cracking, crashing, and snapping of falling limbs and burning foliage was deafening. On, on, on travelled the destructive element, until it seemed as if the whole forest was enveloped in flame. Afar up the wood-crowned hill, the overtoppingtrees shot forth pinnacles and walls and streamers of arrowy fire. The entire hill-side was an ocean of glowing and surging fiery billows. Favored by the gale, the conflagration spread with lightning swiftness over an illimitable extent of country, filling the atmosphere with driving clouds of suffocating fume, and leaving a broad and blackened trail of spectral trunks shorn of limbs and foliage, smoking and burning, to mark the immense sweep of its devastation.

Resolved to search for a trail no longer, when daylight came I selected for a landmark the lowest notch in the Madison Range. Carefully surveying the jagged and broken surface over which I must travel to reach it, I left the lake and pushed into the midst of its intricacies. All the day, until nearly sunset, I struggled over rugged hills, through windfalls, thickets, and matted forests, with the rock-ribbed beacon constantly in view. As I advanced it receded, as if in mockery of my toil. Night overtook me with my journey half accomplished. The precaution of obtaining fire gave me warmth and sleep, and long before daylight I was on my way. The hope of finding an easy pass into the valley of the Madison inspired me with fresh courage and determination; but long before I arrived at the base of the range, I scanned hopelessly its insurmountabledifficulties. It presented to my eager vision an endless succession of inaccessible peaks and precipices, rising thousands of feet sheer and bare above the plain. No friendly gorge or gully or cañon invited such an effort as I could make to scale this rocky barrier. Oh for the faith that could remove mountains! How soon should this colossal fabric open at my approach! What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable—down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, and thirty more restore me to friends who had abundance. Supposing that I should find plenty of thistles, I had left the lake with a small supply, and that was entirely spent. I looked in vain for them where I then was.

While I was thus considering whether to remain and search for a passage or return to the Yellowstone, I experienced one of those strange hallucinations which many of my friends have misnamedinsanity, but which to me was Providence. An old clerical friend, for whose character and counsel I had always cherished peculiar regard, in some unaccountable manner seemed to be standing before me, charged with advice which would relieve my perplexity. I seemed to hear him say, as if in a voice and with the manner of authority:

"Go back immediately, as rapidly as your strength will permit. There is no food here, and the idea of scaling these rocks is madness."

"Doctor," I rejoined, "the distance is too great. I cannot live to travel it."

"Say not so. Your life depends upon the effort. Return at once. Start now, lest your resolution falter. Travel as fast and as far as possible—it is your only chance."

"Doctor, I am rejoiced to meet you in this hour of distress, but doubt the wisdom of your counsel. I am within seventy miles of Virginia. Just over these rocks, a few miles away, I shall find friends. My shoes are nearly worn out, my clothes are in tatters, and my strength is almost overcome. As a last trial, it seems to me I can but attempt to scale this mountain or perish in the effort, if God so wills."

"Don't think of it. Your power of endurance will carry you through. I will accompany you.Put your trust in Heaven. Help yourself and God will help you."

Overcome by these and other persuasions, and delighted with the idea of having a travelling companion, I plodded my way over the route I had come, intending at a certain point to change it so as to strike the river at the foot of the lake. Stopping after a few miles of travel, I had no difficulty in procuring fire, and passed a comfortable night. When I resumed my journey the next day the sun was just rising. Whenever I was disposed, as was often the case, to question the wisdom of the change of routes, my old friend appeared to be near with words of encouragement, but his reticence on other subjects both surprised and annoyed me. I was impressed at times, during the entire journey, with the belief that my return was a fatal error, and if my deliverance had failed should have perished with that conviction. Early this day I deflected from my old route and took my course for the foot of the lake, with the hope, by constant travel, to reach it the next day. The distance was greater than I anticipated. Nothing is more deceptive than distance in these high latitudes. At the close of each of the two succeeding days, my point of destination was seemingly as far from me as at the moment I took leave of the MadisonRange, and when, cold and hungry, on the afternoon of the fourth day, I gathered the first food I had eaten in nearly five days, and lay down by my fire near the debouchure of the river, I had nearly abandoned all hope of escape.

At daybreak I was on the trail down the river. The thought I had adopted from the first, "I will cot perish in this wilderness," often revived my sinking spirits, when, from faintness and exhaustion, I felt but little desire for life. Once, while struggling through a field of tangled trunks which seemed interminable, at one of the pauses I found myself seriously considering whether it was not preferable to die there than renew the effort to proceed. I felt that all attempt to escape was but a bitter prolongation of the agony of dissolution. A seeming whisper in the air, "While there is life there is hope; take courage," broke the delusion, and I clambered on. I did not forget to improve the mid-day sun to procure fire. Sparks from the lighted brands had burned my hands and crisped the nails of my fingers, and the smoke from them had tanned my face to the complexion of an Indian. While passing through an opening in the forest I found the tip of a gull's wing; it was fresh. I made a fire upon the spot, mashed the bones with a stone, and consigning them to my camp kettle, the yeast-powderbox, made half a pint of delicious broth. The remainder of that day and the night ensuing were given to sleep.

I lost all sense of time. Days and nights came and went, and were numbered only by the growing consciousness that I was gradually starving. I felt no hunger, did not eat to appease appetite, but to renew strength. I experienced but little pain. The gaping sores on my feet, the severe burn on my hip, the festering crevices at the joints of my fingers, all terrible in appearance, had ceased to give me the least concern. The roots which supplied my food had suspended the digestive power of the stomach, and their fibres were packed in it in a matted, compact mass.

Not so with my hours of slumber. They were visited by the most luxurious dreams. I would apparently visit the most gorgeously decorated restaurants of New York and Washington; sit down to immense tables spread with the most appetizing viands; partake of the richest oyster stews and plumpest pies; engage myself in the labor and preparation of curious dishes, and with them fill range upon range of elegantly furnished tables until they fairly groaned beneath the accumulated dainties prepared by my own hands. Frequently the entire night would seem to have been spent ingetting up a sumptuous dinner. I would realize the fatigue of roasting, boiling, baking, and fabricating the choicest dishes known to the moderncuisine, and in my disturbed slumbers would enjoy with epicurean relish the food thus furnished even to repletion. Alas! there was more luxury than life in these somnolent vagaries.

It was a cold, gloomy day when I arrived in the vicinity of the falls. The sky was overcast and the snow-capped peaks rose chilly and bleak through the biting atmosphere. The moaning of the wind through the pines, mingling with the sullen roar of the falls, was strangely in unison with my own saddened feelings. I had no heart to gaze upon a scene which a few weeks before had inspired me with rapture and awe. One moment of sunshine was of more value to me than all the marvels amid which I was famishing. But the sun had hid his face and denied me all hope of obtaining fire. The only alternative was to seek shelter in a thicket. I penetrated the forest a long distance before finding one that suited me. Breaking and crowding my way into its very midst, I cleared a spot large enough to recline upon, interlaced the surrounding brushwood, gathered the fallen foliage into a bed, and lay down with a prayer for sleep and forgetfulness. Alas! neither came. The coldness increasedthrough the night. Constant friction with my hands and unceasing beating with my legs and feet saved me from freezing. It was the most terrible night of my journey, and when, with the early dawn, I pulled myself into a standing posture, it was to realize that my right arm was partially paralyzed, and my limbs so stiffened with cold as to be almost immovable. Fearing lest paralysis should suddenly seize upon the entire system, I literally dragged myself through the forest to the river. Seated near the verge of the great cañon below the falls, I anxiously awaited the appearance of the sun. That great luminary never looked so beautiful as when, a few moments afterwards, he emerged from the clouds and exposed his glowing beams to the concentrating powers of my lens. I kindled a mighty flame, fed it with every dry stick and broken tree-top I could find, and without motion, and almost without sense, remained beside it several hours. The great falls of the Yellowstone were roaring within three hundred yards, and the awful cañon yawned almost at my feet; but they had lost all charm for me. In fact, I regarded them as enemies which had lured me to destruction, and felt a sullen satisfaction in morbid indifference.

My old friend and adviser, whose presence I had felt more than seen the last few days, now forsookme altogether. But I was not alone. By some process which I was too weak to solve, my arms, legs, and stomach were transformed into so many travelling companions. Often for hours I would plod along conversing with these imaginary friends. Each had his peculiar wants which he expected me to supply. The stomach was importunate in his demand for a change of diet—complained incessantly of the roots I fed him, their present effect and more remote consequences. I would try to silence him with promises, beg of him to wait a few days, and when this failed of the quiet I desired, I would seek to intimidate him by declaring, as a sure result of negligence, our inability to reach home alive. All to no purpose—he tormented me with his fretful humors through the entire journey. The others would generally concur with him in these fancied altercations. The legs implored me for rest, and the arms complained that I gave them too much to do. Troublesome as they were, it was a pleasure to realize their presence. I worked for them, too, with right good will, doing many things for their seeming comfort which, had I felt myself alone, would have remained undone. They appeared to be perfectly helpless of themselves; would do nothing for me or for each other. I often wondered, while they ate and slept so much, thatthey did not aid in gathering wood and kindling fires. As a counterpoise to their own inertia, whenever they discovered languor in me on necessary occasions, they were not wanting in words of encouragement and cheer. I recall as I write, an instance where, by prompt and timely interposition, the representative of the stomach saved me from a death of dreadful agony. One day I came to a small stream issuing from a spring of mild temperature on the hill-side, swarming with minnows. I caught some with my hands, and ate them raw. To my taste they were delicious. But the stomach refused them, accused me of attempting to poison him, and would not be reconciled until I had emptied my pouch of the few fish I had put there for future use. Those that I ate made me very sick. Poisoned by the mineral in the water, had I glutted my appetite with them as I intended, I should doubtless have died in the wilderness, in excruciating torment.

ill236

IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.

IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.

IMAGINARY COMPANIONS.

A gradual mental introversion grew upon me as physical weakness increased. The grand and massive scenery which, on the upward journey, had aroused every enthusiastic impulse of my nature, was now tame and spiritless. My thoughts were turned in upon myself—upon the dreadful fate which apparently lay just before me—and the possible happiness of the existence beyond. All doubt of immortality fled in the light of present realities. So vivid were my conceptions of the future that at times I longed for death, not less as the beginning of happiness than as a release from misery. Led on by these reflections, I would recall the varied incidents of my journey—my escape from the lion, from fire, my return from the Madison Range—and in all of them I saw how much I had been indebted to that mysterious protection which comes only from the throne of the Eternal. And yet, starving, foot-sore, half blind, worn to a skeleton, was it surprising that I lacked the faith needful to buoy me above the dark waters of despair, which I now felt were closing around me?

In less serious moods, as I struggled along, my thoughts would revert to the single being on whom my holiest affections centred—my daughter. What a tie was that to bind me to life! Oh! could I be restored to her for a single hour, long enough for parting counsel and blessing, it would be joy unspeakable! Long hours of painful travel were relieved of physical suffering by this absorbing agony of the mind, which, when from my present standpoint I contrast it with the personal calamities of my exile, swells into mountains.

To return from this digression. At many of thestreams on my route I spent hours in endeavoring to catch trout, with a hook fashioned from the rim of my broken spectacles, but in no instance with success. The tackle was defective. The country was full of game in great variety. I saw large herds of deer, elk, antelope, occasionally a bear, and many smaller animals. Numerous flocks of ducks, geese, swans, and pelicans inhabited the lakes and rivers. But with no means of killing them, their presence was a perpetual aggravation. At all the camps of our company I stopped and recalled many pleasant incidents associated with them.

One afternoon, when approaching "Tower Falls," I came upon a large hollow tree, which, from the numerous tracks surrounding it, and the matted foliage in the cavity, I recognized as the den of a bear. It was a most inviting couch. Gathering a needful supply of wood and brush, I lighted a circle of piles around the tree, crawled into the nest, and passed a night of unbroken slumber. I rose the next morning to find that during the night the fires had communicated with the adjacent forest, and burned a large space in all directions, doubtless intimidating the rightful proprietor of the nest, and saving me from another midnight adventure.

At "Tower Falls" I spent the first half of aday in capturing a grasshopper, and the remainder in a fruitless effort to catch a mess of trout. In the agony of disappointment, I resolved to fish no more. A spirit of rebellion seized me. I determined that thistles should thenceforth be my only sustenance. "Why is it," I asked of myself, "that in the midst of abundance, every hour meeting with objects which would restore strength and vigor and energy, every moment contriving some device to procure the nourishment my wasting frame required, I should meet with these repeated and discouraging failures?" Thoughts of the early teaching of a pious mother suppressed these feelings. Oh! how often have the recollections of a loved New England home, and the memories of a happy childhood, cheered my sinking spirits, and dissipated the gathering gloom of despair! There were thoughts and feelings and mental anguishes without number, that visited me during my period of trial, that never can be known to any but my God and myself. Bitter as was my experience, it was not unrelieved by some of the most precious moments I have ever known.

Soon after leaving "Tower Falls," I entered the open country. Pine forests and windfalls were changed for sage brush and desolation, with occasional tracts of stunted verdure, barren hillsides,exhibiting here and there an isolated clamp of dwarf trees, and ravines filled with the rockydebrisof adjacent mountains. My first camp on this part of the route, for the convenience of getting wood, was made near the summit of a range of towering foot-hills. Towards morning a storm of wind and snow nearly extinguished my fire. I became very cold; the storm was still raging when I arose, and the ground white with snow. I was perfectly bewildered, and had lost my course of travel. No visible object, seen through the almost blinding storm, reassured me, and there was no alternative but to find the river and take my direction from its current. Fortunately, after a few hours of stumbling and scrambling among rocks and over crests, I came to the precipitous side of the cañon through which it ran, and with much labor, both of hands and feet, descended it to the margin. I drank copiously of its pure waters, and sat beside it for a long time, waiting for the storm to abate, so that I could procure fire. The day wore on, without any prospect of a termination to the storm. Chilled through, my tattered clothing saturated, I saw before me a night of horrors unless I returned to my fire. The scramble up the side of the rocky cañon, in many places nearly perpendicular, was the hardest work of my journey. Often, while clinging tothe jutting rocks with hands and feet, to reach a shelving projection, my grasp would unclose and I would slide many feet down the sharp declivity. It was night when, sore from the bruises I had received, I reached my fire; the storm, still raging, had nearly extinguished it. I found a few embers in the ashes, and with much difficulty kindled a flame. Here, on this bleak mountain side, as well as I now remember, I must have passed two nights beside the fire, in the storm. Many times during each night I crawled to the little clump of trees to gather wood, and brush, and the broken limbs of fallen tree-tops. All the sleep I obtained was snatched from the intervals which divided these labors. It was so harassed with frightful dreams as to afford little rest. I remember, before I left this camp, stripping up my sleeves to look at my shrunken arms. Flesh and blood had apparently left them. The skin clung to the bones like wet parchment. A child's hand could have clasped them from wrist to shoulder. "Yet," thought I, "it is death to remain; I cannot perish in this wilderness."

Taking counsel of this early formed resolution, I hobbled on my course through the snow, which was rapidly disappearing before the rays of the warm sun. Well knowing that I should find no thistlesin the open country, I had filled my pouches with them before leaving the forest. My supply was running low, and there were yet several days of heavy mountain travel between me and Botelers' Ranch. With the most careful economy, it could last but two or three days longer. I saw the necessity of placing myself and imaginary companions upon allowance. The conflict which ensued with the stomach, when I announced this resolution, required great firmness to carry through. I tried wheedling and coaxing and promising; failing in these, I threatened to part company with a comrade so unreasonable, and he made no further complaint.

Two or three days before I was found, while ascending a steep hill, I fell from exhaustion into the sage brush, without the power to rise. Unbuckling my belt, as was my custom, I soon fell asleep. I have no idea of the time I slept, but upon awaking I fastened my belt, scrambled to my feet, and pursued my journey. As night drew on I selected a camping-place, gathered wood into a heap, and felt for my lens to procure fire. It was gone. If the earth had yawned to swallow me I would not have been more terrified. The only chance for life was lost. The last hope had fled. I seemed to feel the grim messenger who had been so long pursuingme knocking at the portals of my heart as I lay down by the side of the wood-pile, and covered myself with limbs and sage brush, with the dreadful conviction that my struggle for life was over, and that I should rise no more. The floodgates of misery seemed now to be opened, and it rushed in a living tide upon my soul. With the rapidity of lightning, I ran over every event of my life. Thoughts doubled and trebled upon me, until I saw, as if in vision, the entire past of my existence. It was all before me, as if painted with a sunbeam, and all seemingly faded like the phantoms of a vivid dream.

As calmness returned, reason resumed her empire. Fortunately, the weather was comfortable. I summoned all the powers of my memory, thought over every foot of the day's travel, and concluded that the glass must have become detached from my belt while sleeping. Five long miles over the hills must be retraced to regain it. There was no alternative, and before daylight I had staggered over half the distance. I found the lens on the spot where I had slept. No incident of my journey brought with it more of joy and relief.

Returning to the camp of the previous night, I lighted the pile I had prepared, and lay down for a night to rest. It was very cold, and towardsmorning commenced snowing. With difficulty I kept the fire alive. Sleep was impossible. When daylight came, I was impressed with the idea that I must go on despite the storm. A flash—momentary but vivid—came over me, that I should be saved. Snatching a lighted brand, I started through the storm. In the afternoon the storm abated and the sun shone at intervals. Coming to a small clump of trees, I set to work to prepare a camp. I laid the brand down which I had preserved with so much care, to pick up a few dry sticks with which to feed it, until I could collect wood for a camp-fire, and in the few minutes thus employed it expired. I sought to revive it, but every spark was gone. Clouds obscured the sun, now near the horizon, and the prospect of another night of exposure without fire became fearfully imminent. I sat down with my lens and the last remaining piece of touchwood I possessed to catch a gleam of sunshine, feeling that my life depended on it. In a few moments the cloud passed, and with trembling hands I presented the little disk to the face of the glowing luminary. Quivering with excitement lest a sudden cloud should interpose, a moment passed before I could hold the lens steadily enough to concentrate a burning focus. At length it came. The little thread of smoke curled gracefullyup wards from the Heaven-lighted spark, which, a few moments afterwards, diffused with warmth and comfort my desolate lodgings.

I resumed my journey the next morning, with the belief that I should make no more fires with my lens. I must save a brand, or perish. The day was raw and gusty; an east wind, charged with storm, penetrated my nerves with irritating keenness. After walking a few miles the storm came on, and a coldness unlike any other I had ever felt seized me. It entered all my bones. I attempted to build a fire, but could not make it burn. Seizing a brand, I stumbled blindly on, stopping within the shadow of every rock and clump to renew energy for a final conflict for life. A solemn conviction that death was near, that at each pause I made my limbs would refuse further service, and that I should sink helpless and dying in my path, overwhelmed me with terror. Amid all this tumult of the mind, I felt that I had done all that man could do. I knew that in two or three days more I could effect my deliverance, and I derived no little satisfaction from the thought that, as I was now in the broad trail, my remains would be found, and my friends relieved of doubt as to my fate. Once only the thought flashed across my mind that I should be saved, and I seemed to hear a whispered commandto "struggle on." Groping along the side of a hill, I became suddenly sensible of a sharp reflection, as of burnished steel. Looking up, through half-closed eyes, two rough but kindly faces met my gaze.

"Are you Mr. Everts?"

"Yes. All that is left of him."

"We have come for you."

"Who sent you?"

"Judge Lawrence and other friends."

"God bless him, and them, and you! I am saved!" and with these words, powerless of further effort, I fell forward into the arms of my preservers, in a state of unconsciousness. I was saved. On the very brink of the river which divides the known from the unknown, strong arms snatched me from the final plunge, and kind ministrations wooed me back to life.

Baronet and Prichette, my two preservers, by the usual appliances, soon restored me to consciousness, made a camp upon the spot, and while one went to Fort Ellis, a distance of seventy miles, to return with remedies to restore digestion and an ambulance to convey me to that post, the other sat by my side, and with all the care, sympathy, and solicitude of a brother, ministered to my frequent necessities. In two days I was sufficiently recoveredin strength to be moved twenty miles down the trail to the cabin of some miners who were prospecting in that vicinity. From these men I received every possible attention which their humane and generous natures could devise. A good bed was provided, game was killed to make broth, and the best stores of their larder placed at my command. For four days, at a time when every day's labor was invaluable in their pursuit, they abandoned their work to aid in my restoration. Owing to the protracted inaction of the system, and the long period which must transpire before Prichette's return with remedies, my friends had serious doubts of my recovery.

The night after my arrival at the cabin, while suffering the most excruciating agony, and thinking that I had only been saved to die among friends, a loud knock was heard at the cabin door. An old man in mountain costume entered—a hunter, whose life was spent among the mountains. He was on his way to find a brother. He listened to the story of my sufferings, and tears rapidly coursed each other down his rough, weather-beaten face. But when he was told of my present necessity, brightening in a moment, he exclaimed:

"Why, Lord bless you, if that is all, I have thevery remedy you need. In two hours' time all shall be well with you."

He left the cabin, returning in a moment with a sack filled with the fat of a bear which he had killed a few hours before. From this he rendered out a pint measure of oil. I drank the whole of it. It proved to be the needed remedy, and the next day, freed from pain, with appetite and digestion reestablished, I felt that good food and plenty of it were only necessary for an early recovery.

In a day or two I took leave of my kind friends, with a feeling of regret at parting, and of gratitude for their kindness as enduring as life.

Meeting the carriage on my way, I preceded to Boseman, where I remained among old friends, who gave me every attention until my health was sufficiently restored to allow me to return to my home at Helena.

My heartfelt thanks are due to the members of the expedition, all of whom devoted seven, and some of them twelve days to the search for me before they left Yellowstone Lake; and to Judge Lawrence, of Helena, and the friends who co-operated with him in the offer of reward which sent Baronet and Prichette to my rescue.

My narrative is finished. In the course of events the time is not far distant when the wonders of theYellowstone will be made accessible to all lovers of sublimity, grandeur, and novelty in natural scenery, and its majestic waters become the abode of civilization and refinement; and when that arrives, I hope, in happier mood and under more auspicious circumstances, to revisit scenes fraught for me with such thrilling interest; to ramble along the glowing beach of Bessie Lake; to sit down amid the hot springs under the shadow of Mount Everts; to thread unscared the mazy forests, retrace the dreary journey to the Madison Range, and with enraptured fancy gaze upon the mingled glories and terrors of the great falls and marvellous cañon, and to enjoy, in happy contrast with the trials they recall, their power to delight, elevate, and overwhelm the mind with wondrous and majestic beauty.

Back to IndexNext