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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



250 other rivers, many of them turbulent 

 giants like the Ohio, the Arkansas, the 

 Red, etc., add their brown floods to the 

 broad torrent, he can easily comprehend 

 the statement that the Mississippi River 

 discharges into the sea one-half more 

 water than do the Rhine, Loire, Po, Elbe. 

 Vistula, Danube, Don, Dnieper, and 

 Volga all together, and that it brings 

 down to the Gulf of Mexico annually 

 more material than has been taken out of 

 the Panama Canal from the day that De 

 Lesseps removed the first shovelful of 

 earth. 



On the lower reaches of the Missis- 

 sippi he sees dikes thicker, higher, and 

 longer than any Holland can show, parts 

 of a levee system much more extensive 

 than the famous reclamation works on 

 the Zuyder Zee. The latter, however, are 

 better known, being generations older and 

 nearer to routes frequented by travelers 

 and writers. 



Here, also, he passes sugar-cane plan- 

 tations, cotton fields, cypress forests, 

 quaint old steamboats redolent with mem- 

 ories of the days of Huck Finn, pictur- 

 esque negro populations — a weird con- 

 trast to the blazing furnaces of Pitts- 

 burgh, the white flour mills of Minneap- 

 olis and St. Paul, the noisy cattle yards 

 of Kansas City and Omaha, the snow- 

 capped mountains of Montana and Wyo- 

 ming and Pikes Peak in Colorado, all 

 tributary to the same river. 



It is to be regretted that today there is 

 very little traffic on the river compared 

 to earlier days. 



THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 



Leaving the masterful Mississippi Val- 

 ley and journeying westward, we soon 

 enter the region of the national parks, of 

 which there are eight of the first order — 

 the Yellowstone National Park, princi- 

 pally in Wyoming ; the Glacier National 

 Park, in Montana ; the Rocky Mountain 

 and Mesa Verde National Parks, in Colo- 

 rado : the Crater Lake National Park, in 

 Oregon: the Mount Rainier National 

 Park, in Washington, and tbe Yosemite 

 and Sequoia National Parks, in Califor- 

 nia. To these must be added the Grand 

 Canyon of the Colorado, in Arizona, the 

 scenic masterpiece of the world, officially 



classed as a national monument until 

 Congress makes it a park. Each park has 

 its own individuality, and each in its 

 specialty excels. Together they contain 

 more features of conspicuous grandeur 

 than are accessible in all the continents. 



Foremost in interest in the Yellowstone 

 are the geysers, of which "Old Faithful" 

 ranks first, not because of size, for the 

 Giant is a Goliath beside it ; not because 

 of beauty, for there are others more 

 beautiful ; but because of fidelity. It 

 never disappoints. It is so regular that 

 it could almost serve as the nation's 

 standard timepiece. Every 70 minutes 

 "Old Faithful" shoots its great column 

 of water heavenward. At each eruption 

 it sends up into the air a million and a 

 half gallons of water (see pp. 370-371). 



One writer has described the geyser 

 basins "as laboratories and kitchens, in 

 which, amid a thousand retorts and pots, 

 we may see Nature at work as chemist or 

 cook, cunningly compounding an infinite 

 variety of mineral messes ; cooking whole 

 mountains ; boiling and steaming flinty 

 rocks to smooth paste and mush — yellow, 

 brown, red, pink, lavender, gray, and 

 creamy white — making the most beauti- 

 ful mud in the world, and distilling the 

 most ethereal essences. 



"Many of these pots and caldrons have 

 been boiling thousands of years. Pots of 

 sulphurous mush, stringy and lumpy, and 

 pots of broth as black as ink are tossed 

 and stirred with constant care ; and thin 

 transparent essences, too pure and fine to 

 be called water, are kept simmering 

 gently in beautiful sinter cups and bowls 

 that grow ever more beautiful the longer 

 they are used. 



"In some of the spring basins the wa- 

 ters, though still warm, are perfectly 

 calm and shine blandly amid a sod of 

 overleaning grass and flowers, as if they 

 were thoroughly cooked at last and set 

 aside to settle and cool. Others are wildly 

 boiling over, as if running to waste, thou- 

 sands of tons of the precious liquids be- 

 ing thrown into the air to fall in scalding 

 floods on the clean coral floor of the es- 

 tablishment, keeping onlookers at a dis- 

 tance. 



"Every flask, retort, hot spring, and 

 geyser has something special in it, no two 



