Down the Yellowstone

ps" that had been built at that end of the dam. This was probably true, but as landing on the almost perpendicular cliff immediately above the drop-off looked a bit precarious I decided in fav

he power canal. It was not an easy task with my little shallop, but I managed it alone without undue exertion. Five minutes more sufficed to drag it a coupl

mph as a mere river-rat and hack writer was a distinct anti-climax. As I had been warned by wire that a hundred pages of urgently needed proofs from New York would await me in Billings for correction, there was no side-stepping the necessity. The risk would have to be run, but to minimize it as far as was humanly possible I planned to keep to my room as much as I could, and to disguise myself by dres

over for a story? I couldn't very well refuse that, but took the precaution of throwing my "Indian Police" uniform in the closet before he arrived. Then I made a special point of telling him I always wore flannels and duck on my river trips-sort of survival of my South Sea yatching days. If he w

A. Hu

WDER RIV

A. Hu

WATER, BIG

demonstrations-that is, of a hostile nature. Calls from scouting secretaries searching for a fatted calf to butcher for club holidays were the only ripples on the surface. Still with my fingers crossed, I ordered a closed taxi for the run down to

hard-set jaw. Without waiting for him to go on I made one wild, despairing bid

c, but this was the way of it at any rate: I cared no whit if hardware-drummer Allstein believed I was a hobo, just as long as he continued to believe I was an ex-sparring partner of Jack Dempsey. And what he must be prevented

like you're hoboing as did them three dishes of strawberries at the Northern this morning," he growled, glowering. I caved at once and meekly asked him t

Not knowing what else to say, I remarked to the driver that it must be getting along toward boat-time. And so away we went. Allstein's reproachful gaze bored into my back unt

of the packing-house metropolises of the Missouri. Billings owed its first prosperity to cattle and sheep and its fine strategic situation for distribution. Pastoral industries cut less of a figure today, but the town has continued to gain ground as the principal distributing centre for western Montana. That, with agr

h the animals to the Mandan Villages. Here, also, is the point that is popularly credited with being the high-water mark of steamboat navigation on the Yellowstone. On June 6, 1875, Captain Grant Marsh in the Josephine, conducting a rough survey of the river under the direction of General J.

e the resistance it offered, that it was appreciatively named 'Hell Roaring Rapids.' At the head of it the boat lay up for the night, with a line stretched to the bank ahead to help her forward in the morning. But when dawn came, General Forsyth, seeing the nature of the river in front, ordered out a reconnoitring party who marched up the bank for several miles examining the channel. On their return they reported the whole river ahead so broken up by islands and with so powerful a current that it could not be navigated without constant resort to warping and sparring.... General Forsyth and Captain Marsh held a

RIDGE OVER T

pring floods. Neither above nor below the bridge for many miles, however, could I locate a riffle sufficiently savage to fit Captain Marsh's description of "Hell Roaring Rapids." It has occurred to me as just possible that such a rapid was wiped out when the power dam was built, the comparatively short distance the water is backed up at that point suggesting that the

river Viking had been tucked under the sod down Bismarck-way for a number of years, but I knew his spirit still took its wonted tricks at the wheel. Captain William Clark and Captain Grant Marsh! Could you beat that pair if it came to standing watch-and-watch down the Yellowstone and Missouri? And there were other

ean-cut alternatives of coming to live with them right there or taking them with me down the river. Fortunately their parents intervened on my side. With the aid of those two kindly and tactful diplo

iderable water was splashed in. For only the shortest of reaches was the stream sufficiently quiet to allow me to take my eyes off it long enough to enjoy the really entrancing diorama of the scenery. I was especially sorry for this, for on my right was unfolding the verdant loveliness of the Crow Reservation, the very heart

g in the regions to the north, south, east and west, this progenitor of the modern booster goes on: "The Crow country is in exactly the right place. It has snowy mountains and sunny plains; all kinds of climate and good things for every season. When summer heats scorch the prairies, you can dr

beaver on the streams. And when winter comes, you can take shelter in the woody bottoms along the rivers; there you will find buffalo me

lace. Everything good is to be found there.

r, dead past, those lines awakened in my heart memo

is, or some

s me with my

s of forgott

seen, I kno

language ma

groping mentally, I unwrapped some forks and spoons done up in a page of the Los Angeles Times. Ah, that gave me t

at square, verandahed house that was all but a mansion. I was wondering if the same pioneering frontiersman who had built the cabins had survived to occupy the big green and white house, when the soft southerly wind brought the scent of sweet clover and the strains of a phonograph. "Evening Star," the Jocelyn Lullaby, the Baccarole, wafted me their "convoluted runes" one after the other; then a piano began to strum and a girl, neither mean of voice nor temperament, sang Tosti's "Good-Bye." It always had had a softly sentimenta

A. Hu

Y'S P

A. Hu

FROM THE TOP O

I used that precious little ten-pound packet of rubber and canvas all the way to New Orleans without blankets. On wind-blown sand bars, mud-banks, coal barges or the greasy steel decks of engine-rooms it was ever the same-always dry, always soft, always warm. Com

changed my mind. She was on the upper verandah recuperating from a shampoo. Scarlet kimono and bobbed hair! No, not with a river to escape by. Stifling my au revoir impulse I

ight, about two hundred and fifty paces from the shore. It is nearly four hundred paces in circumference, two hundred feet high and accessible from the north-east, the other sides being a perpendicular cliff of a light-coloured, gritty rock.... The Indians have car

om the river, which indicated-as the channel seems to have been well fixed here-that I was enjoying three or four feet more water than did my illustrious predecessor. This would seem to be just about acco

trace of the letters themselves. The practical obliteration of what is probably the only authentic physical mark of their passing that either Lewis or Clark left between St. Louis and the mouth of the Columbia is hardly compensated for by the presence of several hundred somewhat later and rather less important signatures at this point. Several of these latter bore the date of the previous day-July 4th, 1

his own party had been used a half dozen times over first and last-than that this rocky eminence by the Yellowstone should be called after Pompey. That he was not clear in his mind as to the character of the historic original at Alexandria is evidenced by the fact that he first called the Yellowstone prototype "Pompy's Tower." Whether he or his publishe

PILLAR,

ING WHIC

TIALS C

LARK ON T

Y'S P

old lady and her very stout daughter. They insisted on my staying to tea, which required no great persuasiveness on their part after Joanna remarked that she was out of breath from turning the ice-cream freezer. The girl was astonishingly red, round and sweet-a veritable bifurcated apple. She s

ude of beam-certainly six inches more than the stern-sheets of my slender shallop. She could wedge in sidewise, of course, but that still left the matter of a life-preserver. I didn't feel it was quite the thing to take an only child into a rapid without some provision for floating her out in case of an upset. And my Gieve wouldn't

erected to divert the water into the head of an irrigation ditch. Running until n

int that John Colter fled after being chased by the Blackfeet across Yellowstone Park, and it was his point of departure in a canoe on a voyage to St. Louis which he claimed to have made in thirty days. Colter's account of how he ran down several black-tail deer and bighorn before relaxing the tremendous burst of speed he had put on to distance the Redskins never bothered me much, but that average of close to a hundred miles a day-most of it down the languid Missouri-somehow won't stick. I found I couldn't k

own length without grounding. And yet, I reflected, the Big Horn could have been scarcely higher on that sultry Sunday of June 25th, 1876, when Captain Grant Marsh, acting on orders from General Terry, sparred and warped and crabbed the wonderful old Far West up twenty-five miles of those rock-choked, foam-white rapids. The skies to the south were black with rolling smoke clouds, but with nothing to indicat

dier here who is suffering with wounds is the victim of a terrible blunder; a sad and terrible blunder." Crabbing up stream with supplies was one thing, floundering down with a shattered human cargo of that kind, quite another. Captain Marsh declared the moment the most sickening of his life. Then he pulled himself together and drove her through. I tried to imagine the relief her skipper must have felt as he rounded that last bend above where I now saw a railway bridge and headed the Fa

sting to me at the moment as it involved the upset of a skiff in a riffle I was about to run. All of the letters written by Custer's men since leaving Fort Lincoln were put in a bag and started by boat for Fort Buford. "Sergeant Fox and two privates of the escort were detailed to carry the precious cargo down," wrote Major Hanson. "Amid a chorus of hearty cheers from the people on the

the men who were to fall before the Sioux a few days later. These included Custer's note to his wife as well as young Boston Custer's letter to his mother. Sending three inexperienced soldiers to b

but no riffles to speak of below the Rosebud. There

n to spend the night in the screened bunk-house was promptly forthcoming. The ranch turned out to be a part of an extensive irrigation enterprise, promoted and managed by a chap named Cummings from Minneapolis, who chanced to be on the place at the time. Except for the general farming depression, pros

The red-brown current of the latter tinged the Yellowstone for a mile below their confluence. Clark camped at the mouth of the

and its rapid current throws out great quantities of mud and some coarse gravel.... The warmth of t

pher, even if he did run amuck a bi

hing of a morning-after frame of mind. It rather warmed one's heart to see so many people rubbing throbbing temples, and I seemed to see in

nes, S

RDS, MI

A. Hu

IGHT

Put it there"! in a deep, mellow voice that goes straight to the heart. That voice and that look embody the quintessence of reassurance. You know in an instant that you are face to face with the kind of a town that couldn't play a mean trick on a man if it tried-that there isn't going to be any need of slinking around with one hand on your wallet and the other on your hip-po

rt in its later growth. The splendid valleys of the Powder and the Tongue are both tributary territory, while the irrigation of the rich lands of the Yellowstone is bringing year by year

ouldn't establish itself right there by the Yellowstone under almost normal home weather conditions? Of course, if they were going to establish themselves for long some kind of a meteorological Joshua would be needed to command the thermometer to stand still; also some one to see that the command was carried out. And there would lie the way to complications and friction, for one can hardly imagine a Hottentot Joshua quite in agreement with an Esquimo Joshua as to just what poi

ble afternoon with Mr. Doane, the engineer of the project. He said that I ought to have little trouble in running right through all of the rapids, but suggested it might be well to land at a farmhouse near the head and see for myself. He also gave me a few facts about the power project. I would have to refer to my notes (which I never do if at all avoidable) to recall the hydro-electric data; but I need no such adve

f one of these animals being found in them." He describes it further as a "succession of bad shoals, interspersed with hard, brown, gritty rock, extending for six miles; the last shoal stretches nearly across the river, and has a descent of about three feet. At this

illings that were quite as menacing as the one which now put his party to so much trouble to avoid. I would not be too dogmatic on that point, however. A hundred years of time bring great changes even to bedr

I found a family at lunch, but with one nice, juicy helping of cream-splashed tapioca pudding still unconsumed. I helped them out with that, and in return asked for information about the rapids. None of them was river-broke, but they said they had seen a rowboat run down the left side of the first riffle the previous summer and that they afterwards heard it was not upset until it got to Wolf Rapids, down Terry-way. That was more encouraging, at least as far as Buffalo Rapids were concerned, and I decided to push off and let Nature take its course. All of them, including the careful deaf brother

rather savage looking white where the teeth of the bedrock were flecked with tossing foam. Rounding a wide bend, I found myself drifting down onto the main run of riffles, the passing of one of which caused Clark's party some tr

of smoothly-running rollers that extended to and under the long railway bridge. I could have kept clear of the worst of this water by hard work, but with the beautifully rounded waves signalling "All clear"! as far as snags and really hostile rocks were concerned it seeme

of its port-side legs. Warned by what had happened to me under similar circumstances in the riffle under Rapids Station, I kept my eye right on the ball to the end of the swing. A few days later, in the hotel at Glendive, a notions drummer told me

n't have the savoir faire to make it easy for him to finish as frankly as he opened up. I didn't blame him and his friends for wishing for that spill. I know perfectly well I would have hoped for it myself had our positions been reversed. Almost any good red-blooded human would get a kick out of watching, from a nice, dry car platform, another goo

ks strewed over the river; but though the waves are high, there is a very good channel to the left, which renders the passage secure." Wolf is dismissed as "a rapid of no great danger." A hundred spring floods have doubtless had the effect of worsening Wolf-a bedrock rapid-somewhat, and of scouring out the worst of the boulders in Bear. I found the latter

its banks of a dark brown colour. Its current throws out great quantities of red stones; which circumstances, with the appearance of the distant hills, induced Captain Clark to call it the Redstone, which he afterward found to be t

iosks and minarets of black and red rock. It is desolate in the extreme even when viewed from the cool current of the river, but surely in no wise so sinister and forbidding as those terrible stretches

to his cabin, brought down some eggs and milk, and we pooled grub and suppered together there under the cottonwoods by the river. He had hunted, trapped, prospected and searched for agates for fifty years, and it was well into the night before he had told me all about it. A confession of my old love for "Calamity Jane" broke down his reserve at the outset. He had seen a lot of the dear old girl at the ver

keeping from being blown under the caving banks. This was, as I remember it, my first experience of what later became perhaps the most annoyingly persistent difficulty attending my progress down both the Missouri and Mississippi. After getting in trouble two or three tim

in an extremely windy section of country, the buildings appeared to be something of a compromise between forts and cyclone cellars. Nothing short

ndividual was a part-time wrestler and prize-fighter, abandoning the squared-circle for the pots and pans only in the off seasons. He introduced himself to me as "Happy" Coogan, and then proceeded to show why he was so called. Backing me up behind a food barrage, he sang a song, danc

hear of my leaving before supper. Impromptu cabaret work lengthened that banquet out to eight o'clock, and it was early twilight before I finally broke away and went down to push off. "Happy" foll

r vicinity if you ever need that hand-out. That bucket of California hom

sleep. Awakening at dawn to find a cloudless sky, I crawled out, pushed off, and was in Glendive before six o'clock. Landing half a mile above town, I climbed up to a shack which "Happy" Coogan had told me was owned by a friend of his who had worked in the local pool-room. It was no sort of hour to awaken a tired business man of a Sunday morning, but "Happy's" name proved open sesame. It took some rearranging to get my stuff into that te