The Living Age, December 11, 1897; The Living Age Company, Boston
by Charles M. Skinner
Skinner published collections of myths, legends and folklore found inside the United States and across the world. – Wikipedia
People who go through the Yellowstone country nowaday know little of what that trip meant before the time of the railroad. Four of us made the journey: the Parson, Old Silurian, the Unsalted, and the Tramp; in other words, a city clergyman, a professor of geology, a young collegian, and myself. There was but an apology for a road, and we had to get down and pull logs out of the way to get through. At one point we had no road but a river-bed, and followed it through a cañon. At night we camped wherever there was tent room, and the frost nipped our toes through our blankets. “Toot,” our factotum, and “Al,” his brother, keeper, also, of the Coyote saloon in Bozeman, were famous hunters, fishermen, and cooks, steady drivers, astonishing drinkers, and they liked to use bad language and relate unseemly narratives in order to see the clergyman and the professor wince. They claimed to have committed many sins, but they never worried over them. It was different with a “rustler” we met out there.
Continued at Haw Creek Destinations.
Photo: The Natural Bridge, Yellowstone National Park – by F. Jay Haynes
