CATHEDRAL SPIRES

“_And ever the spell of beauty came
And turned the drowsy world to flame._”

EMERSON

In the picturesque region of Pike’s Peak there is grouped such an
array of scenic wonders as are unrivalled, within the limits of any
corresponding area, in the entire world. To this region Colorado
Springs is the gateway, and the poetic little city is already famous
as one of the world resorts whose charm is not exclusively restricted
to the summer. The winter is also alluring, for Colorado is the land
of perpetual sunshine. One turns off the steam heat and sits with open
windows in December. The air is electric, exhilarating. The cogwheel
road up Pike’s Peak is stopped; but almost any of the other excursions
one can take as enjoyably as in summer. The East is, apparently, under
the delusion that the land is covered with snow up to the very summit
of Pike’s Peak. On the contrary, the ground is bare and dry; the
birds are singing, the sun shines for all, and the everlasting hills
silhouette themselves against the blue sky in all their grandeur.
One easily slips into all the charm and fascination of Colorado days
through these resplendent winters, when there are two hours more of
light and sunshine in Colorado, on account of its altitude, than in any
state to the eastward. The climate of Colorado Springs has a perfection
that is remarked even in the Centennial State, where, in every part,
the climate is unsurpassed in sunshine and exhilaration. Especially,
however, is Colorado Springs a summer resort, as is Saratoga or Newport
or Bar Harbor. Its season is increasingly brilliant and crowded. People
come to stay a day and prolong it to a week, or come for a week and
prolong their stay to a month. The driving is fine, the motor cars are
abundant, the excursions are delightful, and the air is as curative and
exhilarating as is possible to conceive. The inner glories of the Rocky
Mountains, with their vast cañons and giant peaks; their waterfalls
dashing over precipices hundreds of feet in height; the fascinating
glens and mesas for camping excursions, or for scientific research and
study, are all reached by this gateway of Colorado Springs.

Pike’s Peak, this stupendous continental monument, dominates the entire
region. The atmospheric effects around its summit offer a perpetual
panorama of kaleidoscopic changes of color and cloud-forms. Looking
out on the Peak from Colorado Springs, three miles from its base,
there are hours when it seems to be actually approaching with such
swift though stately measure that one involuntarily shrinks back from
the window in irrational alarm lest the grim monster shall bear down
upon it, with a force inevitable as Fate; disastrous as a colossal
iceberg wandering from Polar seas and sweeping down with irresistible
force against the side of a transatlantic liner. In a lightning flash
of instantaneous, unreasoning vision, one beholds in imagination the
impending destruction of a city. It becomes a thing endowed with
volition; a weird, uncanny monster, the abode of the gods who have
reared their monuments and established their pleasure-grounds in their
strange, fantastic garden at its foot.

Again, the Peak enfolds itself in clouds and, secure in this drapery,
retires altogether from sight, as if weary of being the object of
public view. It is as if the inmates of a house, feeling an invasion
of public interest, should turn off the lights, draw the curtains, and
close the shutters as a forcible intimation of their preference for
privacy and their decision to exclude the madding crowd. Sometimes
the Peak will flaunt itself in glorious apparel and gird itself
in strength. With light it will deck itself as with a garment. It
surprises a sunrise with the reflection of glory transfigured into
unspeakable resplendence. It is the royal monarch to which every
inhabitant of the Pike’s Peak region, every sojourner in the land, must
pay his tribute. The day is fair or foul according as Pike’s Peak shall
smile or frown. All the cycles of the eternal ages have left on its
summit their records,–the silent and hidden romance of the air. The
scientist alone may translate this aërial hieroglyphic.

“Omens and signs that fill the air
To him authentic witness bear.”

This monumental peak of the continent shrouds in oblivion its mystic
past, and still the handwriting on the wall may be read by him who
holds the key to all this necromancy. The record of the ages is written
on parchment that will never crumble. The mysteries of the very
creation itself,–of all this vast and marvellous West,–of infinite
expanse of sea and of volcanic fires that swallowed up the waters and
crystallized them into granite and porphyry,–this very record of
Titanic processes is written, in mystic characters, in that far upper
air where the lofty Peak reigns in unapproachable majesty. For while
there are other peaks in the Rocky Mountains as high,–and Long’s
Peak even exceeds it in altitude,–there is no other which rises so
distinctly alone and which so supremely dominates an infinite plateau
that extends, like the ocean, beyond the limit of vision.

[Illustration: SUMMIT OF PIKE’S PEAK, COLORADO]

There is one glory of the moon and another glory of the stars, as
well as the glory of the sun, in this mountain region of Colorado
Springs. The sunsets over the mountains are marked by the most gorgeous
phenomena of color before whose intensity all the hues of a painter’s
palette pale. The gates of the New Jerusalem seem to open. Great
masses of billowy clouds in deepest, burning gold hang in the air;
the rainbow hues of all the summers that have shone upon earth since
the first rainbow was set in the heavens, reflect themselves in a
thousand shimmering cloud-shapes. It is one of the definite things of
the tourist’s day to watch from the western terrace of “The Antlers”
these unrivalled sunset effects; and when, later (still in compliance
with the unwritten laws that prevail in the Empire of Transcendent
Beauty), dinner is served at small tables on the terrace,–where the
flowers that form the centrepiece of each table, the gleam of exquisite
cut glass and silver, and the music from an orchestra hidden behind
the palms and tall roses that fling a thousand fragrances on the
enchanted air all blend as elements of the faëry scene whose background
is a panoramic picture of mountains and sky,–the visitor realizes an
atmosphere of enchantment that one might well cross a continent to gain.

Again, there is the glory of the night. A young moon glances shyly over
the mountain summit and swiftly retires to her mysterious realms on
the other side. Each ensuing night she ventures still further afield,
gazing still longer at the world she is visiting before she again wings
her flight down the western sky, pausing, for a tremulous moment,
on the very crest of the mountains ere she is lost to sight in the
vague distance beyond. The stars come and go in impressive troops and
processions. They float up from behind the mountains till one questions
as to whether the other side is not a vast realm of star-dust in
process of crystallizing into planets and stars. Has one, then, at
last arrived at the Land that is the forge of the gods who create it?
May one here surprise the very secrets of the Universe? Perhaps some
dim, mysterious under-world lies over that colossal range in which
celestial mechanism is at work sending forth and withdrawing the
shining planetary visitants, so continuous is the procession of stars
through all the hours of the night. Each star, as it rises over the
mountains or sets behind them, pauses for an instant on the crest for a
preliminary survey, or a parting glance, of the world it is entering or
leaving.

It is still in the realms of doubt as to whether there may be
discovered a royal road to learning; but a royal road to the summit
of Pike’s Peak, more than fourteen thousand feet above sea level, has
been, since 1890, an accomplished fact in the Manitou and Pike’s Peak
cogwheel road, starting from Engleman’s Glen, one of the famous resorts
of Manitou. This lovely town, that dreams away its summer at the base
of Pike’s Peak guarded by precipitous mountain walls, is connected
with Colorado Springs by electric trolley, and the little journey of
four miles is one of the pleasure excursions of the region. The route
lies past the “Garden of the Gods,” where the curious shapes of red
sandstone loom up like spectral forms in some Inferno.

Like Naples, Colorado Springs is the paradise of the tourist, offering
a new excursion for every day in the season; and there are few of
these whose route does not include lovely Manitou, which is also the
objective point from which to fare forth on this journey above the
clouds, into those mysterious realms where he who listens aright may
hear spoken the words which it is not lawful for man to utter. The
journey into aërial spaces opens in a defile of one of the deep cañons,
the train on the one hand clinging to the wall, while on the other one
looks down a vast precipice, at the foot of which dashes a river over
gigantic boulders. The route is diversified by the little stations on
the way,–Minnehaha, whose waterfall indeed laughs in the air, and is
given back in a thousand ghostly echoes; the Half-Way House, nestling
under the pinnacled rocks of Hell Gate–must one always pass through
the portals of Hades on his way to Paradise? Strange and grotesque
scenery companions the way. On the mountain-side one finds–of all
things–a newspaper office, where a souvenir daily paper is issued
with all the news of that new world above the clouds, Pike’s Peak. The
ascent is very steep in places. The verdure of the foothills vanishes,
the trees cease to invade this upper air, and only the dwarfed aspen
shivers in the breeze as it clings to some barren rock. New vistas
open. The world of day and daylight duties is left behind. Gaunt,
spectral rocks in uncanny shapes haunt the way. The air grows chill;
car windows are closed, and warm wraps are at a premium. But the scene
below! The sensation of looking down on the clouds, the view of Lake
Moraine, an inland sea high in the mountains; the new sensations of the
rarefied air,–all these seem to initiate one into a new world. From
the summit, reached in a journey of ninety minutes, the view can only
be described as that of unspeakable awe and sublimity. An expanse of
sixty thousand miles is open to the gaze. To the west rise a thousand
towering peaks, snow clad, in a majesty of effect beyond power of
portrayal. To the east the vast plateaus stretch into infinite space.
Below, the sun shines on floating clouds in all gleams of color. In the
steel tower of the new Summit Hotel is a powerful telescope that brings
Denver, eighty miles distant, into near and distinct view. In Colorado
Springs, fourteen miles “as the crow flies,” the telescopic view even
reveals the signs on the streets so they may be plainly read. In close
range of vision appear Pueblo, Cripple Creek, Victor, Goldfield,
Independence, and Manitou.

The surface of the top of Pike’s Peak comprises several acres of level
land thickly strewn with large blocks of rough granite of varying
size,–blocks that are almost wholly in a regular rectangular shape,
as if prepared for some Titanic scheme of architecture. The highest
telegraph office in the world is located here, and the usual souvenir
shop of every summer resort offers its tempting remembrances, all of
which are closely associated with the _genus loci_, and are all a very
part of the Colorado productions. A powerful searchlight was placed
on Pike’s Peak during the summer of 1906, adding the most picturesque
feature of night to all the surrounding country. Denver, Colorado
Springs, Pueblo, the Cripple Creek district, the deep cañons of the
Cheyenne range, the silvery expanse of Broadmoor, whose attractive
casino is a centre of evening gatherings,–all these points in the
great landscape are swept with the illumination from the highest
searchlight in the world to-day.

A century has passed since Major Zebulon Montgomery Pike first
discovered the shadowy crest of the mountain peak that immortalizes
his name. It was on November 13, 1806, that the attention of Major
Pike and his party was arrested by what at first looked to them as a
light blue cloud in the sky, toward which they marched for ten days
before arriving at the base of the mountain. The story of this journey
is one of the dramatic records in the national archives. Major Pike
and his men left St. Louis on July 15, 1806, on his trip to the Rocky
Mountains, or Mexican Mountains as he called them at the time. He
pronounced the country through which he travelled to be so devoid of
sustenance for human beings that it would serve as a barrier, for all
time, in the expansion of the United States. In vivid contrast are
the conditions to-day. Major Pike could now make his journey from St.
Louis to Pike’s Peak over either of several grand trunk railways
equipped with all the modern luxuries of travel. Where he passed great
herds of buffalo, he would now see cattle grazing in equal numbers on
the prairies. The vast plains that paralyzed his imagination by their
desolate aspects are now dotted with prosperous farms or ranches. The
mountains that appealed to him only for their scenic grandeur have
been found to be the treasure vaults of nature that were only waiting
to be conquered by the hardy frontiersmen who followed him nearly half
a century later. The great white mountain that he declared could not
be ascended by a human being is now the objective point of a hundred
thousand tourists annually, who gayly climb the height in a swift trip
made in a luxurious Pullman observation car. The first attempt of the
Pike party to ascend the peak was a failure, and Major Pike expressed
his opinion that “no human being could ascend to its pinnacle.” In 1819
Hon. John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, sent Major Long and a
party on an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, then almost as unknown
as the Himalayas. This exploring party camped on the present site of
Colorado Springs, and on July 13 (1819) started to ascend the peak. On
the first day they made only two miles, as the ground was covered with
loose, crumbling granite. On the second day, however, they succeeded;
the first ascent of Pike’s Peak thus having been made on July 14, 1819.
A chronicle of this ascent describes the point above which the timber
line disappears as one “of astonishing beauty and of great interest as
to its productions.” The first woman to stand on the summit of Pike’s
Peak was Mrs. James H. Holmes, in August of 1858.

General Zebulon Montgomery Pike achieved distinction both as an
explorer and a brave soldier. He was but twenty-seven years of age
when he was chosen to lead the most important military expedition of
the day, and eight years later, as Brigadier-General, he commanded the
troops that captured the British stronghold at York (now Toronto),
Canada, and here he met his death, which has been compared to that of
Nelson. The captured flag of the enemy was placed under the head of
the dying general to ease his pain. The cheers of his soldiers aroused
the young commander, and on being told that the fort was captured, he
closed his eyes with the words, “I die content.”

In his notebook were found the maxims that had guided him through life,
dedicated to his son, among which were “Preserve your honor free from
blemish,” and “Be always ready to die for your country.”

General Pike was buried with full military honors in the government
plot at Madison Barracks, New York. A modest shaft marks the resting
place of the heroic soldier-explorer, and on Cascade Avenue in Colorado
Springs, directly in front of “The Antlers,” there is placed a statue
of the heroic discoverer of the mighty Peak which forever perpetuates
his name.

No adequate life of Pike has ever been written; but with the monumental
majesty of the mid-continental mountain peak that proclaims his name to
all future centuries, what room can there be for biographical record
or sculptured memorial? The archives of the Department of War, in
Washington, contain his diary, kept from day to day in this march from
St. Louis to Colorado. After his discovery of the Peak, Major Pike
returned to the place where now the city of Pueblo stands, continuing
his journey into the mountains, thence to New Mexico, where he was
captured by the Spaniards. Hardships of every description were suffered
by the party before being placed in captivity at Santa Fé; but even
the capture of his papers by the Spaniards at Santa Fé did not serve
to destroy the records of the astute young soldier, who had carefully
concealed duplicates of his papers in the barrel of his big flintlock
rifle, and he was afterward able to restore them to original form.
Major Pike was as tender and humane as he was brave. In the capture of
the party by the Spanish two of the men had to be abandoned and left to
their fate in the hills. They were given a small supply of provisions,
with the assurance that they would be rescued if the rest of the party
found a haven of safety and rest. Major Pike kept this promise and,
more nearly dead than alive, these men were brought into Santa Fé by
the Spanish soldiers.

Well might it have been of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, in his first eager
march toward this “blue cloud” that beckoned him on and proved to be
a vast mountain peak,–well might it have been this hero that Emerson
thus pictured in the lines:

“The free winds told him what they knew,
Discoursed of fortune as they blew;
Omens and signs that filled the air
To him authentic witness bear;
The birds brought auguries on their wings,
And carolled undeceiving things
Him to beckon, him to warn;
Well might then the poet scorn
To learn of scribe or courier
Things writ in vaster character;
And on his mind at dawn of day
Soft shadows of the evening lay.”

In his diary, kept during the march from St. Louis, Major Pike thus
pictured his first impressions of Colorado:

“The scene was one of the most sublime and beautiful inland
prospects ever presented to man; the great lofty mountains, covered
with eternal snow, seemed to surround the luxuriant vale, crowned
with perennial flowers, like a terrestrial paradise.”

The memory of this hero cannot but invest Colorado Springs with a
certain consecration of heroism that becomes, indeed, part of the
“omens and signs” that fill the air.

In the early autumn of 1906 Colorado Springs and Manitou celebrated the
centenary of the discovery of Pike’s Peak with appropriate ceremonies.
One of the interesting features was the rendering of an “Ode” by a
chorus of one thousand voices, of which the words were written by
Charles J. Pike of New York, the well-known sculptor, a great-nephew of
General Pike, and for which the music was composed by Rubin Goldmark.

One of the noted excursions of the Pike’s Peak region is the “Temple
Drive,”–a carriage road beginning in Manitou, traversing Williams
Cañon, and, climbing its west wall. The drive offers near views of
the Temple of Isis, the Cathedral of St. Peter, the Narrows, and
of St. Peter’s Gate in the Cathedral Dome. It is fairly a drive in
elfland, and is as distinctive a feature of Colorado Springs life as
is the famous drive from Naples to Amalfi and Sorrento a feature of
the enchantment of Southern Italy. Manitou Park is easily reached by
motor or carriage drive from Colorado Springs through the picturesque
Ute Pass, and aside from its beauty it has an added interest in having
been presented to Colorado College by General William J. Palmer and Dr.
William A. Bell, to be used as the field laboratory of the new Colorado
School of Forestry. Manitou Park contains cottages and recreation
halls, so that all sorts of hospitalities and entertainments can be
there enjoyed.

[Illustration: WILLIAMS CAÑON, NEAR MANITOU, COLORADO]

Of the “Garden of the Gods” who can analyze the curious, mystic spell
of the place? A large tract of rolling mesas is covered with these
uncanny monsters of rocks in all weird and grotesque forms. The deep
red sandstone of their formation gives it the aspect, under a midday
sun or the slanting rays of a brilliant sunset, of being all on fire–a
kind of inferno, foreign to earth, and revealed, momentarily, from some
underworld of mystery.

Cheyenne Cañon is one of the most poetically touched places in all the
Pike’s Peak region. Of Cheyenne mountain Helen Hunt Jackson wrote:

“By easy slope to west, as if it had
No thought, when first its soaring was begun,
Except to look devoutly to the sun,
It rises and has risen, until glad,
With light as with a garment it is clad,
Each dawn before the tardy plains have won
One ray, and after day has long been done
For us the light doth cling reluctant, sad to leave its brow.”

Poets and artists have embodied it in song and essayed to transfer
it to canvas; but the grandeur of South Cheyenne Cañon eludes every
artist while it impresses the imagination of every visitor. It is fitly
approached through the “Pillars of Hercules,”–sheer perpendicular
walls of rock looking up over one thousand feet high, with a
passage-way of only forty feet. Once within the cañon and one might
as well have been translated to Mars so far as utter isolation can be
realized. In the dim green twilight from the lofty wooded cliffs toward
the Seven Falls one enters on “the twilight of the gods,” not dark, but
a soft light, the sun shut out, the air vibrating with faint hints of
color, the colossal granite walls rising into the sky, the faint dash
of waterfalls heard splashing over hidden rocks and stones; a rill here
and there trickling down the mountain side; the far call of some lonely
bird heard far away in the upper air; and the soft, mysterious light,
the dim coolness and fragrance, the glimpse of blue sky just seen in
the narrow opening above–was anything ever so enchantingly poetic?
It is here one might well materialize his castle d’Espagne. Winding
up the cañon, one comes to “Seven Falls,”–a torrent of water rushing
down mighty cliffs on one side of a colossal amphitheatre, and the
precipitous cliffs show seven distinct terraces down which the foaming
torrent plunges.

In North Cheyenne and in Bear Creek Cañons the grandeur is repeated,
and in those the people find a vast free recreation ground. This
privilege is again one of the innumerable ones that are due to the
gifts and grace of General Palmer, who has had this sublime locality
made into a practicable resort, with pavilions where tea, coffee,
lemonade, ices, and sandwiches are served; a rustic hostelry, “Bruin
Inn,” is also provided as a place of refuge and entertainment,
providing against any disasters in the sudden storms that are so
frequent in these cañon regions; and the bridle paths, the terraced
drives on the mountain walls, and the glades where games may be played,
all make South Cheyenne the most unique pleasure resort of that of any
city in the United States.

[Illustration: SEVEN FALLS, CHEYENNE CAÑON, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS,
COLORADO]

In all these cañons the massive, precipitous granite walls, which seem
to rise almost to the sky, are also rendered more arresting to the eye
by their richly variegated coloring. These ragged cliffs rise, too, in
pinnacles and towers and domes that proclaim their warfare with the
elements for ages innumerable. Visitors familiar with all the Alpine
gorges and with the Yosemite agree that in no one of these are there
such majesty of effects as in the Cheyenne cañons.

Manitou, the Indian name for the Great Spirit, is an alluring place in
a nook of the mountains at the foot of Pike’s Peak, reminding one of
the Swiss-Alpine villages. Ute Pass; Williams Cañon, in which is the
noted “Cave of the Winds”; the famous “Temple Drive”; Cascade, Green
Mountain Falls and Glen Eyrie are all grouped near Manitou, and it is
here that the cogwheel road ascending Pike’s Peak begins. The Mineral
Springs are approached in a pavilion with two or three large rooms;
the auditorium, where an orchestra plays every afternoon, seats some
two hundred people, who can listen to the music, sip their glasses of
mineral water, and chat with friends, all at one and the same time.
There is a foreign air about Manitou. The little town consists of one
street extending along the cañon, following its curves, with a few
cottages perched on terraces above, and the hotels, boarding-houses,
and the little shops, with the hawkers of curios at their street
stands, make up a picturesque spectacle. The shop windows glisten with
jewelry made from the native Colorado stones, the amethyst, opal,
topaz, emerald, tourmaline, and moonstone being found more or less
extensively in this state. The native ores are exposed; Indian wares,
from the bright Navajo rugs and blankets to the pottery, baskets, and
beaded work; photographs and picture cards of all kinds, and trinkets
galore, of almost every conceivable description, give a gala-day
aspect to the little mountain town. The surrounding peaks rise to the
height of six and eight thousand feet above the street, which looks
like a toy set in a region designed for the habitation of the gods.
American life, however, keeps the pace, and in this mountain defile
at the foot of Pike’s Peak were the signs out announcing a “Psychic
Palmist,” a “Scientific Palmist,” and a “Thought Healer,” by which it
will be inferred that an up-to-date civilization has by no means failed
to penetrate to Manitou. Each year the accommodations for travellers
multiply themselves. Each summer the demand increases. There is a
fascination about Manitou that throws its spell over every visitor and
sojourner.

The Grand Caverns are on the side of one of the picturesque mountains,
reached by a drive through the Ute Pass. Beyond Rainbow Falls, and
entering the vestibule of these caverns, the visitor finds himself
under a lofty dome from which stalactites hang, and in which is a pile
of stones being raised to the memory of General Grant, each visitor
adding one. No form of memorial to the great military commander,
whose character was at once so impressive and so simple, could be
more fitting than is this tribute. From the vestibule one wanders to
Alabaster Hall, where there are groups of snow-white columns of pure
alabaster. In a vast space sixty feet high, with a dome of Nature’s
chiselling and two galleries that are curiously wrought by natural
forces, there is a natural grand organ, formed of stalactites, with
wonderful reverberations and with a rich, deep tremulous tone. To
reveal its marvels to visitors a skilled musician is employed, who
renders on it popular selections, to the amazement of all who are
present. Another feature of the Grand Caverns is the “jewel casket,”
where gems encased in limestone reflect the glow of a lamp. There is
also the “card room,” with its columns and its pictorial effects;
the “Lovers’ Lane” and the “Bridal Chamber,” filled with translucent
formations in all curious shapes and hints of color.

The marvellous achievements of the engineer in encircling the
mountains with steel tracks on which cars climb to the summit are
seen, in perhaps their most remarkable degree of development in
conquering the problems of mountain engineering in Colorado. Of all
these achievements, one of the most conspicuous triumphs is that known
as the “Short Line” between Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek, a
distance of only forty-five miles, and the time some two and a half
hours; but within these limits is comprised the most unspeakably
sublime panorama of mountain scenery. As the train begins to wind up
the mountains one looks down on the flaming, rose-red splendor of the
Garden of the Gods,–with its uncanny shapes, its domes and curious
formations. Climbing up, the vast plain below–a plain, even though
it is six thousand feet above sea level–looks like a sea of silver.
The railroad crosses Bear Creek Cañon on a narrow iron bridge and
threads its way again on the terraced trunk of the opposite mountain
up to Point Sublime,–a gigantic rock towering on a mountain crest. A
landscape unfolds that rivals Church’s wonderful “Heart of the Andes”
in its fascination. Entering South Cheyenne, the beauty and grandeur of
the eastern end of the cañon are seen by following the narrow course
between its rugged granite sides hundreds of feet in height, reaching a
magnificent and most impressive climax at the wonderful Seven Falls. No
visit to the Pike’s Peak region can be considered complete without this
trip through South Cheyenne Cañon.

[Illustration: ST. PETER’S DOME, ON THE CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT LINE]

The usual feature of the situation as trains circle around the rim
of these cañons is that their beauty is seen from above. A short stroll
and one finds himself between walls towering a thousand feet above his
head. The beauty is all around and above. The tops of the mountains
seem very far away, and lost in clouds. But in the train the situation
is reversed; for, seated in a luxurious observation car of the “Short
Line,” the tourist is carried above the peaks and cañon walls, which
from below seem inaccessible in their height, and from this startling
elevation one looks down on an underworld of strange and mysterious
forms. St. Peter’s Dome, as it is called, looks down from its towering
height with the national colors flying from its summit,–a huge mass
of granite that seems to stand alone and to guard the secrets of the
depths below.

[Illustration: APPROACHING DUFFIELD]

The ascent of St. Peter’s Dome is a triumph of engineering skill. As
the train glides along, and glory succeeds to glory, vista to vista,
and cañon to cañon, in ever changing but constant charm, the dizzy
height is climbed apparently with so much ease that the traveller,
absorbed in the entrancing surroundings, reaches the top before he is
aware of it. It seems impossible that the track seen on the opposite
side of the cañon hundreds of feet above should be the path the train
is to follow; but a few turns, almost imperceptible, so smooth is
the roadbed, and one looks down on the place just passed with equal
wonder, and asks if that can be the track by which he has come. As
the train climbs the side or rounds the point of each mountain peak,
the matchless view of the plains is unfolded before the enraptured
gaze. All description is baffled; any attempt to reproduce in words
the glory of that scene is impossible. Every tourist in the Pike’s
Peak region regards the “Short Line” trip as the very crown of the
summer’s excursions, or, in the local phrase, one whose sublimity of
beauty “bankrupts the English language.” These forty-five miles not
only condense within their limits the grandeur one might reasonably
anticipate during a transcontinental journey of three thousand miles,
but as an achievement of mountain engineering, railway experts in both
Europe and America have pronounced it the most substantially built and
the finest equipped mountain railroad in the world. It was opened in
1901, and, quite irrespective of any interest felt in visiting the gold
camps of Cripple Creek, the “Short Line” has become the great excursion
which all visitors to Colorado desire to make for the sublime effects
of the scenery. A prominent civil engineer in Colorado said, in answer
to some question regarding the problem of taking trains over mountain
ranges and peaks that, given the point to start from and the point to
reach, and sufficient capital, there was no difficulty in carrying a
railroad anywhere. The rest is, he said, only a question of time and
skill. The construction of the “Short Line” reveals the achievement
of carrying a railroad around the rims of cañons and over the tops of
mountains rather than that of following a trail through the bottom
of the cañons. As a scenic success this feat is unparalleled. The
bewildering magnificence, the incomparable sublimity, as the train
winds up St. Peter’s Dome, are beyond the power of painter or poet
to picture. Leaving Colorado Springs, the tourist sees the strange
towering pinnacles of the Garden of the Gods, in their deep red
contrasting with the green background of trees; Manitou gleams from
its deep cañon; the towers and spires of Colorado Springs appear in
miniature from the far height, and the great expanse of the plateau
looks like the sea. It is difficult to realize that one is still gazing
upon land. The ascent is more like the experience in an aero-car than
in a railroad train, so swift is the upward journey. The first little
station on this route is Point Sublime, where the clouds and the
mountain peaks meet and mingle. North Cheyenne Cañon is seen far below,
and in the distance is fair Broadmoor with its Crescent Lake gleaming
like silver. The Silver Cascade Falls sparkle in the air hundreds of
feet up the crags. At Fair View the North and South Cheyenne Cañons
meet,–those two scenic gorges whose fame is world-wide,–and from one
point the traveller gazes down into each, the bottom depths so remote
as to be invisible. These precipices are wooded, so that the aspect
is that of sheer walls of green. St. Peter’s Dome almost pierces the
sky, and as the train finally gains the summit a vista of incomparable
magnificence opens,–of cañons and peaks and towering rocks,–and
through one cañon is seen Pueblo, over fifty miles distant, but swept
up in nearer vision with a mirage-like effect in the air. It is a view
that might well enchain one. The Spanish Peaks cut the sky far away on
the horizon, and the beautiful range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
offers a view of wonderful beauty. The road passes Duffields, Summit,
Rosemont, and Cathedral Park, at each of which stations a house or
two, or a few tents, may be seen,–the homes of workmen or of summer
dwellers who find the most romantic and picturesque corners of the
universe none too good in which to set up their household gods for
the midsummer days. Nothing is more feasible than to live high up in
the mountains along the “Short Line.” The two trains a day bring the
mails; all marketing and merchandise are easily procured; and the
air, the views, the marvellous spectacle of sunrise and sunset, the
perpetually changing panorama, simply make life a high festival. The
little station of Rosemont is a natural park, surrounded by three
towering peaks,–Mount Rosa, Big Chief, and San Luis. Clyde is a point
much frequented by picnickers. The “Cathedral Park” is an impressive
example of what the forces of nature can accomplish. Colossal rocks,
chiselled by erosion, twisted by tempests, worn by the storms of
innumerable ages, loom up in all conceivable shapes. They are of the
same order as some of the wonderful groups of rocks seen in the
Grand Cañon. Towers and arches and temples and shafts have been created
by Nature’s irresistable forces, and to the strange fantastic form
is added color,–the same rich and varied hues that render the Grand
Cañon so wonderful in its color effects. This “Cathedral Park” is a
great pleasure resort for celebrations and picnics, both from Colorado
Springs, Colorado City, Broadmoor, and other places from below, and
also from Cripple Creek, Victor, and other towns in Cripple Creek
District.

[Illustration: PORTLAND AND INDEPENDENCE MINES, VICTOR, COLORADO]

The district of Cripple Creek includes a number of towns,–Victor,
Anaconda, Eclipse, Santa Rita, Goldfield, Independence, and others,
each centred about famous and productive mines. The first discovery
of gold here was made in 1891 by a ranchman, Mr. Womack, who took the
specimens of gold ore that he found to some scientific men in Colorado
Springs, who pronounced it the genuine thing, and capitalists became
interested to develop the mines. In 1891, the first year, the total
value of the gold produced was $200,000; 1905, the fourteenth year, the
value of the production was $47,630,107. The total value of the gold
produced in the fourteen years of the camp’s existence, to December 31,
1905, was $141,395,087.

There are about three hundred properties in the camp which produce
with more or less regularity. Of this number the greatest proportion
are spasmodic shippers, making their production from the efforts of
leasers. There are thirty large mines in the district, each producing
$100,000 or more annually. Dividends paid by the mining companies in
1905 amounted to $1,707,000. Total dividends paid to December 31,
1905, $32,742,000. There are employed on an average some six thousand
three hundred men in the mines, and the monthly pay-roll runs to about
$652,189, exclusive of large salaries paid mine superintendents and
managers and clerks in offices. The lowest wage paid in the camp is
three dollars per day of eight hours, while many of the miners receive
more than that. The average wage per day paid for labor amounts to
$3.44. There are twelve towns in the district, with a population of
fifty thousand people. During the period of excitement the population
was about seventy thousand. The social life of the people is much the
same as in other towns.

There is a free school system, with an enrolment of nearly four
thousand pupils, with a hundred and eighteen teachers under a
superintendent with an assistant. There are thirty-four churches,
representing almost every variety of faith.

Cripple Creek, the largest of these, lies in a hollow of the mountains,
whose surrounding ranges are a thousand feet above the town. It
consists mostly of one long street, with minor cross-streets, and there
are little shops with chiffons, “smart” ribbons and laces, and all
sorts of articles of dress making gay the show windows, and one sees
women and children in all their pretty and stylish summer attire. There
are two daily papers and an “opera house.” Cripple Creek is a rather
favorite point with dramatic companies, as the entire town, the entire
district, turns out, and the audiences do not lack in either enthusiasm
or numbers.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM BULL HILL, RICHEST GULCH IN THE WORLD]

Mr. William Caruthers, the district superintendent, estimates that
this region has become one of the greatest gold-producing regions in
the world; and in rapid development, and in the richness of its ores,
nothing like it has ever been known before. In fifteen years the cattle
ranges have been transformed into a populous district with fifty
thousand people, and with all the modern conveniences of Eastern cities.

The electric trolley system connects all the towns in Cripple Creek
district and passes near all the large mines. This trolley line is
owned and controlled by the “Short Line,” and is greatly sought for
pleasure excursions both by visitors and residents.

Electric cars convey the miners up and down the hills to their
respective mines. The class of laborers is said to be greatly improved
of late years, and Mr. Caruthers informs the questioner that no
problematic characters are longer tolerated in Cripple Creek. It
has ceased to be the paradise of those who, for various unspecified
personal reasons, were unable to keep their residence in other cities,
or had left their own particular country for their country’s good.
When such characters appear, Mr. Caruthers and his staff guide them
with unerring certainty to the railroad track, with the assurance that
these intruders are wanted in Colorado Springs, and that, although
there may be no parlor-car train, with all luxuries warranted, leaving
at that moment for their migrating convenience, yet the steel track is
before them, and it leads directly to Pike’s Peak Avenue (the leading
business street of Colorado Springs), and they are advised at once to
fare forth on this mountain thoroughfare. The persuasion given by Mr.
Caruthers and his assistants is of such an order that it is usually
accepted without remonstrance, and the objectionable specimens of
humanity realize that their climb of several thousand feet up to the
famous gold camps was by way of being a superfluous expenditure of
energy on their part.

The special entertainment in Cripple Creek is to make the electric
circle tour, on electric trolley cars, between Cripple Creek and
Victor, going on the “low line” one way, and the “high line” the other.
The high line is almost even with the summit of Pike’s Peak, that
looms up within neighborly distance, and the splendor of the Sangre de
Cristo range adds a bewildering beauty to the matchless panorama. On
this round trip–a trolley ride probably not equalled in the entire
world–one gets quite near many of the famous mines, whose machinery
offers a curious feature in the landscape.

Taking the trip in the late brilliant afternoon sunshine along this
mountain crest, offers the spectacle of an entire landscape all in a
deep rose-pink, gleaming, in contrast with the dark green of the cedar
forests, like a transformation scene on a stage.

The tourist who regards this life as a probationary period, to
be employed, as largely as possible, in festas and entertaining
experiences, may add a unique one to his repertoire, should he be so
favored by the gods; and sojourning in neighborly proximity to the
“Garden of the Gods,” why should they not bestir themselves in his
favor? At all events, if he has contrived to invoke their interest, and
finds himself invited by Mr. MacWatters (the courteous and vigilant
General Passenger Agent of the “Short Line”) to make the return journey
from Cripple Creek, down below the clouds to Colorado Springs in a
hand car, he will enjoy an experience to be treasured forever. For the
hand car runs down of its own accord, by the law of gravitation, and
is provided with an air-brake to regulate its momentum. To complete
the enchantment of conditions,–and it need not be said that in a
Land of Enchantment conditions conform to the prevailing spirit and
of course are enchanting,–to complete these, let it be a _partie
carrée_, with Mrs. MacWatters, and with Ellis Meredith, the well-known
Colorado author, to make up the number; for the keenest political
writer in Colorado is a woman, and this woman is Ellis Meredith. It
is a name partly real, partly a literary _nom-de-plume_, and which
is the one and the other need not be chronicled here. The name of
Ellis Meredith has flown widely on the wings of fame as the author of
a most interesting story, “The Master-Knot of Human Fate,” which made
an unusual impression on critical readers. “The Master-Knot” is an
imaginative romance, whose scene is laid on one of the peaks of the
Rocky Mountains. It presupposes an extraordinary if not an impossible
situation, and on this builds up a story, brilliant, thoughtful,
tantalizing in its undercurrent of suggestive interest, and altogether
unique.

[Illustration: THE DEVIL’S SLIDE, CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT LINE]

In her connection with a leading Denver journal Miss Meredith wields
a trenchant pen, and one reading these strong and able articles could
hardly realize that the same writer is the author of poems,–delicate,
exquisite, tender,–and of prose romance which is increasingly sought
by all lovers of the art of fiction. With such a party of friends as
these, what words can interpret the necromancy of this sunset journey
winding down the heights of majestic mountains, amid a forest of
towering peaks, and colossal rocks looming up like giant spectres
through the early twilight that gathers when the sun sinks behind some
lofty pinnacle! The rose of afterglow burned in the east, reflecting
its color over the Cheyenne cañons, and even changing the granite
precipice of the “Devil’s Slide”–a thousand feet of precipitous
rock, through which the steel track is cut–with a reflection of its
rose and amber. Cathedral Park took on a new majesty in the deepening
haze. At the foot of one of its tall spires is an ice cavern, which
holds its perpetual supply all summer. The solid roadbed, uniformly
ballasted with disintegrated granite, built on solid rock for its
entire extent, and totally devoid of dust, gives to the hand car the
ease and smoothness of a motor on level ground. No one can wonder
that this road, built originally to convey coal and other supplies
to Cripple Creek, and to bring the ore from the mines to the mills
and smelters (a transportation it serves daily), has also, by its
phenomenal fascinations, achieved a great passenger traffic made up of
the tourists and visitors to Colorado. Even travellers going through to
the Pacific Coast make the detour from La Junta to Colorado Springs to
enjoy the “Short Line,” just as they go from Williams to Bright Angel
Trail for the Grand Cañon. With this aërial journey through a sunset
fairyland, where the mysterious cañons and gorges lay in shadow and the
Colorado sunshine painted pinnacles and towers in liquid gold, what
wonder that our poet, discovering her lyre, offered the following “Ode”
to the “Short Line”:

“There’s the splendor that was Grecian;
There’s the glory that was Rome;
But we know a brighter splendor,
And we find it here at home.
Not the Alps or Himalayas,
Not old Neptune’s foaming brine,
Can surpass the wealth of beauty
Of this state of yours and mine.

“All the fairy-tales and legends
Of the time that’s passed away;
All the scientific wonders
That amaze the world to-day;
All the artist can imagine,
All the engineer design,
Are excelled in magic beauty
On the Cripple Creek Short Line.

“Oh, those mountains pierce the heavens
Till its radiance glistens through,
And the clouds in golden glory
Float across its field of blue;
And the soul that may be weary
Feels the harmony divine
Of this wonder-tour of Nature
On the Cripple Creek Short Line.

“There are minarets and towers;
There are stately domes and fair;
There are lordly, snow-capped mountains,
There are lovely valleys there;
And no ancient moated castle,
Frowning down upon the Rhine,
Looks on scenes of greater beauty
Than the Cripple Creek Short Line.

“There’s a vision and a grandeur
When the plains come into view,
And one seems to see the ocean
In the misty rim of blue;
And the eyes of landlocked sailors
With unbidden teardrops shine,
As they see the far-off billows
From the Cripple Creek Short Line.

“There’s a strength and there’s a refuge
In the everlasting hills;
There’s a gleam of joy and gladness
In the leaping sparkling rills;
There’s a benediction sweeter
Than the murmur of the pine,
And it falls on all who travel
O’er the Cripple Creek Short Line.”

[Illustration: COLORADO SPRINGS AND TUNNEL NO. 6, CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT
LINE]

Ellis Meredith has often pictured in song the charm and romance of
Colorado with the vividness and power that characterize her poems which
are essentially those of insight and imagination; but in the opinion of
many of her admirers she has hardly laid at the shrine of the muses any
more felicitous votive offering than this little impromptu.

A summer in Colorado Springs is one that is set in the heart of
fascinating attractions. Nor is the Pike’s Peak region a summer land
alone, for the autumn is even more beautiful, and the winters are all
crystal and sunshine and full of exquisite exhilaration and delight in
mountain regions that take on new forms of interest. Colorado Springs
is not merely–nor even mostly–an excursion city for pleasure-seekers;
it is a city of permanent homes, whose residential advantages attract
and create its phenomenal growth.

To open one’s eyes on the purple line of the Rocky Mountains, with
Pike’s Peak towering into the sky, in a luminous crystal air that makes
even existence a delight, is an alluring experience. To look over
the beautiful city of Colorado Springs, with its broad streets and
boulevards, and lines of trees on either side; its electric lights,
electric cars, well-built brick blocks, churches, schools, and free
public library; its interesting and enterprising journalism; to come
in contact with the intelligence and refinement of the people,–is to
realize that this is no provincial Western town, but instead, a gay and
fashionable city, with the aspect of a summer watering place. Manitou,
which lies six miles away at the very base of Pike’s Peak, and Colorado
Springs are connected by electric cars running along the mountain
line, and there is a great social interchange. It is simply a whirl of
social life in the late summer, and the rapidity with which the guest
is expected to flit from one garden party, and tea, and reception to
another, within a given time, reminds him of a London season. In the
morning every fashionable woman drives to Prospect Lake, and from her
bathing in its blue waters to the informal “hop” at night, she is on a
perpetual round of gayety if she so desire.

The wide range and freedom of life in Colorado Springs is equally
enjoyable. The artist, the thinker, the writer, finds an ideal
environment in which to pursue his work. This beautiful residence
city, founded by General Palmer in 1871, has now a population of some
thirty thousand, and although lying at the foot of Pike’s Peak, it is
yet on an elevation of six thousand feet above the level of the sea.
Adjoining Colorado Springs is Colorado City, a manufacturing town
of five thousand inhabitants, and Manitou, the little town at the
immediate base of Pike’s Peak, with some two thousand residents, to
which, in the summer, is added an equal number of visitors, who bestow
themselves in the attractive hotels and boarding-houses or who occupy
cottages or camps in the foothills. Colorado Springs was founded in a
wise and beneficent spirit. Every deed in the town contains a clause
prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors, and by the terms of the
contract any violation of this agreement renders the deed null and void
and the property reverts to the city. Education is made compulsory,
and on this basis of temperance, education, and morality the town
is founded. It is laid out with generous ideas and with unfailing
allegiance to municipal ideals of taste. The avenues are one hundred
and forty feet wide and the streets are all one hundred feet wide.
Lying midway between Denver and Pueblo, the two largest cities of the
state, Colorado Springs is within two hours of the former and one hour
of the latter.

Colorado College, a co-educational institution, is largely endowed,
and it has from eight to nine hundred students. Rev. Samuel A. Eliot,
D.D., of Boston, the president of the Unitarian Association, was
invited to deliver the Commencement Address at this college in 1905,
and on this occasion Dr. Eliot said:

“Nothing can surpass the academic dignity of a commencement at a
Western State University. The perfection of the discipline would
make our elegant, but often distressed, ‘master of ceremonies’ at
Harvard green with envy. At our Eastern Colleges there are still
individual idiosyncrasies and perverse prejudices and traditions
of simpler days to be considered. There are some old-fashioned
members of the faculty who just won’t wear the academic gown or
the appropriately colored hood, and there are always some reckless
seniors who will wear tan shoes or a straw hat. Not so in Kansas
and Colorado, in Iowa and Nebraska. There every professor and every
senior wears his uniform as if he were used to it; each one knows
his place and his part and performs it impressively. The academic
procession, headed by the regents in their gowns and followed by
the members of the various faculties with their characteristic
hoods and stripes, and by the senior classes of the college and the
various professional schools, is perfect in its orderly procedure,
and the commencement exercises themselves are carried through with
a solemnity which is sometimes awesome. I caught myself almost
wishing that some senior would forget to take off his Oxford cap
at the proper time or trip on his gown as he came up the steps of
the platform to get his sheepskin, but no such accident marred the
impressiveness of the occasion.”

Dr. Eliot playfully touches a fact in the social as well as in the
academic life of the West in these remarks. The informalities so
frequently experienced in recognized social life in the Eastern cities
are seldom encountered in the corresponding circles of life in the
West, all observance of times and seasons, as calling hours, ceremonial
invitations, and driving being quite strictly relegated to their
true place in the annals of etiquette. In his Commencement address
before Colorado College in 1905 Dr. Eliot said, regarding the several
educational schools of Colorado:

“Thus in Colorado the State University is at Boulder, the
Agricultural College at Fort Collins, the Normal School at Greeley,
the School of Mines at Golden, and so on. The result is not only
an injudicious diffusion of energy, but real waste and sometimes
deplorable rivalry. Doubtless it is now too late to rectify this
mistake. Provincial jealousies and a sense of local ownership are
too strong to permit of desirable concentration, and these states
are probably permanently burdened with the necessity of sustaining
half a dozen institutions which must often duplicate equipment and
courses of instruction.”

Leading authorities in the Centennial State do not wholly agree with
this view. The distribution of an educational centre in one city and
part of the state and another in a different part, contributes to the
building up of different cities and to a certain concentration on the
part of the students on the special subjects pursued. President Slocum
of Colorado College, President Baker of the State University, President
Snyder of the State Normal College in Greeley, with other college
presidents and their colleagues and faculties, are devoting their lives
to the interests of higher education in its broadest and most complete
sense; and with their own splendid equipments in learning, their
patience and ability in research, their zeal for teaching, and their
intense interest in the problems of university life in a new state,
they are making a record of the most impressive quality. They are the
great pathfinders of the educational future.

Colorado has the advantage of a larger percentage of American
population than any other of the Western inland states, there being
only twenty per cent of foreign admixture in the entire six hundred and
fifty thousand people,–a fact that is especially to be considered in
educational progress.

The high school building in Colorado Springs; the court house, costing
a half-million dollars; the new city library of Colorado stone; the
thirty-five miles of electric railway; a water system costing over a
million of dollars; the admirable telephone system,–these and the fine
architectural art would render it a desirable residence city even aside
from the group of scenic wonders which has made it famous all over the
world.

General William J. Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, is one of
the great benefactors of the state of Colorado. “General Palmer has
always been a builder for the future,” says a local authority. “His
remarkable foresight was best exemplified in the construction of the
Rio Grande railroad,–the road which made Colorado famous. Colorado
Springs is another monument to his prophetic vision. With an ample
fortune he has retired from business life, but is busier than ever with
his many philanthropies, all of which have an eye to the future.

“At great expense he has abolished Bear Creek toll-gate, and has
constructed a wonderful carriage road through this beautiful cañon, and
will give it to the people as a permanent blessing.”

This Bear Creek Cañon lies north of Cheyenne Cañon–about five miles
from Colorado Springs. The road winds back and forth in a zigzag
elevation, with new vistas of enchantment at every turn,–towering
mountains, the Garden of the Gods,–that strange, weird spectacle, St.
Peter’s Dome, Phantom Falls, Silver Cascade, Helen Hunt Falls, and
other points of romantic beauty.

Colorado Springs has a great park system at a cost already of three
hundred thousand dollars, and with the buildings and other features
projected the cost will be hardly less than half a million. There are
to be floral gardens, an Italian sunken basin with a fountain rising
in streams, after the fashion of the fountains of Versailles,–and an
art gallery is soon to be added to this lovely and enterprising city.
Already the city has Palmer Park,–comprising eight hundred acres,
donated by the generous and beneficent General Palmer,–a park that
contains Austin’s Bluffs, from which a magnificent view is obtained.

It is to General Palmer that all the charming extension of terraced
drives and walks in North Cheyenne Cañon is due,–the road often
terraced on the side of the mountain; and here and there little
refreshment stands, where a sandwich, a glass of lemonade, a cup of
tea may be had, are found in these wild altitudes. In Palmer Park
one portion has been appropriately named Statuary Park, from the
multitude of strange forms and figures that Nature has chiselled in
the sandstone. Gray’s Peak, like a dim shadow on the far horizon to
the north, and the faint, beautiful outline of the Spanish Peaks to
the south, are seen from this park, while the massive portals of the
“Garden of the Gods” in their burning red are near, and at one side the
rose pink rocks of Blair Athol.

General Palmer’s residence in Glen Eyrie is one of the poetic places
of the world. The romantic environment of mountain cañons, towers,
and domes of the fantastic sandstone shapes, and overhanging rocks
that loom up thousands of feet on a mountain side, impart a wild charm
that no words can picture. The architectural effects have been kept in
artistic correspondence with the romantic scenery.

Monument Valley Park is the latest of General Palmer’s munificent gifts
to Colorado Springs. It was a tract of low waste land some two miles
in length and covering an area of two hundred or more acres, but its
transformation into the present beautiful park is the realization of
an Aladdin’s dream. An artistic stone drinking-fountain; a wide vista
of trees relieved by a low Italian basin with fountains; Monument
Creek, made to be sixty feet wide between its banks; the creation of
artificial lakes; and there are included in the scheme conservatories,
rustic pavilions, and botanical gardens. This park is one of the most
extensive improvements in decorative effect, that is known in any city.

Monument Park is distinctive from Monument Valley Park, the former
lying some ten miles from the city, and it is picturesque beyond words.

The “Garden of the Gods” has achieved world-wide fame. The “Gateway,”
the “Cathedral Spires,” “Balanced Rock,” and other singular formations
fascinate the visitor and draw him back again and again. A local writer
thus describes the majestic “Gateway”:

“Two immense slabs of red sandstone, soft and beautiful in their
coloring, tower over three hundred feet high on either side and
seem to challenge the right of the stranger to enter the sacred
portals. Napoleon, at the Pyramids, sought to impress his soldiers
with the thought that from that eminence four thousand years
looked down upon them. But from here geological ages of untold
length look down upon the beholder. In close proximity may be
found limestone, gypsum, white sandstone, and red sandstone,
each representing a different geological era, and each, in all
probability, representing millions of years in its formation.”

The “Garden of the Gods” represents one of those inexplicable epochs
of Nature’s creations as does, only in a more marvellous degree,
the Grand Cañon and the Petrified Forest. A scientist says of these
grotesque shapes that “their strangely garish colors, red and yellow
and white, in enormous masses, lofty buttresses, towers and pinnacles,
besides formations of lesser size, in fantastic shapes, that readily
lend themselves to the imagination, are sedimentary strata, which once
lay horizontally upon the mountain’s breast, but that some gigantic
convulsion of nature threw them into their present perpendicular
attitude, with their roots, as it were, extending hundreds of feet
underground. The erosion of water, when this was all the Gulf of
Mexico, accounts for the shaping.

“The gateway to the Garden is really the grandest feature, rising
perpendicularly on either side twice the height of Niagara, and framing
in rich terra cotta a most entrancing picture of the blue and tawny
peak, apparently only a little way on the other side.”

[Illustration: GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF THE GODS, COLORADO SPRINGS,
COLORADO]

Any writer on Colorado Springs is embarrassed by the fact that the
great founder and benefactor of the city has requested that his name
is not to be recorded in connection with his great and constant gifts
to the municipality; and while it is far from the desire of any one
to disregard the expressed wish of a man whose modesty is as great as
is his munificent generosity, it is yet impossible to tell the story
of Colorado Springs without perpetual references to her distinguished
citizen, her great and noble benefactor and founder. It is not too
much to say that there is probably not, in the history of the United
States, all instance parallel to the story of General Palmer and
Colorado Springs. Yet beyond this bare mention, in which one even thus
records that which General Palmer has wished to have had left without
reference, one is under bonds not to go. The Recording Angel may not
be so plastic to the expressed preferences of the wise founder and the
munificent benefactor of the charming city; and the vast and generous
gifts, the noble character of the citizen whose life and example is
the most priceless legacy that he could bequeath to Colorado Springs,
however priceless are his long series of gifts,–these are inevitably
inscribed in that eternal record not made with hands, on whose pages
must ever remain, in shining letters, the honored name of General
William J. Palmer, whose energy and whose lofty spirit have invested
this beautiful centre of the picturesque region of Pike’s Peak with the
spell of an enchanted city lying fair in a Land of Enchantment.

“_God only knows how Saadi dined;
Roses he ate and drank the wind._”

EMERSON

Deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountains lies Glenwood Springs, a
fashionable watering place, where a great hotel, bearing the name of
the Centennial State, with every pretty decorative device imaginable,
allures the summer idlers, and where various kinds of springs and
baths furnish excuse for occupation. All varieties of invalidism,
real or fancied, meet their appropriate cure. One lady declared that
the especial elixir of life was found in a hot cave that yawns its
cavernous and mysterious depths in an adjacent mountain. Another
continued to thrive on (or in) the sparkling waters of “the pool,”
which is, for the most part, a dream of fair women, relay after relay,
all day and evening, swimming about after the fashion of the Rhine
sisters; and those who do not take kindly to the pool or the dark and
“hot” cave fall upon some particular geyser and appropriate it for
their own. Woe to the woman who interferes with another woman’s geyser!
The whole region around Glenwood Springs is phenomenal. A hot sulphur
spring boils up at the rate of twenty thousand gallons a minute. The
“pool”–where the Rhine maidens are forever floating, morning, noon,
and night–covers over an acre, and is from three to six or seven feet
deep. Two currents of water are constantly pouring into it,–the hot
(at one hundred and twenty-seven degrees) at a rate of ten thousand
gallons a minute, and the cold from a mountain stream. A stream
constantly runs from it, a part of which is utilized as a waterfall in
the centre of the large dining-room of the hotel. On one bank of this
pool is a colossal stone bathhouse (costing over one hundred thousand
dollars), where every conceivable variety of the bath is administered,
and from which “the pool” is entered. In warm evenings, when the full
midsummer moon peeps over the mountains, the groups of girls, one after
another, begin mysteriously to disappear, and in reply to a question as
to the destination of this evening pilgrimage one bewitching creature
in floating blue organdie, as she flitted past, laughingly answered,
“Come to the pool and see.” There was no time to be lost. The moon in
silver splendor was climbing over the mountains, and the girls emerged
from their dainty evening gowns to array themselves in bathing suits.
A few minutes later they were to be seen at this mysterious trysting
place at “the pool,” the only difference being that some were outside
and some inside. Surely those inside had the best of it. How can the
scene be pictured? From the broad piazza of the hotel a terraced
walk ran down through the greenest of lawns, with shade trees and a
fountain resplendent in colored electric lights. The pool lies in an
open glade. Not far away is one of the ranges of the Rocky Mountains,
over which the August moon was climbing. Tall electric lights mingled
with the moonlight, giving the most curious effects of chiaroscuro
through the glade and the defiles of the mountains. On one side of this
immense natatorium rose the vast stone bathhouse,–a beautiful piece of
architecture. Near by the round sulphur spring boiled and bubbled in a
way to suggest the witches’ rhyme:

“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.”

A high toboggan slide in one place descended into the pool, and was
much used by the young athletes,–the men, not the girls. In the pool
a natural fountain of cold water shot high in the air. The swimmers
abounded. Those who were unable to swim would cling to a floating
ladder. Here in the moonlight the girls–clinging two and three
together–circle around in the water, needing only the melody of the
Rhine sisters to complete the illusion of one of the most enchanting
scenes in the entire Wagner operas.

Rev. Frederick Campbell wrote of this unique place:

“There is but one word to utter at Glenwood Springs–‘Wonderful!’
If one enjoys life at the most luxurious of hotels, here it is at
Hotel Colorado. Built in the Italian style of peach-blow sandstone
and light brick, lighted with electricity, a searchlight reaching
from one of its towers at night and lighting the train up the
valley, a powerful fountain supplied from the mountain stream up
the cañon pouring the geyser 170 feet straight in the air, and
views, views everywhere.”

The hot cave is as wonderful as anything around Sorrento or Amalfi.
In fact, all Colorado reminds the traveller of Italian scenery. It
has been called the Switzerland of America, but it is far more the
Italy. It has the Italian sky, the Italian coloring, and the mysterious
and indefinable enchantment of that land of romance and dream. The
volcanic phenomena is often startlingly similar to that of Italy. This
hot cave at Glenwood Springs is of the same order as those on Capri
and the adjacent coasts of Italy. In this cave at Glenwood hot air
continually comes up from some unknown region, and it is utilized for
curative purposes. The two or three caves have been made into one,
a cement floor laid, and marble seats with marble backs put in (the
ancient Romans would have found this a Paradise). Here come–not the
halt or the blind, but the people who take “the cure.” The process
is to sit on the marble seat with a linen bag drawn completely over
the entire form, with a hole for the head to emerge. Around the neck
is placed a towel wrung out of cold water. To see a cave filled with
these modern mummies, sitting solemnly, done up in their linen cases,
like upholstery covering, is a spectacle. The men go in the morning,
the women in the afternoon. One lady obligingly gave the data of her
“cure.” Twice a week she migrated in negligée to the hot cave, and
sat done up in her linen covering, bathing in the hot air at one
hundred and twenty degrees or so. Other afternoons were devoted to the
hot sulphur water bathing, and what with the various gradations of
temperature and the work of the attendants, the cup of Turkish coffee
and the siesta, the process consumed the entire afternoon. It is bliss
to those who delight in being rolled up like a mummy and sitting still.
But if it were chasing a star that danced, if it were riding on a
moonbeam, if it were dancing with the daffodils,–if it were anything
in all the world that was motion,–then it might have some fairer title
to charm. The felicity of lying about in a state of inertia is in the
nature of a mystery. And one questions, too, whether the spring of life
is not, after all, within rather than without. Let one take care of
his mental life and the physical will, very largely at least, keep in
spring and tune without elaborate and expensive processes of propping
it up. To disport one’s self in the pool,–there is a delight. Who
wouldn’t be a Rhine maiden under the midsummer moon in the heart of the
Rocky Mountains?

[Illustration: THE WALLS OF THE CAÑON, GRAND RIVER]

In nearly all the cañons and caves of this surrounding region are found
traces of the prehistoric peoples who inhabited them. Fragments of
pottery, in artistic design and painted in bright colors, are numerous;
relics similar to those found in the cliff houses are not unfrequently
chanced upon in walks and excursions and the stone implements abound.
The ethnologist finds a great field for research in all this Glenwood
Springs country. There are carriage roads terraced along the base of
the mountains where drives from five to twenty miles can be enjoyed
in the deep ravines where only a glimpse of blue sky is seen above,
and the saunterer finds a new walk every day. The mountains branch off
in every direction, and the lofty peaks silhouette themselves against
the sky. It is like being whirled up into the air. The sensation is
exhilarating beyond words. If people could take “cures” getting up into
sublime altitudes like this, where the views are so heavenly that one
does not know where earth ends and Paradise begins,–that would be a
cure worth the name. Really, it is vitality and exhilaration that one
wants, and it is to be found in the air far more than in any other
element.

“‘Tis life whereof our nerves are scant;
‘Tis life, not death, for which we pant,
More life and fuller that I want.”

The Denver and Rio Grande Railway is well called “the scenic line of
the world.” From Denver to Pueblo it runs almost due south, across a
level valley, with perpetually enchanting views of the mountains and
curious rock formations, between Denver to the region below Colorado
Springs. From the great smelting city of Pueblo, “the Pittsburg of the
West,” the road turns westward, on an upward grade, till it reaches
Cañon City, and from there to Glenwood Springs this road is a marvel of
civil engineering. Up the narrow, deep cañons of Grand River, through
the towering granite cliffs, it winds, on and up, passing Holy Cross
Mountain, offering at every turn new vistas of sublime and wonderful
beauty. To take a day’s ride through such scenery, with the luxurious
comfort of the most modern Pullman cars, and a good dining-car
constantly with the train, is to enjoy a day that lives in memory. Not
the least of the attractions of Glenwood Springs is the enchanting
route by means of which one arrives in this picturesque region. As the
train climbs up to plateau after plateau in the mountains the scenes
are full of changeful enchantment. The formation is interesting,–a
deep cañon, with rock cliffs apparently towering into the sky, and then
the emerging on a great level plateau. All along this route, too, are
those wonderful sandstone formations that have made the “Garden of the
Gods” so marvellous a place. Between Cañon City and Glenwood Springs
the very dance of the Brocken is seen in Sandstone sculptures.

[Illustration: THE “FAIRY CAVES,” COLORADO]

Near the summit of Iron Mountain, which is in the immediate vicinity,
the “Fairy Caves” rival the famous “Blue Grotto” of Capri in
attraction. These caves (less than a mile from the Hotel Colorado)
are a most intricate and wonderful series of subterranean caverns,
grottos, and labyrinths, with translucent stalactites and stalagmites,
and they are all lighted by electricity,–a great improvement on the
sibyls’ cave, where the sibylline leaves were read. The oracles of that
time were sadly lacking in conditions of modern conveniences. The sibyl
had not even a telephone. We do things better now, and run electric
cars up to the Pyramids. Nor did the sibyl of old have a tunnel two
hundred feet long, by which her votaries could approach the scene of
her oracles; but visitors to the Fairy Caves may pass by means of
this tunnel to one of the grandest and most awful precipices in the
Rocky Mountains, where they step out upon a balcony of stone into the
open air, with a perpendicular wall of rock one hundred feet high,
above, and an almost perpendicular abyss, down, twelve hundred feet
below. Standing on this balcony, nothing can be seen behind but sheer
perpendicular ascent and descent of rock; but in front and far below
may be seen the Grand River, appearing as a brook, winding in and out
among the projecting mountains, visible here like burnished silver, and
lost there, only to reappear again at a point far distant.

At this high elevation the opening of the cañon of the Grand is seen
in all of its majesty,–the massive mountains projecting against each
other in their outlines, and the lofty peaks reaching to the skies. The
Denver and Rio Grande Railway is at the foot of the cañon,–a mere
winding line, as seen from this Titanic height.

The Colorado Midland Road also runs through Glenwood Springs, whose
phenomenal hot caves and luxurious and elaborate bathhouse have given
it European fame. The twin towers of the hotel remind one of Notre
Dame, and the views from these are beautiful. The design is after the
Villa Medici in Rome,–the same motive repeated for the central motive
of this superb Hotel Colorado with its towers and Italian loggias and
splendid spacious piazzas, and its searchlight from one of the towers,
illuminating the evening trains that pass in the deep cañon of Grand
River. Here is a region that might be that of Sorrento and Capri.

In Glenwood Springs the traveller may meet Mrs. Emma Homan Thayer, the
author of “Wild Flowers in Colorado,” published in both London and New
York. Mrs. Thayer was a New York girl, one of the original founders
of the Art League, and the daughter of an enterprising and well-known
man. She is an artist by nature and grace,–sketches, paints, and
writes, and in both painting and literature she has made a name that is
recognized, and she has charmingly perpetuated in her book the unique
and wonderful procession of Colorado wild flowers.

[Illustration: MARSHALL PASS AND MT. OURAY, COLORADO]

Lookout Mountain, rising some twenty-five hundred feet above the
town, has an easy trail to its summit; the driving is picturesque
and safe on terraced mountain roads with perpetual vistas of beauty,
and many lakes in the vicinity–Mountain, Big Fish, Trappers’ Lake,
and others–offer excellent fishing. The hotel grounds at night are
transformed into a veritable fairyland. The fountains shoot their
jets of water up hundreds of feet into the air, with a play of color
from electric lights thrown over them until they are all a changeful
iridescent dream of rose and emerald and gold mingled with blue,–the
very rainbows of heaven reproduced in mid-air.

The journey up the “scenic route” has one point especially–that at the
base of the Holy Cross Mountain where the train climbs from plateau
to plateau–that enchants the imagination. The vast mysterious cañons
lie far below, steeped in the twilight of the gods. The air shimmers
with faint hints of color. Above, the towering granite walls seem to
cut their way into the sky. The faint plash of a thousand waterfalls
echoes from the rocky precipices, and the faint call of some lonely
bird hovering over a pinnacle is heard. The mysterious light, the
dim coolness and fragrance, the glimpses of blue sky seen through
the narrow openings of the cañons above all, combine to produce that
enchantment–the “Encantada,”–that Vasquez de Coronado felt when he
first beheld this marvellous country.

Emerson asserts that life is a search after power,–

“Merlin’s blows are strokes of fate.”

It is apparently a twentieth-century Merlin who has dreamed a dream of
wresting electricity from the mountain currents to utilize as power to
create a new field for industrial energy. The electrical engineer, who
is the magician of contemporary life, demonstrates that not the volume
of a stream, but rather its “fall,” is the measure of its possibilities
of power, and no country is so rich in water that comes tumbling down
from the heights as is Colorado. The wild streams that precipitate
themselves down the mountain-sides are as valuable as are the veins of
gold that permeate the mountain. Science has now taken them in hand,
and will not longer permit these torrents and waterfalls to run to
waste or to display themselves exclusively as decorative features of
the mountain landscapes. The General Electric Company is utilizing
these falling waters, and is already achieving results with their
transformation into power which are beyond the dreams of imagination.
The Silver Cascade, which for ages has had nothing to do but leap and
flash under the shimmering gold of the Colorado sunshine, suddenly
undergoes

“a sea change
Into something new and strange.”

It becomes an important factor in the world’s work. For instance, in
lovely Manitou,–the little town that dreams at the foot of Pike’s
Peak and which seems made only for stars and sunsets and as the stage
setting of idyllic experiences,–in lovely Manitou an hydro-electric
plant has been for more than a year in successful operation; and an
opportunity is thereby afforded the interested observer to see the
practical working of an enterprise that draws its energy directly from
nature’s sources. The power is obtained from water that is stored in a
reservoir situated far up on the side of the peak. Three and one-half
miles of pipe were used to carry the water from the reservoir to the
plant. The water has a fall of twenty-three hundred feet, which is much
more than is needed to turn the giant wheels that furnish the power to
be distributed to Colorado Springs, Colorado City, and the surrounding
country. The mills at Colorado City use this power exclusively, and the
cheapness at which it can be furnished is a potent factor in making for
the success of their operation.

At Durango the Animas Power and Water Company has installed a plant
for hydro-electric energy which will furnish power to the entire San
Juan county. The plant comprises two three-thousand horse-power current
generators and the station appliances that correspond with these; and
from this plant extend fifty-thousand volt circuits to all the large
mines near Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride. The “Camp Bird,” the “Gold
King,” the “Silver Lake,” the “Gold Prince,” and the “Revenue Tunnel”
mines all draw from this plant for their entire milling and mining
work.

To harness the cascades, which for ages have known no sterner duty
than to sparkle and frolic in the sunshine, to force the water sprites
and nixies to perform the work of thousands of horse-power, is the
achievement of the modern Merlin.

The Platte River Power and Irrigation Company are about to establish
two electrical power enterprises most important to Denver, one of which
is to supply all the power that is necessary to turn every wheel now
in motion in the city, and the second is to secure electric power from
the water that is stored in the Cheesman dam and transmit it to Denver.
Responsible men are working for the success of the enterprises, and
it is anticipated that Denver will soon enjoy the advantage of power
furnished at a minimum of cost.

The Denver inter-urban service for transportation will be carried on
entirely by electricity within the near future. All the railroads that
centre in this City Beautiful are preparing estimates and making ready
to conduct experiments. The recent tests in the East of electrically
driven locomotives indicate that Colorado, with Denver as a centre,
will one day be a network of electric lines traversing productive
regions and connecting all the prosperous towns of the state by this
most ideal form of transit.

In Colorado it is one of the unwritten laws–a law from which there
is no appeal–that nothing which is desirable is impossible. This is
one of the spiritual laws, indeed, and he who holds it as an axiom
shall perpetually realize its force and its eternal truth. The entire
physical world is plastic to the world of spirit. In that realm alone
realities exist. For “the things which are seen are temporal; but the
things which are not seen are eternal.” The faith that stands–not
“in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God”–is that which shall
be justified by the most profound actuality. It is that hidden wisdom
“which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” Science has
already discerned the connection between organic form and super-space;
and speculations already begin to emerge from the dim and vague region
of conjecture into hypothesis and theory out of which are developed new
working laws of the universe which are as undeniable as is that of the
law of gravitation.

In harmonious accordance, then, with that unwritten law of Colorado
that nothing which is desirable is impossible, it was realized that the
Gunnison River, a powerful stream thirty miles east of the Uncompahgre,
afforded an abundance of water to reclaim these desert wastes to the
traditional blossoming of the rose. The Gunnison River, however, flows
through a box cañon three thousand feet deep. Were it at the bottom of
a gorge three thousand miles deep, that fact would hardly daunt the
Colorado spirit. Immediately some invention, incomprehensible to the
present mind of man, would be made by which the desirable issue should
be achieved. As has been remarked, failure is a word not included
in the vocabulary of Colorado. That state has a “revised version” of
its own for the resources of its language, laws, and literature. Its
keynote is the invincible. Ways and means are mere matters of minor
detail. If an achievement is desirable, it is to be accomplished, of
course. It is not even a question for discussion. There is no margin of
debatable land in the realization of every conceivable opportunity.

A stupendous work in development is that of this Gunnison Tunnel
under the Vernal Mesa to Uncompahgre Valley,–a desert waste whose
area comprises some one hundred thousand acres of sand, sagebrush,
and stones. Yet even here irrigation worked its spell, and while the
Uncompahgre River held out a water supply, the land reached proved
fertile beyond expectation. But the Uncompahgre had its far too
definite and restricted limits; no other water supply was available
for this region, and there lay the land–a tract of potential wealth,
but destined to remain, so far as could be seen, an unproductive and
cumbersome desert region unless irrigation could be achieved.

To the constructing engineer of the reclamation service there came
a telegram from the chief engineer in Washington asking if it were
feasible to divert the waters of Gunnison River to Uncompahgre Valley
by means of a tunnel under Vernal Mesa? This implied building a tunnel
from a point totally unknown. No one had ever succeeded in passing
through Gunnison Cañon. But the past tense does “not count,” any more
than Rip Van Winkle’s last glass, in any estimate of the present in
Colorado. Professor Fellows, an engineer of Denver, selected his
assistant; they prepared their instruments, their provisions, and
their inflated rubber mattress, and set forth on this expedition in
which their lives were in constant peril; in which hardships beyond
description were endured. The topographic map, for instance, was
made by Mr. Fellows in the delightful position of being lowered
with ropes into the deep cañon where, should the slightest accident
occur, he would never return to the day and daylight world again. The
establishment of precise levels for both ends of the tunnel, one of
which must, of course, be lower than the other to induce a flow of
water, was another matter requiring a delicacy of adjustment beyond
description. Of their wonderful and even tragic experiences a local
report says: “It all ended by Fellows and his companion saving two
things,–their lives and their notebooks. Everything else went down
with the flood. When the men emerged at the Devil’s Slide, weary,
bruised, and bleeding, friends who had been waiting to pick up their
mangled bodies hailed them as if they had returned from the dead.”

Of all this story there was no hint in the cheerfully laconic telegram
despatched to Washington,–“Complete surveys for construction.” The
tunnel will be five or six miles in length, of which over two miles
are already completed. The work proceeds night and day with the drills
like mighty giants eating their way through the solid granite of the
Vernal Mesa that lies between the two rivers. This desert region which
will thus be reclaimed comprises portions of three counties,–Ouray,
Montrose, and Delta,–the region being at an altitude of five thousand
feet. It easily produces fruit, alfalfa, and grain, and it is also well
adapted to the culture of potatoes, celery, and the sugar beet. The
land when irrigated is estimated to be worth five hundred dollars per
acre. The tunnel will have a capacity for conveying thirteen thousand
cubic feet of water per second, and there will be connected with it
an elaborate system of lesser canals and ditches that will carry the
water all over this desert tract. It is estimated that this enterprise
will add thousands of homes to the valley of the Uncompahgre, and that
it will increase by at least ten millions the taxable property of
Colorado. The cost of the Gunnison Tunnel will be some two and a half
millions.

Uncompahgre Valley, lying between the Continental Divide on the east,
and the Utah Desert on the west, comprises the greatest extent of
irrigable land west of Pueblo in the entire state; but the need for
irrigation and the possibilities of supplying that need were so widely
apart that even Merlin the Enchanter recognized the difficulty, though
by no means defining it as an impossibility. The Uncompahgre River
was soon exhausted, and only this apparently impracticable scheme,
now happily realized, offered any solution of the problem. Hon. Meade
Hammond of the state legislature of Colorado secured the appropriation
of twenty-five thousand dollars to meet the expenses of surveying
and preliminary work. Hon. John C. Bell, the representative for that
district in Congress, gave untiring devotion to the project, and to
his efforts was due the zeal with which the reclamation service took
up this vast work; and when Professor Fellows was appointed as the
government district engineer its success became the object of his
supreme interest and unremitting energy, and its achievement adds
another to the remarkable engineering works of Colorado.

In this Land of Enchantment almost anything is possible, even to
yachting,–a pastime that would not at first present itself as one to
be included among the entertainments of an arid state which has to
set its own legislative machinery and that of Congress in motion in
order to contrive a water supply for even its agricultural service;
nevertheless, on a lake in the mountains, more than a mile and a half
above sea level and some one hundred miles from Denver the Beautiful,
a yacht club disports itself with all the airy grace and assurance of
its ground–one means of its water–that distinguishes the delightful
Yacht Club at old Marblehead on the Atlantic Coast. There was, however,
no government appropriation made to create this lake, as might at
first be supposed, nor any experts sent out commissioned to prepare
the way. There are numerous forms of summer-day entertainments that
are more or less in evidence in the inland states; but yachting has
never been supposed to be among them, as preconceived ideas of this joy
have invariably associated it with oceans and seas. Still, it must be
remembered that Colorado is an exceptional region in the universe, and
creates, not follows, precedents. It is the state, as has before been
remarked, to which nothing conceivable is impossible.

Grand Lake is in Middle Park, sixty miles from the nearest railroad
station. (With the incredible celerity with which life progresses
in the Centennial State, of course by the time this description is
materialized in print Grand Lake may have become a railroad centre–who
shall say? It is not safe to limit prophecy in Colorado.) At present,
however, a railroad journey of forty miles from Denver, supplemented
by sixty miles of stage, brings one to the lake, a beautiful sheet of
water two miles in length and more than a mile in width, whose water
is icy cold. The locality has become something of a summer resort for
many Denver people, and also, to some extent, to those from Chicago
and Kansas City, and a group of cottages have sprung up. Some seven
years ago the Grand Lake Yacht Club was duly organized, with Mr. R.
C. Campbell, a son-in-law of Senator Patterson of Colorado, Mr. W. H.
Bryant, a prominent citizen of Denver the Beautiful, Major Lafayette
Campbell, and other well-known men, as its officers. The club has
now a fleet of yachts; it has its regatta week, and altogether holds
its own among nautical associations; it takes itself seriously, in fact
with what Henry James calls the “deadly earnestness of the Bostonians,”
which is paralleled by this inland and arid-land yachting club.

[Illustration: THE WONDERFUL HANGING LAKE, NEAR GLENWOOD SPRINGS,
COLORADO]

Besides the joys of yachting in an arid state where that nautical
pastime is apparently carried on in mid air, is the local diversion of
climbing mountain peaks that are pronounced impossible of ascension.
This is one of the favorite entertainments of Colorado young women,
who have conquered Long’s, Gray’s, Pike’s, and Torrey’s peaks, Mount
Massive, the “Devil’s Causeway,” and various lesser heights, which they
scale with the characteristically invincible energy of their state. The
summit of Mount Massive is fourteen thousand five hundred feet above
sea level, and of one of these expeditions a Denver journal says of
this party of several ladies and gentlemen:

“Camp was struck at Lamb’s ranch, where, in the early morning, the
wagon was left with all the outfit not absolutely necessary. The
trail sloped steadily to the boulder field, where the party stopped
for lunch. They were now at an altitude of twelve thousand feet.
A cold wind swept across the range and chilled them, so that the
climb was soon renewed.

“The boulder field is two miles long and seemed five, for walking
over the great stones is a wearisome business. At the end of the
boulder field, which is much like the terminal range of an old
glacier, is a great snowbank. From a long distance the mountain
climbers saw the keyhole,–a deep notch of overjutting rock through
which goes the only trail to the summit of Long’s. It is a gigantic
cornice to a ridge that extends north from the main cone.

“After passing the keyhole, which had loomed up before them through
weary miles of tramping, a great panorama of mountains stretched
before them…. There was a precipitous slope of rocks jammed
together in a gulch. This rises for about seven hundred feet, every
inch stiff climbing.

“The danger at this point was that some climbers might dislodge
rocks which would come bounding down on the heads of those in the
rear. For this reason the orders of the leader were urgent that the
party should not get separated. The trail at this point led up the
sharply sloping eaves of the mountain roof, from which the climber
might drop a dizzy distance to the depths below. Clinging to the
rocks and hanging on by hands or feet, the party pushed up to a
ledge from which they looked over an abyss several thousand feet
sheer down.”

In Southern Colorado the cliff-dwellers’ region offers some of the most
remarkable ruins in America, and their preservation in a government
reservation, to be known as the Mesa Verde National Park, has been
assured by a bill that has been recently passed by Congress and
which is one of the eminent features of latter-day legislation. It
is Representative Hogg who introduced this bill providing for the
permanent protection of those cliff-dweller ruins which, with those
in New Mexico and Arizona, constitute some of the most valuable and
interesting prehistoric remains in the United States. Already much of
this archæological treasure of inestimable scientific value has been
carried away by visitors, while, instead of permitting this region to
be thus despoiled, it should be made easily accessible to tourists
and held as one of the grand show places of the great Southwest.
Like the Grand Cañon and the Petrified Forests of Arizona, like the
Pike’s Peak region in Colorado, Mesa Verde would become an objective
point of pilgrimage to thousands of summer tourists. In the winter
of 1904-5 Representative Lacey, of Iowa, the eminent chairman of the
House Committee on Public Lands, made in behalf of his committee a
favorable report on the Colorado Cliff-dwellers’ Bill, presenting, with
his characteristic eloquence of argument, the truth that the permanent
preservation of these wonderful and almost prehistoric ruins is greatly
to be desired by the people of the Southwest, as well as by those
interested in archæology elsewhere. “The ruins are situated among rocky
cliffs, and may be easily preserved if protected,” said Mr. Lacey, and
added:

“With the exception of two or three small, fallen, and totally
uninteresting ones, all the ruins of the Mesa Verde are in the
Southern Ute Indian Reservation. It is an extremely arid region,
and little or no agriculture is practised by the Utes, although
they range sheep, goats, cattle, and ponies on the mesa and in the
cañons. It is a poor range at best, and the Indians appear to need
all they can get. Moreover, the reclamation service has made some
estimates regarding storage reservoirs in the upper Mancos, and it
may be at some future time a part of this land in the reservation
will be irrigable and greatly increased in value. The Utes are
not going to destroy these ruins or dig in them. They stand in
superstitious awe of them, believing them to be inhabited by the
spirits of the dead, and cannot be induced to go near them.”

These dwellings are excavated in cliffs from five to nine hundred feet
above the plateaus. Of these, two dwellings stand out prominently,–the
“Spruce Tree House” and the “Balcony House,” the former of which
contains a hundred and thirty rooms, of each of which the average
measurement is about eight by six feet. Much pottery, weapons,
armament, and many skeletons and mummies are found in these dwellings.

The later conclusions of scientists are that these cliff-houses were
designed as places of refuge and defence rather than as ordinary
habitations. The parallelogram and circle forms predominate, and they
are often forty feet in diameter. There are sometimes double, or even
triple walls, solidly built of hewn stone, with a circular depression
(council-chamber) in the centre.

Pueblo is the metropolis of Southern Colorado. It is the second city
in the state, ranking next to Denver. It is an important industrial
centre, being the location of the great steel works of the Colorado
Fuel and Iron Company, and two large smelting plants in constant
activity. It is a town with unusual possibilities of beauty, rambling,
as it does, over the rolling mesas with a series of enchanting vistas
and mountain views of great beauty. The Spanish Peaks are in full
sight from the new residence region of Pueblo, and here is the home of
ex-Governor and Mrs. Alva Adams, with its spacious, book-lined rooms;
its choice and finely selected souvenirs of foreign travel; its music
and pictures; and far above all, the gracious sweetness and charm of
Mrs. Adams, who has that most perfect of gifts–that of transforming a
household into a home. Governor Adams, although in his modesty he would
deprecate the distinction, is easily the first citizen of Colorado.
Twice the Governor of the state, he has impressed the entire people
with his flawless integrity of character, his noble ideals, and his
energy of executive power in securing and enforcing the best measures
for the people and carrying onward into practical life the highest
moral and educational standards.

Governor Adams is always greatly in demand as a speaker, and in
September of 1906 he was again nominated for Governor of the state.

Colorado, quite irrespective of party, is all aglow with the name of
Alva Adams. Good Republicans have long been greatly perplexed over
the fact that the man they most desire to vote for, the man to whose
guidance they would most willingly commit the affairs of state, is a
Democrat. The ability, the unquestioned integrity, the fidelity to
lofty ideals, and the great administrative power of Governor Adams
inspire the almost universal enthusiasm of Colorado irrespective of
party lines.

No son of the Centennial State is more in sympathy with its individual
problems. Born in Wisconsin (some fifty-five years ago), Governor Adams
was about to enter the Ann Arbor Law School when the illness of a
brother brought him in his earliest youth to Colorado. Its beauty, its
rich possibilities, enchanted him. Here he married a very cultivated
and beautiful young woman, whose parents came in her early girlhood to
Colorado, and whose sympathetic and perfect companionship has been the
unfailing source of his noblest inspiration.

In an address on “Pathfinders and Pioneers,” given before an irrigation
congress at Colorado Springs, we find Governor Adams saying:

“What a sublime moment when the explorer realizes the fruition
of his dream! What fateful hours upon the dial of human progress
when Columbus saw a new world emerge from the sea, when Balboa
stood ‘silent upon a peak in Darien,’ when Lewis and Clark upon
the continent’s crest saw the waters of the rivulet run toward the
West! Such events compensate great souls, and their spirits defy
hardship, ingratitude, chains, dungeons, and the axe. The curtain
has been run down upon the careers of those brave men whose praise
we sing. Their race is run. The explorer, priest, trapper, and
pioneer have vanished.

“‘Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.’

“Would it be a daring assumption to consider the irrigated regions
of America as the arena in which the fifth act, time’s noblest
offspring, is to perfect and complete the drama of civilization?

“Irrigated lands were the cradle of the race. The first canals
were run from the four rivers of Paradise. May not the fruition of
mankind seek the same conditions amid which it was born? Providence
has kept fallow this new land until man was fitted to enter and
possess it.

“‘Hid in the West through centuries,
Till men, through countless tyrannies, could understand
The priceless worth of freedom.'”

“I would not decry culture and refinement,” said ex-Governor Adams in
this address; “they are the charm and beauty of modern life, the music
and art of the social commerce of the age; but in their acquirement
I would not give up the robust, vigorous, daring qualities of the
pioneer.”

The Governor proceeded:

“They had blood and iron in their heart, they had the nerve to
dare, the strength to do. I do not believe in battle for battle’s
sake; but I never want to see our people when they are not willing
to fight, and able to fight. The only guarantee of peace and
liberty is the ability and willingness to do battle for your
rights. Refinement alone is not strength, culture alone is not
virtue. Absalom, Alcibiades, and Burr stand in history as the
most polished, cultured men of three ages, yet they were more a
menace than a brace to the liberties of their time. In stress,
the world calls upon the Calvins, the Cromwells, the Jacksons,
Browns, and Lincolns. They were stalwart, strenuous, courageous
men; not cultured and refined, but rich in royalty and daring. It
is the rugged and the strong, and not the gentle and the wise, who
gather in their hands the reins of fate and plough deep furrows
in the fields of human events. It is they who have driven the car
of progress and have woven the deepest colors in the fabric of
human happiness. It is true that some of our Western torch-bearers
were not perfect; none of them were ever anointed with the oil
of consecration; around them surged the temptations of a wild
and boisterous age; through their hearts and souls there swept
the impulses and passions of the strong; if they sinned, it was
against themselves, not their country. Let their frailties be
forgotten, and their good cherished. Often rough and defiant of the
conventionalities, they were ever true and loyal, and most of these
empire builders can stand before the great white throne with open
hearts. They were the architects, the Hiram Abifs of these Western
empires. They laid the foundations in courage and liberty.”

Let no one fancy that Pueblo is a primitive Western city devoid of
electricity, telephones, motor cars, or even Marconigrams. Let no one
fancy it is too far from Paris to have the latest French fashions. It
is hardly an exaggeration to say that it demands the best and the most
up-to-date ideas of the Eastern cities to be at all eligible in these
Colorado towns. Pueblo has a most delightful club-house on the edge of
a lake–the lake is artificially created, and being made to order, is,
of course, exactly the kind of lake that is desired, the water being
conducted from the mountains into a large natural depression–where
great open fires in every room greet the daily visitor; where there are
large reading-rooms, a dining-room, and a ball-room; no intoxicating
beverages of any kind are allowed to be sold, so that youths and
maidens may at any time enjoy the club with no insidious dangers to
their moral welfare.

There are many centres of social life; and if Pueblo people have any
other conceivable occupation than to give dinner parties at night and
go motoring in the morning, with endless receptions of the Daughters
of the Revolution and other clubs, organizations, or purely private
card receptions invading the afternoons, the visitor hardly realizes
it. The dinners given are often as elaborate as in the large Eastern
cities, as one, for instance, given by Mr. and Mrs. Mahlon D. Thatcher
at their stately home “Hillcrest,” where the decorations were all in
rich rose red, a most brilliant effect, and the souvenirs were India
ink reproductions of old castles on white satin. The dinner cards held
each a quotation from the poets.

* * * * *

Pueblo is always all sunshine and radiance, and has a beauty of
location that makes it notable, with its encircling blue mountains and
picturesque mesas, and the perpetual benediction of the Spanish Peaks
silhouetted against the western sky. Its new library is the pride and
delight of every citizen. It is one of the Carnegie chain,–a large,
two-story and basement structure of white Colorado stone, the interior
finished with the richly variegated Colorado marble which is used for
mantels and fireplaces. The book stacks, the spacious and splendid
reading-room, the children’s room, and the smaller ones for reference
and special study, are all planned on the latest and most perfect
models.

The library is in the Royal Park, on the crest of one of the mesas,
very near the home of Governor Adams. It is a library to delight the
heart of the book-lover. Pueblo offers, indeed, great attractions to
all who incline to this land of sunshine. The climate is even more mild
than that of Denver, from which city it is a little over three hours
distant by the fast trains, or four hours by slower ones. Colorado
Springs lies between–two hours from Denver and a little over one
hour from Pueblo. The location combines many attractions. With three
railroads; its large industries in smelting and steel; its excellent
schools, both public and private; its churches, its daily newspapers;
its library; and its fine clubhouse, open to families,–women and
children as well as men enjoying it freely,–Pueblo seems one of
the most delightful of places. It has large wealth and a power of
initiating many opportunities. It is on the most picturesque and
delightful lines of travel to Cañon City, Salida, Leadville, Glenwood
Springs, and through Salt Lake City to the Pacific Coast; or on the
line to Arizona and the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, and on to Los
Angeles and San Francisco; or eastward to Chicago and the Atlantic
Coast; or southward to Mexico, or St. Louis, or New Orleans. Pueblo is
really in the heart of things, so to speak. The Chicago papers arrive
the next day, the New York papers the third morning, and the telephonic
communication is simply almost without limit. Governor Adams will step
from his library into another book-lined room where the telephone is
placed, and from there talk with people in five different states. Once
he held a conversation with a man at the bottom of a mine a few hundred
miles away,–a man whose subterranean sojourn had the alleviation of a
telephone.

The greatest industrial organization west of the Mississippi River is
that of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, whose largest plant is at
Pueblo, and is held at a valuation of fifty-eight million dollars. On
its pay-roll are fifteen thousand employés. There are twenty thousand
tons of steel rail produced each month, and it is said that this
number will soon be largely increased, and that the Goulds and the
Rockefellers are arranging to utilize the product of these mills for
their vast railroad interests. The company owns such large tracts of
land in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming; it owns coal mines,
iron mines, lime quarries; it owns parts of two railroads, besides
telegraph and telephone lines galore, so that by reason of these
extensive holdings it is able to secure at a minimum of cost all the
raw materials from which the finished products are turned out. Upward
of three hundred thousand acres of the richest coal lands in the West,
an empire containing one hundred square miles more than the coal
area of Pennsylvania, constitute the holdings for coal mine purposes
of the company. In addition there are iron, manganese mines, and
limestone quarries containing the elements which give to the product
of the furnaces and mills qualities that secure the markets of the
Western world. Its plant at Pueblo has become the centre of a town
called Minnequa, composed of its own employés and their families. The
company has established a model hospital, with a surgeon’s department
fitted up with the most elaborate and finest scientific and nursing
facilities; a fine library and large reading-rooms, and a recreation
hall and gymnasium for the workmen. Nearly one million dollars has
been expended on the tenant houses belonging to the company, which
are rented to their employés on fair and advantageous terms. In
many respects Minnequa, at Pueblo, is one of the most remarkable
manufacturing centres in the world, presenting aspects that invite
study, in its extensive resources, the vast and colossal character of
its purposes, and its remarkable achievements. All employés are given
the opportunity to acquire homes; and every late ideal in the way of
providing opportunities for their care in health, in mental and moral
development, and in recreations, is carried out to the fullest possible
extent.

The company has recently engaged in an irrigation enterprise in the
purchase of water-right priorities of the Arkansas River for seventy
cubic feet of water per second, at an expense of one million dollars.
These rights, which date back to 1860-62, are among the oldest
existing, and they insure to the company the uninterrupted and certain
possession of the river flow. A court decree enabled them to change
the point of division, and they have constructed a new head-gate at
Adobe, six miles east of Florence. A canal fifty-eight miles in length
is being constructed from Florence to the mills owned by the company.
The cost of this canal will be some three quarters of a million. These
mills produce over seventy-five thousand tons of iron and steel each
month. The manufacturing plant at Minnequa includes blast furnaces,
converting works, blooming mills, a merchant iron mill, a hoop and
cotton tie mill, a spike factory, a bolt factory, a castings and pipe
foundry, with open hearth furnaces, a reversing mill, and many other
appliances.

“It must not be supposed, because we find it necessary to practise
irrigation in Colorado, that we therefore never have any rains,”
observed a Coloradoan; “on the contrary, the rains of spring are
usually of such abundance as to make the ground in fine condition
for ploughing and putting in crops, and we seldom find it necessary
to apply water to germinate any kind of seed; only once, in thirteen
years’ experience at Greeley, were we compelled to resort to irrigation
before crops of all kinds were well up and considerably advanced in
growth. About the last of May, however, as regularly as the natural
periods of summer, autumn, winter, and spring occur in the other
states, never varying more than a week in time, these copious rains
suddenly cease and give place to light and entirely inadequate local
thunder-showers. Now is the accepted time, and all over cultivated
Colorado, within a period of not more than two days, every flood-gate
is opened and the life-giving current started to flowing on the rapidly
parching grain. Corn will endure until later in the season, but all
sowed crops must get one thorough application of water within two
weeks or become severely injured for the want of it. Day and night
the silent current flows on and on, among the fields of grain; not a
drop of water nor a moment of time must run to waste until the first
irrigation is completed.”

In so exceptional a summer of drought and heat as was that of 1901 the
advantages of irrigation stand out. Journeying through Kansas, the long
day’s ride across the state revealed continued devastation from the
lack of rain. Corn fields looked almost as if a fire had passed over
them, so shrivelled and stunted they were; but in Colorado on every
hand there were greenness and luxuriance of vegetation and of crops.
The result is simply that, with irrigation, man controls his climate
and all the conditions of prosperity. Without it, he is at the mercy of
the elements.

The Union Colony of Greeley was the first to introduce upland
irrigation in Colorado. Of the method employed, the “Greeley Tribune”
gave this description:

“Almost the first question asked by many persons on their first
arrival in Colorado, when they see the irrigating ditches running
along the sides of the bluffs high above the river, and back from
it five, ten, or twenty miles, is, ‘How do you get the water out
of the river, and so high above it? It looks as if you made the
water run uphill.’ The answer is very simple. All the rivers of
Colorado are mountain streams, and consequently have a fall of from
ten to thirty feet to the mile, after they reach the plains. In the
mountains, of course, the fall is often much greater. The plains
also have a gradual slope eastward from the foothills, where the
altitude is generally between six and seven thousand feet above sea
level, while at the eastern boundary of the state it is only about
three thousand feet. Take, for example, the canal generally known
as Number Two, which waters the lands of the Greeley Colony. This
canal is taken out of the Cache la Poudre River, about seventeen
miles west of Greeley, and where the bed of the river is probably
a hundred and sixty feet higher than it is at Greeley. The bed of
the canal only has a fall of from three to three and a half feet
to the mile; therefore it is easily seen that when that grade is
continued for a number of miles, the line of the canal will run in
a direction further and further from the river, and on much higher
ground, so that the lands lying between the canal and the river are
all ‘covered by,’ or on a lower level than, the water in the canal.
In the process of irrigation this same plan must be followed,
of bringing the water in on the higher side of the land to be
irrigated, then the water will easily flow all over the ground.”

In Weld County, of which Greeley is the county seat, irrigation was
extended during 1905 to cover from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand
acres of arid land never before under cultivation, and storage
reservoirs increased in capacity. It is proposed to cut a tunnel
through the Medicine Bow mountain range and to bring a large quantity
of water through from the Western slope to irrigate an additional fifty
thousand acres of prairie.

Within the past year there have been two potato starch factories
started in successful operation in Greeley which are estimated to
pay out annually one hundred thousand dollars for potatoes that have
heretofore been practically a total loss to the farmers.

The Swift Packing Company of Chicago propose investing one and a half
millions in further irrigation in this county. The products of the
Greeley district alone, for 1905, were five and a half millions,–a
fact that suggests the wise foresight of Hon. Nathan Cook Meeker, the
founder of the town, in selecting this location, in 1869, for his
colony.

Of recent years a remarkable feature of agricultural progress in
Colorado has been developed by the “dry farming” system, the discovery
of which is due to Prof. H. W. Campbell, who has been experimenting,
for some twenty years past, in Eastern Colorado, in the scientific
culture of the soil without benefit of irrigation. Professor Campbell
says that he had been assured that corn would not grow at an altitude
of three thousand feet, as the nights would be too cool; but that he
can refute this, as, during the past five years, he has averaged from
thirty to forty-two bushels per acre at an altitude ranging from five
thousand to nearly seven thousand feet. Successful agriculture is, in
Professor Campbell’s belief, based on the fundamental principle of soil
culture, and in an interview he said:

“While the great work now being done by the government in
promoting irrigation enterprises in the more arid portion of
the West and the using of millions upon millions of money for
the building of mammoth reservoirs have value and virtue, and
means the development of many sections that must remain almost
worthless without them, and the spending of thousands of dollars
in traversing foreign countries to secure what some have pleased
to call drought-resisting plants, will undoubtedly play their part
in promoting the welfare and prosperity of Colorado, … yet there
should also be an understanding of, first, the necessary physical
condition of the soil for the most liberal growth and development
of roots; secondly, the storing and conserving the entire season
rainfall,–not only the portion that falls during the growing
season, but from the early spring to late in the fall; thirdly, the
fact that air is just as important in the soil as water, and that
it is the combination of the elements of air and water in the soil,
together with heat and light, that is most essential; and that when
these conditions are fulfilled, Eastern Colorado will come to its
rightful own, and little towns and cities will spring up along all
the great trunk lines, while the intervening country will be dotted
with ideal farm homes and shade trees; orchards and groves will
break the monotony of the now bleak prairie, and present a restful,
cheerful, homelike, and prosperous condition.”

While agriculture in Colorado is regarded as in its infancy, yet the
product of Colorado farms alone contributed almost fifty-one millions
to the world’s wealth, in 1905, exclusive of wool, hides, or live
stock. Professor Olin of the State Agricultural College estimates that
there are over two hundred thousand acres in Colorado which produce
crops without irrigation, by the application of Professor Campbell’s
“dry-farming” system. The so-called dry land, consisting of millions
of acres in Eastern Colorado, averages now four dollars per acre,
where one year ago untold quantities could be bought for an average of
two dollars per acre. The speculative value of this land has gone up
wonderfully under the impetus of the Campbell system of dry farming. If
this system comes anywhere near proving the claims of its advocates,
it will vastly increase the wealth and population of the state. With
a greater understanding of the science of dry culture it is certain
that the farmers of the state and the state generally will experience
immeasurable advantage. In the eastern plains of Colorado are embraced
more than fifteen million acres of land which are now lying practically
useless, only a small amount being utilized for ranging cattle. The
claims of dry-culture enthusiasts and those who have been experimenting
with seed imported to meet the dry conditions are, that this empire
will be made to yield harvests which will support many thriving
communities. In proof of their claims they point to so-called model
farms established at various places on the plains where the hitherto
unyielding soil has borne substantial crops.

One important feature in the agricultural development of Colorado is
the extinction of the bonanza ranch of thousands of acres. Instead,
farms are reduced to manageable proportions, and are carried on far
more largely by intelligent thought and scientific appliances than by
mere manual labor.

The present day Colorado ranch is an all-the-year-round enterprise.
The ranch owner is a careful business man, who watches his acres and
the products thereof even as the successful merchant or manufacturer
acquires close knowledge of all the details of his business. He sows
his land with diversified crops, rotating hay, grain, and root crops
scientifically for the double purpose of securing the greatest yields
and preserving the nourishing qualities of the soil. Keeping in touch
with the market conditions of the world, and with the advancing
developments of science, he is easily the master of the situation, and
in no part of the country is the condition of the farmer better, or
perhaps so good, as in Colorado. The agriculturist of the Centennial
State who is the owner of two quarter sections, or even of one, is
altogether independent. The returns from his business are absolutely
sure, and with the certain knowledge of substantial gains at the end
of the season he plans improvements to his home, and comforts and even
luxuries for himself and family, which far exceed those usually secured
in the Middle West or by the small farmers of the East. In Colorado it
will be found that almost every young man and woman of those who are
natives of the state are college graduates. Co-education prevails, just
as does the political enfranchisement of women, and the results of this
larger extension of the opportunities and privileges of life are very
much in evidence in the beauty, the high intelligence, and the liberal
culture that especially characterize the women of Colorado.

Irrigation enterprises in Colorado are far more widely recognized than
is the Campbell system of dry culture; but in 1905 these enterprises
appealed with increased force to capitalists outside, as well as within
Colorado, as a safe and profitable means of investment. Land held at
ten dollars per acre is, by irrigation, instantly increased in value
from twenty to fifty dollars; and it was seen that the most favorable
localities within the state in which to raise funds for further
extension of irrigation were among the farmers in the older irrigated
sections who have won their ranches, improved their places, and made
large deposits in the banks through the use of the productive waters
trained to make the soil blossom with wealth.

Irrigation is developed to its highest excellence in Northern Colorado
and in the valley of the Arkansas River. These regions have been the
longest under irrigated culture, and their value is increasing rapidly.
Each year sees the agriculturist grow more conservative in his use of
water, and the quantity thus saved has been applied to new lands. Thus,
in an interesting and quite undreamed-of way, a problem that incited
discord and dissension, that promised only to increase inevitably
as larger territories of land and their correspondingly increased
irrigation should be held, was brought to a peaceful solution.
Continued litigation, and a great pressure to secure legislative
restrictions of the use of water supply, and the constant irritation
and turmoil involved in these disputes, were all, happily, laid to rest
by the discovery of the farmers themselves that extravagance in the use
of water was not conducive to their own prosperity. In the matter of
flood waters the irrigation experts of the state are quite generally
meeting the condition in their own way. Storage reservoirs are dotting
the irrigation systems at frequent intervals, and in the dry months
the supply piled up behind the cement dams is drawn off to furnish the
final necessary moisture for the maturing of the crops.

Another possibility of irrigation that is receiving the attention of
engineers is the utilization of the streams for power purposes. In many
cases the power thus generated will be made to accomplish marvellous
feats in the way of construction, as in the instance at Grand River,
already described.

One of the special journeys in Colorado is that called a “trip around
the circle,” affording more than a thousand miles among the mountains
within four days’ time; but a permission for ten days is available,
thus affording several detours by stage, which penetrate into the
most sublime regions. The abysmal depth of five of the great cañons;
many of the noted mountain passes; great mining camps, with their
complicated machinery; cliff dwellings, vast plateaus, and stupendous
peaks; Indian reservations; the icy crevasses a thousand feet in depth;
the picturesque “Continental Divide,” from which one looks down on a
thousand mountain peaks, where the vast Cordilleras in their rugged
grandeur are seen as a wide plain; the beautiful Sangre de Cristo
(“Blood of Christ”) range; the sharp outlines of the Spanish Peaks,
rising twelve and thirteen thousand feet into the air; beautiful meadow
lands where the blue and white columbine, the state flower of Colorado,
blooms in profusion, and the tiger lily, the primrose, and the
“shooting stars” blossom,–all these are enjoyed within the “circle”
trip; and it also includes Leadville, the “city above the clouds,”
Durango, Ouray, Gunnison, and other interesting towns. It offers a near
view of the Mount of the Holy Cross, which strange spectacle is made by
the snow deposits in transverse, gigantic cañons,–the perpendicular
one being fifteen hundred feet, while the transverse cross is seven
hundred and fifty feet in length; of Lost Cañon, a novelty even in a
land of cañons; and of the Rio de Las Animas Perditas, old Fort Lewis,
the valley of Dolores River, a region of early Spanish discovery; of
Black Cañon and Cimarron Cañon and Grand River Cañon, whose walls
rise to the height of more than twenty-five hundred feet;–all these
are but the merest outline and hint of the scenic wonders compassed
within the circle trip. Up the cañons the train climbs; through narrow
gorges with overhanging rocks, on and on, till a plateau is reached;
then more cañons, more climbing, more peaks towering into the skies,
and waterfalls chiming their music. As even an enthusiast in scenery
cannot entirely subsist on stars, sunsets, and silences, the luxurious
comforts of these trains enhance one’s enjoyment. A dining-car is
always on, and the excellence of the food and the moderate prices for
all this perfect comfort and convenience are features the traveller
appreciates. That dance of the Brocken which one fancies he sees in
the fantastic sandstone formations on the mountain’s side on the
romantic route to Glenwood Springs is occasionally duplicated in
other cañons, where these strange rocks resolve themselves, with the
aid of the mysterious lights and shadows, into a dance of witches,
and every shape springs to life. The train rushes on, and one leaves
them dancing, confident that although these figures may be stationary
by day, they dance at night. Another mountain slope of the sandstone
shows a colossal figure of a prophet,–shrouded, hooded, suggesting
that solemn, majestic figure of death in Daniel French’s great work
entitled “Death and the Sculptor.” The precipitous walls of the cañon
rise in many places to over a thousand feet in height. In their sides
such a variety of designs and figures have been sculptured by erosion
that the traveller half imagines himself in the realm of the gods of
Hellas. These innumerable designs and figures incite not only the play
of fancy, but they invite the study of the geologist, who finds here
the primary rock formations exhibited in the most varied and striking
manner. As the train winds deeper into the heart of the projecting
rocks the crested crags loom up beyond the sight; below, the river
rushes in foaming torrents and only a faint arch of the sky is seen.
There are recesses never penetrated by the sun.

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL ROCKS, CLYDE PARK, CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT LINE]

Another group of the sandstone shapes, under the transformation of
moonlight, resolved itself into a band of angels, and still another
mountain-side seems to be the scene of ballet dancers. The splendid
heights of Dolores Peak and Expectation Mountain, the Lizard Head,
the Cathedral Spires, the Castle Peaks of the Sangre de Cristo–what
points and groups that fairly focus all conceivable sublimity they
form! Here is a state more than a third larger than all New England;
it is the state of sunsets and of stars; of scenery that is impressive
and uplifting, rather than merely picturesque; a state whose plains,
even, are of the same altitude as the summit of Mount Washington in the
White Mountains, and whose mountains and peaks ascend to an altitude
of over two miles above this height. Of the total extent of Colorado,
the mountains, inclusive of parks and foothills, occupy two-thirds of
the area. So it is easily realized to what extent they dominate the
scene. But great and impressive as they are in effect, the mountain
features have an undoubted influence, however unconsciously received,
on the character of the people. The effect of beauty on character is
incalculable. When to beauty is added sublimity, how much greater must
this effect be! It was not mere rhetoric when the Psalmist exclaimed,
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth…. The Lord
shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul.” It is
this train of thought which is inevitably suggested to the mind in
gazing upon the stately, solemn impressiveness of the mountain scenery.
Nature has predestined Colorado for the theatre of noble life, and the
influence is all-pervading.

Great engineering feats are in evidence all over Colorado. Miles of
railway tunnels pass through the mountains. No mountain, not even
Pike’s Peak, is regarded in Colorado as being in any sense an obstacle
to any form of the extension of travel. The railroad either passes
through it or climbs it. The matter is apparently simple to the
railroad mind, and evidently all the peaks of the Himalayas piled on
Pike’s or Long’s peaks–“Ossa piled on Pelion”–would not daunt the
Coloradoan enterprise. In fact, the greater the obstacle, the greater
is the enterprise thereby incited to overcome it. In the most literal
way obstacles in this land of enchantment are miraculously transformed
to stepping-stones. But what would you,–in an Enchanted Country?

Colorado has four great systems of parks whose elevation is from seven
to nine thousand feet: North Park, with an area of some twenty-five
hundred square miles; South Park, one thousand; Middle Park, three
thousand; and San Luis, with nine thousand four hundred square
miles,–all sheltered by mountains, watered by perpetual streams, and
so rich in grass lands as to afford perpetual grazing and farming
resources. Colorado has nearly one thousand inland lakes, and over two
hundred and fifty rivers fed from mountain snows. Its grand features
include mountains, cañons, gorges and deep chasms, crags and heights;
its mountain systems cover more than five times the area of the Alps,
and its luminous, electrically exhilarating air, its play of color, and
the necromancy of distances that seem near when afar–all linger in the
memory as a dream of ecstatic experiences. Colorado is all a splendor
of color, of vista, and of dream. It is the most poetic of states.

Now the fact that this country has been importing over two million tons
of sugar a year lends importance to the beet sugar factories already
largely established. Colorado has a future in beet sugar hardly second
to her gold-mining interests, if her interests receive the national
safe-guarding that is her due.

Colorado and the Philippines were brought into collision of interests
by the attempt to reduce the tariff on sugar imported from those
islands. This would ruin the beet sugar industry in the Centennial
State, which is already beginning to transform it into one of the
richest agricultural states in the Union.

This industry is absolutely identified with the irrigation interests
of Colorado, as it is the arid land irrigated that offers the best
facilities for the sugar beets.

The beet sugar enterprise means remunerative work for the farmer, good
business for the railroads and merchants, and an incalculable degree of
prosperity for all Colorado. Thomas F. Walsh, of Ouray, Colorado, and
of Washington, made an earnest protest against this movement.

Mr. Walsh is a great capitalist, but while he has not one dollar
concerned in the beet sugar enterprise of his state, he is a loyal and
devoted son of Colorado. In a convincing manner he said:

“… It is not a small thing, this robbery of American farmers and
home-makers for the benefit of sugar corporations and exploiters
of Philippine labor. It means the ultimate ruin of an industry
that is full of the brightest promise for thousands of Americans.
It means that the people of the United States shall pay tribute
to a trust forever for one of the necessaries of life…. The
removal of protection to Colorado sugar growers would simply mean
that the sugar trust, or cormorants in human form like it, would
go to the Philippines, employ the peons at starvation wages, and
send millions of tons of sugar to the United States. Would the
consumer here be benefited? Not at all. Has the consumer benefited
by reciprocity with Cuba? The sugar trust has received a gift from
the treasury of the United States–that is all.”

And again Mr. Walsh truly says:

“This proposition is merely a design on the part of enormously
rich, greedy speculators, who are willing to adopt any means for
the accumulation of more money. Money, money, money! They have
already a thousand times more than they need, and are simply money
mad. They propose to exploit the Philippines for their own selfish
ends. Help for the poor Filipinos, indeed! Imagine the generosity
of these get-rich-quick sharks towards the peons in their employ.
Think of the wages that would be paid, contrasted with the standard
of living in the United States! I’d rather have the people of this
country exterminated than to be brought to such a level.”

Regarding the arid land Mr. Walsh said:

“With the application of water to this land under the National
Irrigation Act–one of the greatest acts of statesmanship
accomplished under our broad-minded and far-sighted President–the
people of Colorado will furnish an outlet for a great population,
and the cultivation of beets for sugar will enable thousands of
American citizens to establish homes of their own. That is what is
now being done in Colorado, and the industry is in its infancy.
The people have gone in there at the suggestion of the government,
planted beets provided to them by the agricultural department, and
started a great industry. There was an implied, if not expressed,
promise that they were to be protected in this new industry. Yet
it is now proposed to place them in competition with the peons
of the Philippines, at the most critical time in the history of
the industry. The people of the East,” continued Mr. Walsh, “do
not seem to be able to grasp the great possibilities of the arid
West under the operation of the national irrigation law. The West,
properly irrigated with water that we know can be developed by
drainage, wells, and underground flow, will easily support fifty
millions of people. Think of what this means! Fifty millions of
American citizens owning their own homes! It is an incalculable
addition to the wealth and strength of the United States.”

One of the very valuable and exceptional resources of Colorado is
in its stone, which equals the world’s best product in its quality.
Millions of tons of almost every variety of building stone lie
unclaimed on the hills and plateaus. There are quarries in Gunnison
County that would make their owners multi-millionnaires, could the
stone be made easy of access or transportation. The difficulty of the
former, and the high freight charges, combine to delay this field
of development. In Pueblo there is a marbleized sandstone that is
very beautiful. Its “crushing” strength, as the architectural phrase
goes, is between eleven and twelve thousand pounds to the square
inch,–a strength which exceeds the most exacting requirements of any
architect. This stone is found in unlimited quantities. In the country
around Fort Collins there is a red sandstone which is very popular, and
this is also found in large quantities at Castle Rock, south of Denver.
Near Trinidad is a gray sandstone of great beauty, and the Amago stone,
which is used for the Denver Postoffice, is a favorite.

In stone for decorative purposes also, Colorado is plentifully
supplied. Specimens of marble from the vicinity of Redstone show
characteristics as beautiful as are seen in the finest Italian marble
found at Carrara.

Besides the marble for building there are also vast beds of the purest
white marble, which will soon be placed on the market for statuary
purposes.

Vast deposits of granite are to be found in many different sections of
the state. In Clear Creek County, about Silver Plume and Georgetown,
there are mountains of granite. In the southern part of the state
deposits are found which are used extensively for monumental purposes,
and great quantities of this granite are shipped out of the state.

Although only a limited amount of work in the way of development and
seeking markets has been done for Colorado stone, the value of the
sales is already an appreciable source of revenue.

Statistically, Colorado ranks first in the United States as to the
yield of gold and silver; first in the area of land under irrigation;
first as to the quality of wheat, potatoes, and melons, and as to
the percentage of sugar in the sugar beet. The state ranks fifth in
coal and iron; sixth in live stock, and eighth in agriculture. It is
true, however, that irrigated agriculture is considered to be the
most important interest in Colorado. The Centennial State is not,
primarily, as has often been supposed, a mining state; the mines, rich
and varied in products as they are, offer yet a value secondary to that
of agriculture. A mine is always an uncertainty. A rich pocket may be
found that is an isolated one and leads to nothing of a permanently
rich deposit. A vast outlay of time and expensive mechanism can be
made that will not result in any returns. An apparently rich mine may
suddenly come to an end; the miner may have reason to believe that
if he could go down some thousands of feet he would again strike the
rich vein; he may do this at great cost of machinery and labor only
to find that the vein has totally disappeared, or does not exist. All
these and many other mischances render mining something very far from
an exact science,–something, indeed, totally incalculable, even to
the specialists and experts,–while agriculture is an industry whose
conditions render it within reasonable probabilities of control and
calculation. The great problem which continues to confront Colorado,
and to a far greater extent Arizona, is the more complete understanding
of what Prof. Elwood Mead, the government expert in national irrigation
problems, calls “the duty of water” and the conditions which influence
it as a basis for planning the larger and costlier works which must be
built in the future.

“One of the leading objects of expert irrigation investigation is to
determine the duty of water,” says Professor Mead, and he adds:

“In order to do this it is necessary to deal with a large range
of climatic conditions, and to study the influence of different
methods of application and the requirements of different crops.
Farmers need an approximate knowledge of the duty of water in order
to make intelligent contracts for their supply. It is needed by
the engineer and investors in order to plan canals and reservoirs
properly. Without this knowledge every important transaction in
the construction of irrigation works, or in the distribution of
water therefrom, is very largely dependent on individual judgment
or conjecture…. In constructing reservoirs it is as necessary to
know whether they will be filled in a few years by silt as to know
that the dam rests on a solid foundation; and it is as desirable to
provide some means for the removal of this sedimentary accumulation
as it is to provide an adequate waste way for floods.”

The problems of irrigation are evidently highly complicated ones. There
are large tracts of irrigated land selling at three hundred dollars an
acre which, fifty years ago, were held as worthless desert regions. The
value of water rights has risen from four to thirty-five dollars an
acre. The Platte River and its tributaries, alone, irrigate one million
nine hundred and twenty-four thousand four hundred and sixty-five
acres. In the South Platte the average flow of water is two thousand
seven hundred and sixty-five feet a second. The North Platte and its
tributaries irrigate about nine hundred thousand acres. There are now
over two million acres in Colorado under actual irrigation, with an
agricultural population of some one hundred and fifty thousand, with a
total income of over thirty millions. The agricultural population is
increasing so rapidly that the day cannot be distant when it will reach
a million, with a total production of more than one hundred and fifty
million dollars. It is believed that an expenditure of forty millions
in irrigation at the present time would immediately result in an
increment of from two hundred to three hundred millions. The irrigation
bill that passed Congress in 1904 proved of the most beneficial nature
to Colorado; not only for its immediate effects, but for the promise
it implied and the confidence inspired in the immediate future. The
encouragement of irrigation in Colorado is the influence that enlarges
and develops the agricultural efforts, promoting the growing industry
of beet sugar and extending all resources. Beyond the material results
there lie, too, the most important social conditions of the greater
content and industry of the people and the corresponding decrease of
tendencies toward anarchy and disorder.

In the quarter of a century–with the sixth year now added–since
Colorado became a state there has passed over twenty million acres of
government lands into the individual ownership of men whose capital,
for the most part, consisted solely of the horses and wagon that they
brought with them. Of this vast area there are some two and a half
million acres under agricultural cultivation, which are assessed at
a valuation of some twenty-five millions. The Boston and Colorado
smelter, established in 1873, has produced a valuation in gold, silver,
and copper of nearly ninety-six millions. In the year of 1905 the
Colorado mines,–gold, silver, lead, copper, and zinc,–all told,
produced nearly ninety million dollars.

The population of Colorado is increasing rapidly, not only by the
stream of immigration that pours in of those who come _con intentione_,
but to a considerable degree by those who come only as tourists and
visitors, and who become so fascinated with Colorado’s charm, and so
impressed with her rich and varied resources, that they remain. The
development of this state is one of the most remarkable and thrilling
pages in American history. It is the story of personal sacrifice,
personal heroism, personal devotion to the nobler purposes and ideals
of life that no one can read unmoved.

“There can be no backward movement, not even a check in the steady
tramp of such a conquering army,” said the “Denver Republican”
editorially. “Before it, mountains melt into bars of gold, of silver,
of copper, lead, zinc, and iron. It passes over virgin soil, and behind
it spring up fields of grain and groves of fruit. It brings coal from
distant fields, rocks from far-away hills, and its artisans mould and
weld and send out tools of trade and articles of merchandise to all the
world.

“It pushes the railroads it needs to where it needs them, and the world
comes to marvel at its audacity. It finds to-day what yesterday it
needed and to-morrow it must have. It waits only the world’s needs or
pleasures to find yet other ways to supply them.”

The prosperity of Colorado is a remarkable fact in our national
history. By some untraced law, defects, faults, misfortunes, or crimes
are always made more prominent than virtue and good fortune. The crime
is telegraphed everywhere, the good deed is passed over in silence–as
a rule. And so the strikes, and the outlawry, and the discords and
troubles of Colorado have been very widely heralded, while there
has been less general recognition of the firm and just governmental
authority that has held these outbreaks in check, and has almost
succeeded in ending them entirely.

In general aspects and conveniences the towns and cities are under
excellent municipal regulations. Leadville, formerly one of the most
lawless of great mining camps, is to-day a peaceful and prosperous city
on a great trans-continental highway. The Western towns begin with
wide, clean, beautiful streets. They begin with the most tasteful
architecture. It may not be the most expensive or the most colossal,
but it is beautiful.

Northern Colorado is in many respects a distinctive region of itself.
It offers rich agricultural facilities; the beet sugar factories at
Greeley are making it a commercial centre; the electric trolley line
which will soon connect Greeley with Denver will multiply the homes
and settlements within this distance of fifty miles, and this part
of Colorado is enriched with great coal fields. The latter promise
not merely their own extension of industries in digging the coal and
putting it on the market, but they also indicate another and far more
important result, which stimulates the scientific imagination,–that of
making Northern Colorado a power centre whose strength can be applied
in a variety of ways and transmitted over a large area of country. For
more than two years the Government has been conducting a series of
experiments in a very thorough manner, endeavoring to ascertain the gas
values of the great lignite coal fields between Boulder and Denver. It
has been discovered that the converting of the coal into gas gives it
double the efficiency for use as a motor power for engine or for fuel
than can be gained from the coal in its natural state. A ton of coal
converted into gas will, as gas, give twice the power that the coal
would have yielded, and give the same power that two tons of coal, that
has not been converted into gas, would afford. In order, however,
to produce this power economically, it must be done at the point of
mining. It is there that the gas producers must be located; and from
these points the gas can be transported in pipes, or can be converted
into electricity and sent by wires at far less cost than would be that
of sending the coal itself by freight. These discoveries not only
suggest that this region in Colorado is destined in the near future
to become a power centre which will be tapped from the surrounding
country for a great distance in all directions, and will thus render
Boulder one of the most important of Western cities; but they also
suggest the evident tendency of the age toward intensity rather than
immensity,–toward the concentration of energy in the most ethereal
form rather than its diffusion through large and clumsy masses of
material.

Colorado contains over twenty-five thousand square miles of coal
fields, distributed over the state, with an average annual product of
over seven million tons. No other corresponding area in the entire
world exceeds Colorado in its great storage of coal, and the state
ranks as one of the first in the production of iron.

There are already fifteen beet sugar factories in operation,
representing investments amounting to over twelve million dollars,
and which are estimated to have produced, in 1906, an aggregate of
some two hundred and twenty thousand pounds of sugar, the percentage
of saccharine matter being higher than that of the sugar beet of
California.

[Illustration: SULTAN MOUNTAIN]

Statistically, Colorado ranks first in irrigation, and there are some
eighteen thousand miles of irrigating canals already in operation, with
the system being so rapidly extended that it almost outruns the pace of
calculation. Three million acres are under cultivation in Colorado, and
two million eight hundred and fifty thousand acres are irrigated; the
storage reservoirs already constructed are sufficient to place another
million of acres under cultivation. This irrigated land sells from
sixty to one hundred dollars per acre. Colorado has a reputation for
being a great potato state, and in the year 1905 the town of Greeley
alone shipped over three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of potatoes,
while tomatoes are a feature often yielding ninety dollars to the acre,
and celery has been estimated to yield one hundred and fifty dollars an
acre. There are tracts of from two to three thousand acres devoted to
peas alone, producing forty to fifty thousand cans; and asparagus grows
with great success.

Colorado is a fruit country offering the best of conditions. The
peaches of Southern Colorado lead the world in flavor, beauty, and
size; the canteloupe flourishes with such extraordinary vitality that
it often yields a revenue of fifty dollars an acre; and the watermelon
also grows in unusual perfection. The valley of the Arkansas River is
the great region for producing melons, and Colorado exports these to
New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. Apples, plums, and
pears grow with equally bounteous success, and there are fruit farms
that with their orchards and small fruits sometimes realize fifty
thousand dollars a year, when the season is a good one and the market
conditions favorable. The seasons of irrigated land are largely under
control, and surpass those regions which are at the mercy of excessive
rains or of droughts. So the law of compensation still obtains. The
resources of horticulture, alone, in Colorado are very important, and
they form one of the most alluring features of this beautiful and
richly bountiful state.

In the way of crops, alfalfa takes the lead in Colorado, as wheat
does in Kansas. It requires the very minimum of care; the land being
once planted with alfalfa, there is need only of turning on the
irrigation, and mowing it, at the right time. Alfalfa produces three
crops a year, and yields from one to two tons per acre. It sells at
from three to ten dollars a ton, and this makes a revenue quite worth
considering. The difficulties encountered everywhere in Colorado, in
every branch of industry, or in domestic work, are those of securing
labor. Wages are high in every conceivable line of work, but to a
large extent the labor and service, even when procured, is of a very
poor order. In many of the larger hotels employés are often kept
on the pay-roll for two months at a time when not needed, simply
because it is impossible to fill their places when the need comes.
From requirements of the seamstress, the laundress, the cook, the
maid, the farmer’s working-men, or the employés in almost any line
of work, the same difficulty exists. Much is heard regarding strikes
and other forms of the eternal conflict between labor and capital;
and yet the high rates paid, the concessions constantly made to the
demands of employés, the conditions provided for them, would seem, at
a superficial glance, to be such as to bridge over every difficulty.
Domestic service is something that presents the greatest problem on the
part of the employer. If there is so large a number of “the unemployed”
in the East, why should not the conditions balance themselves and this
superfluous element find good conditions for living in Colorado? This
question involves the problem of economics, with which these pages have
nothing to do; but no traveller, no sojourner, can linger in Colorado
who is not simply lost in wonder that the varied work that is waiting,
with the most liberal payments for the worker, and the multitude of
workers in the East who need the liberal payment, cannot, by some law
of elective affinity, be brought together.

When it is realized that the Rocky Mountains occupy in Colorado
more than five times the entire space of the Alps in Europe, their
importance in climatic influence as well as in scenic magnificence
can be understood. The forests of Colorado are found on the mountains
and foothills. The heights are covered with a dense growth of pine
woods, while in lower ranges abound the silver spruce and the cedar.
Colorado has a state forestry association which aims to secure as a
reservation all forests above the altitude of eight thousand five
hundred feet, as this preservation is considered most important to the
water supply. In the Alps there are nine peaks over fourteen thousand
feet in height; in the Rocky Mountains, within the limits of Colorado
alone, there are forty-three peaks, each one of which exceeds in height
the Jungfrau. There are in Colorado more than thirty towns, each of
which is the theatre of active progress, and each of which lies at an
altitude exceeding that of the pass of St. Bernard. The sublime cañons
and gorges are eloquent of the story of Titanic forces which rent the
mountains apart. The vast plateaus were once the bed of inland seas.
In the cañon of Grand River towering walls rise to the height of half
a mile, in sheer precipitous rock, for a distance of some sixteen
miles. The strata of these rocks are distinctly defined, and the play
of color is rich and fantastic. The vast walls are in brilliant hues
of red and amber and green and brown,–the blending of color lending
its enchantment to the marvellous scene. Each cañon has its own
individuality. No one repeats the wild charm of another. Excursions
abound. There is “the loop,” an enchanting mountain ride made from
Denver within one day for the round trip; the “Rainbow” tour, and
others, besides that of the “circle” already described. In each and all
these journeys the route is often on the very verge of the abyss, and
the sublimities, the splendor of coloring, exceed any power of language
to suggest.

In Northwestern Colorado, along the White River and northward, lies
the sportsman’s paradise, now reached only by a stage drive of from
forty-five to ninety miles from the little town of Rifle on the “scenic
route” of the Denver and Rio Grande, beyond Glenwood Springs. Trapper’s
Lake and the Marvine lakes are well known, and the Marvine Hunting
Lodge is a favorite resort of English tourists.

Estes Park, some seventy miles from Denver, a favorite summer resort,
is a long, narrow plateau of two or three miles in width and fifteen
in length, a mile and a half above sea level, and enclosed in mountain
walls that tower above the park from two to seven thousand feet. A
swift stream, well stocked with trout, runs through the park. The
four great systems of parks divide Colorado into naturally distinct
localities: North Park, with an area of twenty-five hundred square
miles; Middle Park, with its three thousand; the smaller South Park
of one thousand; and San Luis, with over ninety-four hundred square
miles,–all, in the aggregate, presenting a unique structural plan.
Every journey in Colorado has its vista of surprise. No artist can
paint its panoramas. Every traveller in this Land of Enchantment must
realize that its exhilaration cannot be decanted in any form. It is a
thing that lies in character, moulding life.

Colorado is the Land of Achievement. It offers resources totally
unsurpassed in the entire world for an unlimited expanse. These
resources await only the recognition of him who can discern the
psychological moment for their development. That nothing is impossible
to him who wills is one of the eternal verities, and even the expert
census taker, or the supernatural tax collector whom nothing escapes,
might search in vain, within the limits of the splendid Centennial
State, for any man who fails to will. The resplendence of this state
of stars and sunshine is due to this blaze of human energy. The
Coloradoans are the typical spirits who are among those elect

“… who shall arrive
Prevailing still;
Spirits with whom the stars connive
To work their will.”