“Move on, damn quick,” he said. So we did. CHAPTER XXIII ON NATIONAL PARKS AND GUIDES Nothing fit to print can be said of the Yellowstone Trail, advertised by various and sundry people as a “good road all the way,” with the freedom people take with other people’s axles. Here and there are smooth patches, but they failed to atone for the viciousness of the greater part of the route from Salt Lake City to the Park. Some of it was merely annoying, but there were places where we had to keep our wits about us every moment, and had we met another car, so narrow and tortuous and hilly were the last few miles, we should have come to an eternal deadlock. We had for consolation a view of some lovely lakes grown about with great pines, and in the open stretches, a long view of the great saw-toothed Tetons sheltering Jackson’s Hole, that region beloved of Jesse James before he encountered the “dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard.” All the sinister Robin Hoods of the West once knew the supreme advantage of Jackson’s Hole as a place of temporary withdrawal from the world when it became too much with them. Now it is infested only by the “dude” sportsman, who has discovered its loveliness without as yet spoiling it. A tempting sign-post pointed an entrance to this paradise of mountains and lakes, but we had been warned that the road there was far worse than the one we came over, which was impossible, so we gritted our teeth, and went on to the Park. I shall not attempt a description of Yellowstone Park, for the same reason that I dodged the Grand Canyon, and because its bears, mudholes, geysers, sulphur basins, lakes, Wiley camps, falls and dam, its famous parti-colored canyon, its busses and Old Faithful were well known to thousands long before I was born. Yellowstone used to be known less attractively among the Indians by the name of Stinking Waters. The park is still circled by a roundabout trail, made by superstitious tribes, who refused to approach this haunt of devils. Nobody who has stood on the seething ground of Norris Basin, and watched its manifold evil spirits, hardly tethered, burst forth and sullenly subside can fail to sympathize with the untutored savage’s reaction. If we had not been taught a smattering of chemistry and geology, we should undoubtedly feel as he did, and even in spite of scientific explanations, the place seemed too personally malevolent to be comfortable. Think of a God-fearing and devil-respecting mind to whom science was unknown, looking on the terrors, the inexplicable manifestations this Park contains for the first time!