Chapter XX

Colorado Springs.--Ascent of Pike's Peak.--The View from the Summit.-- The Descent.--The Springs at Manitou.--Treasury of Indian Myth and Legend.--The Collection of Minerals.--Glen Eyrie.--The Garden of the Gods.--Victor Hugo on Sandstone.

We found much to interest us in Colorado Springs. It is a town of great fame as a health resort, and lies on a splendid plateau, with the background of the Rocky Mountains, and Pike's Peak, in all its snowy splendor, in the middle distance.

Near by is Colorado City, and joining on to that is Manitou, where lie the wonderful mineral springs, from which the city of "Colorado Springs" gets its name.

The wise men who founded the city, knew well that there was no room for expansion in the Alpine clefts where the springs lie; and yet they knew, too, their value as an attraction. Hence, the shrewd wisdom to bravely adopt a _lucus a non lucendo_, to call their town "Colorado Springs." They had them not, it is true, but they were near at hand.

It is well that they thus decided for both site and name; for the place chosen, gives ample scope for wide streets, and all the room for expansion, which the coming years demand. As it is, the growth of the place has been phenomenal. It is hard to realize that the public buildings, the churches, the schools, and the splendid homes are all the result of a comparatively brief period.

After our vast journey, we were not in much of a mood for more aggressive sightseeing; but some of our party, bravely attempted the ascent of Pike's Peak, on the cog railway, just opened for the season.

When the party was near the summit, a furious snow-storm came down upon them. The track had been cleared of snow some days before, and huge piles of it lay on each side of the course, but this sudden storm gave fresh obstruction. Men were detailed to clear away the encumbrance, so as to get the train clear up to the adjacent summit; but as they were thus engaged in front, the snow-storm was rapidly filling in the track behind. It was fortunately observed that the dreadful possibility of being snowed up on that bleak height, was imminent; so all hands were called away from further effort to get farther on, and a speedy retreat was made to safety and a lower level, where snow was not. Our merry party had a good snow-balling time, while all this was going on, and did not know, until their return, the fearful possibilities from which they had escaped.

The view from Pike's Peak toward the east is magnificent. The memory of it will never leave me, as I saw it years ago. The vast plain of Kansas stretches out, more sublime even than the ocean. One can mark the winding water courses, by the trees which line their banks; and the dimness, which covers all the great distance, has a sublime effect.

As I descended in the cog train, a furious thunder-storm blotted all the landscape from the view; but soon the converging lines of the mountains became visible, the sun shone out once more from the west, and that great plain was spanned with a double rainbow, so huge, so brilliant, so all-embracing, that its like could not easily be seen, except under similar conditions, and those would be hard to match. It was the most splendid spectacle I have ever beheld.

We had two days at Colorado Springs and vicinity, and enjoyed to the full the charm of our situation at Manitou, where our good car "Lucania" again found a pleasant anchorage.

The mineral springs at Manitou, are of iron and soda. They are now all tamed and chained to commerce; and the place, in the season (we were too early for it), is a scene of excursions, and merry-makings, and all that kind of life which delights in shows and curio shops, and restaurants at all prices.

How sacred a place it must have been to the wild children of the mountain and the plain, as they sought its mystic retreat, for the sake of its healing waters, and its strange, sparkling streams! It was for them, indeed, from Manitou, the Great Spirit.

From the parching drought of the burning summer sun, or the ice-bound cold of winter, they could enter here, at any time, and find refreshment for their thirst, and healing for their wounds.

There surely must be a whole treasury of Indian myth and legend clustering round this spot and its wonderful sacred fountains, all well worth the study of the antiquarian and the poet. I am confident that the place is as rich, in all such matters, as ever Delphi was, or the sacred places of the Greeks.

We were charmed, while at Manitou, by a visit to a superb collection of minerals, beautifully arranged, and all, the product of Colorado. There is something especially attractive in mineral beauty. It took its form in the mystery of darkness, and there, in all its beauty, would remain forever, content to be. But man brings it to the light of day, and we are thrilled as we look at the perfect forms of the crystal, at the rich verdure of the velvet malachite, at the varied veinings of onyx and of agate, and at the many wonders which we admire, but cannot name.

We were told that this splendid collection had been purchased for ten thousand dollars, and was to be shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. It is well worthy of such a place.

While at Colorado Springs we had one or two splendid drives. We went through Glen Eyrie, the residence of General Palmer. The romantic place is kept generously open for carriages, but it is not permitted to any one to dismount, or drive in the roads marked private. It is a delightful spot, where nature is left yet in much of its wildness, and just enough of landscape gardening introduced to give a note of home and refinement. An eagle's nest, high up on the rocks, gives the name Glen Eyrie to the attractive place.

We also went to the Garden of the Gods. This is a great space hemmed in by huge crags, and covered all over with fantastic rock formations.

As we drove through, our coachman sounded out the names of the grotesque groups as we passed them by. It required but little imagination to improve on his list. Whatever the mind might fancy, the sandstone was ready to give. The rocks were as variable and changing as the clouds in "Hamlet." They might be whales, or bears, or dragons, or toadstools, or demons, or anything else vague and fantastic.

I can imagine how such a place would set a nervous person mad. Not, that it is not beautiful also, in a certain sense, but, the gibing, the mocking, the absurd prevails; and one is almost shocked, even when in most sober mood. The mental distress, possible in such a place, seemed all concentrated in the face of a lone young bicyclist, with bicycle by his side, who eagerly questioned us as to the way to Manitou. He had lost his way amid these gruesome wonders, and although it was ludicrous to see his distress, one could not but sympathize with his misery, while lost in this wild, so full of monsters. I may here quote what Victor Hugo, in his "Alps and Pyrenees," says of sandstone. It would seem as if he was actually describing some of the fantastic forms which we saw in the Garden of the Gods.

"Sandstone," he says, "is the most interesting of stones. There is no appearance which it does not take, no caprice which it does not have, no dream which it does not realize. It has every shape; it makes every grimace. It seems to be animated by a multiple soul. Forgive me the expression with regard to such a thing.

"In the great drama of the landscape, sandstone plays a fantastic part. Sometimes it is grand and severe, sometimes buffoon-like; it bends like a wrestler, it rolls itself up like a clown; it may be a sponge, a pudding, a tent, a cottage, the stump of a tree; it has faces that laugh, eyes that look, jaws that seem to bite and munch the ferns; it seizes the brambles like a giant's fist suddenly issuing from the earth. Antiquity, which loved perfect allegories, ought to have made the statue of Proteus of sandstone.

"The aspects presented by sandstone, those curious copies of a thousand things which it makes, possess this peculiarity: the light of day does not dissipate them and cause them to vanish. Here at Pasajes, the mountain, cut and ground away by the rain, the sea, and the wind, is peopled by the sandstone with a host of stony inhabitants, mute, motionless, eternal, almost terrifying. Seated with outstretched arms on the summit of an inaccessible rock at the entrance of the bay, is a hooded hermit, who, according as the sky is clear or stormy, seems to be blessing the sea, or warning the mariners. On a desert plateau, close to heaven, among the clouds, are dwarfs, with beaks like birds, monsters with human shapes, but with two heads, of which one laughs and the other weeps--there where there is nothing to make one laugh and nothing to make one weep. There are the members of a giant, _disjecti membra gigantis_; here the knee, there the trunk and omoplate, and there, further off, the head. There is a big-paunched idol with the muzzle of an ox, necklets about its neck, and two pairs of short, fat arms, behind which some great bramble-bushes wave like fly-flaps. Crouching on the top of a high hill is a gigantic toad, marbled over by the lichens with yellow and livid spots, which opens a horrible mouth and seems to breathe tempest over the ocean."

It was a regret to leave Colorado Springs, but dear home was before us, and Denver, which we reached in the darkness, brought us nearer there.