e outranks by far any similar volcanic area in the world.
It contains more and greater geysers than all the rest of the world
together; the next in rank are divided between Iceland and New Zealand.
Its famous canyon is alone of its quality of beauty. Except for portions
of the African jungle, the Yellowstone is probably the most populated
wild animal area in the world, and its wild animals are comparatively
fearless, even sometimes friendly.
Mount Rainier has a single-peak glacier system whose equal has not yet
been discovered. Twenty-eight living glaciers, some of them very large,
spread, octopus-like, from its centre. It is four hours by rail or motor
from Tacoma.
Crater Lake is the deepest and bluest accessible lake in the world,
occupying the hole left after one of our largest volcanoes had slipped
back into earth's interior through its own rim.
[Illustration: GENERAL GRANT TREE
It has a National Park all to itself]
Yosemite possesses a valley whose compelling beauty the world
acknowledges as supreme. The valley is the centre of eleven hundred
square miles of high altitude wilderness.
The Sequoia contains more than a million sequoia trees, twelve thousand
of which are more than ten feet in diameter, and some of which are the
largest and oldest living things in the wide world.
The Grand Canyon of Arizona is by far the hugest and noblest example of
erosion in the world. It is gorgeously carved and colored. In sheer
sublimity it offers an unequalled spectacle.
Mount McKinley stands more than 20,000 feet above sea level, and 17,000
feet above the surrounding valleys. Scenically, it is the world's
loftiest mountain, for the monsters of the Andes and the Himalayas which
surpass it in altitude can be viewed closely only from valleys from five
to ten thousand feet higher than McKinley's northern valleys.
The Hawaii National Park contains the fourth greatest dead crater in the
world, the hugest living volcano, and the Kilauea Lake of Fire, which is
unique and draws visitors from the world's four quarters.
These are the principal features of America's world supremacy. They are
incidental to a system of scenic wildernesses which in combined area as
well as variety exceed the combined scenic wilderness playgrounds of
similar class comfortably accessible elsewhere. No wonder, then, that
the American public is overjoyed with its recently realized treasure,
and that the Government looks confidently to the rapi
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