70 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



How still the woods seem from here, yet how 

 lively a stir the hidden animals are making; 

 digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work 

 and play, getting food, rearing young, roving 

 through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, 

 wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the 

 lakes and streams ! Insect swarms are dancing in 

 the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, 

 swimming, — a cloud of witnesses telling Nature's 

 joy. The plants are as busy as the animals, every 

 cell in a swirl of enjoyment, humming like a 

 hive, singing the old new song of creation. A 

 few columns and puffs of steam are seen rising 

 above the treetops, some near, but most of them 

 far off, indicating geysers and hot springs, gentle- 

 looking and noiseless as downy clouds, softly 

 hinting the reaction going on between the sur- 

 face and the hot interior. From here you see 

 them better than when you are standing be- 

 side them, frightened and confused, regarding 

 them as lawless cataclysms. The shocks and out- 

 bursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, storms, 

 the pounding of waves, the uprush of sap in 

 plants, each and all tell the orderly love-beats of 

 Nature's heart. 



Turning to the eastward, you have the Grand 

 Canon and reaches of the river in full view ; and 

 yonder to the southward lies the great lake, the 

 largest and most important of all the high foun- 

 tains of the Missouri-Mississippi, and the last to 

 be discovered. 



