The artist may paint you a bit of sky, a little water, a few trees, and mayhap a bluebird or a merry brown thrush, but can he paint the gently moving restless air or the storm that sweeps down the mountainside, the , the , the roar of the river, the whir of the bluebird’s wing as it rises to flight, or the thrush’s song?  
It is beyond the power of brush or pen to paint the , the beauty, the , the awful of this land of Malebolge, sulphurous pits and boiling lakes, a fit place for Minos, infernal judge; the beauty of a playing geyser, the sparkle of the water as it leaps the rocky and pours down the mountain’s great throat, or the scene of the famous Mud Geyser where,—
 
“Bellowing there
A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
By warring wings. The stormy blast of hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy.
When arriving before the ruinous sweep,
There are heard, there lamentations, moans.”
With horrible groanings the thick sulphurous mass is driven against the sides of the deep .
 
“Wherefore delay in such a mournful place?
We came within the fosses deep, that moat
This region comfortless, the walls appeared
As they were framed in iron, we had made
Wide circuit ere we reached the place where loud
The (guide) cried
‘Go , the entrance is here.’”
—Dante.
 
We had circled the Hot Springs, down a way by a ladder we entered the Devil’s kitchen. This is a geyser. The way was dark and the air hot as the heat the walls from the Hot Springs. The water of these springs is rich in minerals, , iron and sulphur. As the water boils over and evaporates it leaves deposits on the them with a delicate frost work of and beautiful . Cream and deepening into rich shades of red, brown, green and yellow.
 
The Cleopatra Spring is one of the most beautiful. Located on a forty feet high[238] and covering an area of three-quarters of an acre, the deep blue water, the sparkling white basin with its pale yellow frost-fretted rivals the touch of the artist’s brush.
 
Just below the springs the broad level in front of the United States barracks covers a burnt-out area. We were on a of the hotel observing the when one of the horses broke through the thin crust. His rider recovered him and they were off before the treacherous ground gave way. A rope was brought and the soldiers lowered one of their comrades, who dropped thirty-five feet before he struck a landing place. showed the entire platte to be dangerously honeycombed.
 
Through the Golden Gate we enter Kingman’s Pass. The stupendous walls of golden yellow rock rise sheer hundreds of feet high on either side.
 
Just as we turned a point in the road such “Ohs” and “Ahs” as the Falls of the Gardener River burst on our sight. The river falls sixty feet into a series of shallow basins of covered rock. To the sides of the basin cling wavering ferns and delicate spray-kissed flowers.
 
The most wonderful mountain in the world stands on the shore of Lake. A glass mountain of pure jet black glass, rising skyward in basalt like columns from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet. The black glass here and there with red and yellow in the sunshine as peak and catch, and reflect the sun’s rays.
 
Large blocks have become detached from time to time forming a glass slide into the lake. is a species of . Pliny says this glass was first found in Ethiopia, but the only glass mountain in the world stands on the shore of Beaver Lake. The Indians used this glass for arrow heads and in making sharp-edged tools.
 
The , lily-padded of Beaver Lake is haunted by wild geese. This lake is the beaver’s own. These little animals constructed it by damming up Green for a distance of two miles. Some thirty dams sweep in curves from side to side each having a fall from two to six feet.
 
 
 
The geyser basins are places of unusual interest and beauty. No scene in the park is lovelier than these areas of bubbling pools, boiling lakes and steaming geysers, at sunrise, when the columns of white steam, to a roseate by the rising sun, against the background of dark green pines. Presently,—
 
“There came o’er the waves
Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made
Either shore tremble, as if a wind
Impetuous, from conflicting sprung,
That ’gainst some forest driving with all his might,
Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and
Afar; then, passing proudly sweeps
His whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.”
—Dante.
Thus warned we moved away just as Old Faithful shot his boiling waters skyward.
 
“Ask thou no more
Now ’gin rueful wailings to be heard.
The gloomy region shook so terribly
That yet with clammy dews chill my brow.
The sad earth gave a blast.”
—Dante.
And steam and water shot up a column two hundred feet high. The Giant Geyser was playing.
 
“We the circle crossed
To the next steep, arriving at a well
That boiling pours itself down a foss
from its source.”
—Dante.
 
 
This well is the formidable Excelsior Geyser which pours its waters into the Fire Hole River.
 
The Paint Pots are springs which boil their pasty clay, which boiling over hardens, building up a rim around the pot. In one group of seventeen pots are as many different colors.
 
The center pot is a pearl gray, while grouped about it are smaller pots of various shades of pink, gray, chocolate, yellow, red, lavender, emerald and and white, thousands of years old that would make the heart of a plasterer glad. Here is a plaster which when hardened, whether by sun or fire, never cracks.
 
Of a somewhat different character are the chocolate on the banks of the Fire Hole River. These springs are rich in iron. The hardens as the water pours out, building up gradually a brown jug-like .
 
The Blue Mud Pot is quite as interesting as the Paint Pots. Its circular basin is twenty feet in diameter. The mud is about the of thick plaster. This mud pot presents a beautiful picture as the of mud burst with a thud-like noise giving off perfect little rings which to the sides of the crater. This spring is strongly impregnated with alum. In this vicinity is a spring of pure alum water and several of sulphate of copper.
 
These springs are clear and deep, having beautiful basins, the rims of which are lined with incrustations of brilliant colors.
 
In a gloomy wood we came to the Devil’s frying pan, a shallow, hot, boiling spring which , sizzles and equal to any old-time, three legged skillet, sending out sulphurous odors that would delight the of Lucifer himself.
 
Hell’s half acre is quite as interesting as its name. Here in times gone by Excelsior Geyser shook the earth.
 
One lovely morning we mounted to our seats in the stage coach, the driver cracked his whip over the heads of the leaders, six creamy white horses up their ears, sprang forward at a and we were off to the Divide.
 
We had just crossed a where deer were grazing when a hail storm, a mountain hail storm, overtook us. In five minutes the ground was white, the hail laying two inches deep, and such hail, an Illinois hail storm is tame in comparison.
 
 
The horses forward, the hail was left behind, and we paused on the Great Divide. Down from this the waters flow east and west.
 
The lovely Lake Shoshone comes into view and presently we are standing on its shore looking down through its blue waters. The of this lake is greater than that of its royal neighbor, the Yellowstone.
 
This most lovely of all American lakes, the Yellow Stone, is perched high in the very heart of the mountains, its blue waters lapping the base of cold, snow-capped peaks, rivals in beauty the far famed Lake Maggiore.
 
On these beautiful shores fair Nausicaa with her golden ball might have to tread the of the ball-dance.
 
The elevation of this lake is marvelous for its size. drop Mount Washington, the highest peak in the White Mountains, into the center of it and the summit would be swept by a current half a mile deep.
 
This lake affords royal sport. Here are the most beautiful fish in the world, the rainbow .
 
Through a pine-clad flanked by high the impetuous Yellowstone River makes[244] its way until it leaps the great falls and down three hundred and fifty feet to the cañon below.
 
On the sides of the spray-washed walls grow and algæ of every hue of green, ochre, orange, brown, , saffron and red. On peaks are brown eagles’ nests.
 
The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, would you describe this marvelous gorge, language is , words are poor.
 
Would you paint it, on your palette place all colors yet produced by the of man. Mix them with rainbow drops. The pale faced moon will lend a shade, the stars another and the sun still another as he drops blood-red down through the mists of the sea. Stir and mix with matchless skill until you have of colors half a hundred and shades as many more. Now boldly dash the stupendous walls, castles, , , columns, and where already they are gleaming a bright vermilion as they from Vulcan’s furnace issued long ago.
 
When you have these colors let Phaethon drive down the gorge in his chariot of fire leaving behind the gleam and the glow of it.
 
Here, the Sioux chiefs, by their camp fires muttered their griefs and their . Here Rain in the Face cried out in revenge, revenge on the White chief with the Yellow Hair.
 
Yonder lay Sitting Bull with his three thousand hidden in and cave. Into the fateful dashed the White chief with his pitiful three hundred men. Like a mountain Sitting Bull and his braves swept down upon that band, and but one was left to tell the story of the Little Big Horn, but one to tell of the gallant stand of Custer and his brave men.
 
Only two survived of all that noble band, one, Curly, the half-breed , and the other, “Comanche,” the horse of Captain Keogh. Comanche was found several miles from the ba............