the former, though of considerable extent, being artificial in the sense of having been formed by a succession of beavers' dams. These lakes abound with feathered game, and on their banks are fumaroles and hot springs heavily charged with alum.

On the bank of Beaver lake there is a wall of vertical columns of obsidian or volcanic glass, many hundred feet in height and for two miles in length. There are cliffs of impure obsidian elsewhere in the Park and in this and other countries, but nowhere has there been found any of this volcanic glass so pure and perfect as this, or in such vast quantity. The columns are of black, yellow, mottled, and banded obsidian, but as regular in form as the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway. Great masses of this volcanic glass had fallen from the columns and formed a barricade some 250 or 300 feet in height, at an angle of 45° to the margin of Beaver lake. Mr. Norris had large fires kindled on this sloping barricade, and then, suddenly cooling it by throwing cold water on it, broke it in pieces and then with great labor crushed it and made a good wagon road over this barricade of glass.

From the obsidian cliffs there is a good wagon road to the Mammoth Hot Springs, and thence to the northern entrance to the Park. We have thus completed our tour of the most important objects of interest in the Park at the present time. What new wonders will be brought to light when the whole region east of the Yellowstone river and lake shall be thoroughly explored, when the southern portion, now almost wholly unknown, shall have been carefully investigated, and when even the northwest portion, drained by the Gallatin river, shall become better known, remains for other and future travellers and tourists to describe. What is already known, stamps it as the most remarkable region on the globe.

"This whole region." says Dr. Hayden, "was, in comparatively modern geological times, the scene of the most wonderful volcanic activity of any portion of our country. The hot springs and geysers represent the last stages-the vents or escape pipesof these remarkable volcanic manifestations of the internal forces. All these springs are adorned with decorations more beautiful than

ACCESS TO THE PARK.

1263

human art ever conceived, and which have required thousands of years for the cunning hand of Nature to form." "It is probable," he remarks elsewhere, "that during the Pliocene period, the entire country, drained by the sources of the Yellowstone and the Colorado, was the scene of volcanic activity as great as that of any portion of the globe. It might be called one vast crater, made up of a thousand smaller volcanic vents and fissures, out of which the fluid interior of the earth, fragments of rock and volcanic dust, were poured in unlimited quantities. Hundreds of the nuclei or cones of these vents are now remaining, some of them rising to a height of 10,000 to 11,000 feet above the sea."

Up to the present time the access to the Park has been only by long and difficult journeys, involving too great fatigue for any but the most robust, and almost entirely excluding, by its very wearisomeness, the visits of the gentler sex. Moreover, the necessary absence of any considerable hotel accommodations, or other provisions for a stay of at least ten or twelve days in the Park, and the frequent presence of hostile bands of Indians within it, have prevented any very large influx of visitors to it. These difficulties are now almost wholly obviated. The Utah and Northern Railway is within fifty miles of Yellowstone lake, and swift coaches over good wagon roads traverse the remainder of the way. Before the opening of the next season (the season is from the middle of August to the middle of October), the Northern Pacific Railway will be running through trains from Chicago and St. Paul to Fort Ellis, and not impossibly to the Park itself. The hardships of the journey will all be gone, and the time of reaching there will be reduced to about eight days, and the expense to one-half what it is at present. The Indians have gone for good, and the era of fast coaches, good hotels, restaurants and bathing-houses is coming on.

The impression that there is little of interest in the Park except the phenomena we have described should be carefully and forever dispelled from the minds of the public. "Few, I suppose,' says Mr. William I. Marshall, "would care to live long among spouting geysers and boiling springs, or even upon the banks of

the brilliantly colored Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone; but these cover only a small part, probably not more than two or three per cent., of the surface of the Park, which embraces 3,578 square miles, or 2,298,920 acres, an area almost one-half as large as the State of Massachusetts, and, of course, extensive enough to contain an immense variety of scenery. There are scores of miles of beautiful valleys traversed by rivers of the purest water, swarming with trout, grayling and whitefish, and furnishing the finest hunting-grounds for ducks, geese, swans, and other waterfowl. These valleys are generally covered with fine grass, on which numerous antelopes pasture, while the greater part of the mountains which bound them is covered with the forests (interspersed with those great grassy slopes which are so marked a feature of the timbered areas of the Rocky Mountains) in which those fond of rifle-shooting can find elk and black-tailed deer and white-tailed deer and mountain sheep, and occasionally a band of mountain buffalo and other large game. There are countless quiet nooks where one can camp under the fragrant pines, besides green meadows gemmed with lovely wild flowers and watered by bubbling brooks, across which the beaver still builds his cunning dam, and beneath whose banks and in whose deep pools the dainty little speckled brook-trout watches for his prey. Not only are there scores of grand mountains lifting their craggy sides and rugged summits (few of which have ever felt the tread of civilized man) far up among the clouds, but innumerable sunny glades and shady dells, charming bits of quiet, picturesque scenery, where one will see nothing of the striking, but only the gently beautiful.

"I presume the head-quarters for tourists, when the Park shall be made a little more accessible, will be established on the shores of the lovely Yellowstone lake, which, lying at an altitude of 7,778 feet above the sea, or 1,500 higher than the summit of Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, covers 300 square miles with cool, clear water, which in places is 300 feet deep, and rolls its waves, of as deep a blue as the open sea, on 300 miles of shore line, now of loveliest beauty, and now of wildest grandeur. With its opportunities for rowing and sailing and fishing and hunting,

YELLOWSTONe park for a summer home.

1265 with the grandest of mountains bordering it and the purest of air ever sweeping over it, and with the inducements to open-air life offered by its surroundings, it is surely destined to become a most delightful summer resort for those who love nature, and who, when they wish to see her strangest and most wonderful phases, can sail or ride in a few hours to the spouting geysers, the boiling springs, the stifling solfataras, the roaring mud volcanoes, the lofty cataracts, and the gorgeous Cañon of the Yellowstone; and when they would enjoy her quieter and more subdued aspects can find them on every hand in endless profusion. Those who travel to see the triumphs of industry and the treasures of art, to behold the ruins of an ancient era or splendor of modern cities; those who wish to revive historical associations, or to survey the beauty of the earth as affected by human effort, and connected with human life, will, of course, go to the old world; but there are many, and the number seems to be constantly increasing, who, for a longer or shorter time, love yearly to leave behind them the bustle of towns and the roar of cities, the vexations of business and the conventionalities of society, and live face to face with nature, resting in her solitudes or communing with her ceaseless health-giving activities, and to these the endless features of the Park will offer varied attractions and constant charms."

CHAPTER XXIII.

ALASKA.

RELATION OF ALASKA TO OUR WESTERN EMPIRE-ANOTHER KAMSCHATKAABSURDITY Of the Stories TOLD OF ITS PRESENT OR PROSPECTIVE PRODUCTIVENESS-ITS FURS, FISHERIES, and Timber, SOMEWHAT VALUABLE—PECULIAR FORM OF THE TERRITORY THE BULL'S HEAD WITH TWO LONG HORNSITS THREE DIVISIONS, SITKA, YUKON, AND THE ISLANDS-AREA-POPULATION --TOPOGRAPHY-MOUNTAINS-Rivers-The LIMITS AND ARea of each Division-GEOLOGY-VOLCANOES AND GLACIERS-MINEralogy-CoAL—METALS-MINERALS-GOLD AND SILVER-RECENT DISCOVERIES-Zoology-ThE DIVISIONS IN DEtail-The Sitkan Division-ITS FUR TRADE, FISHERIES, AND TIMBER-ITS AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS Confined to a few VegetaBLES-2. THE YUKON DISTRICT OF LITTLE VALUE, EXCEPT FOR ITS FUR TRADE, WHALE AND OTHER FISHERies on the CoAST—3. THE ISLand District -SOME ARABLE LAND ON THE LARGER ISLANDS, AND A POSSIBILITY OF FUTURE DAIRY-FARMS THERE, THOUGH AT TOO GREAT COST FOR MUCH PROFIT THE CAPTURE OF THE FUR SEAL ON THE PRIBYLOFF ISLANDS THE PRINCIPAL INDUSTRY, THOUGH FISHERIES MAY INCREASE-Detailed ACCOUNT OF THE FISHERIES-THE POPULATION, NATIONALITIES, AND CHARACTER THE NATIVES-KOLOSHIAN TRIBES-KENAIAN TRIBES-THE ALEUTS-THE ESKIMOPRINCIPAL TOWNS AND VILLAGES-METEOROLOGY OF FORT ST. MICHAEL'S AND UNALASHKA-OBJECTS OF INTEREST TO THE TOURIST HISTORICAL NOTES CAN IT BE Commended to IMMIGRANTS?

ALASKA, the unorganized Northwestern Territory of the United States, bears about the same relation to “Our Western Empire” that Eastern Siberia and Kamschatka do to the Russian Empire; it is remote from the rest of the Empire, of vast territorial extent, but desolate and cold to the last degree, and can never become very populous, or of any remarkable economic value, until the plane of the ecliptic changes, and what is now an Arctic climate becomes torrid, or at least temperate.

We know very well what is said about the ameliorating effect of the Kuro-Siwo or Japan current upon the climate of those high latitudes; but the Gulf stream, a similar but more powerful current, has not rendered Iceland a paradise, or Novaya Zemla a fit habitation for men, though both are in quite as low latitudes