178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Besides these, there are almost innumerable falls in the 

 smaller streams and brooks, but of them we take no account. 

 When it is remembered that nearly all these falls are within the 

 limits of an area fifty-five by sixty-five miles, one can get some 

 idea of the grandeur and beauty of the Yellowstone National 

 Park. It is doubtful if any other similar area in the world affords 

 so many magnificent waterfalls, beautiful cascades, seething tor- 

 rents, and abysmal gorges as are found here. But these are 

 among the least of the strange and wonderful things in this won- 

 derland, where geysers great and small, mud springs and boiling 

 paint-pots, and petrified forests so abound. With scarcely an 

 exception all these streams and lakes are of the best of pure, 

 clear, cold water, well supplied with insect larvae, the smaller 

 Crustacea, and various other kinds of the smaller animal and plant 

 forms sufficient in amount to support an immense fish life. But 

 it is a strange and interesting fact that, with the exception of 

 Yellowstone Lake and River, these waters were wholly barren of 

 fish life until recently stocked by the United States Fish Com- 

 mission. The river and lake just named are well filled with the 

 Red-throated trout (Salmo mykiss lewisi), and this fact is the 

 more remarkable when it is remembered that the falls in the 

 lower Yellowstone River are one hundred and nine and three 

 hundred and eight feet, respectively by far the greatest found 

 in the park. 



The total absence of fish from Lewis and Shoshone Lakes 

 and the numerous other small lakes and streams of the park 

 is certainly due to the various falls in their lower courses, which 

 have proved impassable barriers to the ascent of fishes from 

 below ; for in every one of these streams, just below the falls, 

 trout and in some cases other species of fishes are found in 

 abundance. But to account for the presence of trout in Yellow- 

 stone Lake was a matter of no little difficulty. If a fall of 

 thirty to fifty feet in Lewis River has prevented trout from 

 ascending to Lewis and Shoshone Lakes, why have not the much 

 greater falls in the Yellowstone proved a barrier to the ascent of 

 trout to Yellowstone Lake ? Certainly no fish can ascend these 

 falls, and we must look elsewhere for the explanation. 



Many years ago the famous old guide, Jim Bridger, told his 

 incredulous friends that he had found, on the divide west of the 

 upper Yellowstone, a creek which flowed in both directions one 

 end flowing east into the Yellowstone, the other west into Snake 

 River. But, as he also told about many other strange and to 

 them impossible things which he had seen among which were a 

 glass mountain, and a river which ran down hill so fast that the 

 water was made boiling hot they were not disposed to acknowl- 

 edge the existence of his " Two-Ocean Creek." Subsequent events 



