第18章 IV(3)

That man was a barbarian (I took occasion to tell him so),for he comported himself after the manner of the head-hunters and hunted of Assam who are at perpetual feud one with another.

You will understand that these foolish stories are introduced in order to cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories of the Upper Geyser Basin.The evening I spent under the lee of the Castle Geyser,sitting on a log with some troopers and watching a baronial keep forty feet high spouting hot water.If the Castle went off first,they said the Giantess would be quiet,and vice versa,and then they told tales till the moon got up and a party of campers in the woods gave us all something to eat.

Then came soft,turfy forest that deadened the wheels,and two troopers on detachment duty stole noiselessly behind us.One was the Wrap-up-his-Tail man,and they talked merrily while the half-broken horses bucked about among the trees.And so a cavalry escort was with us for a mile,till we got to a mighty hill strewn with moss agates,and everybody had to jump out and pant in that thin air.But how intoxicating it was!The old lady from Chicago ducked like an emancipated hen as she scuttled about the road,cramming pieces of rock into her reticule.She sent me fifty yards down to the hill-side to pick up a piece of broken bottle which she insisted was moss agate.

"I've some o'that at home,an'they shine.Yes,you go get it,young man."As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and viler till it became,without disguise,the bed of a torrent;and just when things were at their rockiest we nearly fell into a little sapphire lake--but never sapphire was so blue--called Mary's Lake;and that between eight and nine thousand feet above the sea.

Afterward,grass downs,all on a vehement slope,so that the buggy,following the new-made road,ran on the two off-wheels mostly till we dipped head-first into a ford,climbed up a cliff,raced along down,dipped again,and pulled up dishevelled at "Larry's"for lunch and an hour's rest.

Then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive.This have I known once in Japan,once on the banks of the Columbia,what time the salmon came in and California howled,and once again in the Yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New Hampshire.Four little pools lay at my elbow,one was of black water (tepid),one clear water (cold),one clear water (hot),one red water (boiling).My newly washed handkerchief covered them all,and we two marvelled as children marvel.

"This evening we shall do the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,"said the maiden.

"Together?"said I;and she said,"Yes."

The sun was beginning to sink when we heard the roar of falling waters and came to a broad river along whose banks we ran.And then--I might at a pinch describe the infernal regions,but not the other place.The Yellowstone River has occasion to run through a gorge about eight miles long.To get to the bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps,one of about one hundred and twenty and the other of three hundred feet.I investigated the upper or lesser fall,which is close to the hotel.

Up to that time nothing particular happens to the Yellowstone--its banks being only rocky,rather steep,and plentifully adorned with pines.

At the falls it comes round a corner,green,solid,ribbed with a little foam,and not more than thirty yards wide.Then it goes over,still green,and rather more solid than before.After a minute or two,you,sitting upon a rock directly above the drop,begin to understand that something has occurred;that the river has jumped between solid cliff walls,and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome of great waves.

And the river yells aloud;but the cliffs do not allow the yells to escape.

That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror,for it seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my feet.I followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the brink of the canyon.We had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin with,for the ground rises more than the river drops.Stately pine woods fringe either lip of the gorge,which is the gorge of the Yellowstone.You'll find all about it in the guide books.

All that I can say is that without warning or preparation Ilooked into a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep,with eagles and fish-hawks circling far below.And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of color--crimson,emerald,cobalt,ochre,amber,honey splashed with port wine,snow white,vermilion,lemon,and silver gray in wide washes.The sides did not fall sheer,but were graven by time,and water,and air into monstrous heads of kings,dead chiefs--men and women of the old time.So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us,the Yellowstone River ran a finger-wide strip of jade green.

The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had already laid there.

Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us,but the full glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very cautiously to a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it was--that overhung the deepest deeps of all.

Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset as the spirits sit in Blake's pictures.Giddiness took away all sensation of touch or form,but the sense of blinding color remained.

When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been floating.

The maid from New Hampshire said no word for a very long time.

Then she quoted poetry,which was perhaps the best thing she could have done.

"And to think that this show-place has been going on all these days an'none of we ever saw it,"said the old lady from Chicago,with an acid glance at her husband.

"No,only the Injians,"said he,unmoved;and the maiden and Ilaughed.