The Book of the National Parks Part 17

This small stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or the dishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone, but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times that there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake from the Snake River and used it to create the Yellowstone River, which in turn created the wonderful canyon. Here at last is a crime in which all will agree that the end justified the means.

How this piracy was accomplished is written on the rocks; even the former lake outlet into the Snake River is plainly discernible to-day.

At the lake's north end, where the seeping waters of Sulphur Creek and the edge of the lake nearly met on opposite sides of what was then the low flat divide, it only required some slight disturbance indirectly volcanic, some unaccustomed rising of lake levels, perhaps merely some special stress of flood or storm to make the connection. Perhaps the creek itself, sapping back in the soft lava soils, unaided found the lake. Connection once made, the mighty body of lake water speedily deepened a channel northward and Sulphur Creek became sure of its posterity.

At that time, hidden under the lake's surface, two rhyolite dikes, or upright walls of harder rock, extended crosswise through the lake more than half a mile apart. As the lake-level fell, the nearer of these dikes emerged and divided the waters into two lakes, the upper of which emptied over the dike into the lower. This was the beginning of the Great Fall. And presently, as the Great Fall cut its breach deeper and deeper into the restraining dike, it lowered the upper-lake level until presently the other rhyolite dike emerged from the surface carrying another cataract. And thus began the Upper Fall.

Meantime the stream below kept digging deeper the canyon of Sulphur Creek, and there came a time when the lower lake drained wholly away.

In its place was left a bottom-land which is now a part of the Hayden Valley, and, running through it, a river. Forthwith this river began scooping, from the Great Fall to Inspiration Point, the scenic ditch which is world-celebrated to-day as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

IV

Now imagine this whole superlative wilderness heavily populated with wild animals in a state of normal living. Imagine thirty thousand elk, for instance, roaming about in bands of half a dozen to half a thousand.

Imagine them not friendly, perhaps, but fearless, with that entire indifference which most animals show to creatures which neither help nor harm them--as indifferent, say, as the rabbits in your pasture or the squirrels in your oak woods. Imagine all the wild animals, except the sneaking, predatory kind, proportionally plentiful and similarly fearless--bear, antelope, mountain-sheep, deer, bison, even moose in the fastnesses, to say nothing of the innumerable smaller beasts. There has been no hunting of harmless animals in the Yellowstone since 1894, and this is one result.

It is true that comparatively few visitors see many animals, but that is the fault of their haste or their temperament or their inexperience of nature. One must seek in sympathy to find. Tearing over the wilderness roads in noisy motors smelling of gasolene is not the best way to find them, although the elk and deer became indifferent to automobiles as soon as they discovered them harmless. One may see them not infrequently from automobiles and often from horse-drawn wagons; and one may see them often and intimately who walks or rides horseback on the trails.

The admission of the automobile to Yellowstone roads changed seeing conditions materially. In five days of quiet driving in 1914 with Colonel L.M. Brett, then superintendent of the park, in a direction opposite to the stages, I saw more animals from my wagon-seat than I had expected to see wild in all my life. We saw bear half a dozen times, elk in numbers, black-tailed and white-tailed deer so frequently that count was lost the second morning, four bands of antelope, buffalo, foxes, coyotes, and even a bull moose. Once we stopped so as not to hurry a large bear and two cubs which were leisurely crossing the road. Deer watched us pa.s.s within a hundred yards. Elk grazed at close quarters, and our one bull moose obligingly ambled ahead of us along the road.

There was never fear, never excitement (except my own), not even haste.

Even the accustomed horses no more than c.o.c.ked an ear or two while waiting for three wild bears to get out of the middle of the road.

Of course scenic completeness is enough in itself to justify the existence of these animals in the marvellous wilderness of the Yellowstone. Their presence in normal abundance and their calm at-homeness perfects nature's spectacle. In this respect, also, Yellowstone's unique place among the national parks is secure.

The lessons of the Yellowstone are plain. It is now too late to restore elsewhere the great natural possession which the thoughtless savagery of a former generation destroyed in careless ruth, but, thanks to this early impulse of conservation, a fine example still remains in the Yellowstone. But it is not too late to obliterate wholly certain misconceptions by which that savagery was then justified. It is not too late to look upon wild animals as fellow heritors of the earth, possessing certain natural rights which men are glad rather than bound to respect. It is not too late to consider them, with birds and forests, lakes, rivers, seas, and skies, a part of nature's glorious gift for man's manifold satisfaction, a gift to carefully conserve for the study and enjoyment of to-day, and to develop for the uses of larger and more appreciative generations to come.

Of course if this be brought to universal accomplishment (and the impulse has been advancing fast of late), it must be Yellowstone's part to furnish the exhibit, for we have no other.

To many the most surprising part of Yellowstone's wild-animal message is man's immunity from hatred and harm by predatory beasts. To know that wild bears if kindly treated are not only harmless but friendly, that grizzlies will not attack except in self-defense, and that wolves, wild cats, and mountain-lions fly with that instinctive dread which is man's dependable protection, may destroy certain romantic illusions of youth and discredit the observation if not the conscious verity of many an honest hunter; but it imparts a modern scientific fact which sets the whole wild-animal question in a new light. In every case of a.s.sault by bears where complete evidence has been obtainable, the United States Biological Survey, after fullest investigation, has exonerated the bear; he has always been attacked or has had reason to believe himself attacked. In more than thirty summers of field-work Vernon Bailey, Chief Field-Naturalist of the Biological Survey, has slept on the ground without fires or other protection, and frequently in the morning found tracks of investigating predatory beasts. There are reports but no records of human beings killed by wolves or mountain-lions in America.

Yet, for years, all reports susceptible of proof have been officially investigated.

One of Yellowstone's several manifest destinies is to become the well-patronized American school of wild-life study. Already, from its abundance, it is supplying wild animals to help in the long and difficult task of restoring here and there, to national parks and other favorable localities, stocks which existed before the great slaughter.

V

Thirty miles south of this rolling volcanic interlude the pristine Rockies, as if in shame of their moment of gorgeous softness, rear in contrast their sharpest and most heroic monument of bristling granite.

Scarcely over the park's southern boundary, the foothills of the Teton Mountains swell gently toward their Gothic climax. The country opens and roughens. The excellent road, which makes Jackson's Hole a practical part of the Yellowstone pleasure-ground, winds through a rolling, partly wooded grazing-ground of elk and deer. The time was when these wild herds made living possible for the nation's hunted desperadoes, for Jackson's Hole was the last refuge to yield to law and order.

At the climax of this sudden granite protest, the Grand Teton rises 7,014 feet in seeming sheerness from Jackson Lake to its total alt.i.tude of 13,747 feet. To its right is Mount Moran, a monster only less. The others, cl.u.s.tering around them, have no names.

All together, they are few and grouped like the units of some fabulous barbaric stronghold. Fitted by size and majesty to be the climax of a mighty range, the Tetons concentrate their all in this one giant group.

Quickly, north and south, they subside and pa.s.s. They are a granite island in a sea of plain.

Seen across the lake a dozen miles which seem but three, these cl.u.s.tered steepled temples rise sheer from the water. Their flanks are snow-streaked still in August, their shoulders hung with glaciers, their spires bare and s.h.i.+ning. A greater contrast to the land from which we came and to which we presently return cannot be imagined. Geologically, the two have nothing in common. Scenically, the Tetons set off and complete the spectacle of the Yellowstone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by Charles D. Walcott_

THE TETON MOUNTAIN FROM JACKSON HOLE, SOUTH OF YELLOWSTONE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a photograph by Haynes_

THE LAVA LANDSCAPE OF THE YELLOWSTONE AND GIBBON FALLS]

XI

THREE MONSTERS OF HAWAII

HAWAII NATIONAL PARK, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. AREA, 118 SQUARE MILES

If this chapter is confined to the three volcano tops which Congress reserved on the islands of Hawaii and Maui in 1917, wonderful though these are, it will describe a small part indeed of the wide range of novelty, charm, and beauty which will fall to the lot of those who visit the Hawaii National Park. One of the great advantages enjoyed by this national park, as indeed by Mount McKinley's, is its location in a surrounding of entire novelty, so that in addition to the object of his visit, itself so supremely worth while, the traveller has also the pleasure of a trip abroad.

In novelty at least the Hawaii National Park has the advantage over the Alaskan park because it involves the life and scenery of the tropics. We can find snow-crowned mountains and winding glaciers at home, but not equatorial jungles, sandalwood groves, and surf-riding.

Enormous as this element of charm unquestionably is, this is not the place to sing the pleasures of the Hawaiian Islands. Their palm-fringed horizons, surf-edged coral reefs, tropical forests and gardens, plantations of pineapple and sugar-cane are as celebrated as their rainbows, earthquakes, and graceful girls dancing under tropical stars to the languorous ukelele.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF HAWAII NATIONAL PARK]

Leaving these and kindred spectacles to the steams.h.i.+p circulars and the library shelf, it is our part to note that the Hawaii National Park possesses the fourth largest volcanic crater in the world, whose aspect at sunrise is one of the world's famous spectacles, the largest active volcano in the world, and a lake of turbulent, glowing, molten lava, "the House of Everlasting Fire," which fills the beholder with awe.

It was not at all, then, the gentle poetic aspects of the Hawaiian Islands which led Congress to create a national park there, though these form its romantic, contrasted setting. It was the extraordinary volcanic exhibit, that combination of thrilling spectacles of Nature's colossal power which for years have drawn travellers from the four quarters of the earth. The Hawaii National Park includes the summits of Haleakala, on the island of Maui, and Mauna Loa and Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii.

Spain claims the discovery of these delectable isles by Juan Gaetano, in 1555, but their formal discovery and exploration fell to the lot of Captain James Cook, in 1778. The Hawaiians thought him a G.o.d and loaded him with the treasures of the islands, but on his return the following year his illness and the conduct of his crew ash.o.r.e disillusioned them; they killed him and burned his flesh, but their priests deified his bones, nevertheless. Parts of these were recovered later and a monument was erected over them. Then civil wars raged until all the tribes were conquered, at the end of the eighteenth century, by one chieftain, Kamehameha, who became king. His descendants reigned until 1874 when, the old royal line dying out, Kalakaua was elected his successor.

From this time the end hastened. A treaty with the United States ceded Pearl Harbor as a coaling-station and entered American goods free of duty, in return for which Hawaiian sugar and a few other products entered the United States free. This established the sugar industry on a large and permanent scale and brought laborers from China, j.a.pan, the Azores, and Madeira. More than ten thousand Portuguese migrated to the islands, and the native population began a comparative decrease which still continues.

After Kalakaua's death, his sister Liliuokalani succeeding him in 1891, the drift to the United States became rapid. When President Cleveland refused to annex the islands, a republic was formed in 1894, but the danger from j.a.panese immigration became so imminent that in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, President McKinley yielded to the Hawaiian request and the islands were annexed to the United States by resolution of Congress.

The setting for the picture of our island-park will be complete with several facts about its physical origin. The Hawaiian Islands rose from the sea in a series of volcanic eruptions. Originally, doubtless, the greater islands were simple cones emitting lava, ash, and smoke, which coral growths afterward enlarged and enriched. Kauai was the first to develop habitable conditions, and the island southeast of it followed in order. Eight of the twelve are now habitable.

The most eastern island of the group is Hawaii. It is also much the largest. This has three volcanoes. Mauna Loa, greatest of the three, and also the greatest volcanic ma.s.s in the world, is nearly the centre of the island; Kilauea lies a few miles east of it; the summits of both are included in the national park. Mauna Kea, a volcanic cone of great beauty in the north centre of the island, forming a triangle with the other two, is not a part of the national park.

Northwest of Hawaii across sixty miles or more of salt water is the island of Maui, second largest of the group. In its southern part rises the distinguished volcano of Haleakala, whose summit and world-famous crater is the third member of the national park. The other habited islands, in order westward, are Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau; no portions of these are included in the park. Kahoolawe, Lanai, and Niihau are much the smallest of the group.

HALEAKALA

Of the three volcanic summits which concern us, Haleakala is nearest the princ.i.p.al port of Honolulu, though not always the first visited. Its slopes nearly fill the southern half of the island of Maui.

The popular translation of the name Haleakala is "The House of the Sun"; literally the word means "The House Built by the Sun." The volcano is a monster of more than ten thousand feet, which bears upon its summit a crater of a size and beauty that make it one of the world's show-places.

This crater is seven and a half miles long by two and a third miles wide. Only three known craters exceed Haleakala's in size. Aso san, the monster crater of j.a.pan, largest by far in the world, is fourteen miles long by ten wide and contains many farms. Lago di Bolseno, in Italy, next in size, measures eight and a half by seven and a half miles; and Monte Albano, also in Italy, eight by seven miles.

Exchanging your automobile for a saddle-horse at the volcano's foot, you spend the afternoon in the ascent. Wonderful indeed, looking back, is the growing arc of plantation and sea, islands growing upon the horizon, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa lifting distant snow-tipped peaks. You spend the night in a rest-house on the rim of the crater, but not until you have seen the spectacle of sunset; and in the gray of the morning you are summoned to the supreme spectacle of sunrise. Thousands have crossed seas for Haleakala's sunrise.

That first view of the crater from the rim is one never to be forgotten.