But now we can throw back at the effete denizens of other lands "the wonderland of the globe,"—The Yellowstone National Park—in which there is more of the marvelous sports of nature than exists in the entire outer world besides. We can tell them of these wonders, and can then say that these marvels are the Nation's, and that this park of over 3,500 square miles is maintained by the Nation for the people, for their amusement and recreation. It is to be regretted that more of the surplus which has been lying idle in the treasury vaults has not been expended to enable the people to better enjoy their wealth of wonders. The people may read of their treasures; they may see folios of illustrations, but no one can comprehend them without seeing them; no pen pictures can bring them before the eye of one who has not been here; no photograph can display their forms and then dye them in their wondrous colors; no painter can spread them upon canvas, for he would at once be put down as an artistic liar. The simple truth is an exaggeration, and a precise copy is a distortion of nature's molds.

THE EVIL SPIRIT'S ABODE.

No wonder the Indians have given this section of the country a wide berth, for well might they believe it the home of the evil spirit. One of them straying here might wander for days and never mount an elevated point without being able to count scores of columns of white steam lifting above the trees from different points of the forest, telling him of the wigwams of the evil one. If he stole along the valleys, he would come upon pools of water of crystal clearness tempting in appearance to the thirsty; some of them not larger than the blanket which covered his shoulders, others so large that the tepees of half his tribe would not cover their area; some mere jagged holes in the rock, others with rims a foot or so in height, and as regular as his pipe of peace. Here are some a few inches or a few feet in depth, with bottoms and sides painted in rainbow tints; there are others with deep sunken walls embossed and tufted, and dyed with the colors of the setting sun, and with dark throats so deep that they seem to be yawning from fathomless depths. Here they are as placid as the eye of the papoose hanging at the squaw mother's back. Our Indian pauses at the painted brink of one, dips his hand into the tempting fluid—jerks it back quickly, but perhaps not before it is scalded. There they boil up one, two, three or more feet and appear as though they would pour out a flood from below, but not a drop passes over the rim of the pool. The boiling motion is from volumes of steam working its way through the waters from the bowels of the earth and spreading upon the breeze. Boiling water elsewhere wastes itself away, but these pools boil and boil from year to year, and scarcely vary perceptibly in height. Our untutored tourist turns his eye upon the mountain bordering the valley, whose sides are so encrusted with geyserite deposit that it appears to have been formed of this material, and to have been erected by boiling springs; along its whitened side and far up on its crest are springs or vents, from which arise columns of lifting steam and the mountain seems to roar; startled, he hears close to his feet, a gurgling sound such as comes from an animal whose throat is newly cut. His eye seeks the spot whence comes this sound of death. He sees an orifice in the ground not large enough to take in his body, but from it comes the death rattle a hundred times louder than the largest buffalo could make when pierced about its heart. The Evil Spirit is slaying an animal so huge that if he were on the ground its tread would shake the earth.

A WONDERFUL PLATEAU.

He climbs over a mountain spur and sees spread before him a white plateau of several hundred acres. Jets of steam are pouring from a thousand points of its surface, some rising only a few feet, others lifting 500 feet into the air; here from fountains boiling merely, or spouting up to one, two, or more feet; there from simple vent holes in the nearly level surface of the plain. Some pour from fantastic forms—great stumps of trees with one side torn away; from piles of downy cushions; from great platters of biscuit, a part as white as dough, others crisp and brown; from ruined castles; from orifices bordered by mighty, parted, Ethiopian lips of whitish gray tone or painted red and brown. One is fashioned like an old time conical straw bee-hive. So well is the model copied, that no great stretch of imagination would be required to enable one to hear the buzz of busy honey makers swarming about it. Another is a rude cabin chimney with steam lifting from its top, in lieu of smoke curling from a woodman's fire.

He approaches one which might once have been a grotto, with stalagmites and stalactites forming its ribs and roof, but the superincumbent earth having been removed, the stony skeleton is laid bare, partly a dozen or more feet above the ground and partly sunken below. From its hollow pit comes a roaring sound not unlike the growl of a lion when feeding, only of a king of beasts many fold enlarged. He hears close by it a noise he takes to be the call of a familiar bird. There is no bird in sight, but near his feet in the rocky platform is a small vent he could close with his thumb; it is breathing, but its breath is high heated steam; its inspiration is a gentle gurgle, its expiration is the blue jay's call.

Its breath comes from deep below, from the lungs of the monster whose stertorous breathing is an indication that he is turning over in his hidden lair; and as he turns he belches forth a mouthful of steam and water through the grotto. He has evidently eaten something disagreeable and is sick in the regions of the maw, for up comes another and a larger mouthful; and then another and more, until he pours out his very insides in tons of boiling water. Through every opening of the grotto's frame, water and steam rush forth in mighty volume. Thousands of gallons to the minute lift in jets ten to thirty feet through each opening, and run in great streams to the crystal river a little way below. The monster bellows, the vents about the grotto's base whistle, the water splashes, and the steam rushes, scalding hot. After a while—perhaps in twenty or thirty minutes—all flowing ceases, and a column of steam pours out for perhaps an hour and lifts several hundred feet into the air.

"THE GIANT" IN ACTION.

While this strange action is being seen, close by, a rumbling noise is heard in the depths of "The Giant," 200 or 300 yards away. The noise increases, not unlike that of an approaching railroad train, and is soon accompanied by a discharge of water three or more feet in diameter at the geyser nozzle, lifted in an almost vertical column 150 to 200 feet high, all enveloped in a veil of steam. This pours through the top of a geyserite formation some ten feet high, and a dozen or fifteen from out to out—a monster stump, broken and jagged as if a monarch of the forest had been snapped off by a mighty storm blast.

THE GIANT, AT UPPER GEYSER BASIN. (SEE PAGE 33.)

The flood drops all about in spray, veiling the lifted column, and is of such quantity that the river nearly seventy-five feet wide, is doubled in depth when the monster is in action.

Our accidental red tourist has lost his Indian stoicism, and wishes to see something more of the Devil's doings. The "Giant" having become silent, he steals along the white formation a few hundred yards, when, from a small hole in the ground, without any warning, up shoots a beautiful little geyser about twenty feet high, a perfect spreading jet d'eau, accompanied by no steam and lasting only perhaps a quarter of a minute. The action of this little jet over, every drop of its lifted water flows back