NOTES ON TEAVEL 221 



The Canadian Pacific Railway had most generously 

 placed every accommodation at the disposal of the British 

 Association. Free passes and every facility were offered 

 that the members could see as much of Canada as time 

 would permit, and naturally they did not appreciate the 

 special attraction of the Yellowstone. The park was 

 just being opened up, and ideas about it were very 

 vague. It was only beginning to appear in guide books, 

 and their information was apt to be inaccurate and 

 misleading. 



Briefly, all that was known about it was that it was a 

 tract of land about sixty miles square, on the spurs of 

 the Rocky Mountains in Montana and Wyoming, which 

 Congress had determined to keep in its original state 

 so that future generations might know what America 

 had once been. It was to be stocked (and this has 

 now been done) with specimens of the wild animals of 

 the Rockies, which were even then rapidly nearing 

 extinction. 



To anyone who has re-visited the western states since 

 then, the wisdom of this is apparent. Where the rail- 

 way used to run for days through almost unbroken prairie 

 there are hundreds of miles of cultivated land ; and 

 instead of the few clusters of settlers' and miners' 

 shanties there are countless villages and townships ; 

 and up-to-date motor cars race the trains on good roads 

 that run parallel to the line. 



Beside the fact that the Yellowstone district was a 

 particularly beautiful part of the country, a plateau 



