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Title: The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific

Author: Lilian Whiting

Release Date: October 9, 2017 [EBook #55718]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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Apparently, the principle of woman suffrage has "subtle ways" in which "to pass and turn again." It has recently turned in a manner to compel a new and more profound revision of all opinion and argument.

Colorado presents a most interesting field for the study of woman suffrage, and from any fair and adequate review of its workings and results there could hardly fail to be but one conclusion,—that of its signal value and importance as a factor in human progress. One of its special[Pg 26] claims is of a nature not down on the bills,—the fact of the great intellectual enlargement and stimulus,—aside from its results, which the very exercise of political power gives to the women of the state. It is seen in the higher quality of conversational tone and the tendency to eliminate the inconsequential and the inane because great matters of universal interest were thus brought home to women in connection with their power to decide on these matters. This result is perhaps equally seen among the women who rejoice and the women who regret the fact of their political enfranchisement. For in Colorado, as well as in other states, there is a proportion of women who do not believe in the desirability of the ballot for themselves. They sincerely regret that it has been "forced," as they say, upon them. This proportion in Colorado is not a large one, but it includes some of the most intelligent and cultured women, just as an enthusiastic acceptance of the ballot includes a much larger proportion of this higher order of women. However, welcome or unwelcome, desired or not desired, the ballot is there, and so the women who regret this fact yet realize its responsibility and feel it a moral duty to use it wisely as well. And so they, too, study great questions, and discuss them, and fit themselves to use the power that is conferred upon them. All this reacts on the general tone of society, and the quality of conversation at ladies' lunches, at teas, and at clubs, is of a far higher order than is often[Pg 27] found in other states among the more purely feminine gatherings.

Among the women who have successfully administered public office in Colorado was the late Mrs. Helen Grenfell, whose record as State Superintendent of Public Instruction was so remarkable that both political parties supported her. A Denver journal said of her:

"Mrs. Grenfell's term has lasted six years, the last two years having been under a Republican administration, although Mrs. Grenfell is a Democrat. Her most notable achievement has been in her conduct of the school lands of the state, making them valuable sources of revenue. Her policy from the first was against the sale of the school lands, which comprise some three million acres. The income from such sales had been limited, as the investments were prescribed, and the interest rate rather low, as Western interest goes. The leasing system was inaugurated under Mrs. Grenfell's direction, and the result was an increase of school revenues of nearly two hundred thousand dollars a year, with no decrease in the capital. The Land Department of the state shares the credit with the state superintendent of public instruction, as they have administered her policy wisely, but the policy was hers alone."

Judge Lindsay of Denver, giving an official opinion as to the desirability of woman suffrage for Colorado, said:

[Pg 28]

"Woman suffrage in Colorado for over ten years has more than demonstrated its justice. No one would dare to propose its repeal; and, if left to the men of the state, any proposition to revoke the right bestowed upon women would be overwhelmingly defeated.

"Many good laws have been obtained in Colorado which would not have been secured but for the power and influence of women.

"At some of the elections in Denver frauds have been committed. Ninety-nine per cent of these frauds were committed by men, without any connivance or assistance, direct or indirect, from women; but because one per cent were committed by women, there are ignorant or careless-minded people in other states who actually argue that this is a reason for denying women the right to vote. If it were a just reason for denying suffrage to women, it would be a ten times greater reason for denying it to men.

"In Colorado it has never made women any the less womanly or any the less motherly, or interfered with their duties in the home, that they have been given the right to participate in the affairs of state.

"Many a time I have heard the 'boss' in the political caucus object to the nomination of some candidate because of his bad moral character, with the mere explanation that if the women found him out it might hurt the whole ticket. While many bad men have been nominated and elected to office in spite of woman suffrage, they have not been nominated and elected because of woman suffrage. If the women alone had[Pg 29] a right to vote, it would result in a class of men in public office whose character for morality, honesty, and courage would be of a much higher order....

"People have no right to judge woman suffrage in Colorado by the election frauds in a few precincts. The election frauds in Philadelphia, where women do not vote, were never used as a reason why suffrage should be denied to men....

"With women, as with men, it requires more or less public sentiment to arouse them to their civic duties; but when aroused, as they frequently are, their power for good cannot be overestimated. Again, the very fact that the women have such a power is a wonderful reserve force in the cause of righteousness in Colorado, and has been a powerful deterrent in anticipating and opposing the forces of evil.

"It does not take any mother from her home duties or cares to spend ten minutes in going to the polling place and casting her vote and returning to the bosom of her home; but in that ten minutes she wields a power that is doing more to protect that home now, and will do more to protect it in the future, and to protect all other homes, than any power or influence in Colorado.

"I know that the great majority of people in Colorado favor woman suffrage, after more than a decade of practical experience,—first, because it is fair, just, and decent; and secondly, because its influence has been good rather than evil in our political affairs."

Judge Lindsay's words represent the general attitude of the representative people of the state.

[Pg 30]The Hon. Henry M. Teller, senior senator of Colorado, is one of the most interesting men in the Centennial State, and the traveller who may meet and talk with him is impressed with his quiet sincerity, with the sense of reserved power with which he seems endowed, and the refinement and directness of his methods. He is by birth an Eastern man, and a graduate of Harvard; but his mature life has been passed in Colorado. As a lawyer his law office claims much of his time and thought, even with all the great tide of national interests with which he is identified. He is a thorough and, indeed, an astute politician; not in the "machine" sense, but with a very clear and comprehensive grasp of the situation and a large infusion of practical sagacity. Senator Teller is in no sense an enthusiast. He is responsive to high aims and high ideals; he knows what they are, so to speak; he recognizes them on sight; he never falls into the error of under-valuing them; but he is not a man to be carried away by an ecstatic vision, and he would have no use for wings at all where he had feet. He would regard the solid earth as a better foundation, on the whole, than the air, and one more suited to existing conditions.

Senator Teller has had more than a quarter of a century's experience in political life and in statesmanship. For two years he was a member of the Cabinet. For twenty-seven years he has been in the Senate, where, with Senator Hoar of Massachusetts, he shared the highest[Pg 31] honor, and the most absolute confidence, in both his flawless integrity and conspicuous ability, that the Senate, and the nation as well, can give to him.

Senator Patterson, the junior senator from Colorado, is a man whom, if he encounters an obstacle does not grant it the dignity of recognition. He instantly discovers the end,—the desired result,—and declares, per saltum, "It is right; it should be done,—it shall be done." Senator Patterson is a man of very keen perceptions and one with whom it is easy to come into touch instantly; he is responsive, sympathetic, full of faith that the thing that ought to be accomplished can be accomplished, and therefore that it shall be. Senator Patterson has the typical American experience of successful men lying behind him. He was on familiar terms with the intricacies of a newspaper office in his youth; he studied in an Indiana college without an annual expenditure of that twenty thousand dollars which some of the latter-day Harvard undergraduates find indispensable to the process of securing their "B. A.," and tradition records, indeed, that the junior Colorado senator, in the prehistoric days of his youth, set out for the fountain of learning with a capital of forty dollars; that he frugally walked from Crawfordsville to Indianapolis that he might not deplete his financial estate which was destined to buy a scholarship, and that in this unrecorded tour in the too, too truly rural region of his early life, he cleaned two clocks on the way in payment for lodging, and[Pg 32] that he cleaned them uncommonly well. Of all this traditionary history who shall say? Senator Patterson is a man who would always keep faith with his aims and convictions. He is sunny and full of wit, and full of faith in the ultimate triumph of good things in general, and is, all in all, one of the most genial and delightful of men—and senators.

It is related that Senator Patterson first dawned upon Denver in its primeval period of 1872, when its municipal affairs were conducted by two prominent—if not eminent—gentlemen, one of whom was the champion gambler, and the other the champion brewer of the metropolis. There were eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight other citizens in this municipality besides the brewer and the gambler (and the population was said to have been twelve thousand in all), and the eleven thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight, like "The Ten" of early Florentine history, decided that would "reform the town." Their united effort was to elect Mr. Patterson as Mayor. And a good one he proved; and he has gone on and on, in the minds as well as in the hearts of his fellow-citizens, until now he is the colleague of Senator Teller, and he offers another typical illustration of true American integrity and honorable ambition and success. Personally, Senator Patterson is one of the most winning men in the world, and one delights in his success and the high estimation in which he is held.

[Pg 33]The development of Colorado and other parts of the great Southwest during the past half-century has created a new order of employment in that of the government expert,—the specialist in upland or hydraulic irrigation, in engineering and mining problems. The government surveying work has also increased largely, both in extent and in the greater number of specialties now required. The Geological Survey and the Agricultural Department, both included under the Department of the Interior, are rapidly multiplying branches of work that require both the skilled training and ability for original research and accomplishment. These positions, which command government salaries at from some eighteen to twenty-five hundred dollars a year, afford such opportunity for the expert to reveal his value that private corporations and business houses continually draw on the ranks of the government employees. Of late years the demand for the expert irrigation engineer has been so great in Colorado as to seriously embarrass the government forces by drawing some of the best men for private service. Denver is an especial centre for these enterprises, as being the natural metropolis for the vast inter-mountain region and the plains country of the Missouri River. This vast territory will support many millions more of population. In fact, the dwellers within this described territory at this day are but pioneers on the frontier to what the future will develop, although they already enjoy all the benefits[Pg 34] of the older states, with countless advantages beside which they cannot enjoy.

The smelteries in Denver, of which the Grant is the largest, treat millions of pounds of copper and lead, and great quantities of silver and gold, while there are also extensive ones in Pueblo, Leadville, Durango, and other places. There is also a good proportion of Colorado ore which is not treated at all at smelteries, but is of a free-milling order. The revenue from mining has exceeded fifty millions of dollars annually of late years, but the revenue from agriculture exceeds that of the mines, and to these must be added some twenty millions a year from live stock during the past two or three years. In the aggregate, Colorado has an internal revenue of hardly less than one hundred millions a year, and this largely passes through Denver as the distributing point, constituting the Capital one of the most prosperous of young cities. Denver stands alone in a rich region. One thousand miles from Chicago, six hundred miles from Kansas City, and four hundred miles from Salt Lake City, Denver holds its place without any rival.

The ideal conditions of living have never been entirely combined in any one locality on this sublunary planet, so far as human history reveals; and with all the scenic charm, the rich and varied resources, and the phenomenal development of Colorado, no one could truthfully describe it as Utopia. There is no royal road to high achievement[Pg 35] in any line. Difficulties and obstacles are "a part of the play," and he alone is wise who, by his own determination, faith, and persistence of energy, transforms his very obstacles into stepping-stones and thus gains the strength of that which he overcomes.

Northern Colorado has great resources even beyond the coal fields that will make it the power centre; with its prestige of Denver, and such surrounding towns as Greeley, Boulder, Fort Collins, Golden, and others, all of which fall within a group of social and commercial centres that will soon be interconnected by a network of electric trolley lines. For the electric road between Greeley and Denver Mr. J. D. Houseman has secured a right of way one hundred and fifty feet wide, the rails being midway between the Union Pacific and the Burlington lines. Mr. Houseman is one of the noted financiers of the East who came to Denver to incorporate and build this road, and his is only one of three companies that are now in consultation with the power company negotiating for the supplies which will enable them to build the proposed new roads.

The Seeman Tunnel, which is to be constructed near Idaho Springs, at a distance of fifty miles from Denver, and which is to be twelve miles in length, although at an elevation of eighty-five hundred feet, is yet to extend under Fall River and the Yankee, Alice, and the Lombard mining districts. It will be one of the marvels of the state, and will penetrate a thousand mining veins. The[Pg 36] Continental Mines, Power and Reduction Company, recently incorporated with a capital of three millions, of which Captain Seeman is the president, owns many of the mining veins which will be touched by this tunnel. Many of the veins to which this tunnel will afford approach have not been accessible heretofore for more than four or five months in the year. For the remaining six or seven months travel is practically impossible in these mountains; the "claims" cannot be reached, as they lie in the region of perpetual snow. When the Seeman Tunnel is completed the owner of any claim that is tapped by it can, by paying a certain royalty per ton for each ton of ore mined, obtain the right to work it in the tunnel, thus being able to proceed through the entire year and at a far less cost in production than at present. Regarding this gigantic enterprise, Captain Seeman said, in June of 1906, that the work would be pushed as rapidly as men, money, and machinery could advance it, and, he added: "I consider it one of the greatest tunnels ever attempted, and one that will hold the record for mining tunnels. I am confident that we will strike enough ore within the first two or three miles to keep us busy for years." The Leviathan is one of the first veins that the tunnel is expected to tap,—a vein three hundred feet wide on the surface,—and while already traced for more than three miles, it holds every promise for as yet uncalculated extension. The Lombard is another vein of leading importance[Pg 37] which promises to be a bonanza. Gold is the principal mineral that appears in these veins, although silver, lead, and copper are found. Another ore, tungsten, used for hardening in armor plates, large guns, and the best mechanical implements,—an ore valued at six hundred dollars per ton,—has been discovered in these veins. The Seeman Tunnel is located directly under James's Peak.

Another of the remarkable engineering marvels that mark the progress of Colorado is the Moffat road, the new railroad between Denver and Salt Lake City, now open as far as Kremling, which initiated its passenger service in the late June of 1906 with daily excursions, in solid vestibuled trains, making the round trip between Denver and Tolland, Corona (the region of perpetual snow) and Arrow, on the Pacific slope of the Continental Divide, in one day. This vast enterprise is due to the genius and the prophetic vision of President David H. Moffat of the First National Bank in Denver, one of the leaders in all that makes for the best interests and the advancement of the Centennial State, and of the future of Denver the Beautiful. Mr. Moffat says:

"Denver's population is growing steadily and naturally. Some time ago I made the prediction that Denver would have three hundred thousand inhabitants within five years. I see no reason for changing my estimate. Rather, I might increase it, but I will be conservative.

[Pg 38]"The things that build up a city's wealth and population are 'round about Denver in prodigal quantities. If Denver had only the state of Colorado from which to draw, her future would be absolutely assured. But consider the vast territory that is tributary to this city. It stretches away to the east, west, north, and south, an area quite one-third of the whole country, and quite the richest in all natural resources. Denver is the geographical hub of this territory."

The Moffat road will climb the ramparts formed by the main range of the Rocky Mountains west of Denver and run directly westward, passing through one of the most fertile sections of the state. The road ascends to an altitude of eleven thousand six hundred feet, running through a region rich in minerals, and especially in coal. The sublime scenery along the route has already made it most popular for excursions, which draw a vast tourist travel continually. President Moffat's road has brought Routt County into such prominence that investors from the East are being attracted to this region, a notable one among these being the Eastern capitalist, C. B. Knox, who proposes to invest in copper, coal, and iron in Routt County, which he regards as the richest section in Colorado. Mr. Knox engaged the services of several experts to examine and report to him upon this region. To a press correspondent who inquired of Mr. Knox his views regarding Colorado, he said:

[Pg 39]

"I believe that there is wealth unmeasured in Routt County, and I am out here to put some money in there. I am sure that this section of the state is one of the richest territories in the country. How I became interested is a long story,—too long to tell. But it is sufficient to say that I have heard of Routt County for so long, and from so many different people in whose judgment I have the utmost faith, that I have come out here to invest some money. I believe thoroughly that money put into Routt County will within a few years bring handsome returns. If I did not believe that I should not be here looking for a place in which to invest money.

"I have been to Steamboat Springs myself, and I am thoroughly of the opinion that it is going to be one of the big towns of your state. The fact is, I have never seen a better looking proposition in my life than investing money in Routt County. Already I have purchased some land, and I am going to get more. It is this iron proposition that I am having investigated the most completely. The iron to be found in Routt County looks awfully good to me, and there is no question in my mind that Routt County is the place to put capital.

"I cannot, of course, at this time say just what properties I have in view,—that would not be good business; but I have under investigation locations of mineral property near Steamboat and north and south of there. I have decided on nothing definite; that is, as to just what ores I will endeavor to exploit, for the whole proposition looks so good to me that I am going to purchase probably several different kinds of[Pg 40] propositions. As I say, though, I am most interested in the iron ore, as that seems to present the greatest opportunities."

These views are significant not only as those of an experienced financier who has unbounded faith in the future of Colorado, but also as typical of the wide range of vision which is open to the trained eye of the capitalist and the organizer of great enterprises. The spellbinder may work his will in Colorado. It is the land of infinite opportunity. It offers resources totally unsurpassed in the entire world for unlimited development, and these resources await the recognition of those whose vision is sufficiently true to discern the psychological moment.

The first railroad reached Denver thirty-six years ago, and the city has now sixteen railroad lines. It has a population of over two hundred and twenty-five thousand. It is a geographical centre, which assures its permanent importance as a distributing point. With two hundred and twenty-five miles of street railway, with seventy-five miles of paved streets, and a taxable property estimated at one hundred and two and a third millions, Denver holds unquestionable commercial importance.

When, on the evening of July Fourth, 1906, the splendid electric flag, with the national colors intensified a thousand fold in brilliancy by the electrical lights, floated in the air from the dome of the Capitol on its commanding eminence, and the new city Arch, a veritable Arc de Triomphe, flashed its "Welcome" in electrical light to eager[Pg 41] throngs, the moment was one which might well have been fixed on the sensitive plate of the camera of the future as typical of the entire horoscope of Denver the Beautiful. On that day had been unveiled this triumphal arch, placed at the Seventeenth Street entrance to the city from the Union Depot, which, in its sixteen hundred electric lights, flashes its legend upon the vision of every one entering Denver. This arch, weighing seventy tons, eighty feet in length, and with a central height of fifty-nine feet, is constructed from a combination of metals so united as to give the best results in strength, durability, and beauty, and thus to stand as a symbol of the composite life of the nation. Over the entire surface has been placed a plating of bronze finished with verde antique, to thus give it the aspect of ancient bronze. It is built at a cost of twenty-two thousand dollars, and the originator of the idea, Mr. William Maher of Denver, received the entire subscriptions for it within one day. The design is that of a Denver girl, Miss Marie Woodson, whose name must always be immortalized in connection with this beautiful achievement which typifies the spirit of the city. Constructed by one of the city manufactories, the design and the execution are thus exclusively of Denver. In his address at the unveiling of the arch, Chancellor Buchtel said:

"To all men who stand for honesty, for industry, for justice, for reverence for law, for reverence for life, for education,[Pg 42] for self-reliance, for individual initiative, for independence, and for sound character, the city of Denver speaks only one word, and the state of Colorado speaks only one word, and that word we have emblazoned on this glorious Arch,—the word 'Welcome.'"

Dean Hart, offering the Invocation, referred to the scriptural fact that God had instructed his leaders to build monuments that they might bear witness to some act or covenant, and it was right that the people of Denver should raise this similar monument to their ideals of peace and happiness and truth and justice. Mayor Speer, accepting the gift on behalf of the city, emphasized the fact that the arch was to stand in its place for ages as the expression of the attitude of the citizens to the strangers who enter their gates. "It is intended to reflect our hospitality," said Mayor Speer, "on a traveller's arrival and on his departure. It is more than a thing of beauty; it is the type of the new spirit in Denver, an awakening of civic pride that is sure to be followed by much that is artistic and beautiful in our beloved city."

The spirit of Denver the Beautiful is finely interpreted in these words by representative citizens. It is the spirit of generous and cordial hospitality to all who are prepared to enter into and to contribute to its high standards of life. It is the spirit of continually forging ahead to accomplish things; of that irresistible energy, combined[Pg 43] with the eternal vigilance, which is not only the price of liberty, but the price of almost everything worth having. With this zeal for the great achievements,—carrying railroads through the mountains, opening the inexhaustible treasures of mines, bringing the snow of mountain peaks to irrigate the arid plains, establishing electric transit for fifty miles about, and telephonic connection that brings an area of hundreds of miles into instant speaking range with Denver,—with all the zeal for these executive accomplishments, the spirit of Denver is focussed on that social progress which is aided and fostered by all modern mechanical facilities. Education, culture, and religion are nowhere more held as the essentials of social progress than in Denver. Something of the nature of the problems of civilization that confronted the early pathfinders in Colorado may be inferred from the words of Major Long,—whose name is now perpetuated by the mountain peak that bears it,—when, in 1862, he stated, in an official report to the government:

"This region, according to the best intelligence that can be had, is thoroughly uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture for their subsistence, but, viewed as a frontier, may prove of infinite importance to the United States, inasmuch as it is calculated to serve as a barrier to prevent too great an extension of our population westward and secure us against the machinations or incursions of an enemy that might otherwise be disposed to annoy us in that quarter."

[Pg 44]Less than sixty-five years have passed since the region of which Denver is the great centre was thus pronounced useless except as a frontier to serve as protection from an enemy, and this judgment reminds one of a keen insight into the evolutionary progress of life expressed by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe when she remarked that "Every generation makes a fool of the one that went before it." Colorado, pronounced "thoroughly uninhabitable" in 1842, was organized as a territory in 1861 and in 1876 admitted as a state.

Darwin, who regarded "climate and the affections" as the only absolute necessities of terrestrial existence, should have lived in Denver, for of all the beautiful climates is that in which revels the capital of Colorado. The air is all liquid gold from sunrise till sunset; the mountains swim in a sea of azure blue; the ground is bare and dry in winter, affording the best of walking, and there are few cities where the general municipal management exceeds or is, perhaps, even as good as that of Denver. The electric street-car service is on schedule time, and the two hundred and twenty-five miles of its extent already, with increase in the near future, is certainly an achievement for a young city. Nature is a potent factor in this excellent service, as there is no blocking by heavy snowstorms and blizzards, as in the Middle West and the East.

The gazer in the magic mirror of the future requires little aid from the imagination to see, in the growth and[Pg 45] development of Denver, an impressive illustration of the significance of the name of the state of which it is the capital and the keynote. With what felicitous destiny is the name invested in the old Castilian phrase, "A Dios con le Colorado" (Go thou merrily with God),—a parting salutation and benediction. Denver is, indeed, more than a state capital; it is the epitome of the great onward march of civilization, and it must always be considered in its wide relations to all the great Southwest as well as in respect to its own municipal individuality.

No citizen of Denver has contributed more to the moral and intellectual quality of the city as one of the conductors of great enterprises held amenable to the higher ideals of citizenship, than has Mr. S. K. Hooper of the Denver and Rio Grande, which is one of the marvels of the West in scenic glory. From May till October pleasure tourists throng this marvellous route through the Royal Gorge, through mysterious cañons and across the Divide. For it must always be remembered that Denver is a great city for tourists and season visitors, and the floating population exceeds a hundred thousand annually. Beautiful as it is in the winter, Denver is also essentially a summer city. There is not a night in the summer when the wind, cool, refreshing, exhilarating, does not blow from the great rampart of the snow-clad, encircling mountains. There is not a morning when the wind does not come again, sending the blood leaping through the veins, while[Pg 46] the sun rides across the heavens in a glory of brilliancy, and the great range rears its white head to the cloudless blue sky.

The Denver Art League is a flourishing association that has under its auspices classes in drawing, water colors, and sculpture. Already many artists of Colorado are winning a name. A new Public Library is now in process of erection, and the Chamber of Commerce also maintains a free library of some twenty-five thousand volumes, the reading-room open every day in the year. The city appropriates six thousand dollars a year for the expenses of this institution.

The educational standards of Denver are high. Drawing, music, and German are included among the studies of the grammar schools, and physical culture is introduced in each grade. The high school building cost a quarter of a million dollars, and stands second in the entire country in point of architectural beauty and admirable arrangements. Besides the splendid public-school system there is the University of Denver, a few miles from the city; St. Mary's (Catholic) Academy, and two large (Episcopal) schools for girls and boys, respectively,—"Wolfe Hall" and St. John's College. The Woman's College and Westminster University complete this large group of educational institutions which centre in Denver. There is also the University of Colorado at Boulder, which has established a record for success under the able administration[Pg 47] of Dr. James H. Baker, who, in January of 1892, was called to the presidency after having served as principal of the Denver High School for seventeen years. President Baker is well known in educational circles in the United States as a scholarly man and a capable college president. He has been offered the presidency of other State universities from time to time, but has preferred to remain in Boulder and to concentrate his efforts toward making this institution one of the largest and best of the state universities. He has always been active in the State Teachers' Association and the National Council of Education.

For three years past the University of Colorado has held a summer school with a large attendance of teachers and college students. In this past season of 1906, Professor Paul Hanus of Harvard University gave a valuable course of lectures on education, and Professor Hart, also of Harvard, conducted a course in history.

Over a hundred and fifteen thousand pupils are enrolled in the public schools of Denver, including all grades, from the primary to the high school. The latter offers the full equivalent of a college education freely to all.

The churches of Denver are numerous, and include many fine edifices besides the large granite Methodist Church that cost over a quarter of a million dollars. It is not, however, only the church structures that are noble and impressive, but the preaching in them is of[Pg 48] an unusually high order of both intellectual power and spiritual aspiration. The keen, critical life of Colorado's capital demands the best thought of the day. The wonderful exhilaration of the atmosphere seems to exert its influence on all life as a universal inspiration.

The new building for the Denver Public Library is under process of construction, an appropriation of a quarter of a million dollars having been made for the edifice, which will stand in a small triangular park, insuring air and light, and giving to its approach a stately and beautiful dignity.

The Colorado capital is tending to fulfil the poet's ideal of affording

"room in the streets for the soul."

The life is most delightful. Without any undue and commonplace formalities, yet always within that fine etiquette which is the unconscious result of good breeding, the meeting and mingling has a cordial and sincere basis that lends significance to social life. The numerous clubs, and the associations for art and music, for Italian, French, and German readings, are all vital and prominent in the city, and the political equality of woman imparts to conversation a tone of wider thought and higher importance than is elsewhere invariably found.

Denver, which should be the capital city of the United States, is pre-eminently the convention city.[Pg 49] Even with all the beauty of Washington and the vast sums that have been expended within the past fifteen years in the incomparable structure for the Library of Congress, and in other fine public buildings, and the splendor of the private residence region,—even with all this, and the fact that the Capitol itself is one of the notable architectural creations of the world, the nation is great enough and rich enough to found a new capital which should far surpass the present one, however fine that present one may be. However great are the treasures of art and architecture in Washington, the change could be, even now, made with the greatest advantage for the future. Within a quarter of a century all that invests Washington with such charm in architectural beauty and in art could be more than duplicated in Denver. The nation has wealth enough, and the most modern ideas and inspirations in these lines surpass those of any previous age or decade. The present is "the heir of all the ages."

No one need marvel that Denver ranks as the western metropolis of the Union, with its delightful climate, its infinite interests, its centre as a point for charming excursions, and its sixteen railroad lines.

In this atmosphere of opportunity and privilege there is, indeed, "room for the soul" and all that the poet's phrase suggests. There is room for all noble and generous development; for the expansion of the spirit to ex[Pg 50]press itself in all loveliness of life, all splendid energy of achievement; and in all that makes for the supreme aim of a nation,—that of a Christian civilization,—no city can offer greater scope than does Denver the Beautiful.

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THE PICTURESQUE REGION OF PIKE'S PEAK

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[Pg 52] 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[Pg 53] 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[Pg 54] hidden romance of the air. The scientist alone may translate this aërial hieroglyphic.

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.

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. [Pg 55]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.

SUMMIT OF PIKE'S PEAK, COLORADO

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[Pg 56] 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[Pg 57] 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[Pg 58] 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[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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[Pg 61] 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,[Pg 62] 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[Pg 63] 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:

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,[Pg 64] 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.

WILLIAMS CAÑON, NEAR MANITOU, COLORADO

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[Pg 65] halls, so that all sorts of hospitalities and entertainments can be there enjoyed.

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:

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[Pg 66] 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.

SEVEN FALLS, CHEYENNE CAÑON, NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

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[Pg 67] 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.

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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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.

The usual feature of the situation as trains circle around[Pg 71] 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.

ST. PETER'S DOME, ON THE CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT LINE

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[Pg 72] 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[Pg 73] 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[Pg 74] 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[Pg 75] 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.

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[Pg 76] 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.

VIEW FROM BULL HILL, RICHEST GULCH IN THE WORLD

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[Pg 77] 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.

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[Pg 78] 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.

[Pg 79]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[Pg 80] 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.

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,[Pg 81] 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":

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.

[Pg 84]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.[Pg 85] 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.[Pg 86] 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."

[Pg 87]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[Pg 88] 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.

[Pg 89]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[Pg 90] 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.

[Pg 91]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[Pg 92] 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."

GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF THE GODS, COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

CATHEDRAL SPIRES, 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[Pg 93] 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.

---

SUMMER WANDERINGS IN COLORADO

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[Pg 95] 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[Pg 96] 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:

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[Pg 97] 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[Pg 98] 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?

In nearly all the cañons and caves of this surrounding region are found traces of the prehistoric peoples who[Pg 99] 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.

THE WALLS OF THE CAÑON, GRAND RIVER

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[Pg 100] 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.

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[Pg 101] 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.

THE "FAIRY CAVES," COLORADO

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[Pg 102] 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.

Lookout Mountain, rising some twenty-five hundred[Pg 103] 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.

MARSHALL PASS AND MT. OURAY, COLORADO

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.

[Pg 104]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

It becomes an important factor in the world's work. For instance, in lovely Manitou,—the little town that dreams[Pg 105] 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.

[Pg 106]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,[Pg 107] 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[Pg 108] 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[Pg 109] 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[Pg 110] 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[Pg 111] 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[Pg 112] 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.

THE WONDERFUL HANGING LAKE, NEAR GLENWOOD SPRINGS, COLORADO

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[Pg 113] 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.

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[Pg 114] 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[Pg 115] 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[Pg 116] 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[Pg 117] 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[Pg 118] 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[Pg 119] 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."

[Pg 120]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[Pg 121] 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[Pg 122] 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[Pg 123] 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[Pg 124] 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[Pg 125] 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[Pg 126] 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[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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.

[Pg 129]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:

[Pg 130]

"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,[Pg 131] 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.

[Pg 132]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[Pg 133] 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[Pg 134] 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[Pg 135] 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[Pg 136] 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 [Pg 137]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.

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[Pg 138] 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[Pg 139] 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[Pg 140] 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[Pg 141] 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[Pg 142] 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[Pg 143] 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,[Pg 144] 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[Pg 145] 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[Pg 146] 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.

[Pg 147]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,[Pg 148] 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,[Pg 149] 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,[Pg 150] 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.

SULTAN MOUNTAIN

[Pg 151]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[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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[Pg 154] 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[Pg 155] 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.

[Pg 156]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

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THE COLORADO PIONEERS

Not even the starry splendor of Colorado skies or the untold magic of the atmosphere vibrating with unwritten music, pictorial with such scenes as no artist ever put on canvas; not even the scientific achievements in feats of civil and electrical engineering; not even any advancement of the arts and the development of industries, commerce, or economics that bring the general life into[Pg 158] increasing harmony with the physical environment,—none of these things, important and significant as they are, touch the profoundest interest of Colorado. For this supreme interest is that of the noble men and women whose lives have left to the state the legacy of their hopes, their efforts, their earnestness, and their faith. "Much is made of the Pilgrim Fathers who landed on Plymouth Rock," editorially remarked the "Denver Republican" in an article on "Pioneers' Day," in June of 1906; "and if there had been phonographs in those days to preserve the record of the speech of one of those old fugitives from European persecution, with what delight the men and women of this generation would listen to the tones which come from the instrument! But, after all, were the Pilgrim Fathers, canonized by nearly three hundred years of tradition, any braver, any more venturesome, any more worthy of honor, than the pioneers who fought Indians and struggled against adverse fortune of every kind while they laid in fear and hope the foundations of this great state?"

Among the poems of Walt Whitman is one entitled "The Beginners," which interprets a high quality of life. The lines are as follows:

The price was paid by the pioneers of Colorado. They poured out lavishly all their hope, their indomitable energy, their patience, which was faith, as well. They planted, knowing that not to themselves would come the harvest. They builded that those yet to come might have shelter. They gave to Colorado such an endowment of potent but invisible force that its momentum pervades the air to-day. The accelerated ratio of power with which spiritual forces proceed defies even the ablest of the statisticians.

In all the chapters of American history there are none more thrilling than the story of the early life in Colorado; there are no chapters that more vividly demonstrate the absolutely present and practical aid of the divine guidance of God acting through His messengers,—those who have lived on earth and have gone on into the life more abundant.

The lives of the remarkable men and women who have been canonized by the church have left the world the better for their being and humanity the richer for the inheritance of their experience. Their history is not to be held merely as tradition or as superstition. Let one visit in Italy Assisi, the home of St. Francis; Siena, the home of St.[Pg 160] Catherine, and follow the footsteps of others whose names enrich the church calendar, to their homes and haunts, and their record becomes vivid and vitalized as, to a stranger visiting Boston, might become the footsteps of her noble and consecrated lives which are yet almost within universal personal remembrance: the lives of Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, Emerson, Whittier, Lucy Stone, Lowell, Mary A. Livermore, James Freeman Clarke, and Phillips Brooks,—men and women whom Boston may well hold as her prophets and her saints. They, too, were of the order of "The Beginners." They sowed the seeds of the higher life. They were receptive to all high counsels from the ethereal world, from the divine realms; they listened to great truths which the multitude did not hear, and they gave it anew by voice and by pen, till all the world might hear and read and receive it. They were, indeed,—

"God's prophets of the Beautiful."

Such persons were living a twofold life during their entire earthly pilgrimage, and we may well recall their lives and link them with those of the great and the holy men and women of all ages and all climes.

The pathfinders of human progress do not live for personal ease,—

"The hero is not fed on sweets."

These are royal natures, who come into the world not to enjoy ease and prosperity, but who bring with them the[Pg 161] high destiny of sacrifice. Their lives are companioned with struggle and conflict. Of such experiences as theirs well might be asked the question so impressively conveyed in these noble lines by America's great woman poet,—our poet who sang the song of the nation's "Battle-Hymn,"—Julia Ward Howe:

These Shining Ones are on earth to serve as co-workers with the divine power; to serve through good fortune or ill fortune; through evil report or good report,—still to serve; still to follow The Gleam. These are the men who

[Pg 162]The names of many of these heroic pioneers of Colorado may be unwritten save in the pages of the Recording Angel; but they live and are immortal in the influence they have left as a heritage to succeeding generations, in the trains of thought and purposes they initiated, and in all that potent power of generous aims and noble ideals,—for all advancing civilization rests on lofty ideals. "While the basis of civilization must be material," says the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames of Boston, "its life must be spiritual. Its end and object must be the soul, and not the body; and it will provide all best things for the body, that the soul may be worthily housed and served. The higher and chief interests of society will always be intellectual, affectional, aspirational—human and humane. The true, the beautiful, and the good—almost unknown to the barbarian, and often mocked at by the Philistines of modern society—will be sought for as men seek for gold and pearls of great price. Wealth will bring its offering to the altars of education and art and worship. Science, as it searches the worlds of matter and of mind, will find new and sacred parables and gospels of grace. Learning will be a priestess of truth. The imagination of man will wander and wander in the wide creation, free, fearless, and glad, knowing that the Father's house is everywhere, and that his child may be everywhere at home."

In many of the pioneer households of Colorado, whether[Pg 163] those of plenty or of privation, the children had the inestimable advantage of the refined and beautiful atmosphere of a home in which high ideals and lofty devotion to intellectual progress and spiritual culture prevailed. If schools were insufficient, there were the trained educational methods of both the father and the mother under which they were reared and taught; and poverty of purse cannot greatly matter where there is no poverty of the spirit.

Well may these pioneers of Colorado be held as belonging to that order of humanity which the poet calls "The Beginners." Some of them were unlettered and untaught save in the great school of life itself; some of them were rich in learning and culture; but they all shared in common a devotion to progress differing only in degree or conception: they shared common sacrifices; they gave their best energies to the development of a great and beautiful state whose increasing rate of progress is to them an immortal monument. These leaders of humanity whom the poet so finely characterizes as "The Beginners" are an order of people always appearing on earth. They are of those who hear the Song in the air and behold the Star in the sky. They are the persons who discern—and follow—The Gleam. Their lives are rich in service and sacrifice. Their kingdom is not of this world. Their lives are not unfrequently cheerless and cold, but on their altar fires glows the living coal sent down from heaven. They fast that others may feast. They accept privations that others[Pg 164] may revel in possessions. They pay the inexorable price for the same great purchase. They are those who are sent on earth peculiarly set apart to co-operate with God in the larger fulfilment of the divine laws. They pay the inexorable price of toil and labor and sorrow and sacrifice. They rise into the everlasting triumph and the beauty and the joy of spirituality of life. They give all for this; they find all in it. But let no one resign his hopes or his dreams. Let no one doubt, for an instant, that all of goodness and beauty and sweetness and joy that he longs for is on its way toward him. It is only a question of time. Let him be patient, which is not a mere passive and negative condition, but one full of intense activities and serene poise; let him be patient and believing, and make room in his life for that immortal joy which no man taketh from him.

The town of Greeley, with its felicitous location midway between the two state capitals, Denver and Cheyenne, fifty miles from each, and which is already the principal town of Northern Colorado as Pueblo is of the southern part of the state, has a romantic and thrilling story connected with its founding. In the history of Colorado, among the many men whose lives stand out in noble pre-eminence, was that of the founder of Greeley, Hon. Nathan Cook Meeker, whose personal life is inseparably associated with the interesting town which owes to him its origin.

The Meekers trace their ancestry to men who went to[Pg 165] England from Antwerp about 1500. In 1639 Robert and William Meeker came to this country and settled in New Haven. Thirty years later William Meeker removed to New Jersey, and the town of Elizabeth was founded by him and named for his wife. He was a leader in the affairs of the day, held prominent office, and in 1690 he died, leaving the old Meeker homestead in Newark, New Jersey, which is still in the possession of his descendants. One of his sons was Joseph Meeker, also prominent in promoting the conditions of progress, and he was the grandfather of Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of Greeley, who inherited the qualities that have made the family a marked one in America. When he was but seventeen he carried on an extensive correspondence with Henry Clay, John Tyler, George D. Prentice, and other noted men of the day, discussing with them subjects of importance, and he was a contributor even in these early years to the "Louisville Journal," then edited by George D. Prentice, and now the "Courier-Journal," edited by the brilliant Colonel Henry Watterson; to the New Orleans "Picayune," and other leading papers. Even in his early youth Mr. Meeker seems to have been a man of perpetual aspiration and honorable ambition carried out to achievement, and by means of his own energy and persistence he graduated in 1840 from Oberlin College, became a teacher, and later (for literary work was his dominant gift) became a regular contributor to the "New[Pg 166] York Mirror," edited by N. P. Willis, the poet, and the most brilliant man of letters of his day. Mr. Meeker wrote both prose and poetry,—essays, romance, and verse alike flowing from his facile pen. He is the author of three books, one of which he dedicated to President Pierce, and which is in the Boston Public Library among the choice and rare works not allowed for general circulation but kept intact for the special use of scholars and researchers. He became one of the leading writers of the day on sociology, advancing many ideas which are to-day maintained by thoughtful students of the questions involved in this subject.

Founding towns seemed to "run in the family," and even as his great-grandfather founded the town of Elizabeth, New Jersey, so Nathan Cook Meeker felt the impulse to stamp his own strong and progressive individuality on new communities. He became the secretary and librarian (in 1844) of the Ohio Trumbull Phalanx, a colony founded to realize in practical form the theories of Fourier, and somewhat similar to the famous Brook Farm experiment. Mr. Meeker also co-operated in founding the Western Reserve Institute, of which, many years afterward, Hon. James A. Garfield became president.

About this time he married Arvilla Delight, a daughter of Levi Smith of Connecticut and a descendant of Elder Brewster; a woman whose singular force, exaltation, and beauty of character may be traced through a notable[Pg 167] New England ancestry. The family soon removed to the Western Reserve in Ohio. Mrs. Meeker had been known in her sweet girlhood as the beauty of the town. She was a woman of exceptional refinement and culture; for many years a teacher, and, more than all, of a spirituality of character that added to her life its dignity and grace.

The spell of destiny, the burden always laid upon "The Beginners," seemed to be on Nathan Cook and Arvilla Delight Meeker; for no history of the work of the husband could be written that did not include that of the wife. Like Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, their lives were conjoined in that perfect mutual response of spiritual sympathy which alone makes the mystic marriage a divine sacrament.

Horace Greeley became interested in Mr. Meeker's work and invited him to a place on the editorial staff of "The Tribune," a position which he filled with conspicuous ability for several years; but in common with all idealists, Mr. Meeker was haunted and beset by his visions of a more Utopian future for humanity. A Colorado journal, recently giving some reminiscences of the life of its great citizen, said:

"In the fall of 1869 Mr. Meeker made a trip to the West for the 'Tribune,' writing interesting letters by the way. On his return to New York he was full of the idea of establishing[Pg 168] a colony in Colorado. He mentioned his ambition to John Russell Young, who talked it over with Mr. Greeley, and that great man, at the first opportunity, said to the returned correspondent: 'I understand you wish to lead a colony to Colorado.' When Mr. Meeker answered 'Yes,' Greeley added, 'I think it would be a great success. Go ahead; "The Tribune" will stand by you.'

"With such encouragement Mr. Meeker spent the following day in writing the article announcing his purpose and outlining the plan which was afterwards adopted as the constitution of the colony. Mr. Greeley suggested a few minor changes, after which the article was printed and kept in type for a week, in order, as its author said, 'that there might be due reflection and no haste.' It was published in the 'Tribune' of December 14, 1869, with an editorial indorsement of the plan and its originator. Nine days later the colony was organized, and yet in that short time more than a thousand letters had been received in answer to the article. On the 15th of the next April the certificate of organization of 'The Union Colony of Greeley' was filed for record."

In less extended detail some outline of the life of the founder of Greeley, the "Garden City" of Colorado, has already been narrated by the writer in a previous book;[1] but no adequate reference can be made to the state in which Mr. Meeker's life and work remains as so remarkable[Pg 169] a contribution and so fundamental a factor, which does not present in full the story of his relation to its development; and the matter is thus presented even at the risk of some minor repetitions.

In the spring of 1870 Mr. Meeker led his colony to Colorado. The colonists wished to give the town the name of its founder, but he himself insisted that it should bear the name of Greeley, after the great editor of the "Tribune," of whose staff he was still a member. Into all the sacrifice and the hardships of this pioneer life Mrs. Meeker, a woman gently born and bred, entered with the utmost heroism. From the very inception the undertaking was a signal success. But Mr. Meeker conceived of still another extension of his activities in the problem then so prominently before the country,—the civilization of the Indians. He was appointed agent of the northern Utes, in possession of the great park region of the Rocky Mountains, on White River. To it he went in the same spirit in which General Armstrong entered on his work at Hampton. He had matured certain theories regarding the proper treatment of the Indians, in bringing them within the pale of the civilized arts,—theories so wise, so just, so humane, that they might be studied with advantage. These theories he put to the test. His youngest daughter, a beautiful and gifted girl, opened a free school for teaching the Indians. His wife united with him in every kindly and gracious act by which he strove to win[Pg 170] the confidence of the race. This kindness and gentleness was unmeasured. The family lived a life of constant sacrifice and effort for the education and training of the Utes. But the Indian nature is one that wreaks its revenge,—not necessarily on the aggressor, but on the first comer. Other agents had been lax, and a number of causes of discontent to which allusion cannot here be made fanned the smouldering fire. Their chief complaints were that they were required to work, and to abandon a bit of pasturage, only a few acres, for the new agency grounds and gardens. Events drew on like the fates in a Greek tragedy, and on the morning of September 29, 1879, Mr. Meeker was cruelly massacred.

The little town of Meeker marks the site of the Meeker massacre. Here is a little village of a thousand inhabitants, located on White River, among the most beautiful of the mountain ranges,—the location being very much like that of Florence, in Italy,—which is the centre of a very rich agricultural and grazing region. Meeker is now forty-five miles from a railroad, the nearest station being Rifle, on the Denver and Rio Grande, a few miles from Glenwood Springs; but the Moffet road brings to it railroad connection with Denver. There is an extensive stage line of over one hundred miles, starting from Rifle and going on through Meeker up into the mountains, where the hunting attracts a great number of travellers, and especially many Englishmen. It is in[Pg 171] this region that President Roosevelt's happy hunting-grounds lie, and he is a familiar and favorite figure in Meeker.

There is a little gray-stone Episcopal church among other churches that adorn this town, which has laid out a handsome park and which has the perpetual adornment of the beautiful river that flows through it. The mountains about supply streams that make irrigation easy, and the great fields of wheat, potatoes, and alfalfa are fertile and prosperous. Irrigation makes it everywhere possible to control the climatic conditions.

Meeker is the county seat of Rio Blanco County, in which uranium has been discovered in two different places; and two oil wells, each at a cost of four thousand dollars, a creamery, costing nearly six thousand dollars, and water-works at a cost of sixty thousand dollars, have been established within the past two years. Fifteen reservoirs and eighty miles of irrigation ditches were constructed in 1905, and in that year was harvested, in this county, a quarter of a million bushels of wheat, oats, and rye.

The basis on which Greeley was founded is thus outlined in the official documents drawn up by Nathan Cook Meeker:

"I propose to unite with proper persons in the establishment of a Union colony in Colorado territory. A location which I have seen is well watered with streams and springs;[Pg 172] there are beautiful pine groves, the soil is rich, the climate healthful, grass will keep stock the year round, coal and stone are plentiful, and a well-travelled road runs through the property."

Mr. Meeker proceeded to note the cost of the land,—eighteen dollars for every one hundred and sixty acres,—and he especially called attention—for he had the poet's eye—to the grandeur of the Rocky Mountain scenery, and he added:

"The persons with whom I would be willing to associate must be temperance men and ambitious to establish good society, and among as many as fifty, ten should have as much as ten thousand dollars each, or twenty should have five thousand dollars each, while others may have from two hundred dollars to one thousand dollars and upward. For many to go so far without means could only result in disaster."

The practical wisdom of this clause will be appreciated. The true idealist is the most practical and wisest of counsellors. It is only false idealism that leads to destruction. Mr. Meeker's idea was to make the settlement a village, with ample building lots, and then to apportion to each family from forty to one hundred and sixty acres outside for agriculture.

On such a basis as this the Union Colony of Greeley was founded. A constitution was adopted that is a model of the condensation of the duties of good citizenship. Industry,[Pg 173] temperance, education, and religion were the pillars on which the superstructure was raised. It is little wonder that the social quality of Greeley to-day—thirty-six years after its inauguration as a community—is of the highest type and exceptional among all the cities of the United States.

Irrigation was the first necessity. A canal thirty miles long was dug, costing sixty thousand dollars. The Cache la Poudre was first examined and then tapped to furnish water. The elevation of the surrounding high bluffs secured the needed descent for the flow of water. The life began.

Greeley is now a town of some seven thousand inhabitants; the seat of the State Normal College, which its president, Dr. Z. X. Snyder, has made one of the great educational institutions, not only of Colorado, but of the United States; a college that draws students from almost every section, even from New England, so able is President Snyder's course of instruction and so admirable are the opportunities it affords for subsequent connection with the fine public school system in Colorado. A position in any of these offers a higher salary than can be obtained in the East, to say nothing of many other advantages associated with the work. Dr. Snyder was one of the eminent educators of the East; and when some sixteen years since he accepted his present responsible office, he brought to it the best traditions of Eastern culture[Pg 174] and united them with the zeal and freedom and infinite energy of the West. The Normal campus of forty acres on high ground, overlooking the town, with President Snyder's residence in the grounds and other college buildings near, comprise a beautiful feature of Greeley. The western view, both from the college and from the home of President and Mrs. Snyder, over the mountain range including Long's Peak, is one of almost incomparable beauty. The faculty of the State Normal comprises thirty specialists; there is a library of thirty thousand volumes; the laboratory has the latest scientific equipment of the day; the art department and the music course are admirably conducted; French, German, and Italian are taught according to the latest language methods; and athletics, domestic science, nature studies, all receive due recognition. The "Training School" of the State Normal College has an attendance of nearly five hundred, and the graduates of this institution begin work on salaries ranging from five hundred to twenty-five hundred dollars annually. The tuition is free to all citizens of Colorado.

The many churches, the excellent public schools, the clubs and societies for social enjoyment and improvement, indicate the high quality of life in Greeley. There are three newspapers; and of these the "Greeley Tribune," founded by Mr. Meeker and now under the able editorship of Mr. C. H. Wolfe, has created for itself more than[Pg 175] a local reputation. Financially, Greeley stands well, with its several banks and its solidity of resources.

There is hardly a shabby house to be found in all the town, whether of residence or business. Every building has a neat and thrifty aspect, and the art of architecture has been especially studied, for almost without exception every house, whether large or small, is tasteful and attractive. A bay window is thrown out here, a little balcony there, a piazza, a loggia, an oriel window, and the eye is gratified. But, besides this dainty and tasteful architecture, the one great feature of Greeley is her beautiful streets. These are due directly to the taste and the direction of the founder, Mr. Meeker. The streets are one hundred feet wide, lined invariably—every street in the town—with a double row of shade trees, giving coolness, beauty, and contributing much to the modification of the temperature. Every deed granted in Greeley forbids the sale of any intoxicating liquor. There is not a saloon in the place. There is not a loafer or a criminal, nor are there any poor in the unfortunate sense of the large cities. No police are needed. The jail is locally known as a mere ornamental appendage to the fine forty thousand dollar courthouse.

For many years it has been felt that some expression should be made in honor of the memory of the founder of Greeley, and this has now taken form in the project for the "Meeker Memorial Library," which is in preparation.[Pg 176] The beautiful young city is itself, however, the best memorial of its noble founder. It is a living monument of perpetually increasing greatness and beauty; and who to-day can wander under the shade of the beautiful trees which in a double row line every street and boulevard—trees planted in 1870 under Mr. Meeker's personal superintendence—without hearing amid the rustle of their whispering leaves the poet's words, that fall like a benediction:

The glamour of romance can never fade from Colorado, whose entire history is one of heroic deeds and splendid energy; but the primitive stage of the state is already left far behind with the nineteenth century. In its intellectual and scientific development the years of the twentieth century[Pg 177] have almost exceeded its twenty-four years of life as a state in the nineteenth. The tide of immigration still continues, but from being the objective point of mining activities where fortune hunters rushed to find a royal road to riches, it is now a state of agriculture and of commerce. Social conditions are thus altered; and though some of these conditions are those of mining regions, as in the Cripple Creek district, they have altered from the typical Bret Harte mining-camp life to those of orderly progress,—to the life dominated by twentieth-century ideals of humanity; the life whose framework is seen in public-school systems, in religious observance, in the liberal reading of periodical and other literature, and in the maintenance of public libraries as a necessity in every community.

The dawn of literary and artistic development in Colorado is very evident,—a dawn that is already of such radiant promise as to forecast the day when this state shall contribute to our greatest national literature. A large number of individual writers could already be named whose work in books, magazine articles, and excellent journalism might well be held as typical of the best culture of the entire country. The first wild turmoil of a new and richly varied state has given way to a prosperous, progressive commonwealth. Material progress must still always precede the higher growth, yet the air is vital with ideas, and the vision of Colorado is always toward the[Pg 178] stars. The beauty and majesty of the environment cannot but react upon the people. The growth of women's clubs has been one steady factor of progress, with most favorable effect on all the general life of intellectual and moral advancement. The public libraries in every centre establish and develop the reading habit. While a love for beauty is an element in human life, the influence of the transcendent majesty and incomparable sublimity of the Colorado scenery will continue to prove a source of inspiration to the mental and moral life of the people. The changing colors of the mountains are a constant delight. Colorado offers a perpetual feast of beauty. Her resources are infinite. Colorado combines all the exaltation of the untried with an abundance of the conveniences and luxuries of the older civilization; and of this Centennial State it is difficult to record facts and statistics that do not seem to suggest the tales of a thousand nights. With resources and with scenic loveliness which no language could exaggerate, it is still only to those who themselves know and appreciate the grandeur of this state that any interpretation of it will appear as rather within than as at all beyond the limits of the most statistical and demonstrable facts. The East has already outgrown the tradition that the entire trans-Mississippi region is a howling wilderness. Colorado is no longer as vague as is Calcutta to the average mind. Dr. Edward Everett Hale exclaimed that he desired his sons to know that there was something in the[Pg 179] world besides Beacon Street, and this ambition has of late years become too prevalent to leave even the extreme East in any absolute and total ignorance of the wonderful West. Still it may be true that the flying visions from Pullman-car windows are marvellously extended and intensified by increasing familiarity with the almost incredibly swift progress of this region.

A typical illustration of the fallibility of human judgment is seen in the attitude taken in 1838 by the great Daniel Webster on the floor of the United States Senate against an appropriation for a post route west of the Missouri River.

"What do we want," said he, "of this vast worthless area,—this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, shifting sands, and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or these endless mountain ranges, impregnable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What use have we for such a country? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch nearer Boston than it is to-day."

It is a far cry from this "vast worthless area," as Mr. Webster termed it in 1838, to the grand and richly promising state of to-day, with its splendid young cities where art and science unite with literature and ethics in the rapid development of social progress; with its mountain ranges climbed in palace cars; its electric transit and electric lighting; its[Pg 180] vivid and forceful achievements, that even in each decade concentrate the progress of a century, as seen in the past.

It is not a mere vagary, but rather a practical and momentous fact, that Colorado is peculiarly the realm receptive to invisible potencies and mental impressions. Science is now confronted with the question as to whether thought and electricity may be identified as the same force under different degrees of manifestation. "There is an elemental essence—a strange living force—which surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought," says an English scientist, and he continues: "This essence responds with the most wonderful delicacy to the faintest action of our minds or desires; and this being so, it is interesting to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite thought or desire." All the significance of a thousand years may be concentrated in an instant's thought, as all the heat stored up in all the forests of the world is concentrated in a small quantity of radium. Emerson embodies this truth in the stanza:

Los Angeles, "the City of the Angels," is invested with the same poetic suggestion in its name as that which surrounds Santa Fé,—"the City of the Holy Faith." A terraced street is known as "Angel Flight." Any retrospective contemplation of Los Angeles gives one the sensation of having been whirled through the starry immensities of space. During even a brief stay one afterward discovers by the unerring logic of mathematics that within a few days he has perhaps travelled some four hundred miles by the electric trolley cars, besides his motor-car journeys when shot through space from old San Gabriel to the[Pg 299] Pacific Coast, or from Elysium Park to Hollywood, and far and away on the opposite side of the city. Were one caught up in an aëro-car, journeying far above the clouds for ten days, it could hardly seem more unreal. One can only think of Los Angeles as the City of Vast Spaces. The town has laid out all the surrounding country, one would fancy, in beautiful tracts (there are over four thousand), each tract containing several acres,—laid out under alluring names, with streets, sidewalks, and lamp-posts.

The "boom" is something tremendous. Companies and corporations run free electric cars to points forty miles out of town, as Redondo Beach and other localities, for people to inspect the lots offered,—lots at prices from "four dollars down, and four dollars a month," with the entire cost from ninety dollars up to that of several hundred. If all the world is not supplied with homes it is not the fault of enterprising Los Angeles. The incomparable electric trolley system renders the entire region within fifty miles around eligible for city privileges. People think nothing of going thirty, forty, even seventy-five miles by the "express electrics." Over an area of a thousand miles in length and perhaps one hundred and fifty in width there is scattered a population less than that centred within city limits in Chicago. The world is wide—in Southern California. There is nothing of the dreamy,[Pg 300] languorous old Spanish atmosphere in Los Angeles. It is the most electrically up-to-date city imaginable. The city limits comprise over twenty-eight thousand acres. The streets are paved and oiled; the lighting is wonderful, most of it being done from tall towers rather than ordinary lamp-posts. Not even New York has any street or avenue so illuminated by night as is Broadway in Los Angeles, where, as in the boulevards in Paris, one can easily read by the street lights. Los Angeles has twenty-one great parks and innumerable hills and valleys in the residence regions. This diversity affords natural facilities for landscape gardening which are utilized with fine effect. Spacious boulevards, artificial lakes, and series of terraces everywhere enchant the eye, seen amidst the bewildering luxuriance of creamy magnolia blossoms and the graceful pepper tree.

The enterprise of Los Angeles is equalled by the refinement and culture of the people, and the schools, churches, libraries—the social life—all reveal the best spirit of American institutions.

That this is one of the spellbinding cities goes without saying. Everything is in gleam and glitter and glow. The electric car and the telephone system are here developed to a higher degree than perhaps in any other Western city except Denver. The growth of Los Angeles is something fairly incredible. A leading park commissioner, Dr. Lamb, has described the beauty of the four thousand tracts of land (each tract comprising many[Pg 301] acres), all laid out, ready for buyers and builders. Of the twenty-one parks, one comprises more than three thousand acres, and another, Elysium Park, over eight hundred acres of hills and valleys already decoratively laid out with terraced drives and beautiful shrubs, flowers, and artificial lakes. The trend of the city is rapidly toward the ocean, some fifteen to twenty miles away, and it can hardly be five years before from Venice and Santa Monica, on the coast, to Pasadena, ten miles to the east of Los Angeles, there will be one solid city, one vast metropolis of the Southwest. The public library is ably administered, and it is one of considerable breadth of resources, with the advantage of having for its librarian Mr. Charles F. Lummis, the well-known writer on the Southwest. Madam Severance, who in 1878 founded the Woman's Club, a large and influential association of which for many years she was the president, and Mrs. Rebecca Spring, the friend of Margaret Fuller, are two Boston women who have transferred their homes to Los Angeles and whose lives emphasize Emerson's assertion that it is the fine souls who serve us and not what we call fine society.

The rush and the brilliancy of life in all this Los Angeles region transcend description. Broadway has more than two miles of fine business blocks, the architecture being restricted to some eight or nine stories. The beautiful parks, with their artificial lakes, their[Pg 302] date-palm trees, their profusion of brilliant flowers, attract the eye. There are residence sections of exceeding beauty,—the lawns bordered by hedges of rosebushes in full bloom and perhaps another rose hedge separating the sidewalk from the street.

From the high plateaus of Northern Arizona to the blossoming plains of California is a contrast indeed. In Arizona these thousands of acres need only irrigation to become richly productive. The climate is delightful, for the elevation—over seven thousand feet—insures coolness and exhilaration almost every day through the summer. But at present there seems no conceivable way to procure water with which to irrigate. In California precisely the same land is irrigated and has also the advantage of a rainy season, and the vegetation and fruits abound luxuriously. Orange groves, with the golden fruit shimmering on the trees; lemon groves, olive orchards, and the avenues and groves of the eucalyptus tree make fair the landscape. An important industry here is that of lima beans. Tracts of fifteen hundred acres sown with these are not unusual, and the crops are contracted for by Russia and Germany almost as soon as sown. On one of these it is said that the owner had made a princely fortune within two years. The creation of the city in imagination is in great favor. Vast tracts of country from one to ten miles outside the city limits are staked out, as before noted; avenues and streets defined[Pg 303] and named, lamp-posts erected, an attractive name given the locality, and lots are offered for sale from perhaps four or five hundred dollars up, on the terms of "fifty dollars down and ten dollars a month."

The trolley-car service in and around Los Angeles is said to be the best in the world. To Venice and Santa Monica, on the beach,—at a distance of some seventeen miles,—there are electric "flyers" that make the trip within thirty minutes. Venice is a French Étretat. The little rows of streets at right angles with the coast line, running down to the water, are named "Rose Avenue," "Ozone Avenue," "Sunset Street," and other alluring names. This Venice is a veritable (refined and artistic) "Midway," with its colonnades of shops offering every conceivable phase of trinkets and bijouterie; its concert halls, casino, gay little restaurants, and every conceivable variety of amusement. It is the most unique little toy town of a creation conceivable, and the electrical display and decorations at night are fascinating in their scenic effect.

Santa Monica, some two miles farther up the coast, is still, stately, and poetic. Here the blue Pacific rolls in in the most bewildering sea greens and deep blues, and over it bends a sky rivalling that of Arizona in depth and richness of color. The entire Pacific Coast is an idyl of landscape loveliness.

But of life. What are the people of this lovely young[Pg 304] city of two hundred thousand inhabitants doing and thinking? It is not a question to be answered in a paragraph. Life here is intense, interesting, full of color and movement, and its many-faceted aspects invite consideration. As one sits, for instance, on a Pasadena piazza, with the golden glory of the sunset seen over the Sierra Madre, and the rose hedges, the orange groves, the great bushes of heliotrope that are almost like young trees pouring out their mingled fragrance on the evening air, one falls under its spell. As the twilight deepens into darkness the great searchlight from Mount Lowe, directly in the foreground, a picturesque panorama, may swing out with its weird, sweeping, dazzling illumination over the scene. When this searchlight is out, people at the far-away beaches can see to read by it at distances of from twenty-five to fifty miles. Quite near Mount Lowe—one of the adjacent peaks—is Mount Wilson, on which the new Carnegie Observatory is to be located. This will be fitted with the largest telescope in the world and will have the advantage of every latest scientific appliance.

Pasadena, like all the California towns and cities, covers very large tracts of country. There is a thriving business centre, not very far from which are the great Raymond Hotel and other winter resorts for the throngs of tourists who are almost as important to the revenues of California as they are to Italy. There are both North and South Pasadena,—each almost a separate city in[Pg 305] itself,—and the most beautiful street is Orange Grove Avenue, with large estates on either side and spacious lawns. On Fair Oaks Avenue, in a pretty cottage, lives Prof. George Wharton James, the famous explorer, scientist, and notable writer on the Grand Cañon in Arizona,—and the greatest interpreter, indeed, of the entire Southwest. The books of Professor James, "In and Out of the Old Missions of California," "The Indians of the Painted Desert," and "Indian Basketry" (besides his book on the "Grand Canyon," which is the accepted authority), interpret the many phases of life in the Southwest in a vivid and accurate manner, rendering them invaluable to contemporary literature. Professor James makes his original explorations, taking with him an assistant and his own camera, and going through varied hardships, almost greater than could be realized. In the vast desert spaces, remote from any human habitation, he has had to swim large, muddy, inland lakes, where vermin were swarming; to go without food and water, and to endure the intense fatigue of long tramps. In perusing his books the reader little dreams at what fearful cost of energy all this original material was obtained. In his home Professor James has a most interesting collection of the objets d'art of the Southwest. One must travel over this part of the country in order to appreciate them. They are as distinctive of New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California as the old[Pg 306] masters and other phases of Italian art are of Italy. There are brilliant Navajo blankets and rugs—soft, rich, and vivid in color, with curiously decorated designs; the most interesting array of Indian pottery—the many specimens from the old tombs being far finer than any pottery done by the modern Indians; and at the entrance to his lawn Professor James has a huge meteorite from Meteorite Mountain in Arizona, which weighs over a ton. He has a large section of a tree of the Petrified Forest, and the finer specimens that show the bark and the fibre, and also the crystallization. His library is large and fine, and comprises many autograph gift copies from other authors.

One feature of the life of Professor James is especially helpful. In his spacious library upstairs, on every Thursday evening, he gives an informal talk on his travels and explorations to his friends and neighbors. His personal experiences in studying the phenomenon of the Salton Sea and the vagaries of the Colorado River, which is a law unto itself, are most interesting.

The call of the wild is not more irresistible than the call of the desert to Professor James. He has lived on it and with it, and learned to read its hieroglyphics. The desert spirits have companioned him. He has explored vast spaces of the Grand Cañon; he has encamped, day after day, even week after week, on the Painted Desert; he has wandered in the grim strange Tonto Basin, and[Pg 307] sailed (of late) the Salton Sea,—this sheet of four hundred square miles of water, this impromptu lake where but a little while before was a deserted hollow of a long extinct volcanic sea. Nature leads man a pretty dance out in this Land of Enchantment. No one would venture to prophesy at night just what stage transformation might take place before morning. This very uncertainty of any particular tenure of mountain, sea, or desert perhaps tends, unconsciously, to so react upon the population that their more real life is thrown forward into the future. For instance, Los Angeles lays no particular stress upon her present population, but announces that by 1910 the figures will undoubtedly reach the half-million mark. Nor, indeed, can the observer doubt this in any contemplation of the present incredible rapidity of progress in every direction. The city seems half made up of millionnaires, and the latest municipal bank clearings amounted to almost four hundred millions of dollars. Los Angeles is really an exotic, for the latest census reveals the astonishing fact that ninety per cent of its inhabitants are from the East, leaving only ten per cent as native Californians. Never was the advertising of a city carried out to the degree of being fairly a fine art so wonderfully as in Los Angeles. In the Chamber of Commerce there is a perpetual exhibition of fruits and flowers in season, and of the products and manufactures of the country.

Los Angeles, like most of the other more important[Pg 308] Western cities, is deeply concerned with irrigation schemes. This region of California supplements its rainfall with irrigation, and between the two the whole country is in bloom and blossom. Los Angeles is now arranging a gigantic scheme to bring water from the Owen's River, two hundred miles away, by means of tunnels through mountains and a huge canal. This fall of water will not only entirely supply the city with water power of immense force and volume, but it is estimated that it will also irrigate a hundred thousand acres. The scheme will employ five thousand men for some four years, and it is estimated that the cost will be twenty-five millions. No undertaking daunts the Western city. If an enterprise is desirable, it is to be achieved. That is the law and the prophets in the Land of Enchantment.

Los Angeles, like Colorado Springs, is the paradise of excursions. The trip up Mount Lowe to the observatory offers a magnificent panorama of landscape, including Pasadena Valley and Catalina and Santa Barbara islands. Old San Gabriel Mission and the San Gabriel Valley are infinitely interesting, and the famous bells of San Gabriel still ring in their quaint, rude stone framework even though they are jangled and out of tune with the lapse of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains rise from the San Gabriel Valley.

One of the excursions has a feature that is new to every visitor,—that of glass-bottom power boats which give a view of the marvels of the ocean. These boats run from[Pg 309] Avalon on the coast—an hour's express trolley ride from Los Angeles—to the submarine gardens adjoining Catalina Island, and they have a capacity to seat over a hundred passengers around the glass. In sailing over these submarine gardens the boats move very slowly, that the passengers may enjoy the view of the strange seaweed, the marine flowers, the varied aquatic vegetation. Catalina Island is a favorite sea resort, lying in such convenient proximity to the city.

Los Angeles seems to be the paradise of every one who has a new idea—or ideal—for the betterment of humanity. There is an atmosphere of idealism. Among the recent institutions is the Pacific School of Osteopathy, with a faculty of thirty physicians, men and women, who base their therapeutics on the scientific fact that the body is subject to chemical, electrical, thermal, mental, and mechanical treatment. In the line of ethics Rev. B. Fay Mills has established a comprehensive movement of "Fellowship," including religious services and social intercourse, with a large and enthusiastic membership drawn by this eloquent orator and preacher who for many years before in his pastorate in Boston preached to large congregations who gave him profound appreciation.

A most important centre that radiates sweetness and light in infinite measure is that of Christ Church (Episcopal), whose rector, Rev. Baker P. Lee, is not only[Pg 310] eminent as a preacher, but as a leader and inspirer of a network of organizations connected with the church for the betterment of human life. Christ Church parish is a large one, numbering over two thousand in direct connection with the church, with a list of communicants of over twelve hundred. Within the past three years the parish has built a magnificent new church and a rectory, and the holy earnestness of the young and gifted rector makes the work one of vital spirituality.

No city can offer more beautiful homes than those of Los Angeles; more attractive parks, more enchanting scenery, or more delightful excursions over a network of electric lines which aggregate above five hundred miles of single track and reach one hundred towns and villages from Monrovia of the foothills to Redondo by the sea. The world has but one Southern California, with its cool, soft, gray sea-fogs in the early mornings, followed by its cloudless days of blue sky over golden sunshine; where the sea-breeze gladly brings its health-giving ozone in exchange for the odors of orange blossoms and roses; where the mountains stand glorying in the ruggedness of their rocky cliffs until, touched by sunset's wand, they glow with pink lights and purple shadows; and over all comes a golden radiance that changes the forbidding outlines of their jagged peaks into radiant beauty,—fitting features of the vast panorama of nature to hold their eternal place in the Land of Enchantment.

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GRAND CAÑON; THE CARNIVAL OF THE GODS

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