Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/473

Rh of the survey, and he won the first of his many laurels on this expedition. In 1873, 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 headwaters 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