Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska | Page 8

reach the glorious snow-capped summit
and return to Manitou between breakfast and supper--unless one should
prefer to be rushed up and down over the aerial railway. From the
signal station the view reminds one of a map of the world. It rather
dazes than delights the eye to roam so far, and imagination itself grows
weary at last and is glad to fold its wings.
Manitou's chief attraction lies over the first range of hills--the veritable
Garden of the Gods. You may walk, ride or drive to it; in any case the

surprise begins the moment you reach the ridge's top above Manitou,
and ceases not till the back is turned at the close of the excursion--nor
then either, for the memory of that marvel haunts one like a feverish
dream. Fancy a softly undulating land, delicately wooded and decked
with many an ornamental shrub; a landscape that composes so well one
can scarcely assure himself that the artist or the landscape gardener has
not had a hand in the beautifying of it.
In this lonely, silent land, with cloud shadows floating across it, at long
intervals bird voices or the bleating of distant flocks charm the listening
ear. Out of this wild and beautiful spot spring Cyclopean rocks,
appalling in the splendor of their proportions and the magnificence of
their dyes. Sharp shafts shoot heavenward from breadths of level sward,
and glow like living flames; peaks of various tinges overlook the tops
of other peaks, that, in their turn, lord it among gigantic bowlders piled
upon massive pedestals. It is Ossa upon Pelion, in little; vastly
impressive because of the exceptional surroundings that magnify these
magnificent monuments, unique in their design and almost unparalleled
in their picturesque and daring outline. Some of the monoliths tremble
and sway, or seem to sway; for they are balanced edgewise, as if the
gods had amused themselves in some infantile game, and, growing
weary of this little planet, had fled and left their toys in confusion. The
top-heavy and the tottering ones are almost within reach; but there are
slabs of rock that look like slices out of a mountain--I had almost said
like slices out of a red-hot volcano; they stand up against the blue sky
and the widespreading background in brilliant and astonishing
perspective.
I doubt if anywhere else in the world the contrasts in color and form are
more violent than in the Garden of the Gods. They are not always
agreeable to the eye, for there is much crude color here; but there are
points of sight where these columns, pinnacles, spires and obelisks,
with base and capital, are so grouped that the massing is as fantastical
as a cloud picture, and the whole can be compared only to a petrified
after-glow. I have seen pictures of the Garden of the Gods that made
me nearly burst with laughter; I mean color studies that were supremely
ridiculous in my eyes, for I had not then seen the original; but none of

these makes me laugh any longer. They serve, even the wildest and the
worst of them, to remind me of a morning drive, in the best of company,
through that grand garden where our combined vocabularies of delight
and wonderment were exhausted inside of fifteen minutes; and where
we drove on and on, hour after hour, from climax to climax, lost in
speechless amazement.
Glen Eyrie is the valley of Rasselas--I am sure it is. The Prince of
Abyssinia left the gate open when he, poor fool! went forth in search of
happiness and found it not. Now any one may drive through the domain
of the present possessor and admire his wealth of pictorial
solitude--without, however, sharing it further. If it were mine, would I
permit thus much, I wonder? Only the elect should enter there; and
once the charmed circle was complete, we would wall up the narrow
passage that leads to this terrestrial paradise, and you would hear no
more from us, or of us, nor we of you, or from you, forever.
On my first visit to Colorado Springs I made a little pilgrimage. I heard
that a gentle lady, whom I had always wished to see, was at her home
on the edge of the city. No trouble in finding the place: any one could
direct me. It was a cosy cottage in the midst of a garden and shaded by
thickly leaved trees. Some one was bowed down among the strawberry
beds, busy there; yet the place seemed half deserted and very, very
quiet. Big bamboo chairs and lounges lined the vine-curtained porch.
The shades in the low bay-window were half drawn, and a glint of
sunshine lighted the warm interior. I saw heaps of precious books on
the table in that deep window.