of the Missouri.  There were cataracts of scalding water which shot straight up into the air; there were blue ponds hot enough to boil fish; there were springs that came up snorting and steaming, and which would turn trees into stone; the woods were full of holes from which issued streams of sulphur; there were canons of untold depth with walls of ashes full of holes which let off steam like a locomotive, and there were springs which looked peaceful enough, but which at times, would burst like a bomb.

In short, every one laughed at Colter and his yarns, and this place where all lies were true was familiarly known as “Colter’s Hell.”  But for once John Colter told the truth, and the truth could not easily be exaggerated.  But no one believed him.  When others who afterwards followed him over the Nez Perces trail told the same stories, people said they had been up to “Colter’s Hell” and had learned to lie.

But, as time passed, other men told what they had seen, until, in 1870, a sort of official survey was made under the lead of Washburne and Doane.  This party got the general bearings of the region, named many of the mountains, and found so much of interest that the next year Dr. Hayden, the United States Geologist, sent out a party for systematic exploration.  The Hayden party came up from Colorado on horseback, through dense and tangled forests, across mountain torrents, and other craggy peaks.  The story of this expedition has been most charmingly told by its youngest member, another John Coulter.  Professor Coulter was the botanist of the survey, and he won the first of his many laurels on this expedition.  In 1872, acting on Hayden’s report, Congress took the matter in hand and set apart this whole region as a “public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” and such it remains to this day.

But, while only of late this region has had a public history, the long-forgotten years between the Glacial period and the expedition of Lewis and Clarke were not without interest in the history of the trout.  For all these years the fishes have been trying to mount the waterfalls in order to ascend to the plateau above.  Year after year, as the spawning-time came on, they leaped against the falls of the Gardiner, the Gibbon, and the Firehole Rivers, but only to fall back impotent in the pools at their bases.  But the mightiest cataract of all, the great falls of the Yellowstone, they finally conquered, and in this way it was done:  not by the trout of the Yellowstone River, but by their brothers on the other side of the Divide.  These followed up the Columbia to the head-waters of the Snake River, its great tributary, past the beautiful Heart Lake, and then on to the stream now called Pacific Creek, which rises on the very crest of the Divide.  In the space between this stream, which flows west to help form the Snake River, and a smaller stream now called Atlantic Creek, flowing down the east slope of the Divide, the great chain