His graphic sketches are delightful romances. He gives a picture, most romantic and enticing of the head-waters of the Yellow Stone. A lake sixty miles long, cold and pellucid, lies embosomed amid high precipitous mountains. On the west side is a sloping plain several miles wide, with clumps of trees and groves of pine. The ground resounds to the tread of horses.
Geysers spout up seventy feet high, with a terrific hissing noise, at regular intervals.
Waterfalls are sparkling, leaping, and thundering down the precipices, and collect in the pool below. The river issues from this lake, and for fifteen miles roars through the perpendicular canyon at the outlet. In this section are the Great Springs, so hot that meat is readily cooked in them, and as they descend on the successive terraces, afford at length delightful baths. Bear, elk, deer, wolf, and fox are among the game, and the feathered tribe yields its share for variety, on the sportsman's table of rock or turf. Such consistency, and an innate conservatism, were both characteristics of Bridger's recital when passing on serious geographical information.