Allowing for the difference in season, there was little change observable in the natural features of the Park since my former visit. Things looked different, of course, but that was only because there was less snow and more dust. The only appreciable natural changes were in the hot spring and geyser areas, where here or there a formation had augmented or crumbled to dust according to whether or not its supply of mineral-charged water had been maintained or not. The cliffs and mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could have suffered no more than the two decades, infinitesimal geologic modifications--mostly erosive. Even in the geyser basins the changes of a decade are such as few save a scientific observer would note. The first authentic written description of the Fire Hole geysers basins was penned nearly eighty years ago by Warren Angus Ferris, a clerk of the American Fur Company. It describes that region of the present as accurately as would the account of a last summer's tourist. Not unless we are prepared to accept those delectable yarns of old Jim Bridger as the higher truth is there any evidence that the natural features of the Park have suffered material change since its discovery. But even in his own credulous time people were hardly inclined to swallow the story of that cliff of telescopic glass which tempted Jim into shooting twenty-five-miles-distant elk under the impression that it was grazing within gunshot. Nor would those ancient sceptics believe the story of the way the hoofs of Bridger's horse were shrunk to pin-points in crossing the Alum Creek, or of how those astringent waters actually shrunk the land and reduced the distance he had to travel. Indeed, it is hard to believe these stories even today. And yet Bridger is credited with being the greatest natural topographer in frontier history--he was said to be able to draw an accurate map of the Rocky Mountains on a buffalo hide. But if the natural changes in the Yellowstone appeared inappreciable, the artificial, the evolutionary changes were very striking. Roads and trails had been greatly improved and extended, horse-drawn vehicles had given place to motors, and the Rangers of the National Park Service had taken over policing and patrol from the Army. Most heartening of all, Administration seemed at last to have found itself. In the decade or two following the creation of the Park, there were two Superintendents, Langford and Norris, who gave the best that was in them to an all but thankless task. Greatly hampered by lack of co-operation and even by actual obstruction in Washington the achievement of neither was commensurate with his effort. [Illustration: _J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_ GOLDEN GATE CANYON AND VIADUCT]