these distances had been accomplished, and I was off the wheels and on my legs again. We spent Tuesday, the 20th, at the Mammoth, and went over the huge deposit with Mr. Hornyold and Mr. Adeane, two very pleasant English travellers, who had come through America from India on their way home, and whom we had met once or twice in the Park. I don't think their estimate of it would differ greatly from my own. As regards the deposit, its great characteristic is its enormous size; it is enormous. Its beauty, however, is quite another question, or not one at all. It contains a hot "Devil's Kitchen." Mammoth is its real name. My memory of travels took me back by comparison to the baths, Hammam Meskoutine, near Bone, in Algeria. There, indeed, is beauty as well as strangeness, and among other objects one can never be obliterated—a large and lovely solid Fall, once of water, but now of solid carbonate of lime, so largely deposited from the hot springs that the waters literally stopped up their own course at last, and had to find another outlet. On Wednesday morning, the 21st, we all went. down together by coach to Cinnabar, and thence to Livingston again-my companions to join the main. line, I alone for the far west still. Thus ended the excursion to the Yellow Stone National Park. It occupied six days to and from Livingston with a round ticket, costing forty dollars, or about £8, and it involved in all a distance to and fro of 260 miles. If I were asked what I asked my H friend at Livingston before starting, I fancy the reply might be the same: "Um-m-m-m-m-yes, oh yes! it's certainly worth going to see." And this, notwithstanding the fact that, just as we were leaving, there came in a taunting telegram from above-"The Beehive is in full play." From Livingston, accordingly, we started at 1.23 in the afternoon-I for Portland, and thence to Tacoma, for Victoria, in Vancouver's Island, another distance through of 1025 miles, being 880 miles to Portland, and 145 more to Tacoma. This involved two more nights "on board," that is to say, until after six o'clock on the evening of Friday, the 23rd. But the long journey was to be sweetened by a vast variety of very fine country, and especially by a some hours' run along the charming banks of the justly far-famed Columbia river, where it divides the two territories of Washington and Oregon, after flowing down from its far-away sources among the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. And all through these remote western districts, while we are snatched along from beauty to beauty amidst streams and mountains with. so much facility, and even comparative luxury, one's thoughts return to the two great explorers, Lewis and Clarke, who, in the now distant year of 1805, over ragged hills and rocks and precipices, over naked, sunburnt plains, hot, worn out, hungry and thirsty, and almost without resources, found their way through districts where the now comparatively pampered traveller can with ease indulge in his sport, his curiosity, and his pleasure. For those whose object it is to loiter among imposing scenes of Nature, there is enough in Montana, Washington, and Oregon to engage attention and secure delight for months, and the two illustrated books which the Northern Pacific Railway Company put into their travellers' hands, written by Mr. Fee, of St. Paul, their general passenger agent, offer an admirably suggestive outline. This thrusting through of a railway to the shores of the Pacific was indeed a mighty enterprise; but all, even now, is new, and the future will have a future, and again another future, before these regions will really know their powers and have made them known. Independently, however, of being a mere wanderer among these scenes, the traveller who is whirled through them is still privileged to great enjoyment of them. If he has not dwelt minutely upon certain points and exhausted certain entire districts, he remembers at the end of his day's journey an enormous number of crowded delights, while at the same time he has had the satisfaction of being rapidly carried over stretches of country from time to time wholly uninteresting, as must occur everywhere; and this will surely be the reflection of any one who runs through the whole course, at once, between Livingston and Tacoma. We arrived at Helena, the capital of Montana, surrounded by its mountains, at about half-past seven in the evening. There my companions left me, and shortly afterwards daylight followed their example. |