public history, the
long-forgotten years between the Glacial period and the expedition of
Lewis and Clarke were not without interest in the history of the
trout. For all these years the fishes have been trying to mount the
waterfalls in order to ascend to the plateau above. Year after year,
as the spawning-time came on, they leaped against the falls of the
Gardiner, the Gibbon, and the Firehole Rivers, but only to fall back
impotent in the pools at their bases. But the mightiest cataract of
all, the great falls of the Yellowstone, they finally conquered, and
in this way it was done: not by the trout of the Yellowstone River,
but by their brothers on the other side of the Divide. These followed
up the Columbia to the head-waters of the Snake River, its great
tributary, past the beautiful Heart Lake, and then on to the stream
now called Pacific Creek, which rises on the very crest of the
Divide. In the space between this stream, which flows west to help
form the Snake River, and a smaller stream now called Atlantic Creek,
flowing down the east slope of the Divide, the great chain of the
Rocky Mountains shrinks to a narrow plateau of damp meadow, not a
fourth of a mile in width; and some years, when the snows are heavy
and melt late in the spring, this whole region is covered with
standing water. The trout had bided their time until they found it so,
and now they were ready for action. Before the water was drained they
had crossed the Divide and were descending on the Atlantic side toward
the Yellowstone Lake. As the days went by, this colony of bold trout
spirits grew and multiplied and filled the waters of the great clear
lake, where their descendants remain to this day. And no other
fishes--not the chub, nor the sucker, nor the white-fish, nor the
minnow, nor the blob--had ever climbed Pacific Creek. None of them
were able to follow where the trout had gone, and none of them have
ever been seen in the Yellowstone Lake. What the trout had done in
this lake--their victories and defeats, their struggles with the bears
and pelicans, and with the terrible worm, joint enemy of trout and
pelicans alike--must be left for another story.

[Illustration: TROUT.]

So the trout climbed the Yellowstone Falls by way of the back
staircase. For all we know, they have gone down it on the other side.
And in a similar way, by stealing over from Blacktail Deer Creek, they
overcame the Undine Falls in Lava Creek and passed its steep obsidi