"Descending Mount Washburn, by a trail through woods, one emerges into the meadows or springs out of which Cascade Creek takes its water, and, following it to near its mouth, you camp and walk to the great falls and the head of the Yellowstone canyon. In grandeur, majesty, and coloring, these, probably, equal any on earth. The painting by Moran in the Capitol is good, but painting and words are unequal to the subject. They must be seen to be appreciated and felt. "Gen. Poe and I found a jutting rock, about a mile below the Seron Falls, from which a perfect view is had of the Seron Falls canyon. The upper falls are given at 125 feet and the lower at 350. The canyon is described as 2,000 feet. It is not 2,000 immediately below the Seron Falls, but may be lower down, for this canyon is thirty miles long, and where it breaks through the range abreast of Washburn may be 2,000 feet. Just below the Seron Falls, I think 1,000 feet would be nearer the exact measurement; but it forms an actual canyon, the sides being almost vertical, and no one venturing to attempt a descent. It is not so much the form of this canyon, though fantastic in the extreme, that elicited my admiration, but the coloring. The soft rocks through which the waters have cut a way are of the most delicate colors,--buff, gray, and red,--all so perfectly blended as to make a picture of exquisite finish. The falls and canyon of the Yellowstone will remain to the end of time objects of natural beauty and grandeur to attract the attention of the living. "Up to this time we had seen no geysers or hot springs, but the next day, eight miles up from the falls, we came to Sulphur Mountain, a bare, naked, repulsive hill, not of large extent, at the base of which were hot, bubbling springs, with all the pond crisp with sulphur, and six miles from there up, or south, close to the Yellowstone, we reached and camped at Mud Springs. These also are hot, most of them muddy. Water slushed around as in a boiling pot. Some were muddy water and others thick mud, puffing up just like a vast pot of mush. Below the falls of the Yellowstone is a rapid, bold current of water, so full of real speckled trout, weighing from six ounces to four and a half pounds, that, in the language of a settler, it is 'no trick at all to catch them.' They will bite at an artificial fly, or, better, at a live grasshopper, which abound here; but above the falls the river is quiet, flowing between low, grassy banks, and finally ending, or rather beginning, in the Yellowstone Lake, also alive with real speckled trout. Below the falls these trout are splendid eating, but above, by reason of the hot water, some of the fish are wormy and generally obnoxious by reason thereof, though men pretend to distinguish the good from the bad by the color of the spots. I have no hesitation in pronouncing the Yellowstone, from the Big Horn to the source, the finest trout-fishing stream on earth.