Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1903-09-05

cAdStiy III one COacn, you nave youl
liberty extended so that you can start
bfteen minutes before to fifteen minutes
latitude. You can't change your course
or drive past those you let start before
You. The roads are exceedingly wei
maintained for such a place, but much
of the soil is nothing but alkali powder
and the drive is bound to be dusty. The
government, which controls the park
and makes the roads, attempts to water
the highway. There are hydrants fol
springs are everywhere and
watering-carts, but there is dust
too. Putting water on such to lay it is
about like putting dust on the ocean to
dry it up. The roads are laid out with
great skill and lead you along from one
object Of interest to another over a
route where the interest steadily III
creases and the views are all the while
expanding and growing grander.
The coach excursion is pursued with
out any stop-over. covers five days.
Every rod Of each days journey IS in
teresting. People become 50 absorbed
in what they are seeing that they for
vanience. As you leave the hotel you
pass close by the 'formation' and get
o new cense of it's curious shapes, its
queer and beautiful streaks of color
from the green and yellow of the sui
phur to the red and black of the iron,
and the shifting cloud of soft steam
that blows this way and that across
the top where the blue pools of hot
water lie. Then you move on through
the Silver Gate" wilderness of mon
strous pieces of broken granite where
some day or other an awful force must
have been at work and through the
famous Golden Gate out into Il wide
upland prairie a mile and a half above
the sea: and off beyond are seen SPLEEN
did snoW-capped peaks 11,OOO and 10000
feet high. Riding on through meadow
and forest, along brooks and past
heaVerdams, you come at lunch time
TO the Norris basin and get presumably
your first sight Of a geyser. Perhaps
the first thing suggested to Connecti
cut citizen. where the name is so famil-
lar by mention of the Norris" geyser
would be hot air But the real thing
is hot water. There's a green steaming
pool in wide stretch of barren waste,
that is really only a thin and treach-
Ierous shell of nedeposit over a seeth-
ing sea. The pool is still. save for it's
sparkling bubbles, when suddenly there
is a WhirJ and gush and up goes the
whole mass of water into the air. more
follows 1t, clouds of steam roll away,
and then the commotion all subsidies,
the pool gradually quiets and when it
gets calm, away it goes again-and so
on day in and day out, summer and
winter Around this Norris geyser,
which is sinconsdera as goysers go,
are no end of boiling springs, some a
foot or two across, others just working
through 1.-The thin surface, all of 'em
busy 7'Off on the bank, Il Guarter-mile
away or SO, with the deafening roar of
fifty boilers blowing off, there pours
steadily out of the ground a great mass
lor live and angry steam which would
cOok a man to shredS in short meter if
ne walked into its stream. They call it
the s'growler,' and growl it does with
out q let-up, no doubt acting as Il safe
ty-valve for the whole basin, which is
Il picture of desolation and waste, as it
is. .-
Resuming the journey, following down
one picturesque river and up another
You come to. the Lower Basin, the Foui-
tain, as. it is called where the night is
spent. Here the geySerS are plentier and
on Il large scale, and SpelHing at less ire
pIent intervals. do more when they work.
But geySerS are not the only wonders
here. As is widely known, every wild
creature in Yellowstone Park is protected.
HorSetieS almost as big as hummine birds
and mosquitoes of the do-or-dig variety
are the limit Of what you can Kill. TIKI.
place is an animals paradise. Every man
who enters must seal or surrender his
firearms Thou shalt not kill is IN
Joined upon him at every turn. So the
whole animal Kingdom roams about in
what is really its natural state At the
Fountain Hotel YOU get your first sight
of the bear at large, no ring in his nose
him, just the stately monarch OF the
forest out after-swil There is no or
ganzation in the Yellowstone Park
known as the Civic Club. The. garbage
produced at the various hotels there fall
eth where it listeth and the bear alcth
upon it. Every night the garbage wagon
drops its perceptibe load at the edg" Of
the woods and soon thereafter the bears
appear. You don't hear them come or see
them come. Suddenly there he is or there
they are. A great big fellow ambleS in
his bow-legged fashion up to the tempting
conglomerate ard begins to paw the pile
and to note it, when suddenly with a snort
off he dashes into the cover. Another
bear is coming and the first has fled
ANONYMOUSLY. So bear No. takes the
cake. and all the rest of the collection,
and Is in command for the moment but
|only so. Very shortly No. returns, CON
cudes his flight was a mistake, and
walks back SO bravely that No. . takes
to the woods. 1t is evidently the fur
tive way of the wild beast. Gradually
they get used to each other and some
ines before il is too dark to see. there
will be half n dozen at work together
as Industrious as So many hogs. After
dark more come, and the wilder ones,
and the growing and snarling of the
party are often so loud as to awake
tSleeperS in the hotels That graceful
delineator of what wild animals mig mt
| do Thompson or Seton,
how ever he may he hitChng up his names
| Just now. has told how he spent a day
| IN the swill pile to study bear ways. In
one sense it may have been a soft snap
but those who retain their sense of de
Iccncy and of smell can study as well I'M
der conditions less envied by the bears
land more agreeable to other people. You
lean sit quietly on a bench or lean against
a tree and watch as long as you have
Hight and patience: and a very interesting
IstudN it is There are silver tips, com
lmonly classed with the grizzlies. black
Ibears, and cinnamon or brown bears. and
Ithey range from great big fellows down
b., Hi he hnf thDtr> fI,.,,