Sixty years in Texas Page: 256 of 398

                                
242         SIXTY YEARS IN TEXAS.
Here we could hear a roaring sound like the
steam escaping from a great trans-Atlantic liner,
and we moved on towards the growling noise, and
at last we reached the cause-a mass of steam that
rushed through an opening in the ground. This is
surrounded by a rock as black as jet, and it is called
the Black Growler, and when near it a person cannot
hear his ears. A mass of steam rushes from it day
and night, winter and summer, year in and year out,
and I have no doubt but it has for ages, in one unbroken
volume, keeping up the same terrific roaring.
But this is not all. Volumes could be written in describing
this wonderland, and the marvels of our
National Park. The most wonderful of them all is
the world renowned Yellowstone Canyon. The introduction
to this is sublime. It is a waterfall. The
entire volume of the Yellowstone River falls three
hundred and sixty feet. The river is compressed
into the narrow space of seventy feet and with rush
and roar and maddening flow it leaps the precipice
into the yawning gulf below. I, with other tourists,
went down a flight of four hundred and ninety steps,
near the great volume of water that leaped from
the precipice into the gulf below, the spray bounding
back and producing a beautiful rainbow.
The banks of the canyon are fifteen hundred feet
high, and of many different colors, much of it a
bright yellow and red, white, lavender and green.
The ceaseless roar of this great volume of water
echoes and re-echoes down the Canybn. It is an
awe-inspiring scene, and looking at the falls from
a distance they look like a long, white robe, nearly
four hundred feet in length. The channel seems narrow
and deep, and as we look at it from the platform
over the falls it looks like a silver ribbon as it winds
its way down the canyon and is lost in the distance,
and the passing clouds almost perform a miracle.