Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
The Yellowstone River, one of the headwaters of the Missouri, rises in
the National Park, and its fertile valley is among the leading
pasturages of Montana. Cattle and sheep abound, and the cowboys are
universal, galloping about on energetic little bronchos, with lariats
hanging from the saddle. The Big Horn River flows in, and an extensive
region to the southward is the Crow Indian reservation, about three
thousand living there. It was here, near Fort Custer, at a point
forty-five miles south of the railroad, that the terrible massacre
took place in June, 1876, by which General Custer and his command of
over two hundred and fifty men were annihilated by the Sioux. There is
now a national cemetery at the place. We gradually enter the mountain
ranges which are the outposts of the Rockies, and passing between the
Yellowstone range and the Belt Mountains, reach Livingston, a town of
several thousand people, and a great centre for hunting and fishing,
at the entrance to the Yellowstone National Park. From here a branch
railway turns southward, ascending the valley of the Yellowstone,
going through its first canyon, known as the "Gate of the Mountain,"
an impressive rocky gorge, and ascending a steep grade, so that the
floor of the valley rises within the Park to an elevation of over six
thousand feet above the sea. A second canyon is passed, and on its
western side is a huge peak whose upheaved red rocks have named it the
Cinnabar Mountain. These red rocks are in strata streaked down its
sides with intervening granite and limestone. One of these, the
Devil's Slide, is conspicuous, its quartzite walls rising high above
the lower strata and making a veritable slide of great proportions
down the mountain. The railroad ends at Cinnabar, and stages cover the
remaining distance up the Yellowstone to its confluence with Gardiner
River at the Park entrance, and thence to the Mammoth Hot Springs
within the Park, the tourist headquarters.
THE AMERICAN WONDERLAND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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