figure in the calculations of the period
that they were not even protected in the national park until 1894, when
hunting had reduced the buffalo to twenty-five animals.

Even in these days of enlightenment and appreciation the great majority
of people think of the Yellowstone only as an area enclosing geysers.
There are tourists so possessed with this idea that they barely glance
at the canyon in passing. I have heard tourists refuse to walk to
Inspiration Point because they had already looked over the rim at a
convenient and unimpressive place. Imagine coming two thousand miles to
balk at two miles and a half to the only spectacle of its kind in the
world and one of the world's great spectacles at that! As for the
animals, few indeed see any but the occasional bears that feed at the
hotel dumps in the evening.

The Yellowstone National Park lies in the recesses of the Rocky
Mountains in northwestern Wyoming. It slightly overlaps Montana on the
north and northwest, and Idaho on the southwest. It is rectangular, with
an entrance about the middle of each side. It is the largest of the
national parks, enclosing 3,348 square miles. It occupies a high plain
girt with mountains. The Absarokas bound it on the east, their crest
invading the park at Mount Chittenden. The Gallatin Range pushes into
the northwestern corner from the north. The continental divide crosses
the southwestern corner over the lofty Madison Plateau and the ridge
south of Yellowstone Lake. Altitudes are generally high. The plains
range from six to eight thousand feet; the mountains rise occasionally
to ten thousand feet. South of the park the Pitchstone Plateau merges
into the foothills of the Teton Mountains, which, thirty miles south of
the southern boundary, rise precipitously seven thousand feet above the
general level of the country.

Though occupying the heart of the Rocky Mountains, the region is not of
them. In no sense is it typical. The Rockies are essentially granite
which was forced molten from the depths when, at the creation of this
vast central mountain system, lateral pressures lifted the earth's skin
high above sea-level, folded it, and finally eroded it along the crest
of the folds. In this granite system the Yellowstone is a volcanic
interlude, and of much later date. It belongs in a general way to the
impulse of volcanic agitation which lighted vast beacons over three
hundred thousand square miles of our northwest. The Cascade Mountain