TOWER FALL was our first stop. The dizzy heights had almost unfitted
me for what awaited us at this place, but my brother and the pilot
assisted me up the steps and I followed others down the trail to the
fall, dashing 132 feet over the rocks. The snowy, foaming water has
the appearance of white satin ribbon, falling perpendicularly between
two towering rocks, whence it gets its name. It lacks the volume of
some other falls in the Yellowstone, but its grace and beauty are
nowhere surpassed.
About four miles from the fall, we turned aside to CAMP ROOSEVELT,
where we found a great display of elk horns. I was constantly on the
lookout for elk, deer, and other animals, as I was told that they were
often seen in herds in that locality, but I saw nothing except a
lonely coyote, trotting along utterly indifferent to our presence. It
seems that the continual blowing of automobile horns has frightened
the more timid creatures back from the highways, and only occasionally
do they venture close enough to be seen.
CHAPTER IV
MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS
The distance from Grand Canyon Camp to Mammoth Hot Springs, near Fort
Yellowstone, was made in about three and one-half hours, with only the
one stop at Tower Fall, and the few minutes that we halted at Camp
Roosevelt, and the Cold Spring. But there was not one moment of
monotony. The harmonious blending of colors, the distant mountain
peaks and ranges, the soft-tinted sky, the trees, the water, in fact,
all of Nature's best, in a milder form than we had seen about the
Grand Canyon at the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, was constantly
presented in shifting scenes before our vision, relieving, in a
measure, the tension we had been under since arriving in the vicinity
of the Grand Canyon.
One place, in particular, that attracted my attention, was a beaver
dam and hut that had been constructed by an order of masons whose
operations are conducted exclusively upon the principles of home
protection, and whose chief aim is to protect the fur trade of which
they are the producers. In order to do this and to keep from being
stranded, it is often necessary for the beavers to dam up the waters
and build a house in which to live.
When they cut down trees, they have the faculty of felling them where
they want to build, so as to save as much labor as possible. At our
left was a creek and a dam they had built and a house they had
constructed, independent of the laws controlling the builders'
association or that of the labor unions.
Their tools are very simple, as they use their teeth for saws, their
tails for trowels, etc. In the midst of the dam was the hut, built of
unplaned logs, with a well-constructed roof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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