West Virginia Argus

The Trout Fishing and Spouting Springs of the Yellowstone.

[General Sherman's Letters.]

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 crust 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 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.

From the Mud Springs the trail is due west, and crosses the mountain range which separates the Yellowstone from the Madison, both tributaries to the Missouri, descends this tributary to the west fork of the Madison, and here is the lower geyser basin. It would require a volume to describe these geysers in detail. It must suffice now for me to say that the Lower Geyser Basin presents a series of hot springs or basins of water coming up from below hot enough to scald your hand, boil a ham, eggs, or anything else; clear as crystal, with basins of every conceivable shape, from the size of a quill to actual lakes one hundred yards across. In walking among and around these, one feels that in a moment he may break through and be lost in a species of hell.

Six miles higher up the West Madison is the Upper Geyser Basin, the spouting geyser, the real object and aim of our visit. To describe these in detail would surpass my ability or the compass of a letter. They have been described by Lieutenant Duane, Hayden, Strong, Lord Dunmore and many others. The maps of Major Ludlow, of the engineers, locate the several geysers accurately. We reached the Upper Geyser Basin at twelve o'clock one day, and remained there till four o'clock p. m. of the next. During that time we saw the old "Faithful" perform at intervals varying from sixty-two minutes to eighty minutes. The intervals vary, but the performance only varies with the wind and sun. The cone, or hill, is of soft decaying lime, but immediately about the hole, which is irregular about six feet across, incrustation is handsome so that one can look in safety when the geyser is at rest. So regularly are its periods of activity that we could foretell its movements within a few minutes. Sometimes we stood near enough to feel the hot spray, at others we sat at our camp, about three hundred yards away. Each eruption was similar, preceded by about five minutes of spluttering, and then would arise a column of hot water steaming and smoking, to the height of one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty feet, the steam going a hundred or more feet higher, according to the state of the wind. It was difficult to say where the water ended and steam began, and this must be the reason why different observers have represented different results. The whole performance lasts about five minutes, when the column of water gradually sinks and the spring assumes its normal state of rest. This is but one of some twenty of the active geysers of this basin. For the time we remained we were lucky, for we saw the Bee Hive, Grotto in eruption. The Town and Grotto were repeatedly in agitation, though their jets did not rise more than twenty feet. We did not see the Giant or the Grand in eruption, but they seemed busy enough in bubbling and boiling. One is fairly bewildered by the variety, extent and activity of these boiling and bubbling columns of hot water. They do not seem to me to be volcanic, but rather the result of the chemical action underneath, which produces heat and gases, which give force and activity to these geysers. Externally they are not as beautiful as the formation of lime under water—exquisite in form, but crumbling in the hand and slaking when dry. The specimens gathered by the curious and carried off amount to nothing. The real things is the quantity, variety and form of action of these geysers.