is digging deeper all
the time.

Yellow, of course, is the prevailing color. Moran was right. His was the
general point of view, his message the dramatic ensemble. But, even from
Artists' Point, closer looking reveals great masses of reds and grays,
while Inspiration Point discloses a gorgeous palette daubed with most of
the colors and intermediate tints that imagination can suggest. I doubt
whether there is another such kaleidoscope in nature. There is
apparently every gray from purest white to dull black, every yellow from
lemon to deep orange, every red, pink, and brown. These tints dye the
rocks and sands in splashes and long transverse streaks which merge into
a single joyous exclamation in vivid color whose red and yellow accents
have something of the Oriental. Greens and blues are missing from the
dyes, but are otherwise supplied. The canyon is edged with lodge-pole
forests, and growths of lighter greens invade the sandy slants, at times
nearly to the frothing river; and the river is a chain of emeralds and
pearls. Blue completes the color gamut from the inverted bowl of sky.

No sketch of the canyon is complete without the story of the great
robbery. I am not referring to the several hold-ups of the old
stage-coach days, but to a robbery which occurred long before the coming
of man--the theft of the waters of Yellowstone Lake; for this splendid
river, these noble falls, this incomparable canyon, are the ill-gotten
products of the first of Yellowstone's hold-ups.

Originally Yellowstone Lake was a hundred and sixty feet higher and very
much larger than it is to-day. It extended from the headwaters of the
present Yellowstone River, far in the south, northward past the present
Great Fall and Inspiration Point. It included a large part of what is
now known as the Hayden Valley. At that time the Continental Divide,
which now cuts the southwest corner of the park, encircled the lake on
its north, and just across the low divide was a small flat-lying stream
which drained and still drains the volcanic slopes leading down from
Dunraven Peak and Mount Washburn.

This small stream, known as Sulphur Creek, has the honor, or the
dishonor if you choose, of being the first desperado of the Yellowstone,
but one so much greater than its two petty imitators of human times that
there is no comparison of misdeeds. Sulphur Creek stole the lake from
the Snake River and used it to create the Yellowstone River, which in
turn create