Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/193

Rh Atlantic Creek was found to have two forks entering the pass. At the north end of the meadow is a small wooded canon, down which flows the North Fork. This stream hugs the border of the flat very closely. The South Fork comes down the cañon on the south side, skirting the brow of the hill a little less closely than does the North Fork. The two, coming together near the middle of the eastern border of the meadow, form Atlantic Creek, which, after a course of a few miles, flows into the Upper Yellowstone. But the remarkable phenomena exhibited here remain to be described.

Each fork of Atlantic Creek, just after entering the meadow, divides as if to flow around an island; but the stream toward the meadow, instead of returning to the portion from which it had parted, continues its westerly course across the meadow. Just before reaching the western border the two streams unite, and then pour their combined waters into Pacific Creek; thus are Atlantic and Pacific Creeks united, and a continuous water way from the mouth of the Columbia, via Two-Ocean Pass, to the Gulf of Mexico is established. Two-Ocean Creek is not a myth but a verity, and Jim Bridger is vindicated. We stood upon the bank of either fork of Atlantic Creek, just above the place of the "parting of the waters," and watched the stream pursue its rapid but dangerous and uncertain course along the very crest of the "Great Continental Divide." A creek flowing along the ridgepole of a continent is unusual and strange, and well worth watching and experimenting with. So we waded to the middle of the North Fork, and, lying down upon the rocks in its bed, we drank the pure icy water that was hurrying to the Pacific, and, without rising, but by simply bending a little to the left, we took a draught from that portion of the stream which was just deciding to go east, via the Missouri-Mississippi route, to the Gulf of Mexico. And then we tossed chips, two at a time, into the stream. Though they would strike the water within an inch or so of each other, not infrequently one would be carried by the current to the left, keeping in Atlantic Creek, while the other might be carried a little to the right and enter the branch running across the meadow to Pacific Creek; the one beginning a journey which will finally bring it to the great gulf, the other entering upon a long voyage in the opposite direction to Balboa's ocean.

Pacific Creek is a stream of good size long before it enters the pass, and its course through the meadow is in a definite channel; but not so with Atlantic Creek. The west bank of each fork is low, and the water is liable to break through anywhere, and thus send a part of its water across to Pacific Creek. It is probably true that one or two branches always connect the two creeks under ordinary conditions, and that, following heavy rains, or when