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American Notes-Part7_RUDYARD KIPLING(1865-1936)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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given over to the sportings and spoutings of devils who threw



mud, and steam, and dirt at each other with whoops, and halloos,

and bellowing curses.



The places smelled of the refuse of the pit, and that odor mixed

with the clean, wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils



throughout the day.

This Yellowstone Park is laid out like Ollendorf, in exercises of



progressive difficulty. Hell's Half-Acre was a prelude to ten or

twelve miles of geyser formation.



We passed hot streams boiling in the forest; saw whiffs of steam

beyond these, and yet other whiffs breaking through the misty



green hills in the far distance; we trampled on sulphur in

crystals, and sniffed things much worse than any sulphur which is



known to the upper world; and so journeying, bewildered with the

novelty, came upon a really park-like place where Tom suggested



we should get out and play with the geysers on foot.

Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime-beds, all the



flowers of the summer growing up to the very edge of the lime.

That was our first glimpse of the geyser basins.



The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, blistered cone

of spelter stuff between ten and twenty feet high. There was



trouble in that place--moaning, splashing, gurgling, and the

clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling water jumped into the



air, and a wash of water followed.

I removed swiftly. The old lady from Chicago shrieked. "What a



wicked waste!" said her husband.

I think they call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn



and ragged like the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst there.

It grumbled madly for a moment or two, and then was still. I



crept over the steaming lime--it was the burning marl on which

Satan lay--and looked fearfully down its mouth. You should never



look a gift geyser in the mouth.

I beheld a horrible, slippery, slimy funnel with water rising and



falling ten feet at a time. Then the water rose to lip level

with a rush, and an infernal bubbling troubled this Devil's



Bethesda before the sullen heave of the crest of a wave lapped

over the edge and made me run.



Mark the nature of the human soul! I had begun with awe, not to

say terror, for this was my first experience of such things. I



stepped back from the banks of the Riverside Geyser,

saying:--"Pooh! Is that all it can do?"



Yet for aught I knew, the whole thing might have blown up at a

minute's notice, she, he, or it being an arrangement of uncertain



temper.

We drifted on, up that miraculousvalley. On either side of us



were hills from a thousand or fifteen hundred feet high, wooded

from crest to heel. As far as the eye could range forward were



columns of steam in the air, misshapen lumps of lime, mist-like

preadamite monsters, still pools of turquoise-blue stretches of



blue corn-flowers, a river that coiled on itself twenty times,

pointed bowlders of strange colors, and ridges of glaring,



staring white.

A moon-faced trooper of German extraction--never was park so



carefully patrolled--came up to inform us that as yet we had not

seen any of the real geysers; that they were all a mile or so up



the valley, and tastefully scattered round the hotel in which we

would rest for the night.



America is a free country, but the citizens look down on the

soldier. I had to entertain that trooper. The old lady from



Chicago would have none of him; so we loafed alone together, now

across half-rotten pine logs sunk in swampy ground, anon over the



ringing geyser formation, then pounding through river-sand or

brushing knee-deep through long grass.



"And why did you enlist?" said I.

The moon-faced one's face began to work. I thought he would have



a fit, but he told me a story instead--such a nice tale of a

naughty little girl who wrote pretty love letters to two men at



once. She was a simple village wife, but a wicked "family

novelette" countess couldn't have accomplished her ends better.



She drove one man nearly wild with the pretty little treachery,

and the other man abandoned her and came West to forget the



trickery.

Moon-face was that man.



We rounded and limped over a low spur of hill, and came out upon

a field of aching, snowy lime rolled in sheets, twisted into






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