The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-02-11

and Italy within Our Own Bordcrs--
The GIories of the Yellowstone.
As the men of enterprise and science ad-
vance into the unexplored recesses of our re-
public--pioneers, road builders, gold
searchers-every step brings new revela-
ton of this republics wealth and beauty.
We, as people, are regarded by the
critics of the messy, overgrown and cabined
nations of Continental Europe as given to
exaggeration. ''The special intellectual
foibe Of the Americans" says the London
| Spectator, sis their admiration for the
grandiOse." Yet we cannot write the plain
discoveries recorded in the HERALD without
seeming to the foreign mind to indulge in
| grandiose rhetoric. Every day seems to
ing quickly when the tides of health-desring
and wonder-seeking travel will be from
Europe to America.
Why, for instance, should we 60 to Switzer-
land to see the mountains, or to Ice
land for geyseisP Thirty years ago
the attraction of America to the foreign
mind was Niagara Falls Now we have
ordinary exhibition. The Yo Semitic, which
the nation has made park, the Rocky Noun
tains and their singular parks, the canyons Of
the Colorado the Dalles of the Columbia, the
giant trees, the lake country of Upper Mime
sofa, the country of the Yellowstone, with
their beauty, their splendor, their extraordi-
nary and sometimes terrible manifestations of
nature, form series of attractions possessed
by no other nation in the world. When that
famous city-item reporter, Charles Dickens,
came here over thirty years ago, he was taken
in state to see Missouri prairie. He made
an elaborate record of the disappointment it
caused him and bis failure to see anything to
compare with the glen of Glencoe, in Scot
land The thought that our fathers were so
| ignorant of their own country as to regard
prairie its rarest attraction is not without
humor, and we can well pardon the absence of
any enthusiasm on the occasion of the stately
visit, and the desire of Mr.. Dickens to kill the
tedousness of the journey by champagne and
comic songs. But we really had little more
than prairie and some long, narrow, muddy,
uninteresting rivers to show to the foreigner
thirty years ago. The West was an I'M
known land to lis. There was nothing but
''desolation" beyond the Mississippi; and
as to The Pacific, the Mexcans and Span
iards were in possession, and we had not
fought our war for Texas and California.
AS we have said, why 60 to Switzerland
to see the Alps? There is no exhilara-
ton of air or beauty of scenery in the
Alpine regions that we have not in |
Colorado. Within three or, by easy stages,
four days from New York, the trav-
luxurious palace car into Denver, and from
Denver sweeps a view that has no parallel
in the world. Mountains and peaks, with |
every conceivable variety of color aud beauty,
stretching for hundred miles north and
south, their tops covered with perpetual
snow. The mountain parks invite him for
summers holiday. If he would fish, there are
trout in the streams. Ii he would hunt, there
are deer on the mountains ard buffaloes on the
plains, and no angry Bergh to modest or make
afraid. If he has scientific tastes, the rocks
will tell him geological story; the quartz
formations will speak of the hidden riches Of
the earth; the fora will be full Of profit and
instru ,tion. The air is pure and ife-giving,
and acts upon the nerves like champagne.
Far beyond Switzerland, far beyond the Tyrol,
or the Highlands, or the Lake country, or
Norway, Colorado stands to-day inviting the
tired citizen to come and fad rest and health |
in the midsummer months.
Colorado is scarcely new story, and we
make this allusion as a hint to those of our
the summer. But here we have really new |
story, told to us by General Phil Sheridan,
who sent ont an expedition to see, and whose
report is in print A day or two since the
Senate passed bill setting apart as public
park, to the uses of the people of the United
States forever, what we are in the habit of
calling ''the Yellowstone country" The pas
sage of the act was wise, for as we read the re-
ports published by General Sheridan, we find
an aggregation of curiosities and natural
phenomena in this proposed park that has no
parallel in the world. As we peruse the pre-
else and cold and formal words Of these
official reports we feel tie glow and
color OF tne ARABIAN NigutS, OF the iegenuS
OF the Oriental nations. Those of our
enthusiasts who care to found new religion
upon defined principles of eternal damnation
will welcome the Yellowstone discoveries.
For here are what we call Sulphur Noun
tains, with marvellous deposits of brim-
stone; the earth covered with boiling sui
phur springs, caverns of pure crystallized
sulphur, the air dense with the fumes of
suphureited hydrogen. ''There was one
spring having regular pulsatons like an