The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive. Hiram Martin Chittenden
with Captain Howard Stansbury, of the same corps, in the Salt Lake Expedition of 1849–50. The record is found in Gunnison’s History of the Mormons, [S] and dates back to this expedition. It reads:
“He [Bridger] gives a picture, most romantic and enticing, of the head waters of the Yellow Stone. A lake, sixty miles long, cold and pellucid, lies embosomed among high precipitous mountains. On the west side is a sloping plain, several miles wide, with clumps of trees and groves of pine. The ground resounds with the tread of horses. Geysers spout up seventy feet high, with a terrific, hissing noise, at regular intervals. Water-falls are sparkling, leaping and thundering down the precipices, and collect in the pool below. The river issues from this lake, and for fifteen miles roars through the perpendicular cañon at the outlet. In this section are the ‘Great Springs,’ so hot that meat is readily cooked in them, and as they descend on the successive terraces, afford at length delightful baths. On the other side is an acid spring, which gushes out in a river torrent; and below is a cave, which supplies ‘vermillion’ for the savages in abundance.”
[S] Page 151, Gunnison’s History of the Mormons. See Appendix E.
In this admirable summary we readily discover the Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Cañon, the Falls, the geyser basins, the Mammoth Hot Springs, and Cinnabar Mountain. Prior to 1860, Bridger had related these accounts to Captain Warren, Captain Raynolds, Doctor Hayden, and others, and although he seems to have convinced these gentlemen that there was something in his stories, they still attributed less to fact than to fancy.
In his efforts to disseminate a knowledge of this region, Bridger was as determined as Colter had been before him, and with little better success. He tried to have his narratives published, but no periodical would lend itself to his service. The editor of the Kansas City Journal stated editorially in 1879 that Bridger had told him of these wonders fully thirty years before. He prepared an article from Bridger’s description, but suppressed it because his friends ridiculed the whole thing as incredible. He later publicly apologized to Bridger, who was then living at Westport, Missouri. [T]
[T] Of interest in this connection is the following extract from a recent letter to the writer by the present managing editor of the Kansas City Journal:
“The interview had with Bridger was in the year 1856. He told Col. R. T. Van Horn, Editor of the Journal, which was published at that time, the story of the Park with the geysers, and at the same time, drew with a piece of charcoal on a piece of wrapping paper an outline of the route necessary to be taken by a railroad should it ever cross the continent, which route is exactly on the line that is now crossed by the Union Pacific.
In this conversation, he told the Colonel about the mud springs and the other wonders of that part of the country, or to use his own expression, ‘it was a place where hell bubbled up.’
The Colonel was much interested in the matter at the time and took notes of the account, but did not print it because a man who claimed to know Bridger, told him that he would be laughed out of town if he printed ‘any of old Jim Bridger’s lies.’ ”
The persistent incredulity of his countrymen, and their ill-concealed suspicion of his honesty, to say nothing of his mental soundness, were long a cloud upon Bridger’s life; but, more fortunate than his prototype, Colter, he lived to see himself triumphantly vindicated. Whether from disgust at this unmerited treatment, or because of his love of a good story, Bridger seems finally to have resolved that distrust of his word, if it must exist, should at least have some justification. He was in fact noted for “drawing the long bow to an unparalleled tension,” and for never permitting troublesome scruples of conscience to interfere with the proper embellishment of his yarns. These were generally based upon fact, and diligent search will discover in them the “soul of truth” which, according to Herbert Spencer, always exists “in things erroneous.” These anecdotes are current even yet among the inhabitants of the Yellowstone, and the tourist who remains long in the Park will not fail to hear them.
When Bridger found that he could not make his hearers believe in the existence of a vast mass of volcanic glass, now known to all tourists as the interesting Obsidian Cliff, he supplied them with another glass mountain of a truly original sort. Its discovery was the result of one of his hunting trips and it happened in this wise.
Coming one day in sight of a magnificent elk, he took careful aim at the unsuspecting animal and fired. To his great amazement, the elk not only was not wounded, but seemed not even to have heard the report of the rifle. Bridger drew considerably nearer and gave the elk the benefit of his most deliberate aim; but with the same result as before. A third and a fourth effort met with a similar fate. Utterly exasperated, he seized his rifle by the barrel, resolved to use it as a club since it had failed as a firearm. He rushed madly toward the elk, but suddenly crashed into an immovable vertical wall which proved to be a mountain of perfectly transparent glass, on the farther side of which, still in peaceful security, the elk was quietly grazing. Stranger still, the mountain was not only of pure glass, but was a perfect telescopic lens, and, whereas, the elk seemed but a few hundred yards off, it was in reality twenty-five miles away!
Another of Bridger’s discoveries was an ice-cold spring near the summit of a lofty mountain, the water from which flowed down over a long smooth slope, where it acquired such a velocity that it was boiling hot when it reached the bottom. [U]
[U] This story, which is taken from the report of Captain W. F. Raynolds, was one of Bridger’s favorites, and it is even said that he did not regard it as pleasantry at all, but as plain matter of fact. Mr. Langford, who often heard him relate it, says that he generally described the stream as flowing over the smooth surface of a rock, and reasoned that, as two sticks rubbed together produce heat by friction, so the water rubbing over the rock became hot. In proof, he cited an instance where the water was hot only in close proximity to the rock and not at the surface. Mr. Langford found a partial confirmation of the fact, but not of the theory, in fording the Firehole River in 1870. He passed over the smooth deposit of an active hot spring in the bed of the stream, and found that the stream bottom and the water in contact with it were hot.
An account, in which the “soul of truth” is not so readily apparent, is that of a mining prospector of this region, who, in later times, met a unique and horrible fate. He had for days been traveling with a party toward a prodigious diamond set in the top of a mountain, where, even at noonday, it shone with a luster surpassing the sun. He arrived at length on the top of the mountain only to see the diamond on another summit apparently as far away as ever. Disheartened and weary, he thought to save the labor of descent by taking advantage of an extremely smooth face of the mountain, and accordingly sat down upon his shovel, as upon a toboggan, and let slide. There was a vacant place around the camp-fire that evening, and next day the rest of the party, passing along the base of the mountain, found an infusible clay pipe and the molten remains of a shovel. Warned by the fate of their comrade, the superstitious survivors forbore any further search for the diamond.
To those who have visited the west shore of the Yellowstone Lake, and know how simple a matter it is to catch the lake trout and cook them in the boiling pools without taking them from the line, the ground work of the following description will be obvious enough. Somewhere along the shore an immense boiling spring discharges its overflow directly into the lake. The specific gravity of the water is less than that of the lake, owing probably to the expansive action of heat, and it floats in a stratum three or four feet thick upon the cold water underneath. When Bridger was in need of fish it was to this place that he went. Through the hot upper stratum he let fall his bait to the subjacent habitable zone, and having hooked his victim, cooked him on the way out!
In like manner the visitor to the region of petrifactions