Soon after leaving the Upper Geyser Basin, we approached a tiny lake which has, in some respects, no equal in the world.  With the exception of some isolated mountain peaks, it marks the highest portion of our country.  In winter, therefore, when encircled by mounds of snow, it rests upon the summit of our continent like a crown of sapphire set with pearls.  So evenly is it balanced, that when it overflows, one part of it descends to the Atlantic, another part to the Pacific.  This little streamlet, therefore, is a silver thread connecting two great oceans three thousand miles apart.  Accordingly, one might easily fancy that every drop in this pure mountain reservoir possessed a separate individuality, and that a passing breeze or falling leaf might decide its destiny, propelling it with gentle force into a current which should lead it eastward to be silvered by the dawn, or westward to be gilded by the setting sun.

[Illustration:  THE “SILVER THREAD CONNECTING TWO OCEANS.”]

On either side of this elevation, known as the Continental Divide, the view was glorious.  In one direction, an ocean of dark pines rolled westward in enormous billows.  The silver surfaces of several lakes gleamed here and there like whitecaps on the rolling waves.  Far off upon the verge of the horizon, fifty miles away, three snow-capped, sharply pointed mountains looked like a group of icebergs drifting from the Polar Sea.  They did not move, however, nor will they move while this old earth shall last.  They antedate by ages the Pyramids which they resemble.  They will be standing thus, in majesty, when Egypt’s royal sepulchres shall have returned to dust.  Forever anchored there, those three resplendent peaks rise fourteen thousand feet above the sea, and form the grand tiara of our continent, the loftiest summits of the Rocky Mountains.

[Illustration:  THE THREE TETONS.]

As we began the descent from this great elevation, another splendid vision greeted us.  We gazed upon it with delight.  Beyond a vast expanse of dark green pines we saw, three hundred feet below us, Lake Yellowstone.  It stirred my heart to look at last upon this famous inland sea, nearly eight thousand feet above the ocean level, and to realize that if the White Mountain monarch, Washington, were planted in its depths (its base line on a level with the sea), there would remain two thousand feet of space between its’ summit and the surface of this lake!  In this respect it has but one real rival, Lake Titicaca, in the Andes of Peru.

[Illustration:  LAKE YELLOWSTONE, FROM A DISTANCE.]