romancers their stories were received with great distrust.

The old mountaineers of Montana were generally regarded as great fabricators. I have met with many, but never one who was not fond of practicing upon the credulity of those who listened to the recital of his adventures. James Bridger, the discoverer of Great Salt lake, who had a large experience in wild mountain life, wove so much of romance around his Indian adventures that his narrations were generally received with many grains of allowance by his listeners. Probably no man ever had a more varied and interesting experience during a long period of sojourning on the western plains and in the Rocky Mountains than Bridger, and he did not hesitate, if a favorable occasion offered, to "guy" the unsophisticated. At one time when in camp near "Pumpkin Butte," a well-known landmark near Fort Laramie, rising a thousand feet or more above the surrounding plain, a young attache of the party approached Mr. Bridger, and in a rather patronizing manner said: "Mr. Bridger, they tell me that you have lived a long time on these plains and in the mountains." Mr. Bridger, pointing toward "Pumpkin Butte," replied: "Young man, you see that butte over there! Well, that mountain was a hole in the ground when I came here."

Bridger's long sojourn in the Rocky Mountains commenced as early as the year 1820, and in 1832 we find him a resident partner in the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He frequently spent periods of time varying from three months to two years, so far removed from any settlement or trading post, that neither flour nor bread stuffs in any form could be obtained, the only available substitute for bread being the various roots found in the Rocky Mountain region.

I first became acquainted with Bridger in the year 1866. He was then employed by a wagon road company, of which I was president, to conduct the emigration from the states to Montana, by way of Fort Laramie, the Big Horn river and Emigrant gulch. He told me in Virginia City, Mont., at that time, of the existence of hot spouting springs in the vicinity of the source of the Yellowstone and Madison rivers, and said that he had seen a column of water as large as his body, spout as high as the flag pole in Virginia City, which was about sixty (60) feet high. The more I pondered upon this statement, the more I was impressed with the probability of its truth. If he had told me of the existence of falls one thousand feet high, I should have considered his story an exaggeration of a phenomenon he had really beheld; but I did not think that his imagination was sufficiently fertile to originate the story of the existence of a spouting geyser, unless he had really seen one, and I therefore was inclined to give credence to his statement, and to believe that such a wonder did really exist.

I was the more disposed to credit his statement, because of what I had previously read in the report of Captain John Mullan, made to the war department. From my present examination of that report, which was made Feb. 14, 1863, and a copy of which I still have in my possession, I find that Captain Mullan says:

Again he speaks of the isochimenal line (a line of even winter temperature), which he says reaches from Fort Laramie to the headwaters of the Yellowstone, at the hot spring and geysers of that stream, and continues thence to the Beaver Head valley, and he adds:

As early as the year 1866 I first considered the possibility of organizing an expedition for the purpose of exploring the Upper Yellowstone to its source. The first move which I made looking to this end was in 1867 and the next in 1868; but these efforts ended in nothing more than a general discussion of the subject of an exploration, the most potent factor in the abandonment of the enterprise being the threatened outbreaks of the Indians in Gallatin valley.

The following year (1869) the project was again revived, and plans formed for an expedition; but again the hostility of the Indians prevented the accomplishment of our purpose of exploration. Hon. David E. Folsom was enrolled as one of the members of this expedition, and when it was found that no large party could be organized, Mr. Folsom and his partner, C.W. Cook, and Mr. Peterson (a helper on the Folsom ranch), in the face of the threatened dangers from Indians, visited the Grand Cañon, the falls of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone lake, and then turned in a northwesterly direction, emerging into the Lower Geyser basin, where they found a geyser in action, the water of which, says Mr. Folsom in his record of the expedition, "came rushing up and shot into the air at least eighty feet, causing us to stampede for higher ground."

Mr. Folsom, in speaking of the various efforts made to organize an expedition for exploration of the Yellowstone says: