--Captain Ludlow's report of his visit to the Yellowstone Park in 1875 is one of the most interesting books the Government has published.[15] He found that the army of American vandals has turned its footsteps toward this national museum of wonders, and every year they go to it in hundreds and thousands to admire and destroy the delicate lace work which nature has spent centuries in weaving. The Park contains the most remarkable glaciers on this continent, and the constantly flowing and splashing water has built up a basin of opal around each fountain. These basins are curiously convoluted and fretted, and are composed almost entirely of quartz deposited from the water, their light gray color contrasting beautifully with the deeply tinted water. Wherever they are solid the idiotic visitor writes his name, and thousands of these unimprisoned lunatics have been there. Wherever the basins are most delicate and wonderful, the savage white man strikes them with an axe and carries home "a specimen." Captain Ludlow found two women climbing around one geyser called the Castle, from the numerous little pinnacles and towers it has built up, "with tucked up skirts and rubber shoes, armed one with an axe, the other with a spade." When he first saw the Beehive, the most remarkable of the geysers in point of height, throwing its stream two hundred feet high from a small aperture, he had a pang in anticipation of the destruction that he felt sure would come upon it. And with good reason. The next day he returned to camp just in time to run in and save the Beehive, the pride of the Park, from the uplifted axe of _a woman_! He urges the Government to spend $10,000 or thereabouts in protecting this beautiful place from the assaults of these iconoclasts, who break down ten times as much as they carry off. We regret to see that his recommendation is unheeded. A governor is appointed for the Park, but he has no salary, and probably does not remain on the ground. Captain Ludlow very truly says that the presence of a small party there to open roads, preserve the Park, and keep a careful record of the geysers would well repay its cost in the increase of knowledge and pleasurable travel it would bring to our people. [15] "_Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National Park in the Summer of 1875._" By WILLIAM LUDLOW, Captain of Engineers. War Department, Washington. * * * * *