han the Yellowstone Park. In
that island a man of your country could work, marry, make his fortune or
twenty fortunes, and die. Throughout his career not one soul would ask
him whether he were a British subject or a child of the Devil. Do you
understand?"

I think he did, because he said something about "Britishers" which
wasn't complimentary.

No. XXX

SHOWS HOW I ENTERED MAZANDERAN OF THE PERSIANS AND SAW DEVILS OF EVERY
COLOUR, AND SOME TROOPERS. HELL AND THE OLD LADY FROM CHICAGO. THE
CAPTAIN AND THE LIEUTENANT.

"That desolate land and lone
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path."

Twice have I written this letter from end to end. Twice have I torn it
up, fearing lest those across the water should say that I had gone mad
on a sudden. Now we will begin for the third time quite solemnly and
soberly. I have been through the Yellowstone National Park in a buggy,
in the company of an adventurous old lady from Chicago and her husband,
who disapproved of scenery as being "ongodly." I fancy it scared them.

We began, as you know, with the Mammoth Hot Springs. They are only a
gigantic edition of those pink and white terraces not long ago destroyed
by earthquake in New Zealand. At one end of the little valley in which
the hotel stands the lime-laden springs that break from the pine-covered
hillsides have formed a frozen cataract of white, lemon, and palest pink
formation, through and over and in which water of the warmest bubbles
and drips and trickles from pale-green lagoon to exquisitely fretted
basin. The ground rings hollow as a kerosene-tin, and some day the
Mammoth Hotel, guests and all, will sink into the caverns below and be
turned into a stalactite. When I set foot on the first of the terraces,
a tourist-trampled ramp of scabby grey stuff, I met a stream of iron-red
hot water which ducked into a hole like a rabbit. Followed a gentle
chuckle of laughter, and then a deep, exhausted sigh from nowhere in
particular. Fifty feet above my head a jet of steam rose up and died out
in the blue. It was worse than the boiling mountain at Myanoshita. The
dirty white deposit gave place to lime whiter than snow; and I found a
basin which some learned hotel-keeper has christened Cleopatra's
pitcher, or Mark Antony's whisky-jug, or something equally poetical. It
was made of frosted silver; it was filled with water as clear as the
sky. I do not know the depth of that wonder. The e