The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-07-06
By N. p. D.

1F1 cans could probably name the
Kings of England faster than we could
name our own national parks. 1t is
doubtful If one American out of ten thou
sand could tell how many national parks
We have and where they are. We coIld
begin glbly with the Yellowstone and the
Yosemite. and after that trail off into
vague hummmg, us in the last sLanzas OF
Nh Country. It's Of Thee.
Thousands of Americans before the war
lockstcpped to Europe every wear to the
tune Of $500, 000000. In a single sum
mer we have paid Switzerland alone 500
100000 to see her scenery. We have
elambered all over the Alps and waited
for weeks 10 get a glimpse Of the Matter
horn. We have been particular to 90 10
Versailles ON the day the fountains play.
We have even gone out of our way 10 see
the dinky little fails Of the Rhine. But we
have never climbed Mount Mckinla and
probably never will. We have never seen
Mount Rainler, and may even be uncertain
as to where il is We have never seen
Old Faithful in the Yellowstone, who does
not wait for certain days on which to
play, but keeps on generously spouting at
regular intervals; of from tfty-fve to
cighty-fvc minutes, according to the fall
of snow.
As a matter OF fact. these national
parks of ours, to which Robert Sterling
Yard introduces us, are not our idea of
park at ALL We think of Il park rs a
place where you keep off the grass; a Ie-
sort of nursemalds and their young
chargcs AZ lovers and the proletariat of
elegant leisure. Our national parks are
largely Scenery and perhaps the truth
is that civilized man is soon fed up on a
diet of scenery alone. Like the Young
woman with her novel, he prefers the dia-
logue to the descriptive parts; seeing the
house where Keats or Carlyle lived TO
seeing the greatest waterfall in the world.
He is more thrilled to tread the well worn
pavements of stony hearted Oxford
street than to climb granite mountain,
where only a grizzly may have climbed be-
fore. He prefers the Alps TO the Rockies
because of their greater greenness and
general cosiness, where III the cool of the
evening he may hear the tinkle of bells
and the sound of human voices.
II.
An excuse for not knowing more about
our national parks is that some of them,
although going back to the Archean pc
Rod in years, are new as parks; SIX of
them, in fact, having come into their
parkness since the war, and Lafayette
Park, the only one in the East, being no
older than February of the present year.
We have eighteen national parks, cover
ing a total area Of more than 10000
square miles: Hot Springs, the only one
with proper number of hotels and board
ing houses; Yellowstone, with more gcy-
Sers than in all the rest of the world to-
gcther; Sequoia, the giant forest of giant
trees; Yosemite, valley of world famed
beauty; General Grant, one Of the largest
of the sequoia trees, with Il little park all
its own; Mount Rainier, which YOU see
from Tacoma-where, by the way, you
call it Mount Tacoma on pain of death;
Crater Lake, of an extraordinary blue
that makes the Blue Grotto green with
envy; Wind Cave, with miles of galleries
and chambers in South Dakota; Plat,
with its medicinal springs; Sullys Hill,
with its game preserves; Mesa Verde,
with its cliff dwellings; Glacier, in Mon
tana the Rocky Mountains; Hawaii Las
sen Volcanic, the American Vesuvius;
Mount Mckinley, the highest mountain in
North America; Grand Canyon, ''the most
sublime spectacle in the world,' and La
fayette, with its granite mountains, on the
Maine coast, the only park originally
owned by private individuals, who pre-
sented it to the nation, instead of just
growing like Topsy and being adopted by
the Government.
A guide book to our kind Of parks, it
L. e, L.,