Jake may go to.  I will write until my candle burns out.  Jacob is indolent and fond of slumber, and I think that he resents my remark to him the other day, that he could burn more and gather less wood than any man I ever camped with.  He has dubbed me “The Yellowstone sharp.”  Good!  I am not ashamed to have the title.  Lieutenant Doane has crawled out of his blankets, and is just outside the tent with his hand and fore-arm immersed in water nearly as cold as ice.  I am afraid that lock-jaw will set in if he does not consent to have the felon lanced.

Wednesday, August 31.—­This has been a “red-letter” day with me, and one which I shall not soon forget, for my mind is clogged and my memory confused by what I have to-day seen.  General Washburn and Mr. Hedges are sitting near me, writing, and we have an understanding that we will compare our notes when finished.  We are all overwhelmed with astonishment and wonder at what we have seen, and we feel that we have been near the very presence of the Almighty.  General Washburn has just quoted from the psalm: 

  “When I behold the work of Thy hands, what is man
  that Thou art mindful of him!”

My own mind is so confused that I hardly know where to commence in making a clear record of what is at this moment floating past my mental vision.  I cannot confine myself to a bare description of the falls of the Yellowstone alone, for these two great cataracts are but one feature in a scene composed of so many of the elements of grandeur and sublimity, that I almost despair of giving to those who on our return home will listen to a recital of our adventures, the faintest conception of it.  The immense canon or gorge of rocks through which the river descends, perhaps more than the falls, is calculated to fill the observer with feelings of mingled awe and terror.  This chasm is seemingly about thirty miles in length.  Commencing above the upper fall, it attains a depth of two hundred feet where that takes its plunge, and in the distance of half a mile from that point to the verge of the lower fall, it rapidly descends with the river between walls of rock nearly six hundred feet in vertical height, to which three hundred and twenty feet are added by the fall.  Below this the wall lines marked by the descent of the river grow in height with incredible distinctness, until they are probably two thousand feet above the water.  There is a difference of nearly three thousand feet in altitude between the surface of the river at the upper fall and the foot of the canon.  Opposite Mount Washburn the canon must be more than half a vertical mile in depth.  As it is impossible to explore the entire canon, we are unable to tell whether the course of the river through it is broken by other and larger cataracts than the two we have seen, or whether its continuous descent alone has produced the enormous depth to which it has attained.  Rumors of falls a thousand feet in height have often reached