Part 2

A strange circumstance cannot fail to strike the observer, and awe him, as perhaps nothing else could, with a sense of the vast depth of the fissure into which he fearfully gazes. The spray and rain bring into being hundreds of streams, which flash over the edge of the cliff opposite the Falls in an eternal effort to rejoin their parent river. But they never reach the bottom. Long before they are half-way down, they vanish, dissipated once more into spray, and borne upward in the form of lighted mist.

Of the radiant beauty of the whole scene, one writer, a traveler of renown, says:

"I believe that on that day I was gazing at the most perfectly beautiful spectacle of all this beautiful world.

"As the sun's rays fell on that kaleidoscopic, ever-moving, changing scene, made up of rock, water, mist, and shivering foliage, the coloring of it all was gorgeous, yet of sweetly tender tints under that luminous, pearly atmosphere formed by the spray-mist. Below, where one caught glimpses of the rushing water, it was turned brown and golden, blue and rich dark green. The cliff, sparkling with dripping water, was of shining black and glowing bronze. The foliage of the Rain Forest was of the green of an eternal spring, and a myriad jewels of twinkling light were made by the water-drops on the trembling leaves. A glorious rainbow spanned the Chasm, and other rainbows flitted in the haze. As for the tender, pale beauty of the Cataract and of the luminous, pearly mist, no words could convey it to the imagination."

Another writer says: "The beauty of the pearl-tinted atmosphere, and the glory of the dazzling rainbows, are the first and the last impressions that the Victoria Falls give to the mind."

The eastern extremity of the cliff opposite the Falls is known as Danger Point; and here the Chasm turns abruptly at right angles, and becomes the famous Gorge which for fifty miles zigzags across country, with the Zambesi like a silver cord at the bottom of it. Just at the turning-point, a mass of rock has fallen from the cliff and lies below in the river--a mass which, it is interesting to note, Livingstone describes as just _ready to fall_, and which in his drawing of the scene is represented as almost parted from the rest. Along the Gorge a strong, cold wind blows always, and bears the mist as far as the railway bridge and the exquisite palm groves near it.

Above the Falls, the scene is scarcely less fair. Here lies the broad Zambesi, placid and calm under its sunny skies, with its fifty islands, palm-crowned, wonderful, kept ever green and spring-like by the soft spray-showers. On the banks grows the burly baobab, whose trunk is as large as a house; lovely forest fringes either shore, and gay-plumaged birds flit among the flowering trees and feast on the plentiful wild fruits. From here the mists of Victoria take the form of five towering pillars, bending with the wind, white below, but dark farther up, where they condense into rain. Livingstone says of the river at this point: "No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed elsewhere. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."

The monstrous footprints of the hippopotami are thick along the banks, and crocodiles lie sunning themselves in the open spaces. Tiny gray monkeys, with wise black faces, swing from the miles of creeper which festoon the trees. Green parrots shriek, and strange great reptiles crash a path through the tangle. The savage natives punt or paddle their dugouts on the placid bosom of the river. So recent is the white man's advent that the whole is scarcely changed from the day when David Livingstone first looked upon it and realized, with beating heart, the Wonder he had found.

TRAVELING IN INDIA

BY MABEL ALBERTA SPICER

Here in the Western world, where everything is hustle and bustle, where express-trains, automobiles, telephones, telegraphs, pneumatic tubes, and, most recently, aëroplanes save us hours of time, it is difficult to realize that on the other side of the world things are moving along at the same slow pace at which they did centuries ago. Also, here in America, where everybody is saying, "I have no time, I have no time, I have no time!" it seems strange to think that there are countries where time has no value whatsoever, where people believe they have to live thousands and thousands of lives before they reach their heaven, and, consequently, have no regard for time.

Imagine spending the whole night in the train to go one or two hundred miles! Imagine, also, everybody's surprise if some traveler should attempt to take with him into an American sleeping-car a roll of bedding, a box of ice, sawdust, and bottles of soda-water, a huge lunch-basket, spirit-lamps, umbrella-cases, hat-boxes, suitcases and bags without number, a talkative parrot, and a folding chair or two! He would be thought quite mad, of course, and would not be allowed to enter the car. Yet this is how people travel in the trains of India. Sometimes, to be sure, the chairs and noisy parrot are left at home, but quite as often golf-sticks and a folding cot are substituted. Native travelers often carry their cooking-utensils and stoves with them. No one is in a hurry, and the train often waits quite long enough at stations for them to install their stoves on the platform, and cook a good dish of rice.

Most trains have first-, second-, and third-class carriages. Europeans and Americans usually travel first-class, for the best in India is bad enough when compared with the luxuries of travel in Western countries. Most of the carriages are about half as long as those in America, and divided into two compartments without a corridor, each having a lavatory at one end. Running along each side of the compartment, just under the windows, is a long, leather-covered bench, which serves as a seat during the day, and a berth at night. It is equally uncomfortable in both capacities. Above this, folded up against the side of the car, is a leather-covered shelf that lets down to form the upper berth.

My first experience in Indian trains was at night. My turbaned servant arranged my bedding on a bench in a compartment reserved for ladies, switched on an electric fan, salaamed, and went off to find his place in a servants' compartment adjoining. Most trains have special compartments for servants. It is impossible to travel comfortably in India without native servants.

While I was in the dressing-room, preparing for the night, I heard a noise outside, and, looking out, saw an old man with a lantern, down on his knees looking under the berths. He said that he was looking for me, that he was afraid I had missed the train.

Finally, after a great ringing of bells, tooting of whistles, waving of lanterns, and chattering of natives, we pulled out into the darkness and heat. The electric fan burred, mosquitos hummed and bit, the train rocked wildly from side to side.

I was just dozing off, when lights were flashed in my eyes. More bells, whistles, and chattering natives! The door burst open, and an Englishman ordered his man to put his luggage in the compartment. I called out that it was reserved for ladies, and he disappeared with a "Sorry!"

Out into the darkness again, only to be aroused at the next station by the guard, who shouted, "Tickets, please!" The night was one prolonged nightmare of heat, noise, jolting, and mosquitos. By five, I was beginning to sleep, when I was startled by a cry of "_Chota Hazree!_" I sat up in alarm, wondering what those dreadful-sounding words could mean, when the shutters by my head were suddenly lowered, and a tray of toast and tea thrust in at me. I accepted it, and gave up all idea of sleep. The dreadful-sounding words, I found, meant "little breakfast."

Sometimes we had our meals from a tiffin basket which we carried with us, sometimes from a restaurant car, or again at the station café while the train waited, and sometimes, when all of these failed us, not at all. During the winter, traveling was more comfortable. It was so cold that we needed heavy rugs over us. Some of the express-trains go from twenty to thirty miles an hour.

Each time that the train stops, there is great confusion. The natives arrive at the station hours ahead of time. Here they squat patiently until the train arrives, when they quite lose their heads. In an attempt to find places in the crowded carriages, they run excitedly up and down the platform, clinging to one another, clutching at their clumsy luggage, and screaming at their servants and the trainmen. Equally agitated groups pour out of the cars and scurry off to find bullock carts or _ekkas_ to drive them to the town, which is usually some distance from the station. Boys and women with sweets, fruit, drinking-water, toys, cheap jewelry, and various articles of native production cry their wares at the car windows. Others sell newspapers, which are apt to be weeks old, if the purchaser does not insist upon seeing the date. The platform presents a riot of strange costumes, bright colors, quick-moving figures with jingling bangles and ankles, unholy odors, and clamorous sounds.

At the stations, we were met in different parts of India by the greatest imaginable variety of conveyances--carriages with footmen and drivers in state livery, sent by the native princes, hotel and public carriages after models never dreamed of in America, bullock carts, elephants, camels, rickshaws, and, in Calcutta and Bombay, taxi-automobiles.

When your driver starts off down the street at a reckless gait, clanging a bell in the floor of the carriage with his foot, and a boy on a step at the back calls out "_Tahvay!_" as you bowl along, you wonder if you have not taken, by mistake, a police wagon or an ambulance. But it is all right; you hear the same shouting and clanging of bells from all the other carriages along the route. This noise is necessary to make the idlers who stroll along the streets hand in hand get out of the way of the carriages.

There are so many horses in India that one wonders why any one should ever walk, and, in fact, very few do. They are of all grades, differing as much as does the shabbiest beggar from the most gorgeous raja. The conveyances to which they are harnessed range from the rickety public ekkas to the royal gold and silver coaches used on state occasions. One sees these wretched-looking public carriages that can be hired for a few cents filled with lazy natives and pulled along by a poor little pony that looks as if it were half-starved. Contrasting with these poor over-worked creatures are the thoroughbreds which literally die in the stables of the princes for lack of exercise.

When we were visiting in the native states, the chiefs sometimes offered us saddle-horses. The first time I rode one of these, I started off gaily, nothing fearing. From a gentle canter my mount suddenly broke into a dead run. Supposing that horses in all countries understood the same language, I said "Whoa," first mildly, persuasively, then loudly, imploringly; but without the slightest effect. On he sped faster and faster, until he overtook another horse, apparently a friend of his, for he slowed down to a walk beside it. I learned afterward that a sound similar to that used in America to make a horse go is used in India to make him stop. So the poor dear did not understand in the least my frantic cries of "Whoa!"

The only other swift-moving animal that it was my misfortune to encounter in India was a camel. This was in the north, in the desert of Rajputana. We were going to visit some tombs about five miles from the city. The others went in carriages, but I preferred to try the "fleet-footed camel." The creature knelt docilely enough to let me climb into the saddle back of the driver; then he unfolded his many-jointed legs and rose, throwing me forward and backward in a most uncomfortable manner.

He walked haughtily about the grounds of the guest-house a few minutes, turning up his nose at everybody, then suddenly let his hind legs collapse, almost throwing me off. The driver succeeded in making him understand that there was no use making a fuss, that he would have to take us. Off across the desert he started, at a gait so rough that I know of nothing with which to compare it. At first, I tried to hold to the saddle, but it was too slippery, so there was nothing to do but to throw my arms about the driver, and hang on to him with all my might. I returned in a carriage!

At Mysore and several other places, we saw camel-carriages. They make a queer sight, these ungainly, loose-jointed animals shambling along in the harness. In Bikanir, we watched the camel corps drill. The natives in this part of India are very finely built men, and they look most imposing in their gaily colored uniforms and turbans as they sit erect on the arrogant camels who snub even their masters.

There are so many slow, lazy ways of traveling in India that it is difficult to say which is the slowest.

Perhaps the bullocks, when they walk, are the slowest of all. They do, however, sometimes trot, and that at a rather brisk pace. They are beautiful animals, and very different from those in America. Their skin is wonderfully soft and silky. Between their shoulders is a large gristly hump. From their chin down between their fore legs hangs a loose, flabby fold of skin.

Of these, the most beautiful are the huge white bulls sacred to the Hindu god Shiva. These lead a life of leisure and luxury. They roam about the streets unmolested, eating from the fruit- and vegetable-stalls at will. Some are housed in the temples of the god.

Those who are not so lucky as to be held sacred have a rather hard time of it. They do most of the heavy hauling, and often suffer very cruel treatment from their drivers. In fact, no other animal is so much the victim of the cruelty and ignorance of the natives as these poor bullocks.

We drove in all sorts of curious-looking conveyances behind these somewhat refractory creatures. Once we drove out into a desolate region to visit some deserted temples, seated on the floor of a bullock cart with an arched cover of plaited bamboo over us. The men along the road walked faster than our bullocks, which went so slowly that, had it not been for the jolting of the cart, we should scarcely have known that we were moving.

In the southernmost part of the peninsula, along the Malabar coast, where there are no trains, we traveled in cabin-boats rowed by natives. It took them all night to row from Quilan to Travandrum, about fifty miles along the backwater. They sang from the moment they began to row, timing the stroke of the oar to the rhythm of their song. In the morning, they appeared as smiling and fresh as they had the evening before when we started.

In Madras, we rode in rickshaws like those of China and Japan. In many parts of India, men take the place of animals, both in carrying people and in transporting cargo. Several times we were carried up mountains in _dholies_ by coolies. These dholies consist of a seat swung between two poles by ropes. They are carried by two or four men, who trot off up the hill with the poles resting on their shoulders, while the passenger dangles between them. They used to come down the mountains so fast that we were quite terrified. The seat would twist and sway, hit against trees, graze along the side of rocks, while our porters would dance along, talking and laughing, without paying the slightest attention to us. Then there are various kinds of push-carts used in different parts of the country.

Of course, the really Indian way of traveling is on elephants. Very few, however, except princes and foreign travelers, ever ride on these lordly animals. In the "zoos" in Calcutta and Bombay there are elephants for the children to ride. The riders climb steps to a platform the height of the elephant's back, then jump into the howdah, where they are tied fast to make sure of their not falling. The old _huthi_, as the elephant is called there, sways off, waving his trunk, flopping his ears, and blinking his eyes. He makes a tour of the gardens, then returns to the platform to get other children.

At Jaipur, Gwalior, and a number of other towns where there is a fort on a hill, elephants can be hired for the ascension. The huge creatures knelt down while we clambered into the howdah with the aid of ladders. When they rose, it seemed like an earthquake to us on their backs. They climbed the hill so slowly that the others of the party who walked arrived ahead of us. Our huthi would smell about carefully with his trunk before taking each step, then he would put a huge foot forward cautiously, and throw his great weight upon it slowly, as if afraid that the earth would give way under him. It took him so long to accommodate his four feet to each step, that I was thankful he had not as many as a centiped.

To appreciate an elephant in all his glory, one should see him in the splendor of princely procession. Designs in bright colors are painted on his forehead and trunk, trappings of silver ornament his tusks, head, and ankles, a rich cloth of gold and silver embroidery hangs over his colossal sides, and on his back is perched a rare howdah, often of gold and silver, with silk hangings. Aloft in the howdah rides the prince, resplendent with gold, silk, and jewels. In front, on the elephant's neck, sits the mahout, urging him on with strange-sounding grunts, and prods from a short pointed spear.

The elephants are reserved for state occasions. Most of the princes now have automobiles, which they look upon much as a child does its latest toy. The mass of the people depend upon the bullocks and horses to cart them about. There are now, also, in most parts of the empire, telephones and telegraphs; but they are such ancient systems and so unreliable that they are not to be compared with ours. India is through and through a lazy country, where nobody is in a hurry.

WHERE THE SUNSETS OF ALL THE YESTERDAYS ARE FOUND

BY OLIN D. WHEELER

In Montana, Idaho, and northern Wyoming lies the region where center the headwaters of the Missouri, Yellowstone, Green, and Snake rivers--the last named a branch of the Columbia. In the early years of the last century it was virtually the center of all human activity in the Rocky Mountain region, being a prolific, but dangerous, trapping-ground for the fur trade of those days.

Here the cloud-piercing peaks of the American Rockies reach their greatest altitude, and the scenery is of the wildest and most impressive character. The Grand Teton, 13,747 feet elevation, overlooking the magnificent Jackson Lake basin, has been climbed but twice by white men.

Since the Yellowstone Park was established, in 1872, the wonders of this region have been more or less familiar. But prior to 1870 they were believed to exist largely in the fertile imagination of the trapper.

The Park region, as we will call it, lay between the old-time northern and southern routes of frontier-day travel across the continent. It is true there were Indian trails leading across and through it, but the Indians, superstitious by nature, seem to have avoided the localities of the geysers and hot springs, and their north and south bound trails lay to the east or west of these areas that now fascinate and interest us.

In 1807, along one of these outside trails--one that just skirted the eastern side of the geyser zone, which here lies along a well-defined north-and-south axis--came the first white man who visited the region. He saw the two beautiful lakes, Jackson and Yellowstone, the dazzling Grand Cañon and its two falls, probably some of the hot springs, and possibly some of the inferior geysers. His trail is shown--marked "Colter's Route in 1807"--on the map of the great explorers Lewis and Clark in 1814. But it was after their return to civilization that they learned of this "hot springs brimstone" locality.

John Colter was a prince of adventurers. His life as a border hero, explorer, and trapper rivals that of any character of fiction; his discovery of the Yellowstone, while on a mission to an Indian tribe, was purely accidental, but it brought him lasting fame. He, himself, probably never realized its importance.

Two or three other old-time and adventurous mountaineers, particularly James, or "Jim," Bridger, afterward visited this locality, but people in general utterly refused seriously to consider, let alone believe, what these men told them regarding it.

Bridger was a man of remarkable ability as a guide and mountaineer, although unable to read, or even to write his own name. He was the discoverer of Great Salt Lake, and as a guide and natural-born scout had no superior, if, indeed, an equal, among frontiersmen. In this capacity he served numerous government and other expeditions and explored and traversed a large part of what was then the Far West. He could tell many a good story about his hairbreadth escapes, and lived to a ripe old age.

To attempt a word-picture of this region and its weird and unusual features is almost useless, and yet every one who visits it endeavors to do so. No words can be found adequately to describe the hot springs, that are numbered by the thousands, and the marvelous hues of their waters and their basins, rimmed and ornamented by fluted and beaded parapets of indescribable delicacy and beauty. Nor can the geysers, leaping suddenly from their deep, nether-world reservoirs, be pictured by words in such a way as to convey to the mind a real image of their strange and fascinating reality.

The first printed description of one of them was by another trapper, Warren A. Ferris, of the old American Fur Company. He visited a geyser area in 1834, but his account of it was not published until July, 1842.

Numerous waterfalls are found here, from cascades a few feet in height to cataracts having twice the leap of Niagara; lakes lie deeply embosomed among the high peaks or the heavy forests, and one of them, twenty miles in length and a mile and a half above the ocean, is now being navigated--think of it!--by motor-boats; thousands of miles of crystal trout-streams, kept supplied with trout by the government hatcheries, radiate in every direction; a natural glass cliff, an Indian quarry for arrow-heads in the ancient days, towers above a lake formed at its base by the wise and cunning beavers. There is, too, a low mountain of pure sulphur, with beautiful boiling sulphur-pools splashing at its foot; and, in contrast to these, there is a gruesome volcano of mud belching from a dark, malodorous cavern, while almost beside this is a beautiful, clear pool of hot water formed by a stream flowing from beneath a green Gothic arch.

The wonderful cañons, exhibiting such different phases of nature's sublime handiwork, awe the beholder. One shows the marvelous way in which lava, cooling, arranges itself in massive, black, symmetric slabs and columns; these enclose a beautiful fall that adds a touch of lightness and beauty. The Grand Cañon is the most startling and extraordinary example of color harmony and nature sculpture to be found in the universe. A Japanese, in the poetic imagery of his race, has said that these brilliant cañon walls have caught and emblazoned upon their mural precipices the sunsets of all the yesterdays--a beautiful conception. One stands awed to silence in the presence of "Nature's immensities" seen here and is almost overwhelmed by the profound splendors and majestic glories of this cañon.