Chapter IX: Appendix (4)

A few years later Baron Nordenskjöld, a Swedish explorer, spent many weeks with these ruins, and later wrote a volume concerning them. He carried away from them several carloads of pottery and other products.

The first white discoverers were either religious fanatics or people of the pot-hunter type who were looking for plunder. They were not interested in the preservation of any of the ruins discovered, nor of any of the equipment that had no commercial value. For years some of the early settlers and adventurers made it a business to search for prehistoric buildings in order to obtain the pottery and other treasures which they sometimes contained. Often these pot-hunting treasure-seekers utterly wrecked the buildings which they found. In all probability many objects of interest or information concerning the Mesa Verde cliff dwellers have been lost.

In the autumn of 1904 I visited the ruins for the purpose of taking photographs and found a party of three pottery-hunters camped near the Balcony House. A part of their firewood that evening consisted of precious beams from this ancient house.

For many years the visitors to the Mesa Verde noticed a huge tree-grown mound on the rim of the cañon-wall, directly opposite the Cliff Palace. A few dressed stones, apparently the corner of a wall, thrust above the surface of this mound. Probably there was a building beneath it. Behind and enveloping it lay a forest of low-growing and limby piñon pines and cedars. Over all was the ever-present and brooding mystery of the deserted Mesa Verde.

In July, 1915, Dr. Fewkes put a crew of men to work excavating the mound. As a result of their labors, a prehistoric stone building now stands in the sunshine. It is the shape of the capital letter D. Its straight front, which faces southward, measures one hundred and thirty-two feet; its semicircular back, two hundred and forty-five feet.

Plainly, it was built to a preconceived plan. There was no patchwork, no inharmonious combination. Precisely midway in the south wall was a recess. In another recess near the southwest corner was a fossil palm leaf. This strikingly resembles the rays of the sun, and together with a figure of the sun in the floor, suggests that the building was a Sun Temple. There is nothing to indicate that it was used or intended to be used as a dwelling-place.

The masonry is the best thus far found on the Mesa. It was laid with mortar of tough, enduring clay. The stones of the walls and partitions were small and were cut, many polished, and a few decorated. The figures on a number of these decorated stones consist of triangles, and one is the outline of a typical cliff-house doorway. The outer walls are double. None have outside openings. Perhaps the entrances to the building were either through the roof or by means of subterranean passageways from the face of the cliff just in front and beneath.

In the mound upon the ruins of this building was found a living tree that was more than three hundred and sixty years old. A long period, perhaps several hundred years, must have been required for the earthen mound to accumulate upon the ruins, and then three hundred and sixty years for the tree to grow. Apparently the Sun Temple must have been abandoned several hundred years ago, perhaps about the year 1300. It appears never to have been occupied, and probably was in process of being completed when it was abandoned.

The so-called Cliff Palace in Cliff Cañon is centrally located in the Mesa Verde National Park. This was a stone structure more than three hundred feet long and with more than two hundred rooms. It appears to have been built in sections or installments, not to any consecutive plan. As a result, in this one building there are a number of types of architecture. In one section there is a huge square tower four stories high; in an adjoining section, a large well-built round tower. This building probably was a home for scores of people. There were mill rooms in which corn was ground, storerooms, ceremonial rooms, probably rooms used in religious worship, and other rooms called "kivas," which appear to have been used much of the time by the men as lounging-places. Fireplaces were scattered throughout the building. Many of the walls were of cut stone, and some were plastered and adorned with paintings. Paint still shows on a number of walls.

This park contains other large stone structures and hundreds of smaller cliff ruins. Among the buildings, besides the Cliff Palace, are the Spruce Tree House, the Balcony House, the Tunnel House, and numerous buildings upon the surface. Near Mummy Lake are a number of large, tree-grown mounds, similar to the recently excavated one that covered the Sun Temple. Beneath each of these is a buried stone structure. Here, apparently, is a buried city.

VIII

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

Magnificent mountains in the sky, peak after peak along the horizon,--an inspiring skyline,--such is the setting of the Rocky Mountain National Park. In this playground is a twenty-five-mile stretch of the most rugged section of the Continental Divide. Here are fifty peaks with summits more than two miles high. From one hundred miles distant, out on the plains of Colorado or Wyoming, these snowy, rugged mountain-tops give one a thrill as they appear to join with the clouds and form a horizon that seems to be a part of the scenery of the sky.

Splendidly grouped with these peaks and mountains are cañons, moorlands, waterfalls, glaciers, lakes, forests, meadows, and wild flowers--the Rocky Mountains are at their best.

On approaching the Park by the east entrance, through the long-famed Estes Park region, even the dullest traveler is thrilled with the first glimpse, and those who frequently behold it find the scene as welcome as a favorite old song. From the entrance, one looks down on an irregular, undulating, green mountain meadow, miles in extent. This is Estes Park. Great pines are scattered over it, singly and in groves; rocky points and cliffs rise picturesquely in the midst; and the Big Thompson River, sweeping in great folds from side to side, goes majestically across. High, forest-walled mountains surround it, and the great jagged snowy range stands splendidly above.

The Rocky Mountain Park is glorified with transcendent forms of the beautiful and the sublime. In it bees hum and beavers build; birds give melody to the forest depth, and butterflies with painted wings circle the sunny air. Mountain sheep in classic poses watch from the cliffs, eagles soar in the blue, speckled trout sprinkle the clear streams, and the varied voice of the coyote echoes when the afterglow falls. From top to bottom the park is beautified with dainty, exquisite wild flowers of brightest hues; they crowd the streams, wave on the hills, shine in woodland vistas, and color snow-edges everywhere.

This Park has an area of about three hundred and sixty square miles. Its terraced alpine heights are about equally divided between the Atlantic and the Pacific slopes. It is twenty-five miles long, from twelve to twenty miles wide, and about one mile high from lowest to highest altitudes.

The greater part of the Park lies above the altitude of nine thousand feet. Its southeast corner is within forty miles of Denver; the northeast corner about the same distance from Cheyenne. A number of railroads run close to it, and the Lincoln Highway is about twenty miles away. The Park is only thirty hours from Chicago, and its accessibility adds to its invitingness as a playground.

Side by side in it are two dominating peaks. These are Long's Peak, 14,255 feet high, and Mount Meeker, 14,000 feet above the sea. These great summits were a landmark for the primitive red man who saw them from the plains. For generations the plains Indians spoke of them as the "Two Guides."

Viewed as a whole from a neighboring mountain-top, either on the eastern or the western side, the Park presents an imposing appearance. My favorite near-by view-point is the summit of the Twin Sister Peaks.

In commenting on the appearance of the eastern slope Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, the celebrated geologist, wrote as follows:--

Not only has Nature amply supplied this with features of rare
beauty and surroundings of admirable grandeur, but it has thus
distributed them that the eye of an artist may rest with perfect
satisfaction on the complete picture represented. It may be said,
perhaps, that the more minute details of the scenery are too
decorative in their character, showing, as they do, the irregular
picturesque groups of hills, buttes, products of erosion, and the
finely moulded ridges--the effect is pleasing in the extreme.

Mountain-climbers will find a number of towering view-points. Long's Peak is the superior one, and the most dominating single feature in the Park. It is a mountain of striking individuality and peculiar ruggedness, though not extremely difficult to climb. Standing a little apart from numbers of other peaks, it is placed so as to command rugged near-by views as well as wonderful far-reaching vistas that vanish in the light and shadow of distance. Among the other peaks that climbers would do well to stand upon are Mount Meeker, Hague's Peak, and Specimen Mountain. Among the lower peaks that command magnificent scenes, I would name Meadow Mountain, at the southern end of the Park, as one of the best. Among other excellent views are those from Flat-Top Mountain, Gem Lake, Echo Mountain, near Grand Lake, and a number of places along the summit of Trail Ridge.

The topography of the Park is one big glacial story, which in places is of unusual interest. This fascinating story left by the Ice King is for the most part well preserved and forms one of the Park's chief attractions. Nowhere in America are glacial records of such prominence more numerous, accessible, and easily read.

A few small glaciers remain--one on the eastern slope of Long's Peak, and Andrews, Sprague's, and Hallet Glaciers in the north half of the eastern slope. These glaciers are mere remnants, but none the less interesting.

Altogether there are more than one hundred lakes and tarns in the Park. Most of these are small, but each has its peculiarly attractive setting. With few exceptions, these lakes repose in basins of solid rock that were excavated for them by glacial action. In the Park are also many stupendous moraines.

Each year more than a thousand varieties of wild blossoms give color and charm to this favored spot. They are to be counted among the four chief attractions, the other three being Long's Peak, the glaciation, and the timber-line. Of the brilliantly colored wild flowers many take on large and vigorous form, while in the alpine moorlands numerous species are dwarfed and low-growing. A few bright blossoms jewel the summits of the highest peaks. Flowers grow wherever there is a bit of soil for them to live in.

On the summit of Long's Peak, nearly three miles up, in a number of places I have seen bright primroses and polemonium, blue mertensia and lavender-colored phlox. There are ragged wild gardens of alpine flowers nearly thirteen thousand feet above the sea. More than one hundred varieties of flowers brighten the ledges of the cliffs, fringe the snow-piles, and color the moorlands of the heights above the limits of tree growth. The alpine blooms that live in dry or wind-swept places are dwarfed and flattened. They keep their beauty close to the earth. Many of these little flowering people are so greatly dwarfed that the plant with its leaf and blossom does not rise a quarter of an inch above the earth. Among these are the phlox, harebell, and the columbine.

The Mariposa lily's, perhaps, is the most classic petal in the Park. Among its conspicuous neighbors are the fringed gentian, the silver-and-blue columbine, the elaborate calypso orchid, and the graceful harebell. Among the other abundant and beautiful blossoms are violets, daisies, asters, black-eyed Susans, paint-brushes, rock-roses, pasque-flowers, which Helen Hunt called Maltese kittens, tiger lilies, golden pond-lilies, and anemones. Many of these flowers are perfectly formed and carry petals of cleanest, deepest color.

There are many kinds of wild life in the Park. Mountain sheep probably number several hundreds. Elk are increasing in number; so, too, are deer, which are already common. There are a number of black bears, possibly a few remaining grizzlies, and a few foxes, wolves, lions, and coyotes. The beaver population is numerous, and in many places are extensive beaver colonies with dams, ponds, and houses.

Among about one hundred and fifty species of birds are found a few golden eagles. These nest in the heights. The rose-finch and the ptarmigan live the year round near the snow-line above the limits of tree growth. Among the common birds most frequently seen are the robin, bluebird, blackbird, hummingbird, pine siskin, goldfinch, magpie, white-crowned sparrow, house wren, and Rocky Mountain jay.

During the flower-filled, sun-flooded days of June, while the evening shadows are crossing the openings, the song of the hermit thrush is often heard, its beautiful silvery notes mingling strangely with the wild surroundings. In June, too, the ever-cheerful water-ouzel carols most intensely by his chosen home along the alpine streams. Likewise in this month the marvelous solitaire sings among the crags far up the slopes, close to where the forest ends and the alpine moorlands begin.

Here are primeval forests, torn by cañons and pierced by crags and rock ridges. Among the more common trees are the lodge-pole pine and the Engelmann spruce. Other species are the alpine fir, Douglas spruce, limber pine, and Western yellow pine. The aspen is found in groves, groups, and scattered growths in the moister places all over the woodland.

The timber-line in the Park is one of the most picturesque and interesting in the world. It is strangely appealing and thought-compelling. This is the forest-frontier. Its average altitude is about eleven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Timber-line in the Alps is only about sixty-five hundred feet. Thus it will be seen that the climate of this Rocky Mountain section is far more friendly to wood growth than that of the Alps.

The trees persistently try to climb upward, and their struggle for existence becomes deadly. The wind blows off their arms, and cuts them with flying sand. The cold dwarfs them, and for nine months in the year the snow tries to twist and crush the life out of them. Many have limbs and bark on one side only; others are completely stripped of bark. They seldom grow over eight feet high, and numbers grow along the ground like vines. In the drier places at timber-line the limber pine has sole possession, while in the moister places the Engelmann spruce predominates, and is sometimes accompanied by dwarfed aspen, birch, subalpine fir, and willow. Above the timber-line are crags, snow-piles, and alpine-flower meadows.

Traveling along the eastern slope of the Park, one encounters a number of prominent attractions.

In the south, Wild Basin, a splendidly glaciated realm of several square miles, almost completely surrounded with high peaks, contains lakes, forests, moraines, and gorges. It retains many wild glacial records of peculiar interest. North of it is the Long's Peak group, consisting of Long's Peak, Mount Meeker, Mount Lady Washington, Chasm Lake and Gorge, and Mills Moraine. This moraine is one of the most interesting in the park. Chasm Lake, at the foot of the precipitous eastern slope of Long's Peak, has the wildest setting of all the many Park lakes.

To the east of Long's Peak lies Tahosa Valley, and just beyond this rise the Twin Sister Peaks. Between Long's Peak and the Range is Glacier Gorge, a deep glaciated cañon. At the end of this, in the Continental Divide, is the Loch Vale region. Here the terraced floor is varied with tarns, waterfalls, flowery meadows, grassy spaces, and storm-battered trees. Around it and rising above it are stupendous cliffs and precipices of glaciated rock. Above it to the west is Andrews Glacier. Eastward from it lies the Bierstadt Moraine, named after Albert Bierstadt, whose pictures gave fame to the region. A trail crosses the Continental Divide from Flat-Top Mountain, which is approximately in the center of the Park.

To the north of Flat-Top Mountain lie Fern and Odessa Lakes. They are the best-known and most popular lakes in the Park, but there are a number of others of somewhat similar character and with equally scenic surroundings. Beyond these is Sprague's Glacier; also Forest Cañon, above which extends the scene-commanding Trail Ridge. Again beyond, the Fall River automobile road crosses the Continental Divide.

In the northeast corner of the Park lies the Mummy Range, the highest peak being Hague's. On its northern slope is Hallet Glacier. A bill now (1917) before Congress provides that Deer Mountain, Gem Lake, and the Twin Sister Peaks be added to the Park.[1]

[1] This bill passed after the above was in type. See map of
the Park.

On the western slope, at the south end, is a combination of lovely and magnificent scenes. The great feature on the west side is Grand Lake, the largest lake in Colorado. It is the source of the Grand River, and furnishes a part of the water that roars through the Grand Cañon of the Colorado in Arizona. The North Inlet and the East Inlet are scenic gorges through which streams rush from the heights down into Grand Lake. The East Inlet region, between Shoshone Peak and Grand Lake, has a remarkable glacial story of its own.

In the northwest corner of the Park stands Specimen Mountain, an excellent view-point. This is probably a sleeping volcano. It is the most famous mountain-sheep range in the Park. Its grassy slopes and summit contain spaces of salty ooze that attracts them. Many times I have seen a flock of one hundred or more in the crater.

IX

THE GRAND CAÑON

John Muir strongly urged that a National Park be made of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. In commenting on this Titan of cañons, he said:--

No matter how far you have wandered hitherto, or how many famous
valleys and gorges you have seen, this one, the Grand Cañon of the
Colorado, will seem as novel to you, as unearthly in the color and
grandeur and quantity of its architecture, as if you had found it
after death, on some other star; so incomparably lovely and grand
and supreme is it above all the other cañons.

It is hoped that Congress will early create a Grand Cañon National Park. The territory most seriously considered embraces a hundred-mile stretch of the cañon with a narrow bit of each rim. This would extend about fifty miles up and an equal distance down the river from Grand Cañon Station. It would thus include only about half the length of the Grand Cañon, and no part of any other cañon. I should like to see it extended another hundred miles up the river. It would then embrace not less than two hundred miles of the river, and would include Marble Cañon and a part of Glen Cañon. But, whatever its length, it should include a broad forest border all the way, on both rims of the cañon.

To enable the public to see this titanic gorge in the most comfortable manner and from the best points of view, it is necessary to have more public roads and trails. There is great need that this unmatched wonder have National Park protection and development. At present the main trail to the bottom of the cañon is a private toll trail!

Visitors to almost any great scene are wont to compare it with some other scene; it reminds them of this place or that place. But when one first views Crater Lake, or while one is in the presence of the Big Trees for the first time, memory is suspended; and when one first beholds the Grand Cañon, it does not remind him of this or that--it completely possesses the observer, sweeps other scenes and places out of mind. Presently comes desire for a thousandfold capacity of feeling and comprehension. The thing is too vast and splendid for ordinary faculties.

I have boated in many of the cañons of the Colorado and have camped and tramped along their rims. Often I have looked down into them when they were filled with mists; when broken clouds hung over them; when sunshine or moonlight illumined their depths, from which I have looked forth under like conditions. But to me, whether in summer or when snow piles the rim, the Grand Cañon never loses its intense impressiveness.

_By permission of the National Park Service, Department of the
Interior_]

The Walhalla Plateau is an extraordinary cañon view-point and is likely to become one of the most famous places on the earth. This narrow plateau thrusts ten miles out into the vast, deep, airy Grand Cañon. It extends from the north rim, between Bright Angel Cañon and the inside bend of the main cañon opposite the Cañon of the Little Colorado. A most commanding peninsula it is, with wide and enormous depths sweeping almost entirely around it. Other commanding view-points on the north rim are Point Sublime and Bright Angel Point. Three excellent view-points on the south rim are Grand View, Hopi Point, and the El Tovar. Grand View is a few miles up the river from the El Tovar Hotel, and opposite Cape Royal of the Walhalla Plateau.

The Colorado River in Arizona flows through a series of twenty vast cañons that have a length of about one thousand miles. Most of them are end to end with only a mere break between. Of these, the Grand Cañon is the cañon of cañons. Counting downstream, it is the eighteenth of the series; counting upstream, the third. The cañon is from seven to fifteen miles wide, and from four thousand to six thousand feet deep. It is an enormous gulf two hundred miles long, in solid rock. Less than one thousand feet across at the bottom, and eight to ten miles across at the top, it may be called a rough V-shaped gorge; or, together with its tributary cañons, it might be called an inverted hollow mountain-range. This range, if turned out upon the plateau, would measure in places more than two hundred miles in length and nearly forty miles in width, with summits rising nearly seven thousand feet; and it would be diversified with ridges, gorges, plateaus, spurs, and peaks.

The Grand Cañon of the Colorado is a masterpiece of erosion--a wonderful story carved in rock. It was excavated and washed out by the river. It is not an ordinary mountain cañon, for it lies in a comparatively level plain or plateau. During the ages, the débris-laden water sliding over its inclined bed of solid rock dug, sawed, and cut the cañon to the bottom. The river not only carried away all the material worn from the bottom, but the thousandfold more that tumbled into it from the ever-caving walls.

Here is color in magnificent array. Most of the strata are perfectly horizontal and of great thickness, and each has an individual color. Many of the walls are brown or red, and there are strata of gray, yellow, grayish brown, and grayish green. All these are massed and arranged in vast and broken color pictures and landscapes, some of which are a mile high and several miles in length.

The top, or rim, of the cañon is in an extensive arid region. Water is extremely scarce; in a number of places not a drop is available within miles. If a boatman is wrecked in the cañon, he has little opportunity of escaping. If he should manage to climb out on the desolate, almost uninhabited plateau, he would be likely to perish for lack of water.

The cañon has a climate of its own. In the bottom, the temperature frequently shows a range of one hundred degrees inside of twenty-four hours. Its great depth and peculiar wall exposure give it a climatic variety. The walls that face the north are much cooler than those facing the south. The temperature at the top differs from that at the bottom, and midway on the walls is a temperature distinct from either of the others. On the rim at El Tovar it may be a winter day; you descend to the river and there find a mild climate, with birds singing and flowers in bloom. The six thousand feet of descent to the river gives a climatic change that approximates a southern journey of two thousand miles. This plateau is forested and on the northern rim of the cañon the tree-growth is heavy.

Flowers bloom in the cañon every month in the year. In the niches and on the terraces are the columbine, lupine, stonecrop, kinnikinnick, dandelion, thistle, and paintbrush. Sagebrush and greasewood occur in many places. The Douglas spruce is found upon the southern wall, the cottonwood and willow in the bottom. Beavers, a few deer, many rabbits, wildcats, and wolves are found in a few places in the bottom of the cañon, and sheep and lions upon the terraces. But the larger part of the unbroken and terraced walls is barren and lifeless.

Among the birds that gladden this gorge are the mockingbird, piñon jay, robin, quail, hummingbird, kingfisher, swallow, and owl. Here, too, you will hear that melodious and hopeful singer the cañon wren. Over this vast gulf butterflies with daintily colored wings float in lovely laziness.

In a number of the cañons, ruined cliff houses are numerous, and a few of these are found far north in Glen Cañon. The walls, in places, are marked with picture writing. This probably was the work of the cliff dwellers or of the Indians.

Much of the cañon region may well be called the "No Man's Land" of the continent. In it are a numerous and assorted lot of men with unknown histories. Mingling with these are Indians, miners, health-seekers, and strange and interesting characters, among whom are aged trappers and prospectors and real cowboys who have survived the days of adventures.

Water is the great sculptor of the face of nature. The gentle raindrop grapples with mountains of solid rock, and with never-ending persistence drags them piecemeal into the sea. Here the material is redeposited in sedimentary strata, and this may emerge into the light in the ages yet to be.

A narrow ditch in the earth will widen by the caving-in of its sides. If the ditch be deepened, the caved-in matter being removed, it will continue to widen. And so it is with this cañon; the weathering or the caving-in of these walls goes ever on. The sharpness of the walls, and many of their striking features, are due to the peculiar climatic conditions that exist in this region--the short rainy seasons and long dry periods. Had there been a more even and abundant precipitation, it is probable that more vegetation would have been produced, which would have had a marked influence upon the walls, giving them a more rounded and less interesting form.

The cañon broadens with the years. Cut narrow by the river, it has gradually widened by the caving-in of the walls. If it had remained as the river cut it, it would now be as narrow at the top as it is in the bottom--a cañon about a mile deep, only a few hundred feet wide, and with perpendicular walls. As it is, the walls rise through a series of shattered inclines, precipitous slopes and terraces, with here and there a vertical section.

Well may the Cañon of the Colorado be called the greatest inanimate wonder in the world. Written in the exposed and remaining rock-strata through which the river has cut its way is a wonderful story of the past, a marvelous and splendid romance. At an enormously remote time the Grand Cañon plateau rose from the primeval sea. After long exposure and great weathering it sank back, remained submerged for ages, and thousands of feet of strata were deposited upon it. Again it emerged, was exposed "a million years and a day," during which æon thousands of feet of strata were eroded away. Again it went down into the sea, and upon it were piled thousands of feet of additional strata. A fourth time it rose slowly above the water. As this plateau was rising, its surface was acted upon by the elements. The part of the plateau surrounding the Grand Cañon proper was the scene of repeated volcanic action and earthquake disturbance. Here the strata have been subjected to repeated faultings, heavings, tiltings, and lava-flows. This uplift imprisoned an enormous Eocene lake that occupied much of what is now the Colorado River basin. This lake the river drained. The drainage was quite probably caused by the fact that the eastern part of the territory was uplifted higher than the western. The drainage-system of the Colorado River, as we now know it, began at that time to take on form and its waters started to cut the cañon. This crude outline covers cycling ages, and probably represents millions of years.

Through several thousand years the plateau slowly rose, and all this time the river was gradually cutting its way down into it. Finally the plateau ceased to rise and long remained at a standstill. After cutting down to its first base level, the river had so little fall that its waters, overladen with débris, ceased deepening the channel. The widening of the cañon went steadily on. Again the plateau slowly rose, perhaps two thousand feet. This uplift increased the fall of the river and again set it to deepening its channel, a work it is still doing.

The waters of the Colorado River are heavily laden with sediment. During the ages it has transported an inconceivable bulk of eroded material to the ocean. Much of this has come from its three hundred thousand square miles of mountainous drainage basin and all the material which formerly occupied the vast spaces of its numerous cañons. Continual caving of the walls compels the river to spend most of its time and energy in breaking up this débris and carrying it forward to the sea. This condition has existed for thousands of years.

It should be borne in mind that the transporting capacity of running water varies as the sixth power of its velocity. Therefore when a stream doubles its velocity it is competent to move particles sixty-four times greater than before. If its rate of flow is trebled, its transporting power is increased seven hundred and twenty-nine times. This goes to explain the frightful havoc of streams at times of flood.

The tributary streams of the Colorado come from arid regions and from the deserts, and are subject to sudden violent cloud-bursts and enormous floods. Though these are of short duration, they are of tremendous force. Earthy matter, rocky débris, and ofttimes hundreds of trees are swept along by the waters that rush in from side cañons like an awful avalanche. Lodged driftwood over one hundred feet above normal river-level tells of the magnitude of these wild floods.

Where a stream has all the load of any given degree of fineness that it is capable of carrying, the entire energy of the descending water is consumed by the transportation of the water and its burden, so that none is applied to erosion. If it has an excess of load, its velocity is thereby lessened and its power to transport is diminished; consequently a part of its load is dropped. If it has less than a full load, it is in a condition to receive more, which it eagerly does. Thereby its bed is swept clean, and then only does erosion become possible. Thus it is seen that the work of transportation may at times monopolize the entire energy of a stream to the exclusion of erosion; or the two works may be carried forward at the same time.

The rapidity of erosion depends upon the hardness, size, and number of the fragments in the flowing water, upon the durability of the stream-bed, and upon the velocity of the current, the element of velocity being of double importance, since it determines not only the size but the speed of the particle with which it works. Transportation is favored by an increased water-supply as much as by increased declivity, because when a stream increases in volume the increase in its velocity outruns the increase in volume, and its transporting power is correspondingly augmented. It is due to this that a stream which is subject to floods--periodical or otherwise--has a much greater transporting power than it could possess were its total water-supply evenly distributed throughout the year.

During one period of volcanic activity the focus of lava-flows into the cañon was at Lava Falls. A number of lava-streams burst directly into the cañon through the walls, while several flows poured their fiery floods over the brink. What a wild and spectacular condition existed while the river, deep in the cañon, received these tributaries of liquid fire! When the flow ceased, the cañon for sixty miles was filled with lava to the depth of about five hundred feet. The lava cooled, and in time was eroded away. The records of this spectacular story are still easily read.

Through these thousand miles of cañon, more than one fifth of which is the Grand Cañon, the river has a fall of about five thousand feet, unevenly divided. There are long stretches of quiet water, but in the Lodore, Cataract, Marble, and Grand Cañons are numerous and turbulent currents flowing amid masses of wild, rocky débris. There are about five hundred bad rapids and many others of lesser power. Most of these rapids are caused by rock-jams--dams formed by masses of rocky débris that have fallen from the walls above or have been swept into the main cañon by tributary streams. A few rapids are caused by ribs of hard, resistant rock that have not been worn down to the level of the softer rock.

The cañon was discovered by Spaniards in 1540. A government expedition visited it in 1859. The report of this expedition, printed in 1861, is accompanied with a picture of an ideal cañon. It is shown as narrow, with appallingly high vertical walls. Lieutenant Ives, who was in charge, thus closes his account:--

Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of
Whites to visit this profitless location. It seems intended by
Nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its
lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and
undisturbed.

Ten years later Major John W. Powell explored the series of cañons from end to end. Hundreds of expeditions that have attempted to go through them have failed. Of the half-dozen that succeeded, one was organized and conducted by Julius F. Stone, a manufacturer of Columbus, Ohio.

"Why," I asked Mr. Stone, "did you take the hazard and endure the acute hardship of this expedition?" His reply was:--

To photograph consecutively the entire cañon system of the Green
and Colorado Rivers, which, so far as the upper cañons are
concerned, had not yet been done. We also wished to determine the
accuracy of some statements heretofore made which seemed
reasonably open to question.

Mr. Stone went all the way through the cañon, took hundreds of photographs, and made numerous measurements. He made a thorough study of this cañon, added greatly to our knowledge of it, and corrected a number of misconceptions concerning it.

But [continued Mr. Stone] it was also to get away from work! For
the fun of the thing! Year after year the voice of many waters had
said: "Come join us in our joyous, boisterous journey to the sea,
and you shall know the ecstasy of wrestling with Nature
naked-handed and in the open, as befits the measure of a man." It
takes on many forms and numberless variations, this thing called
play. Its appealing voices come from far and near, in waking and
in dreams; from quiet, peaceful places they allure with the
assurance of longed-for rest; from the deeps of unfrequented
regions they whisper of eager day- and night-time hours brimming
with the fullness of heart's desire, while bugle-throated, their
challenge sounds forever from every unsealed height.

I presume it is quite true that the chance of disaster (provided
we consider death as being such) followed us like the eyes of the
forest that note every move of the intruder but never reveal
themselves. But somehow or other the snarling threat of the rapids
did not creep into the little red hut where fear lives, and so
burden our task with irresolution or the handicap of indecision;
therefore, whatever dangers may have danced invisible attendance
on our daily toil, they rarely revealed themselves in the form of
accident, and never in the shape of difficulties too great to be
overcome, though sometimes the margin was rather small.

Looking back now at the chance of our having been caught, a shade
of hesitation flits over the abiding desire to see it all again,
but the free, buoyant life of the open, unvexed by the sedate and
superfluous trifles of conventionality, the spirit of fair
companionship vouchsafed by the wilderness, and the river that
seemed to take us by the hand and lead us down its gorgeous aisles
where grandeur, glory, and desolation are all merged into
one--these still are as a voice and a vision that hold the
imagination with singular enchantment.

Any one interested in the geology of the Grand Cañon will find much in the books of Powell and Dellenbaugh, but best of all are the recent reports of the Geological Survey. For glimpses of the interesting characters who frequent this region, and for a sober account of an array of Grand Cañon adventures, nothing equals the narrative in "Through the Grand Cañon from Wyoming to Mexico," by Ellsworth L. Kolb.

Professor John C. Van Dyke, author of "The Desert," has most ably summed up the Grand Cañon in three monumental sentences: "More mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height.... The Grand Cañon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world. There is nothing like it."

The land of form, the realm of music and of song--running, pouring, rushing, rhythmic waters; but preëminently a land of color: flowing red, yellow, orange, crimson and purplish, green and blue. Miles of black and white. This riot and regularity and vast distribution of color in continual change--it glows and is subdued with the shift of shadows, with the view-point of the sun.

X

LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK

An active volcano is the imposing exhibit in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. The fiery Lassen Peak rises in the midst of telling volcanic records that have been made and changed through many thousand years.

This Park is in northern California. It is about one hundred and fifty miles south of the Crater Lake National Park. The territory embraces the southern end of the Cascade Mountains, the northern end of the Sierra, and through it is the cross-connection between the Sierra and the Coast Range. The area is about one hundred and twenty-five square miles. The major portion of the Park lies at an altitude of between six thousand and eight thousand feet, the lowest part being about four thousand feet, while the highest point, the summit of Lassen Peak, is 10,437 feet above the level of the sea. The Park is reached by automobile roads. It is easily accessible from the Southern Pacific Railroad in the upper Sacramento Valley, and from the Western Pacific Railroad on the Feather River.

The scientific and scenic merits of this territory were of such uncommon order that in 1907 they were reserved in the Mount Lassen and Cinder Cone National Monuments. Both these reservations are now merged into the Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Lassen Peak is one of the great volcanoes of the Pacific Coast. Most of the material in it, and that of the surrounding territory, appears to be of volcanic origin. It is in the margin of one of the largest lava-fields in the world. The lava in this vast field extends northward through western Oregon and Washington and far eastward, including southern Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park. It has an area of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, over parts of which the lava is of great depth.

Lassen is the southernmost fire mountain of that numerous group of volcanoes that have so greatly changed the surface of the Northwest. Among its conspicuous volcanic companions are Crater Lake, formerly Mount Mazama, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, and Mount Rainier. Until Lassen Peak burst forth in 1914 it had slumbered for centuries, and was commonly considered extinct. It has probably been intermittently active for ages. Many geologists think that this activity has extended through not less than two million years. Just how long it may show its red tongue and its black clouds of breath is uncertain; and just how violent and how voluminous its eruptions may become are matters of conjecture.

All about Lassen Peak are striking exhibits of vulcanism--fields of lava, quantities of obsidian or natural glass, sulphur springs, hot springs, volcanic sand and volcanic bombs, and recent volcanic topography, including Snag Lake.

Two of the imposing cañons here are Los Molinos and Warner Cañon. These and other changes in the sides of Lassen Peak illustrate the old, ever-interesting, and eternal story of erosion. Both these cañons are wild places which have cut and eroded deeply into the ancient lavas of Mount Lassen. Frost and water have reshaped the work of fire. The mountain's sides show that it withstood the latest visits of the Ice King. What appear to be the distinct records of glacial erosion mark many spaces of its slopes.

The eruption of May 19, 1915, produced many changes. A volume of super-heated gases burst out beneath the deeply snow-covered northeast slope. The snow was instantly changed into water and steam. The mighty downrush and onrush of water wrecked the channel of Lost Creek for several miles. Meadows were piled with boulders, rock fragments, and finer débris. Trees were uprooted or broken off, carried downward, and left in piles of fierce confusion.

The hot gases played havoc with the forests. A stretch from a quarter of a mile to nearly a mile wide and about ten miles long was killed by the heat of the sweeping hurricane. Thousands of trees were instantly killed and their green changed to brown. Others were charred. Forest fires were started in a number of places.

The spectacular ruins which this left behind--the trees, wreckage, slides, the changes made by ashes--may now be viewed with ease and safety. It is probable that for years to come this volcanic wreckage will be seen by thousands of visitors annually.

Fiery Lassen Peak is snow-crowned. One may ride to its summit on horseback. From the top one has magnificent views of the mountains to the north, the distant Coast Range, and the mountains eastward by the Great Basin. On the whole, the surrounding mountain distances are hardly excelled for grandeur in the entire country.

Cinder Cone is about ten miles to the northeast of Lassen Peak. It has an altitude of only 6907 feet. It appears to have been built up chiefly during the last two hundred years and for the most part by two eruptions. One of these occurred nearly two hundred years ago. It originated Stump Lake and ejected and spread materials over considerable territory. The more recent eruption appears to have taken place less than a century ago. In the summer of 1890 I found in the crater a lodge-pole pine that was about eighty years of age.

Cinder Cone is a strikingly symmetrical small crater formed of cinders and other volcanic products. It stands in a lava-field that has an area of about three square miles. Its base measures about two thousand feet in diameter, its truncated cone seven hundred and fifty feet, and it is about six hundred and fifty feet high. Its well-preserved crater is two hundred and forty feet deep and is nicely funnel-shaped.

The Indians of the region had a popular tradition of the intense activity of this cone about three centuries ago. This tradition was that for a long time the sky was black with ashes and smoke. Thousands of acres of forest were buried or smothered. The world appeared to be coming to an end. But finally the sun appeared, red as blood. The sky cleared, and volcanic activity ceased.

A number of the hot springs are agitated almost enough to be called geysers. Cold and mineral springs abound. There are a number of lively streams and plunging waterfalls.

The lake-area is twenty-three hundred acres. The largest of the lakes is Lake Bidwell. Cinder Cone stands between two lakes which appear to have been formerly one. The eruption of this cone probably extended a lava-flow across the lake, dividing it into two parts. An outpouring of volcanic material apparently made a dam, which formed a reservoir, now occupied by Stump Lake. This filled with water and drowned a forest growth. Through the surface of this lake still thrust numerous tree-trunks of the drowned forest. The outburst of Cinder Cone that formed this lake and overwhelmed the forest probably took place nearly two hundred years ago. Other lakes are Juniper, Tilman, and Manzanita Lakes.

The greater portion of the Park is forested. Among the more common species of trees are Jeffrey pine, red fir, mountain hemlock, lodge-pole pine, white fir, and incense cedar. In places among the forests are beautiful mountain meadows.

There are scores of varieties of wild flowers. Most of these grow under favorable conditions; have warmth, moisture, and rich soil; and they show bright, clean blossoms. The district has its full share of bird and animal life. In a number of streams fish are plentiful.

The Lassen Volcanic National Park was created chiefly through the efforts of Congressmen John E. Raker and William Kent.

The varied objects of interest in this Park, especially those associated with topography and geology, make it not only a place with curious features, but a region affording unusual opportunities for the gathering of fundamental facts concerning our resources. Here also are scenes to inspire the souls of such as can be moved by the beauty and grandeur of Nature and by the awful manifestations of her power.

Says J. S. Diller, of the United States Geological Survey, "With its comfortably active volcano, inviting cinder cones and lava fields, vigorously boiling hot springs, mud lakes and 'mush pots' for the vulcanologist to study, and the glaciated divides and cañons for the physiographer, in a setting of lovely scenery and attractive camps, for the tourists all easily accessible, the Lassen Peak region affords one of the most alluring and instructive spots for a National Park."

XI

HAWAII NATIONAL PARK

A volcanic exhibit unrivaled in the world is embraced in the Hawaii National Park, which was created in 1916. This Park consists of two volcanic sections in the Hawaiian Islands, with a total area of one hundred and seventeen square miles. Within this territory are two active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii; and one sleeping volcano, Haleakala on the island of Maui.

The celebrated and unequaled Hawaiian volcanoes are a national scenic asset, unique of their kind and famous in the world of science. Apparently, the ocean has been filled in and the entire group of Hawaiian Islands built by the lava-outpourings of volcanoes. In this National Park we may see volcanic topography in the course of construction; some landscapes just cast in the process of cooling; others that are beginning to show the erosion of the elements; also those which vegetation is just possessing.

The Hawaii National Park has about the same latitude as the City of Mexico. There are about a dozen islands in the group, with a total area of seventy-five hundred square miles. Honolulu, the capital city, is on the island of Oahu, near the middle of the island chain, which extends from northwest to southeast. From San Francisco it is about twenty-one hundred miles to Honolulu.

Kilauea is more than two hundred miles southeast of Honolulu, and thirty miles inland from the port of Hilo. Twenty miles to the west from Kilauea is Mauna Loa. The crater of Haleakala is on a different island from Kilauea and Mauna Loa, about midway between these and Honolulu.

The active rim of Kilauea is four thousand feet above the sea. The slopes of this volcano have an exceedingly flat grade. It is the most continuously active of the three volcanoes in this Park. It has a pit in which the molten lava rises and falls and is boiling all the time. For a century Kilauea has been almost continuously active with a lake or lakes of molten lava. The crater of Kilauea is not a steep mountain-top, but a broad, forested plateau, beneath which is a lava sink three miles in diameter, surrounded by cliffs three hundred feet high. Several times during the last century the active crater was upheaved into a hill. In a little while it collapsed into a deep pit with marvelously spectacular avalanches, fiery grottos, and clouds of steam and brown dust. Through many years the crater was overflowing. Frequently large pieces of the shore fall into the molten lake, forming islands.

The magnificent spectacle of the lake of lava at Kilauea is indescribable. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, visited the crater and pronounced it the most wonderful scene he had ever watched. It is a lake of liquid fire one thousand feet across, splashing on its banks with a noise like the waves of the sea. Great high fountains boil up through it, sending quantities of glowing spray over the shore. There are fiery, molten cascades, whirlpools, and rapids, with hissing of gases, rumbling, and blue flames playing through the crevices. It is ever changing, and the record of these changes is being kept from day to day, photographically and otherwise, by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

Mauna Loa is an active crater, 13,675 feet above sea-level. It is an enormous mountain mass, covering a wide area with its very gentle slopes. This volcano erupts about once every decade. Of the three volcanoes in the Park, Mauna Loa is the most productive of new rock, which it pours out on the surface of the land. Its activities start with outbursts on the summit and culminate after a number of years in a flow which floods the whole country for many months.

Perpetual snow crowns Mauna Loa, and ice may be found in cracks even in summer. In the winter-time there is a variety of climate from sea-level to the summit--from the warmth of the tropics to arctic blizzards on the mountain-top.

An interesting and somewhat amusing story is told in regard to an eruption of Mauna Loa in 1881. The flow of lava at that time was so heavy that it seriously threatened to wipe out the town of Hilo. When the lava ran down to within a mile of the place, the natives urged their Princess Ruth to go and conjure the goddess of the volcano, Pele, to stop the flow. She went--so the tales goes--with all her retinue, and threw into the crater some berries, a black hen, a white pig, and a bottle of gin, as sacrifices. The lava-flow stopped, and the natives believed their escape due to the odd offering, although some people have expressed the opinion that such a collection of stuff thrown into an active volcano's crater would make the eruption more violent, if it had any effect at all.

Mauna Loa forces columns of liquid lava hundreds of feet into the air, and every few years pours forth billions of tons of lava in a few days. There is a wonderful rift-line, from which eight or ten flows poured forth during the last century. These burst out on the slopes of the mountain, not from the summit crater. After the first explosion at the summit, a period of quiet intervenes, and then the rifts open and lava flows down.

The lava cools quickly and changes through colors of red, purple, brown, and gray as it cools. Areas of each of these are seen at one time, with red-hot liquids showing in the cracks of the lava. Trees of lava are formed at one place by the flow of lava rushing through a forest and congealing around the trunks. Fields of "Pele's hair"--lava--are blown out by the wind, like spun glass, as the fiery spray is dashed into the air on the surface of the molten lake. In the large craters are numerous smaller ones with endless lava forms, colors, and volcanic structures.

The crater of Haleakala, ten thousand feet high, is near the middle of the island of Maui. It is eight miles in diameter and three thousand feet deep. While Haleakala has not erupted for two hundred years, the entire crater is sometimes full of active fire fountains, and the fiery glow mounts to the clouds like an immense conflagration.

Professor Thomas A. Jaggar says, "The crater of Haleakala at sunrise is the grandest volcanic spectacle on earth."