Joseph Russell Smith

“ The bear really isn't such a bad fellow unless he is starving and there is no danger of his ever getting very hungry when he can take his wife and cubs down back of the hotel and get barrels of good scraps from the hotel table and kitchen. ”

“ Curtis. "It is named Yellowstone National Park but it happens to be over 3,000 times as large as Central Park, New York. It is more than three times as big as the whole State of Rhode Island and actually bigger than the States of Delaware and Rhode Island together."
"Is there a fence around it?"
"Nothing but Nature's fence of high mountains."
"Are there cities and towns in this park? "
"No, indeed, no one lives there. The Yellowstone Park is really a great wild mountain reserve where no one is allowed to make his home. ”

“ Curtis, can you really see a live, walking bear and take a picture of him or is it only a make believe? "
Mr. and Mrs. Bear take supper at Lake Hotel—Yellowstone National Park "Look at this picture here, boys. It is a photograph. You can see the bears almost every day near the big hotels."
"Why don't they hurt people?" said Sam Robinson, who was always asking "why".
"They do not hurt people because the people do not hurt them. No one hunts in the Park. ”

“ All the afternoon the train went on up the Valley of the Platte which reached across the unending plains where wheat fields follow corn fields and cattle ranches follow wheat fields on the range where once the buffaloes roamed in countless thousands. ”

“ Each A mountain and a road made entirely of natural glass
The work of an old valcano
The Obsidian Cliff—Yellowstone National Park one of them spent much thought in selecting his fishing tackle and Dr. Curtis insisted that there should be a liberal supply of stout shoes, sweaters and woolen clothes. In the high mountains of the Yellowstone the climate is always bracing, the nights cold and once in a while there will be frost even in summer. There is nothing hot or muggy about the weather there, and fortunately there are no mosquitoes. ”

“ Curtis and ten of the boys boarded a Union Pacific Express train at Omaha, bound for Yellowstone. As the train pulled away from the Missouri River they felt that they were really entering the Great West, although, as a matter of fact, they were a little east of the geographic center of the United States. They were soon on the Great Plains and were much interested in a forty-mile stretch of perfectly straight track over which their train passed.
The endless plains were flat as a floor and brought to mind many a story of buffaloes, Indians and cowboys. In the same car was a Mr. ”

“ The most exciting of all Mr. Jeffries' stories was the close call he had when he was helping build the railroad. The construction camps were sometimes fifty or sixty miles beyond the last station that trains could reach. ”

“ There were no settlements on the plains, the Indians were often hostile, and one day in 1868 they attacked the workmen near the present station of Elm Creek and killed five men just three hours after Mr. ”