\K* V "^ •His* /jiT ^ oVJIak* V "^ SEEING AMERICA INCLUDING THE PANAMA EXPOSITIONS A DESCRIPTIVE AND PICTURESQUE JOURNEY THROUGH ROMANTIC AND HISTORIC CITIES AND PLACES, NATURAL WONDERS, SCENIC MARVELS OF NATIONAL PRIDE AND INTEREST By LOGAN iVlARSHALL Author of 'The Story of the Panama Canal," "Myths and Legends of All Nations," etc BUtiBtrstfd Philadelphia THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY Publishers ^']''i'^\i^'b Copyiight, 1913, by L. T. Mysm JAN 28 1916 ©Ji,A420r)71 INTRODUCTION THERE IS magic in the word ''travel": it kindles something deep and primordial within us and makes us rise to welcome the man who has been afar as we would to greet a royal guest. We will travel if we can, and if not, then at least we will hsten to the strange and splen- did experiences of those who do. Throughout the ages it has been so. The men who went down to the sea in ships were the most honored and the most envied among all early peoples, and the wander- ing singer was received with joy, not so much for his music as because he brought news from afar, fascinating stories of distant, unknown countries to which few of those who listened could ever hope to go. Travehng has become less and less difficult, of course, and in this twentieth century of steam and steel is quite within the Umits of the possible even for the average man; and the tourist is known throughout the length and breadth of the land, looked upon with something akin to awe in the small towns of the East, and regarded with mild amusement in the West where one sometimes journeys several hundred miles to spend the day with a friend. Yet, though we Americans are a nation of travelers, few of us, except through necessity, spend much time or effort in seeing America. That is ''home" and accord- ingly discounted. England, France, Italy, Japan, China, lure us with the charm of the far-away, bhnd us to the 3 INTRODUCTION truth that it is not the distant that is always most enchanting, but the picturesque or the magnificent, wherever it may be. Americans travel all over the world and find no city so wonderful as New York with its canyon streets and seething masses gathered together from every nation; they visit Asia to study forgotten civilizations when Redskins still live on the Western plains and cliff dwellings reveal strange stories of the past; they take long pilgrimages to the Alps and the Himalayas while the most stupendous sculpture of Nature is unveiled in the valley of the Colorado. Perhaps some day, when Europe like America shall have become a nation of travelers and sung for us the praises of American cities and resorts and great scenic playgrounds, we as a nation shall begin to realize their importance. Here and there, it is true, we find men and women who have journeyed from Land's End to Golden Gate and found America good. They are enthusiastic people always, with a fine flavor of patriotism about them and a quiet inner satisfaction at having discovered within their own country such abundant resources for their refresh- ment and inspiration. It is to these especially that this book will appeal, recalling by word and picture many hours of never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. It will appeal also to those — and they are an ever- increasing number — who would travel if they could, and who long to know more about the places of which they have heard. The author, who has been in the position both of those who long to go and of those who have been, has endeavored to clear up the hazy mental pictures of the former, making their day-dreams more real and abiding, and to revivify the memories of the INTRODUCTION latter. After all, ''home-keeping youths "need not have ''homely wits," for one may read of the Great Plains and breathe their spirit even while one stays quietly at home going the daily round of office and shop. The author has been fortunate enough to have lived in both East and West and to have caught something of the viewpoint of both. In the final analysis, it is the whole of America that we love, North and South, East and West. "Lo! body and soul! — this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land, — the South And the North in the light — Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn." CONTENTS CHAPTER I Modern Towers of Babel PAGB New York the City of Cities — The Mecca of Americans — MaTximoth Skyscrapers — Commerce Encircling the Seven Seas — The Gathering Ground of Many Peoples — Historic Places — Fifth Avenue— The Great White Way— Wall Street— River- side Drive — A People's University — The American Rhine — West Point 13 CHAPTER II Ideas and Ideals Boston, the Ancient Hub — Our Decorous New England Sister — Fundamental Ideals — Sacred American Relics — The Cradle of Liberty — Boston Common — The Public Library — Art and Music— "The Mother Church "—Brave Old Harvard- Boston Harbor 26 CHAPTER III The Birthplace of American Liberty Philadelphia, City of Origins — Remnants of Colonial Days — Independence Hall — Where the First Flag Was Made — The City of Homes— The Quaker City— A Park of Three Thousand Acres — Locomotives to the Whole World — A Pioneer Shipyard — A Place of Vast Industry 38 CHAPTER IV Playgrounds of the East Under the Blue Skies of Maine — The Fashionable World of Bar Harbor — In the White Mountains — Newport, Where Millionaires Congregate — Atlantic City, a Great Democratic Gathering Place 48 7 CONTENTS CHAPTER V Natueal Wonders of the East PAGE The Fairy Realm of Luray Caverns — Mammoth Cave, Kentucky — Natural Bridge — Niagara of a Thousand Moods ... 58 CHAPTER VI Famous Battlefields of Freedom The First Great Battleground of the Revolution — Where Washington and the Patriots Were Well Tested — The Turning Point of the CivU War 67 CHAPTER VII The City Beautiful The Nation's Capital — Capitol Hill and Its Buildings — The Library of Congress — Other Public Buildings — Where Pan- Americans Congregate — The Corcoran Art Gallery — Smithsonian Institution — Washington Monument — Beloved Mt. Vernon 76 CHAPTER VIII The Confederate Capital Richmond of Yesterday and Today — Captain John Smith and "None Such" Land — Capital of the Confederacy — The State Capitol — Other Historic Places 90 CHAPTER IX Where Steel is King A City of Superlatives — Pittsburgh Development — Artistic Buildings — Mammoth Industries — The Smoky City 95 CONTENTS CHAPTER X The Queen of the Great Lakes PAGE Chicago, a City of Endless Enterprise — Realizing Ideals — Lake Michigan and Its Moods— "The Loop"— The Stock- yards — The Great Central Market — Chicago as a Summer Resort — A City at Play — A Twentieth-Century University — The Civic Center 100 CHAPTER XI In the Land of Sunshine Florida of Orange Groves and Flowers — The Oldest City in America — The American Riviera — Mysterious Region of The Everglades 108 CHAPTER XII Of Mardi Gras Fame The New-Old City of New Orleans — Latin Gayety — Mardi Gras — Relics of French Days — The Ancient Cabildo — The St. Louis Cathedral — The French Market — Hotel Royal — The French Opera House — The Place Prepared for Napoleon — The Twentieth-Century City 112 CHAPTER XIII Among the Cotton Fields Atlanta the Metropolis of the Southeast — Civil War Mem- ories — "Marching through Georgia" — The City Today — Snowy Fields of Cotton 120 CHAPTER XIV A Trip to Panama First Dreams of a Canal — The United States to the Res- cue — Gigantic Obstacles — Meeting All Emergencies — A Battle Won 123 9 CONTENTS CHAPTER XV The Cradle of Texas Liberty p^^.^. Remnant of Spanish Days — The Siege of the Alamo — San Antonio of the Mexicans — Cowboy Land — A Growing City 131 CHAPTER XVI More Beautiful than the Sahara Romance of the Southwest — Ancient Santa Fe — Indian Pueblos — The Petrified Forest — Aztec Ruins and Hieroglyphics —The Painted Desert 135 CHAPTER XVII The Cliff Dwellings Treasure Ground of Santa Fe — Pajarito Park — Vast Com- munal Buildings — Ruins Surrounding Flagstaff — Pathos of these People 147 CHAPTER XVIII Nature's Supreme Miracle The Grand Canyon of Arizona — The Descent — In the Abyss — Powell's Gigantic Achievement — The Splendor of a New Day _. 153 CHAPTER XIX Making the Desert Bloom Daring Projects of Uncle Sam — Terms of the Reclama- tion Act — What the Roosevelt Dam is Doing for Arizona — The Miracle of Yakima Valley — The Wenatchee Lands 161 CHAPTER XX Under the Turquoise Sky In the Rocky Mountain Region — Denver, the Gateway — The Surrounding Wonderland — Fabulous Riches — Colorado Springs — The Lordly Pike's Peak — Manitou and the Garden of the Gods — In the Cripple Creek District — Through the Royal Gorge — Around the Circle — A Happy Hunting Ground 166 10 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXI America's Dead Sea PAGE Lake Bonneville — Daring Founders of Salt Lake City — Nature's Contribution — Seeing the City — Saltair Beach — Rivaling Panama , 179 CHAPTER XXII The Fantastic Playground of Nature Nature's Gigantic Exposition in Yellowstone Park — The Boiling River — The Norris Geyser Basia — Landmarks of the Rockies — In the Firehole Region — The Real Home of the Geyser — A Jewel in a Deep Setting — Wild Animals — The Crowning Glory 185 CHAPTER XXIII Among the American Alps Glacier National Park in the Rockies — Following the Rocky Mountain Trail — The Going-to-the-Sun Region — By Skyland Trails — The Mammoth Park Hotels — ^The Mountain Chalet-Villages 193 CHAPTER XXIV The Lure of the Northwest A Region of Endless Charm — Fabulous Orchards — Ro- mance of the Wheat Fields — The Inland Empire — Mighty Forests — The Great Salmon Fisheries — The Majestic River of the Northwest—The Rose City at the Foot of Mt. Hood— A Lake in the Crater of a Volcano — Tacoma and Seattle — The Lordly Mt. Rainier 200 CHAPTER XXV The Land of the Midnight Sun Alaska, Strange Country of the North — Nature's Gorgeous Pageantry — The Old Russian Capital — Cordova and the Cop- per River Country — A Good Investment 209 11 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVI "Our Lady, Queen of the Angels" PAGE Religious Origia of the Name Los Angeles — The Sierra Madre — A Cosmopolitan City — A Garden City — The Longest Aqueduct in the World — The Mission Play — The Enchanted Isle — To Redlands and the Orange Groves 216 CHAPTER XXVII The Yosemite Valley and the Big Trees^ Among Giant Walls of Rock — Yosemite Falls — The Tribu- tary Canyons — Trees Eight Thousand Years Old 222 CHAPTER XXVIII The Guardian of the Golden Gate San Francisco, the Phoenix City — ^A Great Seaport — Beautiful Berkeley — Cosmopolitan Gay ety 226 CHAPTER XXIX Within the Portals of Inspiration Gorgeous Setting of the Panama-Pacific Exposition — The General Plan — Wonderful Courts — Court of Abundance — Court of the Four Seasons — The Exhibit Palaces — Sculpture — An Exposition of Color — "The Zone" — Toyland Grown Up — ■ The Aeroscope — Exposition Grounds Railway — Contests and Athletics 229 CHAPTER XXX A Magic City in the Land of Heart's Desire Romantic Staging of a Modem Industrial Drama — Por- tola and His Men — Fray Serra's Miracle — The Spanish Tradi- tions — ^A New City of Old Spain — The Old and New in Exposi- tions — The Intensive Farm — "The Painted Desert" — The Climate as Contributor 245 12 Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. The Gateway to America. The famous statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The grassy space in the foreground is Battery Park, so calkd because it was forti- fied in the leventeenth century for the protection of tht; town, and the round buikling is the Aquarium. Here in the early days stood a rude ."fastle'' or fort, kiter sujjplantf d by an opera house. Washington often walked in the old garden around the building, as did other great Americans. Phuto by Brown Bros. "The Great White Way." Times Square, New York, at night, with Broadway on the left, a ourvinji ribbon of white light. Here every night in winter thousands upon thousands of ix'ojjh- throng to theaters and cafes. CHAPTER I MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL NEW YORK, THE CITY OF CITIES THE MECCA OF AMERI- • CANS MAMMOTH SKYSCRAPERS COMMERCE ENCIR- CLING THE SEVEN SEAS THE GATHERING GROUND OF MANY PEOPLES HISTORIC PLACES THE GREAT WHITE WAY ^WALL STREET RIVERSIDE DRIVE A PEOPLE's UNIVERSITY THE AMERICAN RHINE WEST POINT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to think of New York without superlatives. It is the largest city on the globe; it is the greatest industrial city; it contains the loftiest buildings; its towers and bridges and tunnels are the wonder of the world. And with every chance of becom- ing the most sordid city, it is still a place of miracled enchantment, its towers resplendent, its commercialism transmuted into glory by the very might of the imagina- tion which can conceive and build its Babel not through fear but through audacity and a certain longing that is truly American to do things in big ways — bigger than they have ever been done before. "For the builders builded in blindness; Little they thought of the ultimate Uses of beauty! Little they kenned and nothing they recked of the raptures Of conscious and masterful art; They builded blinder than they who raised The naively blasphemous challenge of Babel; For they wrought in the sordid humor 13 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL Of greed, and the lust for power; They wrought in the heat of the bitter Battle for gold; And some of them ground men's lives to mortar, Taking the conqueror's toll From the veins of the driven millions; Of curses and tears they builded, Cruelty and crime and sorrow — And behold! by a baffling magic The work of their hands transmuted To temples and towers that are crowned With a glamor transcendent That lifts up the heart like the smile of a god!"* THE MECCA OF AMERICANS Hither Americans from far and near delight to come, as the Englishman delights to journey to London or the Frenchman to Paris, to bathe for a time in the great rushing stream of human life, and return with fresh vigor, new ideas, larger vision. To the average American a trip to Manhattan is a sort of mental and spiritual Turkish bath: he can scarcely escape becoming a little less provincial, a little more alive. The artist translates New York in terms of beauty; the practical man, in terms of efficiency. New York is indeed all things to all men, and the New York of the artist is as different from the New York of the efficiency expert as the New York of the immigrant is from the New York of the millionaires who build their palaces on Fifth Avenue. Everywhere, however, it is spectacular, the big setting of a big drama, a place of endless experiment and achievement, the city of the skyscraper, whose elevators convey one with the * Don Marquis in Scribner's Magazine. 14 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL speed of an eagle to dizzy summits from which those who walk the narrow street below seem like so many ants, following their daily toil. MAMMOTH SKYSCRAPERS For the present at least the tallest office building in the world will be found on the western side of City Hall Park, where the towering Woolworth Building lifts its glittering steel-and-terra-cotta structure through a sheer height of 785 feet above the sidewalk. Like a majestic cathedral it rises out of the old and ugly build- ings that have gathered around the water front. This is not only the loftiest office building, but, if we except the Eiffel tower, it is the tallest structure of any kind as yet erected by man. As the eye ranges up through the multitudinous stories to the pyramidal structure at the top, the question arises as to v/hat is the limit of height to which a habitable building can be carried. The answer is to be found in a certain restriction laid down by the Building Code of New York City, which states that on a rock foundation the load may reach but not exceed fifteen tons to the square foot. On this basis, it would be possible on a plot of ground 200 feet square to erect an office building 2,000 feet in height, and to build it, moreover, so that it would be perfectly secure against the fiercest hurricane, and, because of its elasticity, even against the altogether improbable event of an earthquake shock. This is, indeed, the age of miracles. The Woolworth Building is taUer than it looks. To reach its lowest foundation, we must go down in one place a depth of 120 feet beneath the sidewalk — for 15 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL that was the depth to which it was necessary to sink the pneumatic caisson in that particular spot before the solid rock of Manhattan Island was reached. This would make the total height from lowest foundation to summit 905 feet. The building contains 23,000 tons of structural steel, 17,000,000 common brick, 7,500 tons of terra cotta, 1,800,000 square feet of floor tiles, 1,800,000 square feet of partition tiles, and 2,500 square feet of cut stone. From these figures we gain some idea of what the erection of this $12,000,000 structure meant. We have said that the Woolworth Building was the loftiest in the world; it was once also the largest, but such statements do not long remain true in a city that moves as New York moves, and the great Equitable Building soon eclipsed the Woolworth in size if not in height. The Singer Building, which once stood out the glorious sentinel of lower New York, is now only one of many that make the skyline so daringly picturesque. COMMERCE ENCIRCLING THE SEVEN SEAS It was to New York's splendid position as a seaport that the early growth of the city w^as due, and it is that same position which makes it the peer of American cities today. New York's share of the total foreign commerce of the United States was 46 per cent in 1914, the domestic exports amounting to no less than $845,000,- 000. The shrewd Dutch settlers of the little old town of New Amsterdam could never have imagined such wealth. Ships of a hundred different lines ply to and from the great piers that line the rivers, carrying their cargoes and millions of passengers to and from ports all over the 16 "* Photo by lirown Br Wall Street, Known Around the World. This narrow canyon street in the lower part of the borough of Manhattan is the fintuicial center of the United States. Trinity Church (founded in 1696 and rebuilt in 1839) with its quaint old churchyard lies at the head of the street on Broadway, its spire insignificant amid the giant skyscrapers that surround it. Photo by Brown Bros. Grant's Tomb on the Hudson. It was Grant's own wish that his body should rest in New York, where his last years were spent, and the memorial on Riverside Drive is a fitting burial place. His own immortal phrase, "Let us have peace," is carved above the portico. MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL globe, for New York is indeed a great cosmopolis, to which products and peoples inevitably are directed. THE GATHERING GROUND OF MANY PEOPLES Here all countries are represented, and the East Side especially is a vast melting pot where Italians, Lithua- nians, Russians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Greeks, Poles and Hungarians — Americans-in-the-making — congregate. Many-storied tenements stand in unabashed disorder, clothes and bedding ornamenting the front fire-escapes, and pushcarts Hning the streets where children throng to play and women in kerchiefs and shawls chatter and buy. Chinatown, also, must not be forgotten, with its fasci- nating shops and inhabitants of a nation which possessed both culture and religion many thousand years before America was born. In other quarters are found other Orientals — ^Arabs, Armenians, Turks and Syrians — ^weav- ing their gorgeous fabrics and selling them to him who wiU buy. Japanese stores there are also, German gardens, and a quaint French quarter — aU within this most American of American cities. It is said that there are in New York City more Germans than in any German city and more Irish than in Dublin. HISTORIC PLACES Places of historic interest there are, too — Battery Park, once the famous Castle Garden; Fraunces' Tavern, Broad and Pearl streets, where Washington took leave of his officers in 1783; Jumel Mansion, 160th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the headquarters of Washington and also of Sir Henry Clinton; St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey Street, built in 1766 and still 2 17 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL preserved with Washington's and Governor Clinton's pews, monuments and relics intact — a constant reminder amid all the bustle of the downtown district of the early days, now long since gone by. Near by is also Trinity Church (established in 1697), just at the head of Wall Street, a curious anomaly^ though united to that money center by its wealthy church society, the wealthiest in America, and by the names of some of the distinguished dead whose remains lie in the sleepy old churchyard of worn gravestones and naive inscriptions; and in Wall Street at the corner of Nassau is the United States Sub- Treasury, on the site of Federal Hall in which assembled the first American Congress and where Washington took the first oath of office. A statue of the great chief stands in front of the building. WALL STREET Here in Wall Street is the financial center not only of New York but of the whole nation. The New York Stock Exchange at Broad Street is the world's greatest market of stocks, bonds and securities; and in the Sub- Treasury deposits sometimes reach a total of $225,000,000. At the Produce Exchange in Whitehall Street three thousand members transact annually business amounting to over a billion dollars. THE GREAT WHITE WAY Wall Street is plainly ''down town." The retail business of the city has moved steadily north, following Broadway, until the center of the shopping district is now, roughly, Thirty-fourth Street. The theaters are pretty well scattered throughout the city, but tend to 18 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL concentrate at Forty-second Street and Broadway and it is in this neighborhood perhaps that the ''Great White Way" is most resplendent. To walk Broadway after the theaters have disgorged on Saturday evening is to enter a romantic land where night is not and gayety is unceasing. Electric signs dazzle on every hand and men and women good-naturedly jostle each other in the stream that washes the sidewalks. Overhead, in a blaze of light, a huge eagle with a fluttering ribbon caught in his beak flaps his nightly journey toward a five-foot bottle of beer, a kitten tangles and untangles herself in a spool of well-known silk, and a huge name of cigarette fame lends its luster to the dazzHng highway. From a tall building, Broadway seems a long curving ribbon of white light. RIVERSIDE DRIVE If Broadway is the people's street, Fifth Avenue is the parade ground of the wealthy. Here are the fashionable shops and here in the afternoon smartly dressed men and women love to saunter as well as shop. Up and down the sidewalks they surge while the street is black with automo- biles and omnibuses wriggling in and out between one another and dodging the crowds. Most New Yorkers enjoy these busses and few visitors miss riding in them, viewing from a comfortable seat on the open top the great stores of lower Fifth Avenue and the homes of the Astors and other millionaires farther up. From Fortieth to Forty-second Street, one passes on the left the Public Library, a splendid classic building containing over a million volumes, and on the right at Fifty-second Street St. Patrick's Cathedral, the largest and most beautiful 19 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL Gothic church in America. At Fifty-ninth Street one strikes Central Park, 879 acres of diversified woodland, meadow, lawns and ponds, containing the MetropoHtan Museum of Art, the finest of its kind in America, with many works of modern artists as well as of the old masters. RIVEKSIDE DRIVE"^ Some of the omnibuses follow Riverside Drive all the way to Grant's Tomb at 123d Street, and a beautiful ride it is, with stately houses fronting on the Hudson and a fitting monument to one of the nation's great men at the end. Stately and beautiful the mausoleum stands upon a grassy terrace where its white marble can be seen far up and down the river. Over the entrance are in- scribed the immortal words of the beloved soldier; ''Let us have peace." A people's university Not far away, on Morningside Heights, is the campus of Columbia, once the University of the City of New York in name and still that in fact, offering the students of the city courses such as may be found in no other imiversity this side the sea. Perhaps the most interesting of the buildings here is the Library, built in 1900. Around a portion of this extends an open colonnade, known as the HaU of Fame. Here the names of great Americans (chosen at intervals by the baUot of a hundred prominent persons) are inscribed on memorial tablets. Columbia offers many different courses, including Medicine, Law, Mines and Engineering. The School of Journalism, endowed by Joseph Pulitzer, that strange 20 Photo by Brown B Columbia University on Morningside Heights. A bird's-eye view of the campus showing the Universitj' Library with its dome and pillars, one of the most beautiful buildings in America. Situated in New York City, Columbia has become the Mecca of students from all parts of the country. Copyri(jht by Underwood and Underwood, N. In the Land of Hendrick Hudson. At the upper end of the parade ground of the United States Mihtary Academy at West Point, New York, looking north up the Hudson River toward Newburg. Tliis stream has played a large part in American history, offering in colonial times through Lake Champlain and the Richelieu River a comparatively easy route to Canada. MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL and interesting dean of American newspapers, was opened here in 1912. Those who cannot attend the regular courses are offered opportunities in the Summer School and in the system of extension teaching, w^hereby courses of lectures are given throughout the city. THE AMERICAN RHINE But the caU of the water is in our blood, for we have caught fascinating gUmpses of the upper Hudson River and long to follow its course. To be sure it does not possess the ruined castles and quaint old towns that lend charm to the Rhine, but the scenery is at all times lovely and sometimes impressively grand. ''The Danube has in part ghmpses of such grandeur," said George William Curtis, ''the Elbe sometimes has such delicatety penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea." And if the Rhine has its legendary w^ealth, the Hudson has its Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, immortalized by Washington Irving whose "Sunny side" home is still one of the lovely landmarks of this fascinating stream, and is associated too with the undying romances of James Fenimore Cooper. In ascending the Hudson from New York, there are passed on either hand the heights which were covered in early Revolutionary days with the defenses of New York, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but beyond the names no trace of either fort remains. The British captured both in the latter part of 1776, and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a favorite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of the Pahsades, the won- derful formation built up of columned trap rock that 21 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL extends along the western river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont, this rocky buttress making the northern limit of New Jersey on the Hudson River. To the eastward, the opposite shore of the Hudson is a succes- sion of villas and fashionable summer resorts, whither the New York people come out, seeking rest. WEST POINT The most famous locality in the Highlands is West Point. ''In this beautiful place," wrote Charles Dickens, "the fairest among the fair and lovely Highlands of the North River; shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of New- burg, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the gullies in the hills, hemmed in besides, all around, with memories of Washington and events of the Revolutionary War, is the military school of America." Opposite Anthony's Nose, Montgomerj^ Creek flows in, its mouth broadened into a little bay. Upon the high rocks at the entrance, on either side, stood the great defenders of the lower Highlands during the early Revolution, Forts Clinton and Montgomery, considered impregnable then, and to bar the river passage a ponderous iron chain on timber floats was stretched across the channel to Anthony's Nose. The Hudson River, some distance above, bends sharply around the little lighthouse on the end of West Point, its extremity being a moderately sloping rock covered with cedars, the reef going deep down into the water, while on its highest part is a monument to General 22 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL Kosciusko, who had much to do with constructing the original mihtary works. The flat and elevated surface, some distance inland, plainly visible both from up and down the river, is the Parade Groimd, the Academic buildings being constructed around it, while behind them on higher ground is the dome-crowned library. The surface of West Point is not so high as the surrounding mountains, but its advanced position completely com- mands the river approach both ways, and hence its military importance. Along the water's edge at the Point the rocks are worn smooth, it is said, by so many cadets sitting there in the sunamer time. Just above is the cove, where they swim and practice, at pontoon- bridge building, and back of this cover is the artillery groimd, the guns being fired at the huge side of Old Cro' Nest Mountain to the northward. THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS Still farther north one comes into the fascinating region where the Catskill Mountains rise in all their glory, spreading across the western horizon at a distance of eight to ten miles from the Hudson River. They stretch for about fifteen miles, and the range covers some five hundred square miles. The most prominent peaks in the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising thirty-four hundred and thirty-six hundred feet. The Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti Ora, or '^Mountains of the Sky," thus named because in some conditions of the atmosphere they appear like a heavy cumulus cloud hanging above the horizon. The weird Indian tradition was that among these mountains w^as held the treasury of storms and sunshine for the Hudson, 23 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL presided over by the spirit of an old Indian squaw who dwelt within the range. It was among these wonderful mountains that Wash- ington Irving was thus enabled to discover Rip Van Winkle. Down on the mountain side, upon the margin of a deep dark glen leading up from Catskill ViUage, stands Rip Van Winkle's ancient little cabin. It is within the vast amphitheater where Hendrick Hudson's ghostly crew held their revels and beguiled him to drink from the flagon which put him into his sleep of twenty years. Among these mountains one would like to linger long enough at least to hear the Dutch ship's company from the "Half Moon" playing their game of nine-pins, but sightseeing days are short when there's the whole of America to be visited, and one must return to the vast city where Irving in his busy years found a home, and where Cooper, too, wrote many of his Leatherstocking tales. The New York of their day has long since passed away, as the present city whose towers spell arrogance will perhaps some day also pass. "And we who builded this citadel in fabric of brick and brass Shall build again for the city's Soul and the things that will not pass. In Babel the tongues were all confused; but that ancient curse is done. And here have the scattered tribes of earth fore-gathered again as one. Out of all lands we lift our hands to build with steam and fire; And towering vast we shall raise at last the City of Man's Desire."* For the present New York satisfies many of our twentieth-century desires, and if the New York of Fifth * C. L. Edson in the Evening Mail, 24 MODERN TOWERS OF BABEL Avenue and the towering skyscrapers is also the New York of pohce graft and Tammany and righteous indus- trial unrest, it is still a city not without ideals, a city that in many ways has demonstrated the value both of efficiency and of imagination. 25 CHAPTER 11 IDEAS AND IDEALS BOSTON, THE ANCIENT HUB OUR DECOROUS NEW ENGLAND SISTER FUNDAMENTAL IDEALS SACRED AMERICAN RELICS THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY BOSTON COMMON THE PUBLIC LIBRARY ^ART AND MUSIC — "the MOTHER CHURCH " BRAVE OLD HARVARD BOSTON HARBOR. NEW ENGLAND is a place of historic memories and it is around Boston, ''the hub of the universe," that they center. Prior to the Revolution, indeed, Boston was the largest and most important American city, reaching a population of 25,000 inhabitants — no small number as cities went at that time. As early as 1663 an English visitor, describing the place, wrote that ''the buildings are handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large streets, most of them paved with pebble- stones. In the high street toward the Common there are fine houses, some of stone"; and indeed, as one his- torian truly says, "Philadelphia was a forest and New York was an insignificant village long after its rival, Boston, had become a great commercial town." OUR DECOROUS NEW ENGLAND SISTER A very conservative and proper city is this New England sister, who perhaps exactly because of her age, which must amount now to the years of old-maidenhood, looks askance at the vulgarity and frivolous amuse- IDEAS AND IDEALS ments of her younger sisters. Boston pays obeisance to tradition, is ''quiet and refined" in her tastes, and observes the Sabbath day as duly as a big city can. Her people are overwhelmingly polite and unendingly intellectual, and those of the charmed inner circle whose forebears lived in Boston in her early days, are immu- tably exclusive. Yet there is a delightful flavor about this old city, most English of American cities, and there is no better place to spend a winter holiday, feasting the soul upon Boston's wealth of concerts, plays, and lectures. If one have entree to the old red-brick houses of other times, so much the better, for there one gets the real Boston, the culture that lends grace as well as interest to its inmates, and there the lover of antiques feasts his soul upon massive mahogany and rare old china. FUNDAMENTAL IDEALS After all, Boston is a place of spiritual as well as intellectual culture, with that blessed quality of rever- ence — reverence for the things of the spirit as well as reverence for the past — ^which is so beautiful when it is genuine, and so sadly lacking in our American make-up. Boston is still colored by the transcendentalism that found its supreme utterance in Emerson, and even a commercial age must in a measure respect the city which considers ''women and children first," forbids skyscrapers that shut out the blessed light of day, and holds its ancient graveyards as holy ground. The Westerner arrives prepared to scoff at petticoated Boston, top-heavy with intellect, and stays to praise, perhaps even bowing his head reverently with the rest. 27 IDEAS AND IDEALS SACRED AAIERICAN RELICS At least he will find much in Boston that will move him to homage — ^brave rehcs of the strenuous days when America in pain and tumult was being born. The fa- mous Boston State House, a noble building fronting on Beacon Street at the summit of the hill, stands upon ground which in the eighteenth century was John Han- cock's cow pasture. Within is the Memorial Hall containing the battle-flags of Massachusetts and other historical relics. Portraits, busts and statues of the great men of Massachusetts adorn the interior rooms. From the tower is the finest view of Boston and the surrounding lands and waters. In the Representatives' Chamber hangs, high on the wall, one of the precious relics of the Old Bay State, a carved codfish, typifying a great industry, and recalling to the humorous-minded that ancient mooted question: "Does the codfish salt the ocean or the ocean salt the codfish?" This carved fish was hung m the old State House (still standing) on Washington Street in 1785, at the suggestion of Representative Rowe. A still more priceless rehc is held by the State Library — the ''Log of the Mayflower," written by Governor William Bradford. Near the northern edge of the Common, at the corner of Park and Tremont Streets, is the old ''Brimstone Corner," where stands the citadel of orthodoxy, the Puritan meeting-house. Park Street Church. Adjoining is an ancient graveyard, the "Old Granary Burying Ground," where He the remains of some of the most famous men of Boston, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, James Otis, Peter Faneuil, many of the colonial governors, and also the parents of Benjamin 28 Where the "Boston Tea Party" was Planned. The Old South Church of Boston has many associations. It was the meeting place of the people alter the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, when they demanded the removal of the British troops and here too were held the meetings that led up to the Boston iea Partv" of 1773. IDEAS AND IDEALS Franklin. On Tremont Street was established the first Episcopal Church in Boston, the King's Chapel, the present building replacing the original one in 1754. Adjacent is the oldest burying-place of the colony, where lie the remains of Governor John Winthrop and his sons, with other early settlers. Various intricate streets and passages lead eastward from Tremont Street into Washington Street, the main thoroughfare of the city, having prominent theaters, newspaper offices, many of the largest stores and great ofifice buildings. Benjamin Franklin was born in a little old dwelling near Washington Street, where now stands a newspaper office. Alongside is the Old South Church, the most famous church of Boston, but now a historical relic and museum of Revolutionary antiquities, the congregation having built themselves a magnificent temple, the ''New Old South Church," upon Boylston Street, in the fashionable quarter of the Back Bay, This ancient church is a curious edifice of colonial style, built in 1729, when it replaced an earlier building. It has a taU spire and a clock, to which it is said more eyes are upturned than to any other dial in New England. The interior is square, with double galleries on the ends, and its original condition has been entirely restored. It was the colonial shrine of Boston, wherein were held the spirited meetings of the exciting days that hatched the Revolution. Franklin was baptized in the original church, and here Whitefield preached. THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY Dock Square is not far away, and Change AWej and other crooked passages lead over to the Boston "Cradle 29 IDEAS AND IDEALS of Liberty," Faneuil Hall. Old Peter Faneuil, a Huguenot merchant, built it for a market and presented it to the city in 1742, but it was unfortunately burned, being rebuilt in 176L Within it were held the early town-meetings, and it is still the great place for popular assemblages. It was enlarged to its present size in 1805. This famous hall is a plain rectangular building, seventy- six feet square inside, the lower floor a market, and the upper portion an assembly room. It is located,, with surmounting cupola, in an open square, and when any- thing excites the public it is crowded with audiences, standing, since there are no seats. Across the end is a raised platform for the orators, behind which, on the wall, is Healy's large painting, representing the United States Senate listening to a speech by Daniel Webster. There are numerous historical portraits on the walls. The ''Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," dating from 1638, occupy the floor above the Hall, while in front of it and extending towards the harbor is the Quincy Market. BOSTON COMMON The center aroimd which Boston clusters is the weU- known Boston Common, set apart in 1634, and always jealously reserved for pubhc uses, the surface rising upon its northern verge towards Beacon Hill. No matter by what route approached, the city has the appearance of a broad cone with a wide-spreading base, ascending gradually to the bulb-Uke apex of the gilded State House dome. The Common is rich in noble old trees, and covers nearly fifty acres, while to the westward is an additional 30 CnAiiLKS JdVJiJt Boston of the Lontg-Ago. An old map of the city out of which the modern Boston has grown. The Common with its Powder House, and Beacon Hill are conspicuous. (31) IDEAS AND IDEALS level park of half the size, known as the Public Garden, separated by a wide street accommodating the cross- town traffic. This noted Boston Common was the ancient Puritan pasture-ground, and it is rich in tradi- tions. In the colonial wars, the captured hostile Indians were put to death here, their grinning heads impaled on stakes for a pubhc warning. Murderers were gibbeted, witches burned and duels fought here. The impassioned George Whitefield, in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, preached here to a congregation of twenty thou- sand. An EngUsh traveler in the late seventeenth century described the place as "a small but pleasant Common where the gallants a little before sunset walk with their marmalet-madams till the beU at nine o'clock rings them home." Beacon Street is the northern border and Boylston Street the southern, and there are rows of stately elms upon the walks along these streets and the pathways leading across the Common in various directions. THE LARGER CITY Boston in alarming fashion outgrew its geographical limits, so in order to get available room and facilitate business the city has gathered the terminals of aU the railways into two enormous stations on the northern and southern sides of the town, and for nearly a haK century it has been fiUing in the fens and lowlands to the west- ward, so that now this reclaimed West End is the fashion- able section, containing the finest churches, hotels, and residences. Through this splendid district extends for over a mile the grand Commonwealth Avenue, two hun- dred and forty feet wide, its center being a tree- 32 Pliulo by Bruwn Bros. The Cradle of Liberty. The upper story of this old market-house at the head of State Street in Boston was during revolutionary times frequently used for meetings of Patriots and hence the place came to be known as "The Cradle of Liberty." The building was erected by Peter Faneuil, a merchant, in 1761, was rebuilt after a fire in 1763, and enlarged in 1806. IDEAS AND IDEALS embowered park adorned by statues of Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, William Lloyd Garrison, and Leif Ericson, and having on either side a magnificent boulevard. The bordering residences are fronted by fascinating gardens, and at regular intervals fine streets cross at right angles, their names arranged alphabetically, in proceeding westward, with the well-known English titles, Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, etc. Parallel to the Avenue are Boylston, Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets. On Boylston Street are the stately buildings of the Museum of Natural History, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Beyond, at the intersection of Dartmouth Street, is Copley Square, displaying around it the finest architectural group in the city, five magnificent buildings, three of them churches, including the famous Trinity Church in which Phillips Brooks preached. THE PUBLIC LIBRARY The Pubhc Library, on the southern side, is the pride of all Boston, a splendid structure of pinkish-gray stone in Italian Renaissance style, suggesting a Florentine palace, erected at a cost of nearly two and a half millions. It has a fascinating inner cloistered court, bronze doors by Daniel Chester French, a staircase in Siena marble, panels by Puvis de Chavannes illustrating the history of science and literature, and other notable decorative paintings by John S. Sargent on the history of religion and by Edwin A. Abbey on the quest of the Holy Grail. One could spend many days in this one building alone, feasting one's eyes on the beauty that 3 33 IDEAS AND IDEALS has been gathered together to grace this storehouse of learning. AET AND MUSIC Boston has a splendid art life with many opportunities for students. The Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1870 and the present beautiful building in the famous Back Bay Fens, the reclaimed swamps laid out by F. L. Olmstead, was erected in 1908. As a musical center the city rivals New York, and the Symphony Orchestra, organized in 1881, has a reputation beyond any other in the United States. It has the honor, too, of being the first great orchestra in America, and of having done incalculably much for the musical life of the country. As a literary center Boston held undisputed first place until the later decades of the nineteenth century when New York, with its many publishing houses and teeming life, took precedence. It still retains, however, a considerable colony of writers, and at least two of its periodicals, the North American Review and the Atlantic Monthly, still do much to shape the thought of a host of readers. "the mother church" Of the many thought movements that have arisen in Boston, Christian Science is one, and few visitors to the city fail to admire the great memorial church established in 1894 and enlarged and reconstructed in 1906. It is indeed an impressive structure, and a noble monument to the memory of a woman who, we must admit, whether we accept Christian Science or not, did much to popular- ize a great and fundamental truth. The modem reaction 34 IDEAS AND IDEALS in medical practice against drugs and the increased study and use of principles of psychotherapy may be traced largely to the influence of Mary Baker Eddy. BEAVE OLD HARVAKD And no visitor should fail to visit Harvard, "ancient of days," in dear old Cambridge town, where the elms of long ago still glorify barren brick buildings, and where associations with the most glorious period of American letters make the whole sleepy town sacred. Geograph- ically Cambridge is practically a part of Boston and one may speed thither via the subway — Boston's famous subway in. which for a five-cent fare one may travel by various labyrinthine ways between any two points in an area of a hundred square miles. In 1638 Cam- bridge was named in honor of the English university where many of the leading men of the colony had received their education • and when in the same year John Harvard died, bequeathing his books and half his estate to the wilderness seminary that had just been opened, his name was given to the college. The institu- tion has played an important part in American history and many great names are on the list of alumni — Cotton Mather, the Adamses, William EUery Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Thoreau, Emerson, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman, Charles Sumner, etc. Longfellow's long and distinguished professorship at Harvard associated him with it rather than with Bowdoin, and here both LoweU and Holmes held pro- fessorships for many years. Cambridge has other interests besides Harvard, too, for it was the site of the camp of the first American 35 IDEAS AND IDEALS army at the outbreak of the Revolution, and from it went the detachment which intrenched on Bunker Hill. Here is the old Vassall or Craigie House where Washing- ton lived and which was later the home of Longfellow; and in ^'Elmwood/' built in 1767, James Russell Lowell was born, lived and died. In Mt. Auburn Cemetery lie the remains of many men and women honored throughout the land. BOSTON HARBOR There is a picturesqueness about Boston Harbor, and viewed from that ancient busy place the city rises grad- ually ridge above ridge, until the center culminates in Beacon Hill, surmounted by the bright gilded dome and lantern-top of the State House. From all sides the land, with its varied surfaces of hill and vale, slopes down towards the water courses, leading into the deep indenta- tion of the harbor. In these w^aters there are at least fifty large and small islands, and most of these, which were bare in Win- throp's day, are now crowned with forts, lighthouses, almshouses, hospitals and other civic institutions. The splendid guiding beacon for the harbor entrance stands upon Little Brewster or Lighthouse Island, at the north- ern edge of Nantasket Roads. This is Boston Light, elevated about one hundred feet, a revolving light visible sixteen miles out. George's Island, near the entrance and commanding the approach from the sea, has upon it the chief defensive work of the harbor, Fort Warren, about two miles west of Boston Light. Farther in, and near the city, off South Boston, is Castle Island, with Fort Independence, the successor of the earliest Boston 36 a o -/J ^ IDEAS AND IDEALS fort, the '^ Castle/' built by Winthrop in 1634. Opposite and about one mile northward is Governor's Island, con- taining Fort Winthrop. This island was originally the '^Governor's garden," and Winthrop paid a yearly rent of two bushels of apples for it. It is a long cry from that day to this, but Boston Harbor is still a place of storied interest, with the fascination of many ships that sail the far seas, and as one ghdes out of the harbor at sundown it is with a feeling of gratitude to this oldest of cities that has given so much that is precious to America. 37 CHAPTER III THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY PHILADELPHIA, CITY OF ORIGINS REMNANTS OF COLONIAL DAYS THE CITY OF HOMES THE QUAKER CITY A PARK OF THREE THOUSAND ACRES LOCOMO- TIVES TO THE WHOLE WORLD A PIONEER SHIPYARD A PLACE OF VAST INDUSTRY. TO WANDER thi-ough the older sections of Philadel- phia, among its comfortable red-brick houses with white steps and quaint colonial doorways is to live again for a fleeting moment the days of William Penn and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and all the other great Americans who have helped to make the city famous. To be sure many of the most fascinating of these old houses have gone down before the demands of a vastly busy commercial center, and many more have become the unlovely homes of under-fed and over- worked immigrants; yet even the latter retain some of their other-century charm, and much of the newer archi- tecture (that surrounding Independence Square, for instance, including the colossal Curtis Building of Ladies' Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post fame) carries out with beautiful conformity the ideals of a day that is long past. The Quaker City is indeed a place of inexhaustible surprise and perpetual interest. It is the city of origins, owing its birth as well as its early celebrity to the concurrent circumstances which helped to make the nation. Here is the actual birthplace of the 38 •• BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY United States, for here the Declaration of Independence was drafted and promulgated; here the Constitution of the United States was framed and finally ratified; here was the first seat of the government of the great Com- monwealth of States; here ''Old Glory" — the Stars and Stripes — the flag of the nation, was first made; and here may be seen the old ''Liberty Bell" whose bronze tongue first proclaimed "liberty throughout all the land." REMNANTS OF COLONIAL DAYS Upon the south side of Chestnut Street, running south to Walnut and occupying the block between Fifth and Sixth Streets, is Independence Square, tastefully laid out in flower-beds and lawns with wide and well-shaded walks. Upon the northern side of the square, and fronting Chestnut Street, is the most hallowed building of American patriotic memories. Independence HaU, a modest brick structure, yet the most interesting object Philadelphia contains. The Declaration of Independence was adopted here July 4, 1776. The old brick building, two stories high, plainly built, and lighted by large windows, was begun in 1732. It was the Government House of Penn's Province of Pennsylvania. In the central corridor stands the sacred "Liberty BeU." In the upper story of the hall, Washington delivered his Fare- well Address in closing his term of office as president. The eastern room of the lower story is where the Revolu- tionary Congress met, and it is preserved as then, the old tables, chairs and other furniture having been gath- ered together, and portraits of the signers of the Declara- tion hang on the walls. Here are kept the famous "Rattlesnake flags," with the motto J 'Don't Tread on 39 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY Me," that were the earhest flags of America, preceding the Stars and Stripes. Other historic places are near by. To the west is Congress Hall, where the Congress of the United States held its sessions prior to removal to Washington. To the east is the old City Hall, where the United States Supreme Court sat in the eighteenth century. Adjoining is the Hall of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Benjamin Franklin, and an outgrowth of his Junto Club of 1743. It has a fine library and many interesting relics. Franklin, who was the leading Philadelphian of the Revolutionary period, came to the city from Boston when eighteen years old, and died in 1790. His grave is not far away, in the old Quaker burying-ground on North Fifth Street. A fine bronze statue of Franklin adorns the plaza in front of the post-office building on Chestnut Street. Farther down Chestnut Street is the Hall of the Carpenters' Company, standing back from the street, where the first Colonial Congress met in 1774, paving the way for the Revolution. An inscription appropriately reads that ''Within these walls, Henry, Hancock and Adams inspired the delegates of the colonies with nerve and sinew for the toils of war." THE BETSY ROSS HOUSE On Arch Street, near Third, is the house where Betsy Ross made the first American flag, with thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, from a design prepared by a Committee of Congress and General Washington in 1777. Originally there was a six-pointed star suggested by the committee, but she proposed the five-pointed star as more artistic, and they accepted it. 40 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY OLD CHURCHES The most ancient church in Philadelphia is Gloria Dei, the ''Old Swedes' " Church, a quaint little structure near the Delaware River bank in the southern part of the city, built in 1700. The quiet churchyard, main- taining still its atmosphere of peaceful beauty even in the heart of the slums, is a place where one delights to linger. The early Swedish settlers, coming up from Fort Chris- tiana, erected a log chapel on this site in 1677, at which Jacob Fabritius delivered the first sermon. After he died, the King of Sweden in 1697 sent over Rev. Andrew Rudman, under whose guidance the present structure was built to replace the log chapel; and it was dedicated the first Sunday after Trinity, 1700, by Rev. Eric Biorck, who had come over with Rudman. Many are the tales of the escapades of the early Swedes in the day of the log chapel. On Second Street is the venerable Christ Church, with its taU spire, built in 1727, the most revered Episcopal Church in the city, and the one at which General Wash- ington and aU the government officials in the Revolu- tionary days worshiped. THE CITY OF HOMES The enormous growth of the city geographically has come mainly from the adoption of the general principle that every family shoidd live in its o^ti house, supple- mented by liberal extensions of electrical street railways in all directions. Hence, Philadelphia is popularly known as the ''City of Homes" and it is only within recent years that apartments and flats have attained any popularity. As the city expanded over the level land, four-, six-, 41 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY eight- and ten-room dwellings have been built by the mile, and set up in row after row. Two-story and three- story houses of brick, make up the greater part of the town, and each house is generally its owner's castle, the owner in most cases being a successful toiler, who has saved his house gradually out of his hard earnings, al- most literally brick by brick. There is almost unlimited space in the suburbs yet capable of similar absorption, and the process which has given Philadelphia this exten- sive surface goes on indefinitely. The tradition that one must live ^' south of Market Street" applies, of course, only to the inner social circle, which is perhaps even more exclusive than the same inner circle of Boston. Natu- rally there are many thousands of people, some of them exceedingly estimable, living north of Market Street. Market Street, be it said in passing, is the great business thoroughfare, while Chestnut Street, just one block south, is the place of shops plus atmosphere. Roughly speaking. Market Street is comparable to Broadway, and Chestnut Street to Fifth Avenue, though so many exclusive shops are opening on Walnut Street, another block farther south, that it begins to look as if that thoroughfare might eventually become the Fifth Avenue of Phila- delphia. THE QUAKER CITY The name of ''Quaker City" still chngs to Philadelphia and something of the influence of the "plain" people who formed so large a proportion of the early inhabitants may be seen, perhaps, in the quieter tastes of the people, so much quieter than those of New Yorkers, in the "closed" Sundays, and in the more leisurely way in which the 42 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY general business of life is followed. William Penn, who gave the city its name of Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love), is still honored as the father of the locality and a colossal statue of the great founder surmounts the tower of City Hall. The shape of the city is much like an hour-glass, between the rivers, although it spreads far west of the Schuylkill. The Delaware River, in front of the built-up portion, sweeps around a grand curve from northeast to south, and then reversing the movement, flows around the Horseshoe Bend below the city, from south to west, to meet the Schuylkill. When Penn laid out his town-plan, he made two broad highways pointing toward the cardinal points of the compass and crossing at right angles in the center, where he located a public square of ten acres. The east and west street, one hundred feet wide, he placed at the narrowest part of the hour-glass, where the rivers approached within two miles of each other. This he called High Street, but the public persisted in calling it Market Street. The north and south street, laid out in the center of the plat, at its southern end reached the Delaware near the confluence with the Schuylkill. This street is one hmidred and thirteen feet wide, Broad Street, a magnificent thoroughfare stretching for miles and bordered with handsome buildings. Upon the Center Square was built a Quaker meeting-house, for the Friends, while yet occupying the caves on the bluff banks of the Delaware that were their earliest dwellings, showed anxiety to maintain their form of worship. This meeting-house has since multiplied into scores in the city and_]adjacent districts; for the sect, while not increasing 43 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY ill numbers, holds its own in wealth and importance, and has great influence in modern Philadelphia. Afterwards the Center Square was used for the city water-works, and finally it was made the site of the City Hall. This great building, covering four acres, is more impressive than beautiful, being built in a day that is now happily past; but a trip to the tower is well worth a visit, for from here one may see the great city, laid out for miles and miles in its unrelenting rectangles. A PARK OF THREE THOUSAND ACRES All Philadelphians are justly proud of Fairmount Park, one of the world's largest pleasure grounds. It includes the lands bordering both sides of the SchuylkiU, having been primarily established to protect the water-supply. There are nearly three thousand acres in the park, and its sloping hillsides and charming water views give it unrivaled advantages in natural scenery. At the southern end is the oldest water reservoir of six acres, on top of a curious and isolated conical hill about ninety feet high, which is the " Fair Mount," giving the park its name. The Schuylkill is dammed here to retain the water, and the park borders the river for several miles above, and its tributary, the Wissahickon, for six miles farther. The park road entering alongside the Fairmount hill passes a colossal equestrian statue of George Washington, and beyond a fine bronze statue of Abraham Lincohi, and also an equestrian statue of General Grant. The road- ways are laid on both sides of the river at the water's edge, and also over the higher grounds at the summits of the sloping bordering hills, thus affording an almost endless change of routes and views. The frequent 44 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY bridges thrown across the river, several of them carrying railroads, add to the charm, and an electric railway is constructed through the more remote portions. All around this spacious park the growing city has extended, and prosperous manufacturing suburbs spread up from the river, the chief being the carpet district of the Falls and the cotton mills of Manayunk, the latter on the location of an old-time Indian village, whose name translated means "the place of rum." In this park, west of the Schuylkill, was held the Centennial Exposition of 1876, and several of the buildings remain, notably the Memorial Art Gallery, now a museum, and Horticultural HaU. William Penn's "Letitia House," his original residence, removed from the older part of the city, now stands near the entrance to the West Park. The Wissahickon, most picturesque of wooded drives along a winding stream, is barred to all "sightseeing" automobiles and the upper portions even to private cars, but the glen is well worth a visit, whether one drives behind horses or follows the narrow footpath. LOCOMOTIVES TO THE WHOLE WORLD For the more practical-minded visitor the industrial plants of Philadelphia have keen interest, especially the Baldwin Locomotive Works, founded in 1831 by Matthias W. Baldwin who completed his first locomotive, the "Old Ironsides," in that year. From modest beginnings, the business gradually increased until the works became the largest locomotive establishment in the world. Baldwin locomotives may now be found in practically all parts of the world where railways have been built. The principal plant of the works is located in the city, 45 BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY occupying over seventeen acres of ground, while at Eddy- stone, about twelve miles from the city, on the Delaware River, there is a tract of over 225 acres, where large foundry, pattern, blacksmith and erecting shops are in operation. The rated capacity of the works is 2500 locomotives per annum, and when working on this basis nineteen thousand men are employed. Approximately 3850 tons of coal, 125,000 gallons of fuel oil, six thousand tons of iron and steel and 2500 tons of other materials are used in the works each week when running at full capacity. A PIONEER SHIPYARD Cramps' Shipyard, like the Baldwin Locomotive Works, is known around the world. In 1830 William Cramp, a pioneer shipbuilder of German descent, established an industry on the Delaware River, and his son, who showed a special aptitude as a naval architect, built up a great industry. Other shipyards have gathered on the river, and Philadelphia was in 1915 not only the largest ship- building center in the United States, but a close rival for world honors. A PLACE OF VAST INDUSTRY Philadelphia has always been one of the foremost manufacturing cities in the United States, and is surpassed only by New York and Chicago, both of which are much larger cities. The railway and commercial facilities, the proximity to the coal-fields, and the ample room to spread in all directions, added to the cheapness of living, have attracted to it over a million and a haK inhabitants. It is the seat of great textile industries 46 »t BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY and produces more than one-fourth of all the manu- factured products in the state. Whole sections of the city are given over to mills and the dwellings of those who work in them, notably Kensington in the north- eastern part of the city, which includes Cramps' Shipyard on the Delaware and a number of textile mills employing thousands of workers. It is hard to believe that the little unpretentious settle- ment of William Penn on the Delaware has grown to such vast proportions, with industries that encircle the earth, but we like to remember the words of the peace- loving founder, who after his treaty with the Indians was concluded wrote: "Oh how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicita- tions, harries and perplexities of woful Europe." Per- plexities there are, and many of them, within the modern city, yet something^of the spirit of the noble Quaker remains. 47 CHAPTER IV PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST UNDER THE BLUE SKIES OF MAINE THE FASHION- ABLE WORLD OF BAR HARBOR IN THE WHITE MOUN- TAINS NEWPORT, WHERE MILLIONAIRES CONGREGATE ^ATLANTIC CITY, A GREAT DEMOCRATIC GATHERING PLACE. MAINE SEES many thousands of summer tourists, and few of those who once visit her shores or pene- trate into her forests fail to succumb to the magic spell of her blue skies and fragrant breezes. Easterners who know only boredom on the level, barren sands of the New Jersey coast are enthusiastic about the Pine Tree State, for here one may find either on the shore or on one of the outlying islands all the charm of mountain as well as sea — cool weather that is tonic, picturesque, rocky cliffs, and spicy woods where white-throated spar- rows, and even the hermit thrush, most timid and most musical of birds, sing, and charming meadowland, too, a gorgeous flower-embroidered tapestry in early summer. Not the most charming of Maine resorts, but perhaps the most talked of, is Mount Desert Island. Champlain, impressed with its craggy, desolate summits, named it the Isle des Monts deserts, the '^ Island of Desert Moun- tains." He then wrote of it, ^'The land is very high, intersected by passes, appearing from the sea like seven or eight mountains ranged near each other; the sum- mits of the greater part of these are bare of trees, because Photj by William H. Rau I?^ Honor of Betsy Ross. On Arch Street near the Delaware River in Phila- delphia is preserved as a national monument the house in which Betsy Ross in 1777 made the first flag of the United States. PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST they are nothing but rocks." Green Mountain is the highest, rising over fifteen hundred feet, near the east- ern side, while Western Mountain terminates the range on the other side, and at the eastern verge is Newport Mountain, having the fashionable settlement of Bar Harbor at its northern base. There are several beauti- ful lakes high up among these peaks, the chief being Eagle Lake. Beech and Dog Mountains have pecu- liarities of outline, and a wider opening between two ponderous peaks shows where the sea has driven in the strange and deeply carved inlet of Somes' Sound, six miles from the southern side, almost bisecting the island. Hung closely upon the coast of Maine, in Frenchman Bay, this noted island, the ancient Indian Pemetic, is about fifteen miles long, of varying width, and covers a hundred square miles. It has many picturesque features, its mountains, which run in roughly parallel ridges north and south, separated by narrow trough-like valleys, dis- playing thirteen distinct eminences, the eastern summits being the highest, and terminating generally at or near the water's edge on that side in precipitous cliffs, with the waves dashing against their bases. Upon the south- eastern coast, fronting the ocean, as a fitting termina- tion to the grand scenery of these mountain-ranges, the border of the Atlantic is a galaxy of stupendous cliffs, the two most remarkable being of national fame — Schooner Head and Great Head — the full force of old ocean driving against their massive rocky buttresses. Schooner Head has a surface of white rock on its face, which when seen from the sea is fancied to resemble the sails of a small vessel, apparently m^oving in front of the giant cliff. Great Head, two miles southward, is 4 49 PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST an abrupt projecting mass of rock, the grim and bold escarpment having deep gashes across the base, evidently worn by the waves. It is the highest headland on the island. Castle Head is a perpendicular columned mass, appearing like a colossal, castellated doorway, flanked by square towers. THE FASHIONABLE WORLD OF BAR HARBOR Bar Harbor, an indentation of Frenchman Bay, hav- ing a bar uncovered at low tide, became the fashionable resort of Mount Desert. It has a charming outlook over the bay, with its fleets of gaily-bannered yachts and canoes, but is nothing more than a town of summer hotels and boarding-houses, built upon what was a tree- less plain, the outskirts consisting of cottages, many of great pretensions. Its bane, to those who have not artist-souls, is the fog, a frequent sojourner in the summer. There are days when the mist creeps over the water and finally blots out the landscape. But light breezes and warm sunshine then soon disperse it and the view reappears. The fog-rifts are wonderful picture-makers. Sometimes the mist obscures the sea and lower shores of the neighboring islands, leaving a narrow fringe of tree-tops resting against the horizon, as if suspended in mid-air, and often a yacht sails through the fog, looking like a colossal ghost, when suddenly its sails flash out in the sunlight like huge wings. IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS From Portland, Maine, one may travel into the famous White Mountain region, the varied and im- pressive scenery of w^hich make it a favorite resort. 50 PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST Here in the Franconia group is the ''Old Man of the Mountain," about which Hawthorne has so delightfully written. The white man's discovery of this profile was made in the early nineteenth century by two road- makers, mending the highway through the Notch. Stooping to wash their hands in the lake, just at the right spot, they casually looked up and saw it, being struck instantly by the wonderful facial resemblance. ''That is Jefferson," said one of them. Thomas Jef- ferson was then president of the United States, and the stern countenance certainly looks like some of his por- traits. There he is still, gazing far away, with sturdy, unchanging expression, as he has done for thousands of years. MOUNT WASHINGTON The Fabyan House, in front of Mount Washington, stands upon the location of the "Giant's Grave," which is an elongated mound of sand and gravel formed by the waves of an ancient lake, reacting from the adjacent mountain slopes, and rising about fifty feet. The tra- dition is that once a fierce-looking Indian stood upon this mound at night, waving a flaming torch and shout- ing "No pale-face shall take root here; this the Great Spirit whispered in my ear." The successive burnings of hotels on this site would seem to indicate this as prophetic, and in fact no hotel did stand there any length of time until the projectors of the present large building, after the last one was burned, as if to avoid fate, had the mound making the "Giant's Grave" leveled and obliterated. Here was built the earhest inn of the White Mountains in 1803 by a sawmill owner on the 51 PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST Ammonoosuc River, named Crawford. His grandson, Ethan Allen Crawford, the famous ''White Momitain Giant," was the noted guide who made the first path to ascend Mount Washington and built the first house on its sumimit. Now the mountain is ascended from this western side by an inclined-plane railway, reached by an ordinary railway extending from Fabyan's, five miles across, to the base of the mountain. The rail- way to the summit is about three miles long, and is worked by a cog-wheel locomotive acting upon a cen- tral cogged rail. It is an exhilarating ride up the slope, for, as the car is elevated, the horizon widens decidedly to the west and northwest, while the trees of the forest become smaller and smaller, and their character changes. The sugar-maples, yellow birches and mossy-trunked beeches, with an occasional aspen or mountain ash, are gradually left behind in the valley, being replaced on the higher slope by white pine and hemlock, white birch, and dark spruces and firs hung with gray moss. These gradually becoming smaller; soon the only trees left are a sort of dwarf fir inter- tangled with moss. Then, rising above the hmit of trees, there is only a stunted arctic vegetation, and this permits an unobstructed view all aroimd the western horizon. The top of Mount Washington is the highest eleva- tion in the United States east of the Rockies and north of the Carolinas. It is what may be described as an arctic island, elevated sixty-two hundred and ninety feet, in the temperate zone, and displaying both arctic vegetation and temperature, the flora and climate being like that of Greenland. An observatory gives a higher 52 % PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST viewover the tops of the buildings, and the first great impression of it is that the view seems to be all around the world, Hmited only by the horizon. In every direc- tion are oceans of billowy peaks, the whole enormous circuit of almost a thousand miles, embracing New England, New York, Canada and the sea. The grand scene is at the same time gloomy. The sunamit is spacious, and the contour of the moun- tain can on all sides be plainly seen. Its slope to the westward, like all of the Presidential range, is steeper than to the eastward, down which a wagon-road zig- zags into the Glen. Upon the eastern side, two long spurs seem to brace the mountain, though profound ravines are there cut into it. The southern slope of the summit pitches off suddenly, while to the north there is a more gradual descent, both the railway and wagon- road approaching that way. The original Tip-Top House, the first inn erected, is preserved as a curiosity, a low and damp structure built of the rough stones gathered on the mountain. The newer hotel is of wood, with a steep roof, and is chained down to the rocks to prevent the gales from blowing it over. There is a weather-signal station at the summit, one of the most important posts in the country. NEWPORT, WHERE MILLIONAIRES CONGREGATE Still more far-famed than Bar Harbor as a resort of the fasnionable world is Newport in Rhode Island. Unlike most American watering-places, Newport is not an aggregation of hotels and lodging-houses, but is pre- eminently a gathering of the costliest and most elaborate suburban homes this country can show. Built upon 53 PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST the extensive space surrounding the older town, and between it and the ocean, south and east, modern New- port is a galaxy of large and expensive country-houses, each in an inclosure of lawns, flower-gardens and foliage, highly ornamental and exceedingly well kept. Many of them are spacious palaces upon which enormous sums have been expended; and in front of their lawns, for several miles along the winding brow of the cliffs that fall off precipitously to the ocean's edge, is laid the noted "Cliff Walk." This is a narrow footpath at the edge of the greensward that has the waves dashing against the bases of the rocks supporting it. Each house has its architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a "cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and the styles cover all known methods of building — Gothic, Elizabethan, Swiss, Flemish, French, etc. There have been lavished upon these palaces of New- port, in construction and decoration, large portions of the greatest incomes of the multi-millionaires of New York and Boston, and hither they hie to enjoy the summer and early autumn in a sort of fashionable semi- seclusion, mingling only in their own sets, and rather resenting the excursions occasionally made by the ple- beian folk into Newport to look at their displays. These princes of inherited wealth have made Newport peculiarly their own, and, their expenditures being on a scale com- mensurate with their millions, the growth and improve- ment of the newer part of the place have been extraor- dinary. The Casino is the fashionable center of Newport, a building in Old English style, fronting on Bellevue 54 ^ PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST Avenue, having reading-rooms, a theater, gardens and tennis court, and here the band plays in the season, and there are concerts and balls. During the fashion- able period, Bellevue Avenue is the daily scene of a stately procession of handsome equipages of all styles, as it is decreed that the great people of Newport shall always ride when on exhibition, and they thus pass and repass in the afternoons in splendid review. Touro Park is a pretty enclosure in the older town, containing statues of Commodore M. C. Perry and William EUery Channing, who were natives of Newport, and a statue of the former's brother, Commodore Oliver H. Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, is also at the City Hall, not far away. THE OLD STONE MILL In Touro Park is the great memorial around which the antiquarian treasures of this famous place are clustered, the Old Stone Mill, a small round tower, overrun with ivy and supported on pillars between which are arched openings. Its origin is a mystery, though Longfellow tells weirdly of it in his "Skeleton in Armor," and some of the wise men suggest that it was built by the Norsemen when they first came this way and found Vinland so long ago. But the more practical townsfolk generally incline to the belief that an early colonist put it up for a windmill to grind corn, the weight of the evidence appearing to favor the theory that it was erected by Governor Benedict Arnold, of the colony, who died in 1678, and described it in his will as "my stone-built wind-mill." It is, however, of suf- ficient antiquity and mystery to have a halo cast around it, and is the great relic of the town. 55 PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST ATLANTIC CITY, A GREAT DEMOCRATIC GATHERING PLACE The New Jersey seacoast is a succession of watering places which city-dwellers frequent in search of cool breezes and stimulating surf baths. The coast is a series of sandy beaches broken by bays and inlets, and a broad belt of pine lands behind them separate the sea and its bordering sounds and meadows from the farming region. The resorts form an almost unbroken chain from Cape May at the southern extremity to Sandy Hook, where the long sand-strip terminates at the entrance to New York harbor, but the chief of these is Atlantic City, with its gay pleasure piers and huge boardwalk where a hundred thousand people congregate in the Easter promenade. Three railroads lead over from Philadel- phia across the level Jersey country, and fast trains cover the distance in an hour. To Atlantic City belongs the credit of having origi- nated a boardwalk by the sea — a feature which has since been adopted at other resorts. The first walk was built in 1870, a fund of $5,000 having been raised for that purpose by the sale of city script. The venture was regarded in an unfavorable light by many of the conservative citizens, some of whom were large owners of real estate, but the younger men carried the project through on money privately borrowed until the issue of the city obligations could be legalized. The board- walk was destroyed by severe storms in the winter of 1883-4, but was rebuilt in a more substantial manner in the spring of 1884 at a cost of less than $10,000. Since then the walk has been improved and rebuilt until it is now from twenty to sixty feet in width and nine miles long, the cost exceeding $500,000. PLAYGROUNDS OF THE EAST It is lined on one side with hotels, pavilions, shops and amusement buildings. The ocean side gives an unobstructed outlook over beach, surf and sea. Five amusement piers one thousand feet in length extend from the walk into the ocean. These contain theaters, music halls, restaurants, ball rooms, bazars, picture shows and an endless variety of amusement places. The board- walk is brilliantly lighted at night by myriads of electric lights, and here the gay crowds throng seeking enter- tainment. The shops themselves offer diversion, for many contain rare collections of Oriental goods, price- less rugs and fascinating curios. But the boardwalk is not the only attraction of Atlantic City, for there is a fine bathing beach, oppor- tunities for sailing and fishing, and even a country club with fine golf links. All sorts of pleasure for all sorts of seekers Atlantic City offers, and all things considered it is the most American of American resorts. 07 CHAPTER V NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST THE FAIRY REALM OF LURAY CAVERNS — MAMMOTH CAVE, KENTUCKY NATURAL BRIDGE NIAGARA OF A THOUSAND MOODS. WE READ in Coleridge's ''Kubla Khan" of ''caverns measureless to man/' and such indeed are the actual caverns of Luray, a veritable fairy realm beneath the earth in the famous Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Since their discovery in 1878, however, the caves have been thoroughly explored and charted so that the visitor may penetrate the labyrinthine passages and still find his way back to the common light of day. Entering the grand vestibule, the first emotion one feels is that of mute wonder. The mind fails to grasp the grandeur revealed in such a majestic manner, until it gradually accustoms itself to the fantastic shapes, the almost oppressive silence and the weird influence of this subterranean realm. Queer shapes present them- selves at every turn, aping grotesquely the objects of the outer world, suggesting some animal, some familiar vegetable formation, or some creation of man. Glit- tering stalactites blaze in front, fluted columns, dra- peries in broad folds, cascades of snow-white stone, illu- minated by the glare of the electric light, fill the mind with wonder and awe. One stands amazed in the royal chambers of Nature. Various apartments and objects have been named in NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST honor of some distinguished personage or after some thing to which they bear a striking resemblance. The Elfin Ramble, an open plateau five hundred feet long by one hundred wide, is the playground of the prin- cesses of this fairy realm. Pluto's Chasm, a wide rift in the walls, contains a specter clothed in shadowy dra- peries. Hovey's Hall is adorned with statuary and stalactite draperies, which, for beauty of coloring, trans- lucency and symmetrical folding, are unexcelled by any- thing in the cave. Giant's Hall is a vast space, embrac- ing several chambers. Heroic sentinel forms loom up on every side, guarding the marvelous beauty of Titania's Veil, and watching over the crystal waters of Diana's Bath. The Saracen's Tent, the Cathedral, with its grand organ, and the Bridal Chamber, all look amazingly like the objects for which they are named. Hades, a region sparkling with limpid lakes and peopled with gob- lins, receives its name from the bewildering labyrinth through which the tourist must tread his way, but not- withstanding its uninviting name, it is a very attractive portion of the cave and contains many wonderful forma- tions. The Ball Room, a magnificent apartment, furnished, is full of interest, while Campbell's Hall, named for the discoverer of the cave, is likewise rich in ornamentation. The temperature of Luray is uniformly 54° Fahr. and the air is so pure that it has been forced for therapeutic purposes through all the rooms of the Limair sanatorium built on the summit of Cave Hill. Tests made for several years demonstrated the perfect bacteriologic purity of the air, which is practically filtered, being drawn into the cave through myriads of rocky crevices and 59 NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST further cleansed by floating over transparent springs and pools. The waters of the cavern seem to be wholly destitute of Hfe and the only existing creatures are a few bats, rats, mice, spiders, flies and small centipedes, though when the cave was first entered the floor was covered with the footprints of former inhabitants — raccoons, bears and wolves. Traces of human habitation there were, too — charcoal, flint, moccasin tracks, and even a skeleton embedded in stalagmite, esti- mated to have lain where found for about five hundred years. The caverns are carved from Silurian limestone, and at some period subsequent to their original excavation they were completely filled with glacial mud, heavily acid, by means of which the dripstone was eroded into its present grotesque shapes. The stalactitic display exceeds that of any other known cavern. MAMMOTH CAVE About ninety miles south of Louisville is the famous Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. This is the largest known cavern in the world, extending for a distance of nine or ten miles, the various avenues that have been explored having a total length approximating two hundred miles. The carboniferous limestones of Kentucky, in which the cave is located, occupy an area of eight thousand square miles, and the geologists estimate that there are prob- ably a hundred thousand miles of open caverns beneath this surface. There is a hotel near the cave entrance, and the mouth is reached by passing do"v\Ti a rocky ravine through the forest. It is a sort of funnel-shaped opening 60 Photo by Brown Bos. Vaughn's Dome. Among the most surprising featm-es of scenery in Mammoth Cave Kentucky, are the vertical shafts, sometimes over a hundred feet that pSrc4 through ah levels from the uppermost galleries down to the lowest floor. NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST about a hundred feet in diameter at the top, with steep walls fifty feet high. A hunter accidentally discovered the cave in 1809, and for years afterwards it was entered chiefly to obtain niter for the manufacture of gunpowder, especially dur- ing the War of 1812, the niter being found in deposits on the cave floor, mainly near the entrance, and owing its origin to the accumulation of animal remains, mostly of bats, in which the cave abounds. Upon entering the cave, the first impression is made by a chaos of limestone formations, moist with water oozing from above, and then is immediately felt what is known as "the breath" of the cave. It has pure air and an even temperature of 52° to 56°, maintained all the year round. In summer the relatively cooler air flows out of the entrance, while in winter the colder air outside is drawn in, and this makes the movement of "the breath" at once apparent from the difference of tem- perature and currents of wind when passing the entrance. For nearly a haK-mile within are seen the remains of the government niter-works, the vats are undecayed, and ruts of cart-wheels are traceable on the floor. The Rotimda is then entered, a hall seventy-five high and 160 feet across, out of which avenues lead in various direc- tions. The vast interior contains a succession of wonder- ful chambers, domes, abysses, grottoes, lakes, rivers, cataracts, stalactites, etc. There are eyeless fish and crawfish, and a prolific population of bats. In the subterranean explorations there are two routes usually followed, a short one of eight miles and another of twenty miles. Various appro- priate names are given the different parts of the cave, 61 NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST and curious and interesting legends are told about them, one of the tales being of the Bridal Chamber, which got its name because an ingenious maiden who had promised at the deathbed of her mother she would not marry any man on the face of the earth, came down here and was wedded. NATURAL BRIDGE About a hundred miles south of Luray is another impressive and wonderful sight — the Natural Bridge of Virginia. Many tourists annually visit this interesting section of the South. The chief river of Virginia is the James, a noble stream, rising in the AUeghanies and flowing for 450 miles from the western border of the Old Dominion until it falls into Chesapeake Bay at Hampton Roads. Its sources are in a region noted for mineral springs, and the union of Jackson and Cowpasture Rivers makes the James, which flows to the base of the Blue Ridge, and there receives a smaller tributary, not inappropriately named the Calfpasture River. The James breaks through the Blue Ridge by a magnificent gorge at Balcony Falls. Seven miles away, spanning the little stream known as Cedar Brook, is the bridge, an arch of blue limestone, 215 feet high, ninety feet wide, with a span of a hundred feet thrown across the chasm. Overlooking the river and the bridge and all the country roundabout are the two noble Peaks of Otter, rising about four thousand feet, the highest mountains in that part of the AUeghanies. The Natural Bridge is situated at the extremity of a deep chasm, through which a brook flows, and across the top of which extends a rocky stratum in the form of a 62 NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST graceful arch. It looks as if the limestone rock had originally covered the entire stream bed, which then flowed through a subterranean tunnel, the rest of the limestone roof having fallen in and been gradually washed away. The crown of the arch is forty feet thick, the rocky walls are perpendicular, and over the top passes a public road, which, since it is on the same level as the immediately adjacent country, one may cross in a coach without noticing the chasm beneath. Various large forest trees grow beneath and under the arch, but are not tall enough to reach it ; and on the rocky abutments are carved the names of many persons who have climbed as high as they dared on the steep face of the precipice. Highest of all, for about seventy years, was the name of Washington, who, in his youth, ascended about twenty- five feet to a point never before reached; but this feat was surpassed in 1818 by James Piper, a college student, who actually climbed from the foot to the top of the rock. In 1774 Thomas Jefferson obtained a grant of land from George III which included the Natural Bridge, and he was long the owner, building the first house there, a log cabin with two rooms, one being for the reception of strangers. NIAGARA OF A THOUSAND MOODS ''God's greatest miracle in stone," Chief Justice Mar- shall said of the Natural Bridge; but greater by far is the miracle of water at Niagara, pounding its tumultuous way year after year ''against the rocks of time." The Indians gave to the Falls the appropriate name of "The Thunder of Waters," and deafening indeed is the roar of this mighty cataract. 63 NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST It has been said that Niagara has a thousand moods, and certain it is that its face is ever changing, though ever beautiful, whether one look on it through rainbow mists or in the gloom of night. There is in some ways no spectacle in the world so impressive: many scenes display the beauty and wonder of Nature; none so well'as this her elemental force and magnificence. The Lake Erie level is 564 feet above the sea, and in its tortuous course of about thirty-six miles to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River descends 333 feet, leaving the level of Ontario still 231 feet above the sea. More than half of all the fresh water on the entire globe — the whole enormous volume from the vast lake region of North America, draining a territory equaling the entire continent of Europe, pours through this contracted channel out of Lake Erie. There is a swiit current for several miles, but farther on the speed is gentler as the channel broadens, and Grand Island divides it. Then it reunites into a wider stream, flowing sluggishly westward with small islands dotting the surface. About fifteen miles from Lake Erie the river narrows and the rapids begin. They flow with great speed for a mile above the falls, in this distance descending fifty-two feet. Goat Island divides their channel at the brink of the cataract, where the river makes a bend from the west back to the north. This island separates the waters, although nine-tenths go over the Canadian fall, which the abrupt bend curves into horseshoe form. This fall is about 158 feet high, and the height of the smaller fall on the American side is 165 feet. The two cataracts spread out to 4,750 feet breadth, though the steep wooded bank of Goat Island, which separates them, 64 Photo by Brown Bros In the Blue Ridge Country. Natural Bridge, Virginia, which Henrj' Chij- once d(!S('ril)ed as "a bridge; not made with hands, that spans a river, can-ios a highway, and makes two mountains one." NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST occupies about one-fourth the distance, but the river, just below the cataract, contracts to about one thousand feet. ALONG THE RAPIDS For seven miles the gorge is carved out, the river banks on both sides rising to the top level of the falls, and the bottom sinking deeper and deeper as the lower rapids descend towards Lewiston, and in some places contracting to very narrow limits. Two miles below the cataract the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther do\^Ti, at the outlet of the Whirl- pool, where a sharp right-angled turn is made, the enormous current is contracted within a passage of less than two hundred and fifty feet in width. In the seven miles distance, these lower rapids descend over a hundred feet, and then with placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward to Lake Ontario. The tremendous horsepower of Niagara is not the least wonderful of the facts connected with the falls, and the practical-minded visitor will be much interested in the extensive power houses that have been con- structed. The average flow of water over both falls is estimated to be 222,400 cubic feet per second, represent- ing a potential horsepower of some 4,900,000. The power of the falls was utilized for the operation of a sawmill as early as 1704; but the present development dates only from 1875, when the Niagara Power Canal was constructed. In 1901 the Ontario Power Company and the Niagara Power Company were established, and since then still other smaller companies have sprung into being. With the development of these arose the 6 65 NATURAL WONDERS OF THE EAST danger that the natural beauty of Niagara might be destroyed or lessened. The amount of water that may be used for power purposes has accordingly been limited and by the terms of a treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain, the total amount of water that may be diverted for power purposes is 56,000 cubic feet per second, of which Canada may have 36,000 cubic feet and the United States 20,000. There is a belief that half the water passing into Lake Erie from the upper lakes does not go over the falls, but finds its way into Ontario through a subterranean channel. The actual current is sufficiently enormous, however, and steadily wearing away the rocks over which it descends, it has during the past ages excavated the gorge of the lower rapids. There is no doubt the first location of the great cataract was on the face of the terrace near Lewiston, and it has gradually retired by the eating away, year after year, of the rocky ledges over which the waters pour. This, however, has not been done in a hurry, for the geologists studying the subject estimate that it has required nearly 37,000 years to bring the falls from Lewiston back to their present location. Nature moves slowly, indeed, though with the force of a Niagara she moves inexorably. CHAPTER VI FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS OF FREEDOM THE FIRST GREAT BATTLEGROUND OF THE REVOLU- TION — WHERE WASHINGTON AND THE PATRIOTS WERE WELL TESTED — THE TURNING POINT OF THE CIVIL WAR. ACROSS THE Charles River, north from the Shawmut peninsula of Boston is Chariest own, and the crowning glory of Charlestown is the Bunker Hill Monument, marking the greatest historical event of Boston, the famous battle fought June 17, 1775, when the British stormed the Yankee redoubt on the hilltop north of Charles River, which was then open country, but long ago became surrounded by the buildings of the expanding city, excepting the small space of the battlefield, now reserved for a park around the monument. The granite shaft rises 221 feet, upon the highest part of the eminence. The provincial troops had assembled in large numbers north and west of Boston, mainly in Cambridge to the westward, and hearing that the British in- tended to occupy Bunker and Breed's Hills, in Charles- town, a force was sent under Colonel William Prescott, a veteran of the old French war, in the night, to fortify Bunker Hill. Upon crossing over, they hastily decided that it was better to occupy Breed's Hill, which, while part of the same ridge, was nearer Boston, and they con- structed upon it a square redoubt. The British ships 67 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS in Charles River discovered this at daylight, and began a cannonade; American reinforcements were sent from Cambridge; and in the afternoon General Gage attacked. His onslaught was three times repulsed with heavy slaughter; then, the Americans' ammunition being spent, they could only resist with clubbed muskets and stones, and had to retreat. Facing Boston, in front of the monument, the direction from which the attack came, is the bronze statue of Prescott, the broad-brimmed hat shading his earnest face, as, with deprecatory yet determined gesture, he uttered the memorable words of warning that resulted in such terrible punishment of the British storming colunm: ''Don't fire until I tell you; don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." The traces of the hastily constructed breastworks of the redoubt can be seen on the brow of the hill, and a stone shows where Dr. Joseph Warren fell, killed in the battle. He came to the fight as a volunteer, and had been made a general in the provincial army. The top of the tall monument gives a splendid view in all directions over the harbor and suburbs of Boston, with traces of Mount Wachusett far to the westward, and on clear days a dim outline of the distant White Mountains. The corner-stone of the monument was laid by Lafayette on his American visit in 1825, and it was completed and dedicated in 1842, the oration on both occasions being delivered by Daniel Webster. One ofhis glowing passages thus tells the purpose of the monujnent: ''We come as Americans to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and to our posterity. We wish 68 Photo by Brown Bros. The Memorial of a Great Battle. Bunker Hill Monument, in the northern sec- tion of Boston. It was oiv this hill on June 17, 1775, that the famous battle was fought so valiantly between the American patriots and the British troops of King George. FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from eternal lips, and that weary and with- ered age may behold it and be solaced by the recollec- tions which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of disaster which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national powers are still strong." WHERE WASHINGTON AND THE PATRIOTS WERE WELL TESTED As Boston cherishes Charlestown and Bunker Hill, so Philadelphia cherishes Valley Forge, a small village in Chester County, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles north- west of Philadelphia, for it was here amid intense suffer- ing from cold, starvation and sickness that Washington and his half-clad army spent the frightful winter of 1777-78. On December nineteenth after the battles of Brandywine and Germantown and the occupation of Philadelphia by the British, the army, numbering about 10,000, went into camp here, the site having been selected by Washington partly because the army v/as thus placed between the British forces and York, Pennsylvania (about sixty-five miles west of Valley Forge), where Congress was in session. The camp was almost unap- 69 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS proachable from the west by reason of the precipitous hillsides and Valley Creek, a small stream flowing northward at their base into the Schuylkill River which afforded a barrier on the north; on the east a series of intrenchments and rifle-pits were built. In this vicinity the army remained encamped until the middle of June. As a result of the mismanagement and general incapa- city of the Commissary Department, the armj^ received little food or clothing during the winter months; in the latter part of December nearly 2900 men were unfit for duty on account of sickness or the lack of clothing, and by February this number had increased to nearly 4000, a state of affairs which Washington said was due to ''an eternal round of the most stupid mismanagement (by which) the public treasure is expended to no kind of purpose, while the men have been left to perish by inches with cold and nakedness." There were many desertions and occasional symptoms of mutiny, but for the most part the soldiers bore their suffering with heroic fortitude. In 1893 the state of Pennsylvania created a commis- sion of ten members, with power to purchase about 475 acres in Chester and Montgomery counties of the original camp ground. This tract is now known as the Valley Forge Park. Washington's headquarters were preserved, a picturesque old stone house built in about the year 1758, several other historic buildings were also kept and several bake-ovens and huts of the kind used by the army reproduced in order that visitors may as far as possible picture the camp exactly as it was during that distressing winter. Thousands of pilgrims visit 70 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS this honored spot every year and it is a favorite meeting ground for the Boy Scouts of the vicinity. THE TURNING POINT OF THE CIVIL WAR But of all cherished battlefields none probably means so much to Americans as that of Gettysburg, where at the beginning of July, 1863, was fought the most decisive battle of the Civil War. The field is seven miles north of the southern boundary of Pennsylvania and over forty miles from the Potomac River, for after the victory of Chancellorsville in May the Confederates determined to carry the war north into the enemy's country. There are two parallel ridges bordering the plain on which Gettysburg stands — the long Seminary Ridge which stretches from north to south about a mile west of the town and gets its name from the Lutheran Theo- logical Seminary located upon it, and the Cemetery Ridge to the south of the town which contains on its northern flat-topped hill the village cemetery. There is an outlying eminence called Gulp's Hill farther to the east, making with the Cemetery Ridge, a formation bent around much like a fish-hook, with the graveyard at the bend and Gulp's Hill at the barb, while far down at the southern end of the long straight shank, as the ridge extends for two miles away, with an intervening rocky gorge called the Devil's Den, there are two peaks, formed of tree-covered crags, known as the ''Little Round Top" and the ''Big Round Top." These long parallel ridges, with the intervale and the country imme- diately around them, are the battlefield. It covers about twenty-five square miles, and lies mainly southwest of the town, 71 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS THE GETTYSBURG MONUMENTS As far as monuments go Gettysburg is better marked than probably any other battlefield in the world. Over a million dollars have been expended on the grounds and monuments. There are some five hundred monuments upon the field, placed with the utmost care in the exact localities, and executed in bronze, marble, granite, on boulders and otherwise. Marking-posts also designate the positions of the various organizations in the opposing armies. To the north and west of Gettysburg is the scene of the first day's contest, but the more interesting part is to the south. Ascending the Cemetery Hill, there is passed, by the roadside, the house of Jenny Wade, the only woman killed in the battle, accidentally shot while baking bread. The rounded Cemetery Hill is an elevated and strong position having many monuments, and here, alongside the little village graveyard, the government established a National Cemetery of seventeen acres, where 3572 soldiers are buried, over a thousand being the unknown dead. A magnificent battle monument is here erected, surmounted by a statue of Liberty, and at the base of the shaft having figures of War, History, Peace and Plenty. This spot was the center of the Union line, then a rough, rocky hill. The cemetery was dedicated in November, 1863, Edward Everett deliver- ing the oration, and the monument on July 1,1869. Lincoln's immortal address At the cemetery dedication President Lincoln made the famous '' twenty-line address" which is regarded as his most immortal utterance. He had been requested 72 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS to say a few words by way of dedication, and drawing from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper on which he had written some notes, he spoke as follows: '' Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so con- ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have con- secrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfin- ished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain — that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." A mile across the valley is Lutheran Seminary, the most conspicuous landmark of the Confederate line, and to the southeast of this is Gulp's HiU, strewn with rocks 73 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS and boulders and covered with trees. The Enimits- burg road goes southward down the valley, gradually diverging from the Union line, and crossing the fields that were the battleground on the second and third days. It is bordered by numerous monuments, some of great merit, and leads to the Peach Orchard, where the line bends sharply back. Peach trees are replanted here as the old ones fall. The Wheat Field is alongside, now grass-grown. Beyond it the surface goes do^n among the crags and broken stones of the Devil's Den, a ravine through which flows a stream, coming from the orchard and wheat field, and separating them from the rocky Round Tops, the sandstone cliffs of the Little Round Top rising high above the ravine. The fields sloping to the stream above the Den are known as the Valley of Death. Among these rocks there are many monuments, made of the boulders that are so numerous. A toilsome path mounts the Big Round Top be- yond, and an Observatory on the summit gives a good view over almost the entire battlefield. This summit, more than three miles south of Gettysburg, has tall timber, preserved as it was in the battle. There are cannon surmounting the Round Tops, representing the batteries in action. Across the valley to the west is the long fringe of timber that masked the Confederate position on Seminary Ridge. The lines of breastworks are maintained, and to the north is the little umbrella- shaped grove of trees at which Pickett's charge was directed. The Twentieth Massachusetts regiment brought here a huge conglomerate boulder from New England and set it up as their monument, 74 FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS Along the Confederate line on Seminary Ridge to the northwest of Gettysburg is marked where General Reynolds fell, just within a grove of trees, and an equestrian statue of him has been erected on the field. From his untimely death, Reynolds is regarded as the special Union hero of the battle, as Armistead was the Southern. Near by a spirited statue, the ''Massa- chusetts Color-Bearer," holds aloft the flag of the Thir- teenth Massachusetts regiment, standing upon a slope, thus marking the spot where he fell at the opening of the conflict. Such is the broad and impressive scene of one of the leading battles of the world, and the greatest ever fought in America. But happily the problems which there wrought such havoc have long been settled, and in 1913 veterans from both North and South met together at Gettysburg to commemorate in peace and friendship the great battle that had been waged there fifty years before. 75 CHAPTER VII THE CITY BEAUTIFUL THE nation's capital CAPITOL HILL AND ITS BUILDINGS THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS OTHER PUB- LIC BUILDINGS WHERE PAN-AMERICANS CONGREGATE THE CORCORAN ART GALLERY SMITHSONIAN INSTI- TUTION WASHINGTON MONUMENT BELOVED MT. VERNON. ONE OF THE most stately domes in the world is that of the national Capitol at Washington and its perfect site on a hilltop dominating the city shows the great advantage which Washington enjoys above other cities in having been intelligently planned before its buildings were erected instead of afterward. The Capitol is indeed the crowning glory of Washington, both literally and figuratively. The noble dome surmounted by a colossal statue of America may be seen from far and near no matter in what way one approaches the city. The striking thing about Washington is that, unlike other capitals of great nations, it was created for the sole purpose of a seat of government, apart from any question of commercial rank or population. After the adoption of the Federal Constitution there was a pro- tracted conflict in Congress over the claims of rival localities for the seat of government, but it was finally decided that Philadelphia should remain the capital for ten years, while after the year 1800 it should be located on the Potomac River, on a site selected by Washington. 76 T! a; ■o tC o 71 0) -G c3 CO O O -M o2s "Jzfec Ruina ^"^^^^^'^^^^M^'^''''^ ^"-"^ FOREST Indian InsTi'iipiiZf^^^^^^lri/ied Bridge k./'T^VaRESTNO.l »i°^ — ■ y ^"^, BUTTE t^ATlON^MONUMEl ^*0^ MAP OF ROUTES TO PETRIFIED FOREST, ARIZONA. &£"/» =d^ _Co/o 'BuffisM overhanging a tree-fringed pool. The Eagle's Nest, Snow Lady and Dewey's Cannon are in this locality. The Second Forest is two and one-half miles due south of the first one, the trip requiring thirty minutes each way. It contains about two thousand acres. The trees are mostly intact, large, and many of them highly colored. The Twin Sisters are an interesting sight here. The Third Forest covers a greater area than the others. It lies thirteen miles southwest of Adamana and eighteen miles southeast of Holbrook. This district contains several hundred whole trees, some of them more than two 142 MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SAHARA hundred feet long, partly imbedded in the earth. These huge unshattered blocks of agate are magnificent speci- mens. The colors are very striking, comprising every tint of the rainbow. The local name of Rainbow Forest is therefore very appropriate. The Blue Forest (smallest of the five) is seven miles east of Adamana, being one of the two districts dis- covered by John Muir. It is noted for the blue tints of its trees. The North Sigillaria Forest, a new "find," is nine miles north from Adamana, and contains many finely preserved specimens of the carboniferous period, some of the stumps still standing as they grew. This Forest is located on the bottom and sides of a shallow, wide canyon, with buttes and mesas of different colored clays and rocks. One faUen monarch is 147 feet long. A wide view of the Painted Desert may be had here. On the way an Indian ruin is passed, two miles out. Four miles farther the old CaHfornia Trail is crossed. The Petrified Forest may be visited any day in the year, except when high water renders the streams tem- porarily impassable. Leaving the steel highway of the Santa Fe, it is a southerly journey across arid mesas on a smooth road, full in the glowing Arizona sunshine. The four-horse, twelve-passenger coach is easy to ride in. The horses trot along a natiu-al highway, in places hardpacked by vagrant winds and frequent travel. Here one has the unfailing joy of a wide horizon, and the bluest of blue skies. There are no trees, except for a scant fringe of cotton woods on the Puerco, that incon- sequential stream which one day is as dry as a bone, and the next a raging torrent; no grass, except stray tufts overlooked by foraging sheep; no human habitations, as 143 MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SAHARA far as the eye can reach — ^just rocks, and sand, and sky, with an occasional prehistoric Indian village ruin, or lava fragments belched centuries ago from now extinct volcanoes. Approaching the deposits from Adamana or Holbrook, one is attracted by stray bits of petrified wood that glisten like jewels by the roadside. Then one espies larger and larger blocks, then trunks of trees, then com- plete trees, some more than two hundred feet long, tumbled about in confusion or lying just as they were bared by the action of the elements. There seems to be no limit to the deposits — ^literally thousands of acres and millions of tons. But let no one expect to see trees standing upright. They are all prone upon the ground, in a vast basin, which was once the bed of an ancient sea. Many of these stone trees are partly covered with earth, but retain their bark, sometimes even the heart. The scene presents endless variety and charm, not the least of which is the setting of surrounding cliffs, often rising 150 feet in height, and cut up into ravines and sloping mesas, variegated with shale, clay and sandstone — faintly suggesting the Painted Desert, and it is truly marvelous to look upon millions of tons of ghstening petrified trees. On some of the slopes, where they lie tumbled together, it is as if whole quarries of marble and ony^ had been dynamited. And so varied and bright are the colors, it is as if rainbows had become imprisoned. AZTEC RUINS AND HIEROGLYPHICS Occasional ruins of prehistoric Indian settlements are encountered in the Petrified Forest region. Some com- 144 MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SAHARA prise a solitary habitation only. Others show that several families were housed together. A few indicate the presence of villages numbering many inhabitants. The largest of these homes is the Aztec Ruins, two and a half miles east of Adamana. Here are walls of broken stone and mortar about a foot high, which mark numerous dwellings fronting a plaza 130 feet wide by 210 feet long. Near the plaza's center a small kiva has been discovered, similar to those in use by the Pueblo Indians of today. The flagstone pavement of this old kiva is in a good state of preservation. The Hieroglyphics are near by. They are cut in the stones of the cliff for a mile or more. The '^cutting," however, seems to have been done by pecking the smooth rock surface with some harder stone like petrified wood, rather than with a metallic instrument. The symbols in the first group, and in many following, are conven- tional and not easy to decipher. Further on, in a recess of the chff, is a large upright rock slab on which are shown a lone man, a bird and an animal. The next record of interest is perhaps that of a royal wedding. The figures are dancing and rejoicing, while a priest holds in one hand a rod and in the other the bird of wisdom. Almost at the top of the mesa, and not far from the Aztec Ruins, may be seen hieroglyphics of flocks and herds, with symbols of disaster and increase. THE PAINTED DESERT Both Adamana and Holbrook are contiguous to the Navajo Indian reservation. Holbrook is an outfitting point for the Apache country. A stage leaves daily for the White Mountain reservation, where lies Fort Apache, 10 145 MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN SAHARA in the midst of picturesque mountain scenery. The unique villages of the Hopi Indians are situated about eighty miles north. En route to Hopiland you cross the Painted Desert, the plateau between the canyons of the Marble and Colorado rivers, deriving its name from the marvelous coloring of the rocks. Here live the Navajos, a pastoral people, progressive, intelligent and self-support- ing. They own large numbers of cattle, sheep and goats, till small farms, make the celebrated Navajo blankets, and are expert silversmiths. Thirty-five miles south of Zuni Station, on Zuni River, is the pueblo of Zuni, inhabited by a thousand Indians, made famous through the writings of an energetic ethnologist, Mr. Frank Gushing, who lived in the pueblo for four years, first as a welcome guest and then as a member of the tribe. The Zunis always have been an imperious people and their ceremonial dances are of world-wide renown. 146 CHAPTER XVII THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS TREASURE GROUND OF SANTA FE — PAJARITO PARK ^VAST COMIVIUNAL BUILDINGS BRUINS SURROUNDING FLAGSTAFF PATHOS OF THESE PEOPLE. THE SOUTHWEST, we have seen, is the land of can- yons and the canyons centuries ago were the haunts of the chff-dwellers, mysterious ancestors of the Pueblo Indians, who, in building their dwellings, sought the safety and inaccessibility of the heights, utiHzing the niches and caves of high chffs with additions of masonry for their homes. Remnants of buried civilization are scattered all around Santa Fe with a prodigality that astonishes even the archaeologist. Six miles to the south, on the Arroyo Hondo, are the ruins of a communal village that has been partly excavated and has furnished part of the treasures found in the Cole collection in the New Mexico Historical Museum and elsewhere. The village stood on the brink of a cliff. Similarly, five miles to the southwest, at Agua Fria, a curious and sprawling Mexican settlement on the Santa Fe River, is a mound covered with thousands of pieces of ornamented pottery. A partial excavation shows it to be a huge communal dwelling that yet may yield rich archaeological treasures. Six miles to the north, on the Tesuque river, are similar ruins. 147 THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS PAJARITO PARK But all this is as nothing compared with the twenty thousand communal and cliff dwellings in Pajarito Park, just across the Rio Grande to the west, Pajarito plateau embraces the region between the Jemez Mountains and the Rio Grande, extending from Gallinas Creek to Canada de Cochiti. Pajarito Park is in the center of this plateau. It runs from Santa Clara Canyon, on the north, to Capulin Canyon, on the south. See map of this section on page 171. The first cHff ruins in this park are twenty-five miles from Santa Fe and here, as Dr. Edgar L. Hewett says, is the most interest- ing archaeological region in the United States. The cave-dweUings of this region are not merely houses built in the shelter of some overhanging cliff, but are rooms actually carved out of the chff itself. In untold ages past, when the first hardy cliff-dweUers sought out this secluded area, they made their homes in the many natural cavities in the cliffs. When the population began its enormous increase and no more natural shelters were to be had, they were obliged to fashion new caves for themselves, and these they dug into the soft volcanic tufa rock of the cliffs with their rude stone tools. Every canyon has its cliff waUs literally honey-combed with these artificial caves. The visitor enters through a tiny doorway and finds himself in a room varying from six to ten feet square, with plastered waUs and floor as hard as cement. All the caves contain fireplaces, granaries and other reminders of domestic life, and the blackened ceilings speak of their long occupation. Many of the walls are covered with crude decorations, pictures 148 Copyriyht by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. The Faithful Burro. The burro is a small donkey common in the mountains of the West because of his sure-footedness. The picture shows the descent by Grand View Trail, a short, steep mining path, into the Grand Canyon. The point is about 1200 feet below the southern rim of the gorge, but the bed of the Colorado River is gtill almost a mile farther down. THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS of plumed serpents and all manner of mythical beasts and personages. The cliffs themselves are adorned with thousands of crude symbols chipped into the rock by the stone hatchets of aboriginal sculptors ages before America was discovered. Carloads of pottery and utensils have been carted away to enrich museums and private collections; and the surface is scarcely scratched, for communal ruins thus far unmapped are still being discovered and but two or three have been excavated to any extent. The ground is strewn with bits of decorated pottery, while arrowheads and stone axes are to be found about the cave ruins. VAST COMMUNAL BUILDINGS On the Puy^ to the north, large sections of a com- munal building of twelve hundred rooms have been excavated. It took several seasons to do the work and it has yielded specimens that may be found scattered in museums from the national capital to the Pacific Coast. Several hundred rooms of the Tschrega have been excavated and explored. To the south, in the Rito de los Frijoles, where Bandelier lays the scene of his Delight- makers j a circular ruin has been opened up. From the top of the dizzy trail that leads down into the canyon of the stream that dashes over two high cliffs in foaming waterfalls, it looks like the familiar picture of an old Greek amphitheater. In this canyon a ceremonial cave has been restored as it was in the days when the mys- terious cliff-dwellers came to this canyon as the center of their empire and worshiped, possibly with the same 149 THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS rites and dances as may be observed to this day in the Indian village of Tesuque, nine miles from Santa F6, or on August 4th, at Santo Domingo, the largest Indian pueblo within forty miles of Santa F^. Whether these cliff-dwellers were the forefathers of the Pueblos of the village of San Ildefonso, that lies just across the Rio Grande; and of Santa Clara, a few miles north; or of San Juan, Picuris or Taos, stiU farther north; or of Namb6, below the famous waterfall eighteen miles north of Santa F^; or of the pueblos to the west, Jemez, Sia, and Santa Ana; or the Rio Grande pueblos strung out south of Santa F^ from Cochiti, not far from the mouth of the Rito de los Frijoles, in majestic White Rock Canyon, to Isleta, south of Albuquerque — is a matter of dispute among ethnologists and archseologists. All agree that the civiUzation of the communal dwellings preceded the thousand-year-old culture of the Pueblos, and that the caves in the cliffs beneath the communal dwellings have yielded evidence of occupation in days that date back to the time of the great lava flow. RUINS SURROUNDING FLAGSTAFF By stopping at Flagstaff, Arizona, one may visit other ruins of the dwellings of a prehistoric people within a radius of eight miles. On the southeast. Walnut Canyon breaks the plateau for a distance of several miles, its walls deeply eroded in horizontal lines. In these recesses, floored and roofed by the more enduring strata, the dwellings are found in great number, walled up on the front and sides with rock fragments and cement, and partitioned into compartments. Some have fallen into decay, only portions of their walls remaining, and but a 150 THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS narrow shelf of the once broad floor of solid rock left to evidence their extreme antiquity. Others are almost wholly intact, having stubbornly resisted the weathering of time. Nothing but fragments of pottery now remain of the many quaint implements and trinkets that char- acterized these dwellings at the time of their discovery. PATHOS OF THESE PEOPLE Fixed like swallows' nests upon the face of a precipice, approachable from above or below only by deliberate and cautious climbing, these dwellings have the appear- ance of fortified retreats rather than habitual abodes. That there was a time, in the remote past, when war- like peoples of mysterious origin passed southward over this plateau, is generally credited. And the existence of the cliff-dwellings is ascribed to the exigencies of that dark period, when the inhabitants of the plateau, unable to cope with the superior energy, intelligence and num- bers of the descending hordes, devised these unassailable retreats. All their quaintness and antiquity can not conceal the deep pathos of their being, for tragedy is written all over these poor hovels hung between earth and sky, which hold no place in recorded history. The struggles and the fate of these people are all unwritten, save on these crumbling stones, which are their sole monument and meager epitaph. Here once they dwelt. They left no other print on time. At an equal distance to the north of Flagstaff, among the cinder-buried cones, is one whose summit commands a wide-sweeping view of the plain. Upon its apex, in the innumerable spout-holes that were the outlet of ancient eruptions, are the cave-dwellings, around many of 151 THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS which rude stone walls still stand. The story of these habitations is likewise wholly conjectural. They may have been contemporary with the cliff-dwellings. That they were long inhabited is clearly apparent. Frag- ments of shattered pottery lie on every hand. 152 CHAPTER XVIII NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE THE GRAND CANYON OF ARIZONA — THE DESCENT — IN THE ABYSS — POWELL's GIGAN THE SPLENDOR OF A NEW DAY IN THE ABYSS — POWELL's GIGANTIC ACHIEVEMENT — THE SPECTACLE of the Grand Canyon of Arizona is something that one can never forget. Even the mighty waters of Niagara cannot impress one as does this stupendous miracle in rock, carved by a river and the winds and rains of heaven; even the Gothic cathe- drals of Europe which seem to have gathered under their arching roofs so much of the vastness of the out- of-doors and so much of the rehgion of the ages, do not smite one into silence in quite the same majestic fashion. "How still it is! Dear God, I hardly dare To breathe, for fear the fathomless abyss Will draw me down into eternal sleep."* Here is a gorge over two hundred miles long, from a mile to a mile and one-half deep, and ten to fifteen miles wide from rim to rim. At the bottom of this great chasm flows the Colorado River, the largest factor responsible for this immense chasm in the earth's crust. This great gorge is filled with mountains, some of them * From Henry Van Dyke's The Grand Canyon and Other Poems, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. 153 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE 5,000 feet high, upon the top of which the observer on the rim looks out. The various strata of rock composing the crust of the earth are exposed to view — ^the white hmestone on the KANAB PUTEAU MAP or THE GKAND CANYON OF ARIZONA gOBUTXe Quivc»-oa 9 IJ" / RY. surface, the red sandstone, the blue lime, and the bot- tom gorges of deep purple granite form a marvelous combination in color effect. The activity of the ele- ments, the winds of centuries, the rains and the surging 154 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE river, have shaped and fashioned this wonderful canyon into weird and grotesque formations. Perhaps nowhere else is the crust of the earth's sur- face open to view so vividly. The story of its formation is written in rock, as if it were a printed page — the waving of the water, and the raging of the winds have left their handwriting in stone. THE DESCENT Only by descending into the canyon may one arrive at anything like comprehension of this marvelous void. There are five paths down the southern wall of the can- yon in the granite gorge district — Bass', Hermit, Bright Angel, Grand View and Hance's trails. The following account of a descent of the old Hance trail will serve to indicate the nature of such an experience, except that the trip may now be safely made with greater comfort, and on horseback all the way: For the first two miles it is a sort of Jacob's ladder, zigzagging at an unrelenting pitch. At the end of two miles a comparatively gentle slope is reached, known as the blue limestone level, some 2500 feet below the rim, that is to say — ^for such figures have to be impressed objectively upon the mind — five times the height of St. Peter's, the Pyramid of Cheops, or the Strassburg Cathedral; eight times the height of the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty; eleven times the height of Bunker Hill Monument. Looking back from this level the huge picturesque towers that border the rim shrink to pigmies and seem to crown a perpendicular wall, unat- tainably far in the sky. Yet less than one-half the descent has been made. 155 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE Overshadowed by sandstone of chocolate hue the way grows gloomy and foreboding, and the gorge nar- rows. The traveler stops a moment beneath a slanting cliff five hundred feet high, where there is an Indian grave and pottery scattered about. A gigantic niche has been worn in the face of this cavernous cliff, which, in recog- nition of its fancied Egyptian character, was named by the painter, Thomas Moran, the Temple of Sett. A little beyond this temple it becomes necessary to abandon the animals. The river is still a mile and a half distant. The way narrows now to a mere notch, where two wagons could barely pass, and the granite begins to tower gloomily overhead, for we have dropped below the sand-stone and have entered the archsean — a frowning black rock, streaked, veined, and swirled with vivid red and white, smoothed and polished by the rivulet and beautiful as a mosaic. Obstacles are encoun- tered in the form of steep, interposing crags, past w^hich the brook has found a way, but over which the pedestrian must clamber. After these difficulties come sheer descents, which at present are passed by the aid of ropes. The last considerable drop is a 40-foot bit by the side of a pretty cascade, where there are just enough irregularities in the wall to give toe-hold. The narrowed cleft becomes exceedingly wayward in its course, turning abruptly to right and left, and working down into twi- light depth. It is very still. At every turn one looks to see the embouchure upon the river, anticipating the sudden shock of the unintercepted roar of waters. When at last this is reached, over a final downward clamber, the traveler stands upon a sandy rift, confronted by 156 Copyright by Underwood and Underwood , N. Y. Upon the Dizzy Heights. Looking down upon Ayer's Peak, a mountain 6,000 feet high, in the Grand Canyon, Arizona. NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE nearly vertical walls many hundred feet high, at whose base a black torrent pitches in a giddying, onward slide, that gives him momentarily the sensation of slipping into an abyss. IN THE ABYSS With so little labor may one come to the Colorado River in the heart of its most tremendous channel, and gaze upon a sight that until recently has had fewer wit- nesses than the wilds of Africa. Dwarfed by these prodigious mountain shores, which rise immediately from the water at an angle that would deny footing to a mountain sheep, it is not easy to estimate con- fidently the width and volume of the river. Choked by the stubborn granite at this point, its width is prob- ably between 250 and 300 feet, its velocity fifteen miles an hour, and its volume and turmoil equal to the Whirl- pool Rapids of Niagara. Its rise in time of heavy rain is rapid and appalling, for the waUs shed almost instantly all the water that falls upon them. Drift is lodged in the crevices thirty feet overhead. For only a few hundred yards is the tortuous stream visible, but its effect upon the senses is perhaps the greater for that reason. Issuing as from a mountain side, it slides with oily smoothness for a space and sud- denly breaks into violent waves that comb back against the current and shoot unexpectedly here and there, while the volume sways, tide-like, from side to side, and long curling breakers form and hold their outline lengthwise of the shore, despite the seemingly irresistible velocity of the water. The river is laden with drift, huge tree trunks, which it tosses Hke chips in its terrible play. 157 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE Powell's gigantic achievement Standing upon that shore one can barely credit Powell's achievement, in spite of its absolute authenticity. Never was a more magnificent self-reliance displayed than by the man who not only undertook the passage of Colorado River but won his way. And after viewing a fraction of the scene at close range, one can not hold it to the discredit of three of his companions that they abandoned the undertaking not far below this point. The fact that those who persisted got through alive, is hardly more astonishing than that any should have had the hardihood to persist. For it could not have been alone the privation, the infinite toil, the unending suspense in constant menace of death that assaulted their courage; these they had looked for; it was rather the unlifted gloom of those titanic depths, the unspeakable horrors of an endless valley of the shadow of death, in which every step was irrevocable. THE SPLENDOR OF A NEW DAY Returning to the spot where the animals were aban- doned, camp is made for the night. Next morning the way is retraced. Not the most fervid pictures of a poet's fancy could transcend the glories then revealed in the depths of the canyon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires, golden splendors of sun beating full on fagades of red and yellow, obscurations of distant peaks by veils of transient shower, glimpses of white towers, half drowned in purple haze, suffusions of rosy light blended in reflection from a hundred tinted walls. Again on the plateau, one finds that the descent into the canyon has bestowed a sense of intimacy that amounts 158 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE almost to a mental grasp of the scene. The terrific deeps that part the walls of hundreds of castles and tur- rets of mountainous bulk may be approximately located in barely discernible penstrokes of detail, and will be apprehended mainly through the memory of upward looks from the bottom, while towers and obstructions and yawning fissures that were deemed events of the trail, will be wholly indistinguishable, although they are known to lie somewhere flat beneath the eye. The comparative insignificance of what are termed grand sights in other parts of the world is now clearly revealed. Twenty Yosemites might lie unperceived anywhere below. Niagara, that Mecca of marvel seekers, would not here possess the dignity of a trout stream. A man, standing at a short distance on the verge, is an insect to the eye. Should it chance to rain heavily in the night, next morning the canyon is completely filled with fog. As the sun mounts, the curtain of mist suddenly breaks into cloud fleeces, and while one gazes these fleeces rise and dissipate, leaving the canyon bare. At once around the bases of the lowest cliffs white puffs begin to appear, creating a scene of unparalleled beauty as their dazzling cumuli swell and rise and their number multiplies, until once more they overflow the rim, and it is as if you stood on some land's end looking down upon a formless void. Then quickly comes the complete dissipation, and again the marshaling in the depths, the upward advance, the total suffusion and the speedy vanishing, repeated over and over until the warm walls have expelled their satu- ration and again reveal their shimmering veils of color. It is, indeed, a place of magic. Long may the visitor loiter upon the verge, power- 159 NATURE'S SUPREME MIRACLE less to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. Then the canyon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far Shinumo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal. 160 I'Jiutu by Brui The Royal Gorge Through the Rockies. This deep and gloomy though majestic defile is a mile and a half long and almost half a mile deep, and is used by the Denver and Rio Grande division of the Southern Pacific Railroad. There is a tradition that Spanish missionaries knew the gorge as early as 1642. The first railroad train passed through in 1879. Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y. A Natural Gateway to a Garden of Glory. Massive gateways of red sand- stone lead to the Garden of the Gods at the foot of the far-famed Pike's Peak. The Latter mountain, rearing its snowy summitl( 14,000 feet) m the background, was named in honor of Gensral Pike, who discovered it in 1806. CHAPTER XIX MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM DARING PROJECTS OF UNCLE SAM — TERMS OF THE RECLAMATION ACT WHAT THE ROOSEVELT DAM IS DOING FOR ARIZONA THE MIRACLE OF YAKIMA VALLEY THE WENATCHEE LANDS. IF THIS twentieth century is an age of extravagance, it is also an age of economy. We are introducing scien- tific management into factory and home; we have induced the waters and the winds, and even to some extent the sun, to do our work; we have learned the lesson of conservation; we have achieved results in intensive and in dry farming; and we have through vast irrigation projects succeeded in making the once worthless desert bloom. The limits of the Great American Desert are becoming ever narrower and narrower. Everyone is more or less familiar with the great irriga- tion works that have been carried through in the United States since the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902 — the highest dam in the world (351 feet) on the Boise River in Idaho; the Shoshone dam in Wyoming, 328 feet in height; the dam on the Rio Grande in New Mexico, producing the largest lake of its kind in the world, covering almost 65 square miles (41,280 acres); the Gunnison tunnel, six miles in length, with a dis- charge capacity of 1,300 cubic feet per second; and a score of others. 11 161 MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM TERMS OF THE RECLAMATION ACT According to the terms of the act Congress was to devote the proceeds from the sales of the pubhc lands in arid sections to the construction, operation and main- Approved irrigation projects commenced, area to be reclaimed, with expenditure to and percentage of completion on December 31, 1913, by locations. (Source: The Reclamation Service, Department of the Interior.) Project. Estimates, December 31, 1913. Location. Area. Expendi- tures. a Per Cent of Completion.6i Salt River Acres. 175,000 131.000 20,000 53,000 140,000 220,000 118,700 10,677 32,405 219,557 216,346 60,116 129,270 206,000 20,277 10,000 C155.000 26,182 55,000 70,700 100.000 60.000 9.920 dl37.361 164,122 Dollars. 11,771,196 6,750,803 603,000 712,985 5,467,231 8,822,613 5,272,054 379,659 1,441.197 2.214.687 1.231.107 3.182.182 5.905.770 6,422.332 970.620 380.028 3,137,239 960,215 1,708,854 2,532,039 3,315,501 2,392,801 714,413 6,915,143 4,227,328 94 Arizona-Cahfornia Yuma 65 Orland 61 1 Grand Valley 16 t Uncompahgre Valley. . . . 60 60 100 98 Milk River 32 10 Montana-North Dakota . Nebraska-Wyoming Lower Yellowstone North Platte 95 87 80 100 77 30 North Dakota pumping. . 50 68 Oregon-CaHfornia 84 90 Utah Strawberry Valley 73 90 Washington f84 51 Total 2,540,633 86,430,997 a The amounts in this column include the total amounts paid out for construction and opera- tion and maintenance without amounts that have been collected for services rendered, operation and maintenance assessments, etc. b The percentages noted in this colunrn represent the ratio which costs of construction to date bear to present estimate of total construction cost, c 25,000 acres additional in Mexico, d Sunnyside unit, 100,000 acres; Tieton unit, 34,000 acres, e Stor- age unit, 24 per cent; Sunnyside, 96 per cent; Tieton, 94 per cent. tenance of irrigation works to bring to the desert lands the water necessary to make them fertile. These lands are given under the terms of the homestead law prac- tically free of cost to the settler. In the first ten years of its existence the United States 162 MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM Reclamation Service constructed 7,300 miles of canals — enough to reach from New York to San Francisco and back; it excavated twenty-one miles of tunnels, dragging out rock and earth to the enormous total of 93,000,000 cubic yards; it built 626 miles of road, 2,094 miles of telephone and seventy miles of levees; it purchased 1,05,1- 000 barrels of cement and manufactured in its own mill 340,000 barrels more; and as a result of this ten years of work it made water available for 1,159,234 acres. WHAT THE ROOSEVELT DAM IS DOING FOR ARIZONA As Frederick Haynes Newell, Director of the United States Reclamation Service, expressed it: '^To create opportunities for American citizens is the basic intent of the Reclamation Act"; and although success in desert farming comes only by hard untiring effort, it is estimated that ninety per cent of the settlers on the new irrigated lands are making good. Of all the government's irrigation projects, however, the Salt River project is by far the most highly devel- oped. On most of the irrigated lands forty per cent of the available water is not in use, but the Salt River farmers are irrigating practically every acre for which they can obtain water. About 90,000 acres are in alfalfa, and although alfalfa and other forage crops will always be the chief products of the valley, experiment will probably develop other valuable crops. The average farmer has about forty acres. Ten or twelve years ago land could be bought for twenty dollars an acre or less; last year it averaged a hundred. The Roosevelt Dam, which is the sine qua non of the Salt River Valley, was completed early in 1911. It was 163 MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM capable of holding 1,360,000 acre feet, with a depth of 227 feet at the dam. In April, 1914, the reservoir was still not one-third full, and never since its completion had it been more than half full, but in May, 1915, the reservoir was completely filled and the hearts of the farmers quietly and deeply thankful. The water prob- lem for the vast area drawing its supply from the Salt River has been solved, for once filled the reservoir storage is sufficient to tide the valley over the longest period of drought on record. THE MIRACLE OF THE YAKIMA VALLEY In the Yakima Valle}^, Washington, known through- out the country for its fertihty, although on it there once grew nothing but sage brush and bunch grass, is irrigable land enough to support a population of a million people. Less than a third of this is at present cultivated, watered from small canals built by private capital, and from the two constructed by the United States Reclamation Service. A journey along the banks of these canals or the Yakima River unfolds a panorama of unusual breadth and interest. Instead of the heavy forests of the west side, the sage brush struggles for existence just above the main ditches; but the country below is checkered with orchards, farms, and gardens; and cotton woods protect the banks of the streams. Impressive is the sight in springtime when fruit trees are all in bloom and the Blossom Festival, participated in by a hundred thousand people, is ushering in the full tide of spring; or in autumn when deeper touches of color mark an immense crop ready for the harvester. From the hills on either side, the picture assumes its 164 MAKING THE DESERT BLOOM most perfect form. Cities, meadows, orchards, vine- yards, hop fields, vegetable gardens, alfalfa farms, corn fields, and prairies, bisected and criss-crossed by railroads, highways, canals, and rivers, protected by the brown hills near by and watched over by the mountains in the distance, supply composition for pictures that in detail and variety must discourage all competition. THE WENATCHEE LANDS Equally beautiful but of smaller dimensions is the Wenatchee Valley, reaching from the Columbia -River well up into the foothills of the Cascades. This, too, was a desolate brown slope until the effects of irrigation were felt on its rich volcanic ash soil. After that only ten years were necessary to convert it into a garden of dazzling splendor. Instead of the forlorn sage brush, a maze of orchards, extending up the valley and ascending the hills, presents in springtime a solid mass of blossoms, varying from purest white to daintiest shades of pink. Serpentining along the hill sides, as if protecting the gardens below, are the great viaducts, conducting the precious waters that irrigate the land; while dodging from one side of the vale to the other, or paralleling the Great Northern Railroad, the Wenatchee River hastens onward towards the Columbia. Throughout all the Western states one may see lands that were once impossible covered with luxuriant grasses, grains and orchard trees; for the arid region sleeps only because of thirst. Slake that and it becomes a garden of paradise, its rich soil yielding full measure, running over, harvests which to the Eastern farmer are fabulous indeed. 165 CHAPTER XX UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION DENVER, THE GATEWAY THE SURROUNDING WONDERLAND FABU- LOUS RICHES COLORADO SPRINGS THE LORDLY pike's peak MANITOU AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS IN THE CRIPPLE CREEK DISTRICT — THROUGH THE ROYAL GORGE AROUND THE CIRCLE — ^A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND. THE GREAT backbone of the American Continent is the Rocky Mountains, and the summits of its main range make the parting of the waters, the ''Continental Divide." The name of the Rockies is appropriate, for on these mountains and their intervening plateaus naked rocks are developed to an extent rarely equaled elsewhere in the world. The leading causes of this are the great elevation and extreme aridity, the scanty moisture prevent- ing growth of vegetation, and the high altitudes promoting denudation of the rock-material disintegrated at the surface. Enormous crags and bold peaks of bare rocks mostly compose the mountains, while the streams flow at the bases of towering precipices in deep chasms and canyons filled with broken rocks. Being unprotected by vegetation, the winds sweep the hills clean of soil and sand, the steep slopes of the valleys are strewn with fragments of the enclosing cliffs, and the rivers are usually without flood-plains or intervales, where soils may gather. In the extensive and highly elevated plateaus, 166 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY the streams usually run in the bottoms of deep canyons, their channels choked with debris. Added to this the whole Rocky Mountain region has in the past been a scene of great volcanic activity: many extinct volcanoes appear, broad plains are covered with lava, and scoria and ashes are liberally deposited all about. There are numerous mountain ranges, plateaus and parks under different names in this extensive mountain region and the higher peaks in the United States generally rise to somewhere between thirteen and fifteen thousand feet elevation. These mountains and the plains to the east compose the vast arid region constituting fully two-fifths of the United States, where irrigation is neces- sary to agriculture, and, in consequence, less than ten per cent of this large surface bears forests of any value. We are told that so scant is the moisture, if the whole current of every water-course in this district were utilized for irrigation it would not be possible to redeem four per cent of the land. Some of this surface, however, bears grasses and plants that, to an extent, make pasturage. The precious metals and other useful minerals are found in abundance, and various parts of the region have been developed by the many valuable mines, making their owners enormous fortunes. Through this vast mountain district, over deserts and along devious defiles, a half dozen great railways lead from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific slope. Denver is the great city of the Rockies, and for moun- tain scenery Colorado is without a peer, not even Switzerland and her Alps offering more than a fair comparison. The crescent chain which forms the chief attraction of Cental Europe covers, altogether, an area 167 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY of about 95,000 square miles. Its crowning peak, Mont Blanc, 15,784 feet high, is the most famous and most often named of the mountains of the modern world. But Colorado has many peaks lacking little of this height, and they stand amid others much higher than, but not nearly so bleak, as those included in the Alpine chain. The famous Jungfrau is 13,793 feet high. The Matterhorn is The Marshall Pass District, showing the tortuous path of the raih-oad as it crosses the Continental Divide, on the "Around the Circle" tour. From the summit the waters flow eastward to the Atlantic and westward to the Pacific. still lower. Vegetation ceases at a lesser height than it does in Colorado. The Pass of the great St. Bernard is only 8,170 feet high. Marshall Pass, in Colorado, is 10,850 feet and is climbed every day by Denver and Rio Grande trains. Le Veta Pass is over 9,200 feet high — another railway station. Alpine Pass, on the Colorado and Southern, and Rollins Pass on the Denver and Salt Lake, have each an elevation of 11,660 feet. Hell Gate, 168 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY on the Colorado Midland main line, is 10,540 feet. The town of Leadville, a familiar residence for several thou- sand people, is 10,200 feet above the sea. Some of the beautiful and famous parks of Colorado have their lowest depths higher than the average height of the Alpine chain. DENVER, THE GATEWAY Denver stands on a high plateau, through which the Soutli Platte River flows. This "Queen City of the Plains" was settled by adventurous pioneers as a mining camp in 1858, and through the wonderful development of mining the precious metals has had rapid growth. A broad, graceful arch bearing the word "Welcome" greets the tourist as he steps from the Union Depot. The city has many manufactures and some of the most extensive ore-smelting works in the world, the annual output of gold and silver being enormous. There are many fine buildings, and a noble State Capitol with a lofty dome standing on a high hill. The city was named in honor of General James W. Denver, who was an early governor of Kansas and served in the Civil War. He first suggested the name of Colorado, and thus his name was given to its capital. Denver has built for its water- works, forty-eight miles south of the city, one of the highest dams in the world, 210 feet, enclosing a gorge on the South Platte to make an enormous reservoir holding an ample supply. THE SURROUNDING WONDERLAND Being so admirably located, Denver is a center for excursions into one of the most attractive mountain 169 UNDER' THE TURQUOISE SKY regions in America. The great Colorado Front Range, or eastern ridge of the Rockies, stretches grandly across the country and has behind it one range after another, extending far west to the Utah Basin. Towering behind the Front Range is the Saguache Range, the chief ridge of the Rockies, which makes the Continental Divide. Among these complicated Rocky Mountain ranges are various extensive parks or broad valleys, nestling amid the peaks and ridges, which were originally the beds of inland lakes. Out of this mountain region flow scores of rivers in all directions, the affluents of the Mississippi to the east, the Rio Grande to the south, and the Colorado and the Columbia to the west. AJl of them have carved down deep and magnificent gorges, two to five thousand feet deep, and in places the wonderful results of ages of erosion are displayed in the peculiar constructions of vast regions, and in special sections, where the carvings by water, frost and wind-forces have made weird and fantastic formations in the rocks on a colossal scale, as in the Garden of the Gods. FABULOUS KICHES These mountains and gorges are also filled with untold wealth, and the mines, producing wealth of gold and silver, have attracted vast numbers, so that the whole dis- trict around and beyond Denver is a region of mining towns, which are reached by a network of railways disclosing the most magnificent scenery, and in many parts the most startling and daring methods of railroad construction. Whenever land can be reclaimed for agriculture or grazing on the flanks of the mountains and in the pro- 170 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY tected valleys and parks, it is done, so that the district has extensive irrigation canals, in some parts diverting practically all the available flow of water in the streams. DENVER ''AND AaM RUINSI^j.j^j yg,j^ National »ai r.lZARD UEAD-c^*- FOUR CORNERS Cl .ll Dwi li ngs NEW The cotirse of the traveler on the "Around the Circle" tour is indicated by arrows. Start may be made from Denver, Colorado Springs, Manitou or Pueblo. Northwest from Denver is the picturesque Boulder Canyon, and here at the mining town of Boulder is the University of Colorado. Beyond are Estes Park, one of the smaller enclosed parks among the mountains, 171 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY having Long's Peak on its verge, rising 14,270 feet. West from Denver is the Clear Creek Canyon, and the route in that direction leads through great scenic attrac- tions, past Golden, Idaho Springs and Georgetown, where silver-mining and health-resorts divide attention, and the mountains display beautiful lakes. Beyond, the railway threads the Devil's Gate, climbing up by remark- able loops, and reaches Graymont with Gray's Peak above it. In this district is the mining town of Central City, while to the northwest is the extensive Middle Park, a popular resort for sportsmen. Southward from Denver the railway route passes the splendid Casa Blanca, a huge white rock a thousand feet long and two hundred feet high, and crosses the watershed between the Platte and the Arkansas. COLORADO SPRINGS Here, amid the mountains, seventy-five miles from Denver, upon a plateau at six thousand feet elevation, is the famous city of Colorado Springs, a noted health- resort. It is pleasantly laid out, with wide, tree-shaded streets, like a typical New England village spread broadly at the eastern base of Pike's Peak. Here live large numbers of people who are unable to stand the rigors of the climate on the Atlantic coast, and it has been carefully preserved as a residential and educational city. The set- tlement began in 1871, but there are no springs nearer than Manitou, several miles away in the spurs of Pike's Peak. THE LORDLY PIKE's PEAK Probably the best known summit of the Rockies is Pike's Peak, rearing its snowy top over Manitou, and 172 ■V "®*!?f. ! fcdp.tH^li^- fe III \ ii- »^ '^ y-i "' '^"^ 1/ ljr\ » I +i OJ o !5 {••r— I ••«"■■■" pCj »*•- UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY about six miles west from Colorado Springs, to an eleva- tion of over fourteen thousand feet. As it rises almost sheer, in the Colorado Front Range, this noble mountain can be seen from afar across the eastern plains. A cog- wheel railway nine miles long ascends to the summit from Manitou. In 1806 General Zebulon Pike, then a captain in the army, led an exploring expedition to this remote region and discovered this noble mountain, which was given his name. Forests cover the lower slopes, but the top is of bare rocks, usually snow-covered. MANITOU AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS Manitou has a group of springs of weak compound carbonated soda, resembling those of Ems, and beneficial to consumptive, dyspeptic and other patients. They are at the entrance to the romantic Ute Pass, a gorge with many attractions, which was formerly the trail of the Ute Indians in crossing the mountains. Nearby, upon the mesa, or 'Hable-land," is the Garden of the Gods, a tract of about one square mile, thickly studded with huge grotesque cliffs and rocks of white and red sand- stones, their unique carving being the result of the erosive processes that have been going on for ages. They are all given appropriate names, and its Gateway is a passage just wide enough for the road, between two gigantic red rocks. Farther south on the Arkansas River is Pueblo, an industrial city in a rich mining district, where there is a Mineral Palace, having a wonderful ceiling formed of twenty-eight domes, into which are worked specimens of all the Colorado minerals. The route then crosses the Veta Pass, whereon is the abrupt bend known as the ''Mule Shoe Curve," and beyond this it descends 173 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY into the San Luis, a park covering six thousand square miles. Sentinehng its western side is the triple-peaked Sierra Blanca, the loftiest Colorado mountain, rising almost 14,500 feet. IN THE CRIPPLE CREEK DISTRICT Following up the Arkansas River from Pueblo, a route goes northward behind and west of Pike's Peak into the Cripple Creek district, situated at an elevation of nearly ten thousand feet among the mountains, where in 1890 was a remote cattle ranch. The next year gold was found there, a new population rushed in, and it has since become a leading gold producer. Westward the route crosses the Continental Divide and descends into the extensive South Park, covering two thousand square miles, reaching Leadville. In the early days this was the great gold placer mining camp of California Gulch. After- wards it produced enormous quantities of silver from the extensive carbonate beds discovered in 1876, and the name was changed to Leadville. North of Leadville is the noted Mountain of the Holy Cross, 14,200 feet high, named from the impressive cruciform appearance of tv/o ravines crossing at right angles and always filled with snow. THROUGH THE ROYAL GORGE The Grand Canyon of the Arkansas is one of the most magnificent gorges in the Rocky Mountains. This river above Pueblo forces its passage through a deep pass known in the narrowest part as the Royal Gorge, where the railway is laid alongside the boiling and rushing stream, with rocky cliffs towering 2,600 feet above the line. It ascends westward, beyond the sources of the 174 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY Arkansas, crossing the Continental Divide by the Marshall Pass, at 10,850 feet elevation, the route up there showing, in its abrupt and bold curves, great engineering skill. The Pass is always covered with snow, and the descent beyond it is to the mining town of Gunnison. The Gunnison River is followed down through its magnificent gorge, the Black Canyon giving a splendid display for sixteen miles of some of the finest scenery of the Rockies. The river is an alternation of foaming rapids and pleasant reaches, and within the canyon is the lofty rock pinnacle of the Currecanti Needle. The adjacent gorge of the Cimarron, a tributary stream, gives also a splendid display of Rocky Mountain wildness, and below it the river passes through theXower Gunnison Canyon, bounded by smooth-faced sandstone cliffs, and finally falls into Grand River, one of the head-streams of the Colorado. AROUND THE CIRCLE The combined magnificence of these canyons and mountains makes the environment of the Colorado mining region one of the most attractive scenic districts in America, and the railways have arranged a route of a thousand miles through the mountains, starting from Denver, under the title of '^ Around the Circle," which crosses and recrosses the Continental Divide, threads the wonderful canyons, surmounts all the famous passes over the tops of the Rocky ranges, and includes the most attractive scenery of the district. Subhmity and beauty are not usually convertible terms. They do not mean the same thing. Grandeur is austere. Yet there one finds the most singular combina- 175 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY tions of these two incompatibilities. The grandeur is over all, the overpowering sentiment of the vast domain; yet in unexpected nooks and corners one finds the other — beauty beyond compare. When one looks for the first time upon the Rampart range, fencing the western rim of that vast undulating plain like a wall, it is impossible for him to imagine Manitou and Ute Pass and Cheyenne Canyon and the road to the Garden of the Gods, nestling there so near at hand, beneath the cold dome of Pike's Peak. When one is at Canon City, a pretty town sleeping among its orchards in the sunshine, he does not think how soon the train will glide between the mighty jaws of the Arkansas Canyon. When one traverses drowsily the mesa lands, smooth and wide and given over to bees and gardens, that lie west of Denver, he cannot by himself foresee the Clear Creek Canyon just ahead, or imagine the six parallel tracks and the windings and contortions that make the ''loop" at its farther end aboveSilver Plume. At Salida, at five o'clock in the morning, when the mountain world is filled with turquoise blue, earth and air and sky, not merely tinted, but full of the strange, solid color that heralds the mountain dawn — one cannot imagine the rare, sweet, thin air of the Marshall Pass that is just ahead, or see the rocky bosom of Ouray, bare, solemn, silent, changeless, serene in the vastness of the upper air, yet so near that one may almost count the stones that strew that dismal summit. So it is that beauty and grandeur never have been so nearly akin elsewhere as they are in Colorado. Yet every- thing is on a scale of inconceivable immensity. Even the mesas and table-lands, where the grass grows as on a farm, are four or six thousand feet above the sea — 176 Photo by BroLcn Brus. "Old Faithful" in Eruption. This famous geyser in Yellowstone Park is named because of the clock-like regularity of its eruptions. For over twenty years it has been spouting at average intervals of sixty-five minutes. UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY more than twice as high as Mount Everett. There is nothing low. The word "valley" is a relative expression; low and high have not their usual significance. Looking back as the train crawls up a mountain-side in long, doubling curves, one is surprised to see, floating far below him, a long and trailing film of silver lace; something so near and ethereal and beautiful that he cannot recognize it as that which he has looked up to all his life — a cloud. And on one side the valley sinks away, narrowing and lowering in distance that seems infinite. One was down there but a short time before and they seemed high. But from the opposite window, whither one transfers himself to see the very roof of the world, sure that he has attained to such a height, as he looks out it is still up, up the slanting, narrow track, the world of mountains below, above, everyw^here. Mingled with these general sensations are the special wonders — the places and scenes that have been described by travelers over and over again. In the case of most of them, it was never of much avail to try to reproduce them in words; while all the camera reproduces in miniature, though scientifically exact, fails utterly to convey any other meaning than that of prettiness. A HAPPY HUNTING GROUND And if Colorado is the Paradise of the nature-lover, it is also the Happy Hunting Ground of the sportsman, for forests still cover a large part of the state and they are the natural cover for elk, antelope, the mountain sheep and a variety of smaller game. Any prospector will tell one that there is nothing more common than the fresh bear track near the stream, looking like the footprint of a 12 177 UNDER THE TURQUOISE SKY barefoot baby. All mountain men encounter herds of elk and deer. The region of the foothills — the land between plain and mountain, including both — is the natural home of the elk. It is in the more outlying regions, of course, that the big, shy game now lives. In the days of Indian occupation, all Colorado was a hunting field. The encroachments of civilization have naturally restricted the field, but with the result that there is now more game in the places still occupied than in former times. This unoccupied region is still, in the aggregate, as large as New York State. Then there is fishing of the best. The watercourses of Colorado comprise eight principal rivers, which flow from their sources in the mountains in all directions, increasing in volume from almost countless tributaries. In all these streams the mountain trout is a native and for many years trout fishing has been an important pastime of residents and their visitors. 178 CHAPTER XXI AMERICA'S DEAD SEA LAKE BONNEVILLE DARING FOUNDERS OF SALT LAKE CITY nature's CONTRIBUTION SEEING THE CITY SALTAIR BEACH RIVALING PANAMA. ALMOST THE whole of the present State of Utah was once covered by a great body of fresh water, now known to scientists as Lake Bonneville. The name is in honor of Captain Bonneville, an army officer, who in 1833 first called the attention of the world to proofs of the former existence of this great body of water. This lake was of the quaternary period and occupied an area in excess of 20,000 square miles with a shore line, exclusive of islands, of about 3,050 miles, and a maximum depth of 1,053 feet. Its greatest length was 350 miles, its greatest width 145 miles, and its general shape, that of a huge pear, with the stem end extending into Arizona. A small part of the present states of Nevada and Idaho lay beneath its waves. The lake surface was a thousand feet higher than the present level of the Great Salt Lake, but its waters were fresh, the outlet being to the Pacific Ocean through the Snake River. The shelving beaches of the old lake are plainly seen along the sides of the Wasatch Range in the vicinity of Jordan Narrows and the entire section once under Bonneville's waves gives proof of its existence through shell deposits and the remains of prehistoric life. Utah's scenery is peculiarly its own. The fertile 179 AMERICA'S DEAD SEA mountain valleys remind one of smmy Italy, while the pointed peaks of the Wasatch range contain a touch of Alpine beauty. The memory of the tints of its skies is not soon forgotten and painters have said that the scene presented, as the sun sinks to rest behind the lake, is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the kind in all the world. DARING FOUNDERS OF SALT LAKE CITY When the pioneers of 1847, under the leadership and guidance of Brigham Young, set out on their memorable journey across the trackless prairies and into the fast- nesses of the Rocky Mountains, they had no precedents to direct them in their conduct, and no guides to lead them into the promised land. They were explorers and settlers ; they broke away from the frontier and, traveling steadily toward the setting sun, left civilization far behind. Arriving in the valley of the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847, exhausted from their long tramp, they were con- tent when their leader announced that ''this is the place." It was the dogged determination of these pioneers that laid the foundations of Salt Lake City, reclaiming for the nation a territory greater in extent than the thirteen original colonies. They came into a desert and made it productive by irrigation; they laid out a city; they established homes. On the foundations thus laid there has grown a city of more than a hundred thousand inhab- itants, one of the most beautiful in the United States. nature's contribution Nature has aided man in making Salt Lake City attractive. Overlooking a great vaUey, with the shim- 180 AMERICA'S DEAD SEA mering water of the inland sea at its feet, no better spot on which to build a city could have been found in all the West. From the University campus, on a bench several hundred feet higher than the business portion of the city, one has a view the beauty of which will cling to him as long as memory lasts. At his feet are the broad, tree-lined streets of the city with neat and attrac- tive homes. Here and there a great mansion or "a lofty steeple towers above the foliage. Farther on are office buildings, with the stately city and county building in the midst of a beautiful park to the south and the famous Mormon Temple on the north. Across the valley, beyond the emerald stretches of field, stand the Oquirrh mountains, in their enveloping blue haze. To the east are the richly colored slopes of the Wasatch and beyond are great mountain peaks, many of them more than ten thousand feet above sea level, wearing their caps of snow. To the west, flashing in the sunlight, like a mighty gem, is Great Salt Lake, more than eight times larger than the Dead Sea of Palestine. The business portion of the city is paved throughout and the streets are washed daity, so that no dust offends. Streams of mountain water flow in the gutters on both sides of the street. Many of the streets in the residence portions are parked on the sides or in the middle and all are shaded bj^ magnificent trees. Roses bloom from June until November. SEEING THE CITY A person may come into the city, hasten to the Temple Square, view the magnificent Temple, hear a pin drop in the spacious Tabernacle, and later attend an organ 181 AMERICA'S D'EAD SEA recital there. Words will fail him if he attempts to put his impressions into words, for no words can describe the marvelous charm of the organ's sweet, vibrant tones. Still under its magic influence, the tourist whose time is limited is gathered up in a ''seeing" car, and is rushed away while the lecturer imparts prosaic facts about the Brigham Young Monument, the Bee- hive House, the Amelia Palace, Eagle Gate, and the tomb of Brigham Young, the founder of the city. Then the car hurries through a limited portion of the resi- dence districts and returns to the business section. The Temple Square is a ten-acre block containing the Mormon Temple, Tabernacle and Assembly Hall. The Temple, guarded by the angel Moroni and open only to Latter-day Saints, is a massive structure, built of granite quarried in Little Cottonwood Canyon and hauled twenty miles by ox-team. The Tabernacle organ, one of the finest in the world, was built under the supervision of Brigham Young. It contains 5,500 pipes ranging from two inches to thirty-two feet in length and capable of four hundred tonal variations. Free organ recitals are given every day at noon from the middle of April until August. Eagle Gate, spanning State Street at South Temple, was formerly the entrance to the private estate of Brigham Young; and Beehive House, Lion House, Amelia Palace and the Executive Building are all Mor- mon buildings centering around the gate. The Bee- hive House is the official residence of President Joseph F. Smith; the Lion House was formerly the residence of Brigham Young's wives; and the Amelia Palace, opposite the Eagle Gate, now owned by Col. Edwin 182 AMERICA'S DEAD SEA Holmes, ^vas built for the favorite wife of Brigham Young. The Executive Building was built to contain the offices of the Mormon church. The traveler who is not satisfied with superficial obser- vation, but whose inquiring mind seeks exact information, loiows the city is itself not the source of its wealth. Comparative^ little m^anufacturing is done in the inter- mountain country. Whence comes the wealth which manifestly is here? From the mines and the fields. Salt Lake is the center of one of the greatest mining countries in the world. In the mountains surrounding the valley are mines which produce annually millions of dollars' worth of gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, coal. Mere mention of the famous camps carries the story of wealth — Park City, Bingham, Alta, Tintic, Deep Creek, and others. A rich agricultural country also surrounds the city, needing only the magic touch of irrigating waters, which has been applied in large measure. With the certainty of moisture at times when it is needed, field crops have never been known to fail. SALTAIR BEACH No visit to Salt Lake City is complete without a trip to Saltair Beach, eighteen miles west, and a bath in the buoyant waters of the Dead Sea, the wonderful lake in which one may frolic as one will without fear of drown- ing. The body floats like a cork, so heavy are the salt-laden waters, and one emerges tingling and refreshed. Saltair has other pleasure-resort attractions also — among them one of the largest dancing pavilions in the world. The lake itself is eighty miles long and forty wide and 183 AMERICA'S DEAD SEA contains many islands. And although the waters are so salty the islands contain fresh-water springs of rare excellence. RIVALING PANAMA Another trip one should not miss is to the vast copper- mining camp at Bingham. When the spectator beholds the half a hundred powerful locomotives and over twenty great steam shovels, as well as five hundred ore cars operating every hour of the day and night on the face of this one great mountain of copper ore, it is easy to believe that these are the world's greatest mining opera- tions. The stupendous undertaking is second in magni- tude only to the work on the Panama Canal. Here one sees men, with the aid of the most modern mechan- ical assistance, literally tearing down a gigantic moun- tain and hauling it away. It has been estimated that even with the aid of aU the great mechanical contriv- ances and thousands of men it wiU require fifty years to accomplish this gigantic feat — the moving away of one of the great Oquirrh mountains. 184 CHAPTER XXII THE FANTASTIC PLAYGROUND OF NATURE nature's gigantic exposition in YELLOWSTONE PARK THE boiling RIVER — THE NORRIS GEYSER BASIN LANDMARKS OF THE ROCKIES IN THE FIRE- HOLE REGION THE REAL HOME OF THE GEYSER A JEWEL IN A DEEP SETTING WILD ANIMALS THE CROWNING GLORY. IN YELLOWSTONE PARK, in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, set apart forever by act of Congress for the benefit and enjoyment of mankind, Nature has estabHshed her own gigantic exposition, displaying in this mountain-bound plateau a greater variety of wonders than she has collected in a like area in any other part of the world. Here may be seen, either in active operation or in an extinct condition, almost every known variety of terrestrial phenomenon. Geysers, hot springs, paint pots, sulphur springs, and fumaroles are plentiful, and in addition may also be found chffs of natural glass, lava beds, great riven rocks filled with basalt, extinct vol- canoes, and petrified forests, and over amid the fastnesses of the Hoodoo Mountains and on the slopes of the great Tetons may be seen remnants of an ancient geological period — active glaciers. THE BOILING RIVER Upon entering the Park the first indication the tourist sees of subterranean heat is the Boiling River, which 185 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE issues from an opening in the rocks and empties directly into the Gardiner. This river is the outlet for the waters of the Mammoth Hot Springs, which find their way to this point through underground passages. A few miles beyond, the Mammoth Hot Springs themselves are reached. The living springs are marvels of beauty. Their overhanging bowls, adorned with delicate fretwork, are among the finest specimens of Nature's handiwork in the world, and the colored waters themselves are startling in their brilliancy. Red, pink, black, canary, green, saffron, blue, chocolate, and all their intermediate grada- tions are found here in exquisite harmony. The springs rise in terraces of various heights and widths, having intermingled with their delicate shades chalk-like cliffs, soft and crumbly. These are the remains of springs from which the life and beauty have departed. As the tourist proceeds through the Golden Gate and along Kingman Pass toward those objects in which his keenest interest centers — the Geysers — he may see to the northward, casting the shadow of its mighty presence over all the valley, that old sentinel of the Park, Electric Peak, whose snow-capped head rises 11,150 feet above sea level. Twelve miles from the Springs is found a most curious volcanic formation. Obsidian Cliff, as its name indicates, is a cliff of natural glass at the head of Beaver Lake (so named from the old beaver dam which forms it), rising black and jagged in vertical columns two hundred feet above the road. Here is located the only road of native glass upon the continent. 186 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE THE NORMS GEYSER BASIN After passing Obsidian Cliff evidences of hot-spring action constantly increase, until they reach their climax in the Norris Geyser Basin. This basin is supposed to be among the most recent volcanic developments of the region; but, although it naturally receives a large amount of attention from the fact that it contains the first geysers coming to the notice of the tourists, it is, in reality, of 187 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE minor importance as compared with the Firehole Basin. The main objects of interest here are the Monarch Geyser, the largest in the basin, the Black Growler, and the Hurricane. The eruptions of the Monarch are verj^ irregular, but it sometimes displays tremendous power, forcing the hottest of water to a height varying from one hundred to two hundred and forty feet. The Hurricane and Black Growler are prodigious steam vents, whose continuous roar and violent gusts bear a striking resem- blance to the driving blasts of a tempest, and may be heard a distance of four miles. LANDMARKS OF THE ROCKIES Just as the road commences to descend from the high plateau between the Gibbon and the Firehole Rivers the tourist receives his first glimpse of the Teton Mountains, over fifty miles away. They are distinctly visible from every important peak in the park. From the summit of these mountains the range of vision covers probably the most remarkable group of river sources upon the earth. To the north are the head- waters of the Missouri. To the east rise the Yellowstone, the Wind, and the Big Horn Rivers. Southward across the Wind River Range rises the Platte. From the west flank of the mountains issue the tributaries of the great Colorado, while finally, interlaced with the very sources of the Missouri and Yellowstone, are those of the Snake. IN THE FIREHOLE REGION In the Firehole Geyser region, which includes the Lower, Middle, and Upper Basins, the most pecuUar, phenomena of the Park are seen at their best. 188 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE In the Lower Basin are located the Fountain Geyser, the first one of magnitude the tourist meets and one of the best in the region; the Great Fountain, in some respects the most remarkable geyser in the Park, as its formation is quite unlike that of any other; the Mammoth Paint Pots, the most prominent example of this class of phenomena, and nearly seven hundred hot springs. Here also is located the Firehole, a large hot spring, from the bottom of which, to all appearances a light-colored flame is constantly issuing, at times assuming a ruddy tinge, and always flickering like the lambent flame of a torch. It is only an illusion, however, and is probably caused by escaping gas. THE REAL HOME OF THE GEYSER It is not until the tourist arrives at the Upper Basin, however, that he reaches the real home of the genus geyser. Here are fifteen examples of the first magnitude, besides scores of less important ones, and here they hold high carnival. The Grotto, the Splendid, the Giant, the Castle, the Lion, the Giantess, and the Bee Hive are located here; and here also stands Old Faithful, whose hourly eruption affords the visitor, however transient, an opportunity of witnessing at least one geyser in action. To it fell the honor of welcoming civilized man to this remarkable region, for when the Washburn party, from a dense forest, which concealed everything around them beyond a radius of a few hundred feet, emerged suddenly into an open, treeless valley, there, directly in front of them, scarcely two hundred yards away, stood the vertical column of Old Faithful, 150 feet in the air. The most beautiful geyser in the whole region however, 189 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE is the Bee Hive. While not so grand and powerful as some of the others, from an artistic point of view it is the most perfect geyser in the Park. About eight miles beyond the Upper Geyser Basin the road crosses the Continental Divide, and then for a distance of about ten miles lies on the Pacific Slope. From Shoshone Point a glimpse may be had of Shoshone Lake, quietly nestled among the mountains, and far away to the south may be seen the towering peaks of the great Tetons. A JEWEL IN A DEEP SETTING At Lake View a sharp turn in the forest road brings the tourist suddenly in full view of one of the most striking panoramas in the world. Immediately before him, three hundred feet below, lies the beautiful Yellowstone Lake. Beyond, far away along the eastern horizon, rise the Absaroka Mountains, while on every hand the dark pine forests shroud the slopes and are mirrored in the tranquil waters below. Yellowstone Lake is nearly a mile and a half above the level of the sea, or a quarter of a mile higher than Mt. Washington. It has an area of 139 square miles and a maximum depth of three hundred feet. At one point upon its shore fish may be caught and cooked in the boiling spring without taking them from the line. About twenty miles above the head of the lake is the celebrated Two-Ocean Pass, where exists a most remark- able phenomenon. From the north and from the south issue two streams, which flow along the top of the Con- tinental Divide towards each other until each finally divides, one part passing down the Atlantic slope and the 190 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE other down the Pacific^ thus forming a continuous natural water connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans nearly six thousand miles long. It is supposed that the fish in the Yellowstone Lake entered through this connec- tion. WILD ANIMALS Yellowstone Park is the greatest game preserve in the United States. Herds of buffalo, elk and moose are carefully protected here; and on the mountain tops are many big-horn sheep, goats and antelope. The American beaver finds a home in the valleys and streams, and fur- bearing animals frolic everywhere in the open. No one is allowed to molest bird or beast, and in this security they become so confident that many of them come habitually around the hotels, to the great delight of the guests. The park bears are famous and a few of the game birds are gradually losing their inherent fear of the proximity of mankind. Deer and elk are frequently seen along the park drives as well as numerous members of the bear family. The buffalo are kept in a special enclosure which may be visited by a slight detour from the main-traveled road. Game fowl are seen in abundance on Yellowstone Lake and River. THE CROWNING GLORY As the Upper Falls are neared the road becomes decidedly picturesque. At one point it is hung upon the side of an almost perpendicular cliff overlooking the rapids of the river; at another it crosses a deep ravine over the highest bridge in the park. A short distance below this point the now rushing river 191 THE PLAYGROUND OF NATURE turns abruptly to the right and disappears. Here are the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone. The narrowness of the vent and the velocity of the current force the stream far out from the face of the vertical rock in one bold leap of 112 feet. A few hundred yards beyond this point a sharp bend in the road unfolds to the visitor, all at once, the whole vista of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. For twelve miles it stretches out below the Falls, dropping sheer from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet, and bearing upon the face of its walls the most glorious color work in the world. At the head of the canyon, enveloped now in part, now in total, by a floating robe of mist, are the Lower Falls, where the river plunges headlong over a precipice 310 feet high, and then silently and beautifully winds its way along the bottom of the mighty gorge, a sinuous line of green. 192 CHAPTER XXIII AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS GLACIER NATIONAL PARK IN THE ROCKIES FOLLOW- ING THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN TRAIL — THE GOING-TO- THE-SUN REGION BY SKYLAND TRAILS — THE MAM- MOTH PARK HOTELS THE MOUNTAIN CHALET- VILLAGES. THE TREMENDOUS mountain-land of Glacier Na- tional Park sits high up in the splendid Rocky Mountains of northwestern Montana — on and about the Continental Divide. The Glacier Park mountains outstretch from the Great Northern track all the way north to the Canadian border, and from the reservation of the Black- feet Indians west to the Flathead River — a mountain- land 1,525 square miles in extent. With Mount Cleveland (10,438 feet) and Mount Jackson (10,023 feet) its generals, a veritable army of magnificent peaks, giants of the Divide, for all time is encamped here, peaks that rear from eight thousand to ten thousand feet above sea level, with their bases thickly forested up to the timber line, and their limestone crests by sun and wind painted in many colors — reds and browns and blues and purples. The ^^roof of America" this region has been christened; and from these heights waters start on journeys west to the Pacific Ocean, north to Hudson Bay and south to the Gulf of Mexico. Atop these mountains are eighty living glaciers as inspiring as those ice-fields Americans have for many 13 193 AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS years been crossing to Switzerland to see; of these the great Blackfeet Glacier has an area of five miles. Up in these high places, too, are nimble-footed Rocky Moun- tain goats, also deer and elk. Among these mountains, in the forested valleys where gorgeous wild flowers riot, are 250 glacier-fed blue mountain lakes and scores of noble cataracts and rollicking mountain streams. So many are the tremendous sights to be seen at Glacier Park and so many are the stirring out-of-door things to be done there that only that tourist who has passed a summer within the park has seen and done all. FOLLOWING THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN TRAIL The main entrance to Glacier National Park is opposite the Great Northern station and the automobile highway, over which an auto-stage service is maintained, foUow^s the old Rocky Mountain Trail, for centuries the north- and-south travel route of the Indians, and said once to have extended into South America. About four miles out a branch auto-stage road reaches westward to the Two Medicine country, where Two Medicine Lake and River are, and Rising WoK Mountain (9,270 feet), and Mount Rockwell (9,255 feet). The Two Medicine country commemorates the two lodges in which the medicine men of the Blackfeet Indians, the one-time proprietors of the Glacier Park mountains, a hundred years ago made the medicine that put an end to a great famine that had overtaken the tribe. Rising Wolf was the Blackfeet name for Hugh Munroe of the Hudson Bay Company who settled among the Indians in 1815 and was the first white man in Montana; Rising Wolf Mountain is his monument. 194 AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS A dozen miles farther on another branch road strikes west along the Cut Bank River — a famous stream for the fishing of mountain trout. In the Cut Bank country mountain-climbers on the summit of Triple Divide may dip up a hatful of water and send parts of it traveling to three different seas. Thirty miles out from Glacier Park Hotel the auto- mobile highw^ay reaches the foot of deep and vivid-blue St. Mary Lake — the most beautiful mountain lake in all America. Up this lake the good little ship '^St. Mary" sails westward for ten miles — deep in among the mountain giants of the Park — to the Going-to-the-Sun region. THE GOING-TO-THE-SUN REGION The Going-to-the-Sun region, at the head of St. Mary Lake, contains Going-to-the-Sun Mountain (9,594 feet), and close about it are Goat Mountain (8,815 feet) and Red Eagle (8,500 feet) and Little Chief (9,542 feet). Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, too, affords a good example of the wealth of historic and romantic interest that the Blackfeet Indians have by their association conferred upon the whole of Glacier Park. Going-to-the-Sun was christened by the Blackfeet generations ago, and com- memorates that highly important personage of the Black- feet, Sour Spirit. Sour Spirit, according to the Indian lore, long ago descended from, his Lodge of the Sun, and taught the Blackfeet how to shoot straight with the bow and arrow, how to build commodious tepees, and how to slaughter the buffalo, herds at a time — and then, before his return to the Sun, for an inspiration to the tribesmen wrought the likeness of his face on the granite crest of that 195 AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS mighty mountain that looms at the head of St. Mary, now knowTi as Going-to-the-Sim. The Blackfeet accord- ingly christened that superb peak, to quote its complete title instead of its present-day shortening, The-face-of- Sour - Spirit - who - went - back - to- the- Sun- after -his- work- was-done Mountain. On from the foot of St. Mary Lake a second division of the highway, twenty-five miles in length, extends north to the foot of Lower St. Mary Lake and thence, turning west, stretches, an inter-mountain highway now, up the Swiftcurrent Valley to another wonder place of America, deep in among the mountains: the Many- Glacier region. Here, about McDermott Lake and Falls, are the great pyramid of Grinnell Mountain, and McDermott Peak and Gould Mountain, and on the heights all around are the many glaciers that give to the region its name. BY SKYLAND TRAILS Up and onto the mountains, three principal trails, over which regular saddle-horse service is maintained, ascend — Gunsight, Swiftcurrent and Piegan, three sky- land trails across and along the Continental Divide. Of these'the Gunsight Trail, east to west in direction, from the head of St. Mary Lake winds between Citadel and Fusillade mountains up to lofty Gunsight Lake, six thousand feet above the sea, and the region of Black- feet Glacier, and thence, climbs the side of Mount Jackson and scales the Divide through the notch of Gunsight Pass. From the west gate of Gunsight Pass the trail winds on past Lake Ellen Wilson to the Sperry Glacier country. 196 ^ p: o) •y' B >'• ^ ^ QJ -t? S'a s^ ft, H' AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS Swiftcurrent Trail, another east to west trail, from McDermott Lake ascends the upper reaches of the valley of the Swiftcurrent, and surmounts the Divide at Swift- current Pass — a gap in the mighty precipice of the Garden Wall. From the Swiftcurrent Trail an expanse of moun- tains hundreds of miles in extent is overlooked, including Mount Cleveland, the highest peak of the park. Down the west slope of the Divide both the Gunsight and Swiftcurrent trails descend to Lake McDonald. Piegan Trail, on the other hand, is a north-and-south trail that links the Going-to-the-Sun and the Many- Glacier regions, and follows the Divide. Sexton Glacier, Piegan Mountain, Siyeh Mountain (10,004 feet), Piegan Pass, Grinnell Glacier and Grinnell Lake are a few of the landmarks along the Piegan Trail. THE MAMMOTH PARK HOTELS The chain of mountain hotels and chalet-groups that has been established along the highways and trails is interesting and their chief charm lies in the ingenious manner in which the architects have built into them the atmosphere and traditions of Glacier Park. The outer walls of the Glacier Park Hotel have been constructed largely of the huge trunks of trees and its thousands of feet of exterior galleries are supported by giant tree- trunks processed so that their bark is retained and none of them is less than six feet in diameter. Inside, the most notable feature of the hotel is the Forest Lobby. Here splendid fir-tree pillars four feet in thickness rise to a skylight set in the roof, and carry a succession of interior galleries. From tree-trunks also the hotel desk, the various counters and the lamp stands are fashioned. 197 AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS The floor is strewTi with carpets of Blackfeet design and a host of the gay-hued blankets of the Blackfeet are hung upon the walls. Splendid heads and skins of big game who in life roamed in these mountains also adorn the walls. Still another unique thing is the open camp-fire on the lobby floor. In the evenings tourists and dignified Blackfeet chiefs and weather-beaten guides cluster about a great slab of stone on which sticks of fragrant pine crackle merrily. The Many-Glacier Hotel is more distinctly Swiss in architecture, with its timbered walls stained in many harmonious colors and adorned with unique wood- carvings. In place of being laid out along a formal ground plan, its several sections conform to the irregular contour of the Lake McDermott shore. A mural canvas, 180 feet long, painted by Medicine Owl and eleven other Blackfeet chiefs and depicting the history of the Blackfeet nation in its palmy days, is a novel decoration in the lobby. THE MOUNTAIN CHALET-VILLAGES Supplemental to the hotel through Glacier Park nine chalet-groups are established — in reality nine unique mountain villages. These chalet-groups are each of them made up of club-chalets, dining-chalets and dormi- tory-chalets, modeled after the chalets of the Swiss Alps and picturesquely constructed of logs and stones. For stiU other lodging places there have been estab- lished on Lake McDermott, and on Lake St. Mary near Going-to-the-Sun Chalets, tepee camps where the tourist may lodge somewhat as the old-time Blackfeet Indians did. 198 AMONG THE AMERICAN ALPS Walking tours through the park are highly popular and indeed to one who really loves the open this is the only way to travel through this great national play- ground. One can follow the traveled routes, stopping over night at the picturesque chalets, or push on, follow- ing the dim and little-traveled trails of the Indian and ranger, into the wilderness, but always through a region of indescribable beauty, with new scenic surprises at every turn. 199 CHAPTER XXIV THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST A REGION OF ENDLESS CHARM FABULOUS ORCHARDS ROMANCE OF THE WHEAT FIELDS THE INLAND EMPIRE MIGHTY FORESTS THE GREAT SALMON FISHERIES THE MAJESTIC RIVER OF THE NORTHWEST THE ROSE CITY AT THE FOOT OF MT. HOOD A LAKE IN THE CRATER OF A VOLCANO TACOMA AND SEATTLE THE LORDLY MT. RAINIER. THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST is a region of beautiful mountains, broad rivers and fruitful valleys. Every- thing that will grow in the temperate zone will grow here and with such a prodigality that it produces three- pound apples, bumper crops of wheat, and trees that reach a height of three hundred feet or more. To the east, beyond the Cascade Mountains, the climate is similar to that of Maryland or the famous valley of Virginia, colder in winter and warmer in sum- mer than that of the western section, but pleasant and healthful everjn^^here — a climate promotive of growth and vigor, health, energy and success. The mountain tops, ever in view, are always snow- covered, and while the heat prostrations and sunstroke of midsummer work havoc in Eastern cities, people in this country work all day in comfort and at night draw their blankets closely around their shoulders, thankful for the rest that they can enjoy. These mountains, too, intercept the moisture-laden winds sweeping in from the Pacific, sending the moisture back as warm rain. 200 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST FABULOUS ORCHARDS Some of the greatest fruit-growing country in the world is contained in the Willamette and Hood River valleys in northwestern Oregon, in the Rogue River Valley in southw^estern Oregon, the Grande Ronde Valley in the northeastern part of the state, the Yakima and Wenatchee valleys in central Washington, and the Palouse country in southeastern Washington and west- ern Idaho. One associates the apple with Oregon as naturally as one associates the orange with southern California. Usually the fruit is sold in the orchards, the bulk of the product being shipped abroad. Over six hundred carloads of apples and four hundred carloads of other fruit — chiefly pears — are shipped from the Rogue River district annually, seven hundred carloads of apples, and sixty carloads of prunes from Union County, and a large product from the Grande Ronde Valley and the territory tributary to Lewiston, Idaho; while from the Yakima Valley, in the irrigated district, with more than two million acres of irrigable lands, hundreds of car- loads of apples and peaches are shipped annually. ROMANCE OF THE WHEAT FIELDS Wheat, like apples, is grown in fabulous abundance in the Northwest, and Portland ships more foreign wheat than any other port in the United States. In the Inland Empire, a large area reaching as far north as Spokane, as far south as Union and La Grande, east to Lewiston, and west to Heppner and the Cascades of the Columbia, and including varied altitudes and widely divergent features of climate, the cost of grain production is very 201 THE LURE OF THE. NORTHWEST low, and the soil seems, although repeatedly cropped, to be inexhaustible. This Inland Empire, peculiarly adapted to the raising of small grain, has carried the name of Walla Walla to the grain markets of the world, and wherever wheat is bought and sold, the name of this prosperous little city is known. The Inland Empire produces from forty to sixty million bushels of wheat each harvest, Walla Walla County alone producing a tenth of this amount. THE INLAND EMPIRE This region was once a desolate waste, for thousands of years ago, scientists tell us, there existed between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascade range a vast inland sea — the waters left imprisoned when the ocean receded. After many ages these pent-up waters burst the restrain- ing barriers and forced their way to the ocean, creating the deep canyon of the Columbia, but leaving behind a broad plain, now a veritable '^Land of J Canaan." Its plateaus unite to form one of the bountiful ''bread baskets of the world" while its valleys yield generously of nearly aU the products of husbandry. MIGHTY FORESTS Dense forests of evergreen trees almost envelop the hiUs and mountains. ^Scarcely any portions were origi- nally left bare, except the higher peaks, which in a spirit of independence seem to have pushed their bald heads up and above this beautiful covering. Into the fertile valleys and along the river banks clear to the sea the stately ranks of these forests once advanced, but such localities are now, for the most part, given over to 202 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST the cities and the husbandmen or else in a state of semi- transformation are awaiting the day when they too will be devoted to the peaceful pursuits of agriculture. The sturdy monarchs have all been honored with names and thoroughly worthy of their names they are, without a blemish to mar their fame in spite of the ages through which they have lived. Most prominent is the Douglas fir, or Douglas spruce, the giant of the forest, growing erect as a plumb-line until it ends in a pyramidal crowTi two hundred feet or more above the ground. This is a most important tree, for its product houses the people, and for the past ten years has insured Wash- ington first place in lumber production in the United States. Some of the largest trees reach the enormous proportions of eight, ten, and even twelve feet in diameter, a single one producing material sufficient to build a palace of huge dimensions. Of great importance also is the red cedar, reaching sometimes a height of two hundred feet and ^having a diameter in rare cases of over twenty feet ; yielding for the state of Washington two-thirds of all the shingles produced in the United States. THE GREAT SALMON FISHERIES If Washington and Oregon did not possess their thou- sands of fertile acres of fruit and grain, their timber and their natural wealth, the yearly harvest from the sea would still be worth enough to make them rich, for the greatest salmon fisheries in the world are here along the Columbia, where, year after year, early in the spring, the salmon >begin to move, leaving the ocean in accordance with the impulse which comes only once in their lives, 203 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST back to the fresh water that was their birthplace, to end their lives in some^mountain torrent, perhaps hundreds of miles from the ocean. It is a glorious sight to see the salmon entering the Columbia. On one dayj^there is not a fin in sight, and twenty-four hours later one might almost cross the river on their backs, as George Francis Train declared he did, some years ago. In myriads they come, pushing, fight- ing for first place, springing up falls and ascending rapids — the feats they perform in reaching their destination seem incredible. Those which escape the trap, fish wheel, gill net and other devices for their capture, swim steadily up stream (fasting ahvays after entering fresh water) until they reach that locality which appeals to them as proper for spawning. Here the paired-off fish make a sort of nest, scooping out a shallow place and scraping pebbles about it so that the precious eggs may not wash down stream. Once hatched, everything able to catch them feasts upon them, but in spite of all they go each year in millions to the sea, while the old ones die, once the eggs are cared for. THE MAJESTIC RIVER OF THE NORTHWEST It is difficult for one who has never seen the Columbia to realize its size. It reaches, near its mouth, a width of seventeen miles. For over a hundred miles it is open to ocean-going vessels of the deepest draft and it is the main artery for water traffic for a region which is imperial in the extent of its resources and the size of its territory. Its upper waters sluice mining camps innumerable, furnish water power and carry millions of logs, which, converted into lumber, find their way to almost every 204 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST country in the world. Its lower waters teem with salmon in season, and a great fleet of both steam and sailing craft traffic upon it and its tributaries. The products of the country, wheat, lumber, flour, wool, salmon, hides, hops, apples and other products of forest and mine, orchard and ranch, are found throughout the world's wide markets. John Muir says of it, ''The Columbia, viewed from the sea to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad-topped, picturesque old oak, about six hundred miles long and measured across the spread of its upper branches, nearly a thousand miles wide; the main limbs are gnarled and swollen with lakes and lake-like expansions, while innu- merable smaller lakes shine like fruit among the smaller branches." THE ROSE CITY AT THE FOOT OF MT. HOOD The Annual Rose Festival, held in Portland in June, serves to keep the city prominently in the public eye, and the location, on the Willamette River, from a scenic point of view, is unexcelled. The terraced, wooded heights behind the city, fast becoming covered with beautiful homes, afford wonderful situations from which to view the rich panorama of river, mountain, and forest that stretches from the southern horizon to the limits of vision far to the north. The Cascade range in its great, green, wavy undulations rises to the east, cleft by the mighty gorge of the Columbia River. Here and there, projecting high above the main range, stand Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier, Vv-hite and glittering, robed in ice and snow, and forming imperishable monuments of grandeur. 205 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST In the foreground the great city slopes down to the deep, currentless river and then rises in easy grades to the foothills of the mountains about Mt. Tabor and its adjacent elevations. The central figure of the scene is Mt. Hood, 'Hhe pride of Oregon," and it is a revelation to those who have never feasted their eyes on such a sight. The masted ships and scurrying or docked steam- ers betoken the large river and ocean commerce that centers here. A LAKE IN THE CRATER OF A VOLCANO The most curious natural phenomenon in Oregon is Crater Lake. Mysterious indeed is this lake which apparently has no outlet and into which no rivers flow and the waters of which are still pure and sweet. Roughly circular in shape, with a diameter of five miles, the lake is inclosed by walls of igneous rock which rise from five hundred to two thousand feet above the surface of the water. Blue, deep blue and beautiful is the water, and blue it may well be, for the bottom lies almost another two thousand feet beneath. Many centuries ago fire and lava belched forth from the bowels of the earth in the very spot where now hes this quiet lake. The volcano was probably as high as Mt. Shasta, California (14,380 feet), and the lake is still more than six thousand feet above the sea. Wizard Island, near the western shore, is an extinct volcanic cone — a curious example of a crater within a crater. Phantom Ship, to the south, is composed of columns of rock, resembling, as the name indicates, a ship. 206 THE LURE OF THE NORTHWEST TACOMA AND SEATTLE What Portland is to Oregon, Tacoma and Seattle are to Washington. Tacoma overlooks Commencement Bay, of Puget Sound, with Mt. Rainier, about forty miles distant, a great, majestic outpost. It is a pic- turesque city, high on a bluff above the deep blue waters that rush in and out twice a day with the tides on which are borne to the gigantic wharves the choice products of China, Japan, and the far eastern countries, and from which are shipped to the Orient, lumber, grain, cotton and manufactures in ever-increasing quantities. Seattle is situated on Elliot Bay, of Puget Sound, about an hour's ride from Tacoma by steamer or rail. To the west, across the Sound, the Olympic Range show^s its snow-tipped peaks, and Mount Rainier is seen to the south. From almost any elevated part of the city these two mountain pictures, with the calm waters of the sound lying between, provide a wonderful pano- ramic view. Seattle does an enormous export and import business, and its industrial and commercial growth has been remarkable. THE LORDLY MT. RAINIER For those who have not seen Mt. Rainier, or Mt. Tacoma as the people of Tacoma call it, it is almost impossible to imagine its majesty. It is visible, if the day is clear, long before reaching Tacoma. From all points on the Sound this grand mountain looms high over everything. If one sees it at sunrise or sunset under favorable circumstances, one has a vision such as rarely is vouchsafed mortals to see. The region immediately surrounding Mt. Rainier has 207 THE LURE OF THlS NORTHWEST recently been set aside as a National Park and perhaps no other area in the world brings so many and such varied natural wonders to the very doors of two great cities. It contains a total of 324 square miles, of which one hundred square miles is occupied by Mount Rainier (or Mt. Tacoma), king of mountains, rising apparently directly from sea level, and visible from almost every point in the state. No grander expression of Nature's sculptural art exists than this mighty pinnacle, 14,408 feet in altitude, whose glacial "area, no less than 45 square miles in extent, exceeds that of any other peak in the United States. One of the most interesting glaciers is Carbon on the north slope, reaching down to a lower elevation than any other; the most readily reached is the Nisqually, five miles in length; and the largest is the White or Emmon's. 208 CHAPTER XXV THE LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN ALASKA, STRANGE COUNTRY OF THE NORTH nature's gorgeous PAGEANTRY THE OLD RUS- SIAN CAPITAL — CORDOVA AND THE COPPER RIVER COUNTRY — ^A GOOD INVESTMENT. A MYSTERIOUS COUNTRY there is to the north, where the aurora boreahs gleams in the sky and the red midnight sun doubles back on his track when the year- tide is full. A strange land it is, filled with contrast and charm. From the far frozen seas it sweeps south many leagues to the western islands where the warm breath of Japan fills the air. Silent snow-fields lie sleeping where no man's foot has trod. Busy towns spring to life where restless human beings dig and scramble for gold, and the roar of blasts and din of mills shatters the air, night and day. Great cold peaks hft their pallid face against skies so blue that it seems all the color in the world must have been spilled there, and painted hills of the Yukon rise like rainbows. Newest of all the corners of the United States is this, yet ancient and quaint, with an old-world civilization transplanted on its shores a century and a half ago, in the days when Baranof was the "little Czar of the Pacific"; when the bells of the old California missions were cast in the foundries of Sitka, and Russian feet danced to Russian music in the castle on the hill. 14 209 LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN nature's gorgeous pageantry Many days and long weeks would be needed to travel the length of this strange land. Over mountains, along mighty winding rivers, and out again to the sea one would go. But the '^pan-handle" portion to the south- east is the threshold: and from here one may glimpse the great country. Leaving Seattle by night, the steamers turn north with throbbing engines, like the pulses of eager soldiers of fortune, who rushed here in mobs in the gold fever of '97. Waking in the morning, one sees the green shores of Vancouver Island facing the hills of the main- land across the waterway between. The ''inside pass- age," as it is called, winds through the protected channels of the Alexander Archipelago; and the country along these shores is storied territory, visited by the early navigators of the Pacific. Past Queen Charlotte Sound and the little stretch of open ocean, the hills grow more thickly timbered and one gets the impression of unopened country. The boundary of Alaska begins at Dixon Entrance. And here, also, in the popular notion of the day, the reign of order ceases. "There's never a law of God or man Runs north of fifty-three." Clinging to a hillside, with the business section along the level seashore, is Ketchikan, the first port of call in Alaska, one of the newer of the towns, built up as a center for a variety of interests. A copper district surrounds it, and there are gold prospects also. 210 LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN Metlakahtla, the next stop, is an interesting example of a communal settlement. In 1887 about eight hundred Christian Indians of the Tsimpsian tribe, under the leadership of the Reverend William Duncan, abandoned their village in British Columbia in order to gain greater religious liberty and settled on the body of land knoTvn as Annette Islands. Congress later set apart this reser- vation for their use. A definite municipal system of government was framed, town officials elected, and a school and church founded. After more winding of the way and sailing past green shores and foamy cataracts one reaches Wrangell, one of the oldest of Alaskan towns. A military post was estab- lished here by the United States Government at the time of the purchase of Alaska and maintained until 1887. The original route to the interior country, also, was by way of the Stikine River opposite Wrangell. There is a large sawmill located here, which sends its shingles and lumber all over Alaska. And here also are some of the oldest and most interesting of the native totem poles. After a run through Frederick Sound and Stevens Passage, along the length of Admiralty Island, one reaches Taku Inlet and the glacier of the same name. There are two of the ice-rivers, almost side by side — splendid examples of the ^'dead" and ''live" glaciers — one to the left, gray, dingy, receding, with the great terminal moraine between it and the sea; the other, bright, sparkling and blue, a great wall of ice jutting over the water, from which huge icebergs come tumbling with a crash like thunder, splashing the water high in air and filling the channel with fantastic shapes. The 211 LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN Indians have woven legends about the latter, and call it ^'Sitth Klummu Gutta/' the home of the spirit. Juneau, the capital of Alaska, is a few hours' steaming from here, a pretty little town, at the foot of a towering moimtain. Silver Bow Basin, behind the town, is one of the most beautiful of mountain canyons in Alaska, and is the scene of extensive mining operations. The residence city of the great Treadweil mines, Douglas, is just across Gastineaux channel and con- nected by telephone and ferry. It is a progressive and growing Alaskan town, whose birth dates from the dis- covery of placer gold on the island by 'Trench Pete" (Pierre Erussard), twenty-five years ago. Big scarlet oil tanks and rows of red cottages rising from the shores of Douglas Island announce the city of TreadweU. Here is the largest gold mine in the world as to tonnage; and as to output, the second largest in the United States. This one mine alone has more than three times paid the purchase price of all Alaska. The yawning pits, or ''Glory Hole," the heavy blasting, the mills grinding away night and day the year round, are all of interest. The to\Yn is not incorporated, the site being the property of the operating company. From Haines, the next stop, started the once-famous Dalton trail to the interior, before the Skagw^ay trail was opened. The territory of the Chilkat and Chilkoot tribes Hes back of here. Fort Wm. H. Seward, just adjoining, has one of the most picturesque situations imaginable, and is the military headquarters for south- eastern Alaska. At the head of Lynn Canal lies Skagrv^ay, with various claims to interest. Historically it is the boom town that 212 Photo by Brown Bros. El Captain, the Silent Sentinel of the Yosemite. The great cliff of soHd granite towers into the clouds, majestic, beautiful. LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN sprang to life in a night with the route over the White Pass, and the scene of operations of the notorious ''Soapy Smith" gang of desperadoes. Geographically, it is the gateway to the Yukon country, and during the summer months is filled with travelers. There are numerous hotels, curio shops, and some fine gardens. Deserted Dyea is near by; and Mount Dewey just behind, tempting to alpine climbers. The railroad trip over the White Pass and Yukon Railroad to the summit of the White Pass follows the old trail to the Klondike, and winds up to dizzy heights on the w^ay. White Horse, on the Yukon River, is the terminus, and from here the steamers leave for Dawson, Fairbanks and St. Michael, two thousand miles down-stream on Bering Sea. THE OLD RUSSIAN CAPITAL Tucked away on the seaward side of Baranof Island, back of a hundred low islands, with the snowy outline of Mt. Edgecumbe looming like a dream, lies the ancient trading post of Sitka, wrapped in memories of by-gone days. The old moss-covered warehouse is there still, where piles of priceless sable, ermine and beaver were stored; the old blockhouse and the Greek Cathedral of St. Michael, with its famous Madonna, its store of rich vestments and ornament. Sitka was the seat of govern- ment of Alaska in Russian days, probably because it was more accessible to Siberia than any other toun in south- eastern Alaska, and it remained the capital of the territory for nearly forty years after its purchase by the United States. Lovers' Lane, the beautiful Indian River road, winds 213 LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN along by the sea, at the edge of the forest, with gay totem poles flashing out here and there, or crumbling old war canoes. CORDOVA AND THE COPPER RIVER COUNTRY Following the coast farther north one reaches the beautiful harbor of Cordova, the present gateway to vast copper and coal fields by way of the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, though destined to become less important when the government railways now under construction are completed. Cordova enjoys the for- tunate combination of deep water and easy access to the great interior. Sheltered by forest and mountain its air has the softness of a Puget Sound atmosphere. But back of it, seaming the mountain sides, are great glacial masses. Fifty miles away are Childs' and Miles' glaciers. Along the river's edge for three miles Childs' glacier lifts its colossal face three hundred feet high. From a point back in the mountains, seventy-five miles away, its gigantic body winds along slope and chasm, ever accumulating in the range and ever losing at the river, where riven tons at frequent intervals crash down to spot the water with floes. ' The road extends from Cordova up the Copper River, a distance of 131 miles, to the town of Chitina, at the mouth of the Chitina River, which flows into the Copper River from the eastward, and thence east along the Chitina sixty-five miles further to Kennecott, where is located one of the largest high-grade copper mines in the world. From Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, the government is working on a railroad, which will mean much to the 214 LAND OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN pioneers of Alaska and also be an interesting experiment in government ownership of a common carrier. Of the interior, one-fifth the size of the United States, much might be written, but it is largely the land of the miner, the trader, the trapper and the pioneer; far out of the ordinary tourist route. A GOOD INVESTMENT Concerning the wealth of Alaska much has been reported and much yet remains to be discovered. The territory was purchased from Russia in 1867 for $7,200,000, and from that time until the close of 1912 it had produced minerals, fishing products and furs to the amount of $460,000,000. Alaska's commerce includes northward shipments of food products, merchandise, machinery, lumber, coal, etc., and return shipments of gold, silver, copper, salmon, halibut, etc. The average annual value of this growing commerce during the five years ending with 1912 was nearly fifty million dollars. In addition to this the territory produces annually some lumber, farm products, etc., which are consumed locally and as to the value of which no accurate^figures are available, although it is probably about half a million dollars. The mineral wealth of Alaska is at present its most important resource, but the territory also includes extensive tracts of farming and grazing lands and many water powers. Excellent timber occurs in southeastern Alaska, while the inland forests are valuable for local use. There are also valuable fisheries along the Pacific seaboard. No matter how considered, Alaska has proved a highly profitable investment for Uncle Sam. 215 CHAPTER XXVI "OUR LADY, QUEEN OF THE ANGELS" RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE NAME LOS ANGELES THE SIERRA MADRE — ^A COSMOPOLITAN CITY A GARDEN CITY THE LONGEST AQUEDUCT IN THE WORLD THE MISSION PLAY THE ENCHANTED ISLE TO REDLANDS AND THE ORANGE GROVES. THE ORIGINAL name of the pueblo of Los Angeles, following the custom that then prevailed among the Latin races, of giving religious names to places, was NuestraSenora de Los Angeles, sometimes written Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles — ''Our Lady, Queen of the Angels." This has been shortened in our practical Yankee speech to Los Angeles. Los Angeles was founded on September 4, 1781, by a small band of pobladores, or colonists, who had been recruited in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora, and brought here under command of a government officer, to found an agricul- tural colony, for the purpose of raising produce for the soldiers at the presidios. THE SIERRA MADRE The San Gabriel Valley, which forms the amphitheater in which the city and its garden suburbs spread out, is one of the most picturesque that could be imagined. Encircling it are the foothills of the Sierras, magnificent bald mountains, standing sculpture-like against the sky, 216 "OUR LADY, QUEEN OF THE ANGELS" much like gigantic sand dunes in formation, and chang- ing in color, light and shade with every hour of the day. The Spaniards named them '^ Sierra Madre," ''mother mountains," and the musical name has clung as have so many others that these pioneer people scattered over the lands they settled, like the fragrance of lavender among old linens. Here is the city for those who wish to get back to nature, for here one may live out of doors the year round. Southern California, as a whole, has a climate that is almost perfect. On the coast it is cool in sum- mer, with occasional fogs at night; farther inland it becomes warmer, and in places decidedly hot at times, though, owing to the dry atmosphere, a temperature of 100° is less oppressive than 80° on the Atlantic coast. On a winter's day the traveler may breakfast by the seashore, dip in the ocean, lunch amid the orange groves and dine in the snow-fields of the Sierras. There is really no winter and summer in Los Angeles county. They are represented by a wet and dry season. The former is far from a steady downpour, as some suppose, and in many ways the rainy season is the pleasantest of the year. A beautiful sight is the birth of spring when the bare, brown hills are transformed by a mantle of living green. A COSMOPOLITAN CITY There is a delightful foreign atmosphere for the traveler who will seek it in Los Angeles, and Spanish influence still dominates the architecture of the most beautiful of the show places, although it is not to these one must go for the old-time atmosphere. To wander 217 "OUR LADY, QUEEN GF THE ANGELS" through the Plaza in the original section of the city among lounging brown-skinned Mexicans or to drift into the Plaza church amid a group of devout wor- shipers is to live for a day at least in dear Old Mexico. Nearby is Chinatown, less splendid than the great new Chinatown of San Francisco, but in many ways more picturesque, best visited in the Chinese New- Year season when the narrow streets and overhanging bal- conies are resplendent with lighted lanterns and an atmosphere of festivity penetrates even the temples. This is the time when one's laundryman — for he is invariably Chinese in Los Angeles — tucks fascinating packages of tea and delicious candied ginger into one's bundle, smiling good wishes over the snowy linen. Chi- nese costumes still are seen occasionally on Broadway, and Chinese shops tempt the tourist in a thousand ways. Then there's a cosmopolitan quality about Los Angeles, born of the rubbing together of many people from far and near, for the city is still pre-eminently a tourist center, which no visitor to California ever neglects to see. A GARDEN CITY Of the newer sections of Los Angeles its people are justly proud, for there are a rapidly increasing number of fine buildings and the residence streets are all park- like and yet individual, even the humblest bungalow adding its quota of beauty. One must not expect to see too many flowers in the summer, but in the spring roses riot gloriously for expression, golden poppies spat- ter sunshine over vacant spaces and the tiniest garden spot offers its share of splendor. Geraniums clamber to the second-story, bursting gorgeously to bloom at 218 "OUR LADY, QUEEN OF THE ANGELS'* one's very bedroom window; peach and cherry blos- soms send one dreaming of Japan, and here and there an orange tree makes one's senses faint with its per- fume. Beautiful, too, are the trees of this garden city — palm trees rising high into the sky as if to lift their skirts above any possible contamination, sweet-smelling acacias, graceful pepper trees, with their delicate coral berries and their fern-like foliage flinging exquisite lace patterns on the sunny sidewalks, shaggy aromatic eucalyptus, majestic live oaks, in contour reminiscent of the cedars of Lebanon, and now and again an orange tree, never very large but always symmetrical, with glossy foliage and gleaming golden fruit. Though pre-eminently a residence city, Los Angeles is steadily growing in commercial importance. It has recently annexed San Pedro as a harbor, and extensive improvements have been made to enable vessels of the deepest draft to come to its wharves. THE LONGEST AQUEDUCT IN THE WORLD This work, however, is not so spectacular an achieve- ment as the acquirement by the city of water rights extending for many miles along the banks of the Owens River, in Inyo County. Water is now brought to the city, a distance of 240 miles, by means of an aqueduct and more than twenty miles of tunnels. This gives Los Angeles a supply of pure water from the snow-clad slopes of the highest mountains in the United States, sufficient for a population of two millions, so that not only will the city be amply supplied for many years, but there will be enough surplus to irrigate nearly all the available land in the county. The aqueduct is the 219 "OUR LADY, QUEEN OF THE ANGELS" longest in the world and carries ten times as much water as all the aqueducts of Rome combined. THE MISSION PLAY No visitor to Los Angeles, perhaps, fails to visit Pas- adena, a city of beautiful residences and rare gardens, or the ostrich farm at South Pasadena. San Gabriel Mission, one of the historic missions of California, now a landmark in a squatting half-Spanish village, where in 1915 the Mission play, recounting the early history of the state, was daily given, should not be forgotten and no one who saw that impressive little production, more like the spectacle of Oberammergau than anything America has ever produced, could ever quite forget this humble place. THE ENCHANTED ISLE The beaches of Santa Monica, Long Beach, Redondo, Ocean Park, Venice, etc., are all popular excursions, but the call of Santa Catalina Island is more alluring, for to discover cormorants and other strange birds and fly- ing fish, with their wings glittering in the sun; to see the most magic of islands, all mountains and cliffs and rocky gorges, rise out of the blue waters ahead, more beautiful than Sorrento — these are some of the joys of a trip to Avalon. But the greatest surprise is the Marine Gardens, with their wonderful shell-fish, ocean forests of kelp and brilliant fishes of a thousand colors, darting like flashes of light among the miniature mountains of the sea floor. These and many other wonders of the deep are revealed by the glass-bottom boats peculiar to this place. Avalon has other attractions, too — 220 Photo by Brown Bros. Merced River. . The dome ^s AM and wo^^^^^^ tS,^y^tSL^?::Z^r^t^:if^^rW^^ haJ is one of the riddles of th. stupendous valley. Copyright by Unaerwood and Underwood, N. Y. A Lordly Pillar in one of "God's First Temples." "Grizzly Giant," a redwood in Mariposa Grove, California, one of the most wonderful of all wonder- ful sishts in the West. "OUR LADY, QUEEN OF THE ANGELS" bathing, of course, and fish of fabulous size. The lure of the tuna has drawn sportsmen from all over the world. TO REDLANDS AND THE ORANGE GROVES Chief of the longer trips to be taken from Los Angeles is that on the "Kite-shaped Track" to Riverside and Redlands, to drive through sunny orange groves and look out upon acres of them from the summit of Smiley Heights, to climb Mt. Rubidoux and worship nature at the foot of its picturesque cross, and to stay for a night at least in one of the few hotels in the land that has a distinct individuality. The Glenwood Inn at Riverside was designed and built by a Californian and has gath- ered to itself and celebrated all that was most beautiful in the Spanish missions of the early days. It is an enduring monument to the history of that ancient time and a place where the twentieth-century tourist may well delight to linger and find peace. 221 CHAPTER XXVII THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND THE BIG TREES AMONG GIANT WALLS OF ROCK — YOSEMITE FALLS — THE TRIBUTARY CANYONS TREES EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS OLD. IN THE little valley of the Yosemite, containing only six square miles of territory, and shut in by sheer walls from three to five thousand feet high, their sides washed by wondrous sheets of water that tumble into the valley over precipices from three hundred to 2,600 feet high, is probably contained more beauty and grandeur than can be found in anything like the same limited area anywhere else in the world. Entering the vaUey, the most striking object is its northwestern buttress, the ponderous cliff El Capitan, rising 3,300 feet at a very narrow part, its majestic form dominating the view. On the opposite side, form- ing the other portal, rise the imposing Cathedral Rocks, adjoined by the two slender Cathedral Spires of splin- tered granite, nearly three thousand feet high. Over these rocks on their western side pours the Bridal Veil Fall, so called because the winds often make the foaming column flutter like a white veil. Adjoining El Capitan descends the Ribbon Fall, or the Virgin's Tears, falling two thousand feet, but losing much of its waters as the summer advances. East of El Capitan are the peaks 222 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY called the Three Brothers, the highest also named the Eagle Peak, rising three thousand feet. YOSEMITE FALLS To the east of this peak and in a recess near the center of the valley are the Yosemite Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in the world. Yosemite Creek, which comes over the brink with a breadth of thirty-five feet, descends 2,500 feet in three leaps. It pom-s down a vertical wall, the Upper Fall descending nearly fifteen hundred feet without a break. The column of water sways as the winds blow with marvelous grace of motion, and the eddying mists fade into hght summer clouds above. The Middle Fall is a series of cascades descending over six hundred feet, and the Lower Fall is four hundred feet high. There is a high and splendid ice cone formed at the foot of the Upper Fall in the winter. Alongside, from a projection called Yosemite Point, is given one of the best views of the famous valley. THE TRIBUTARY CANYONS At the head of the Yosemite, the canyon divides into three narrow tributary canyons, each discharging a stream, which uniting form the Merced. The northern- most is the Tenaya, and overshadowing it rises the huge North Dome, more than 3,700 feet high, having as an outlying spur the Washington Column. Opposite, and forming the eastern boundary of the valley, is the Simth or Half Dome, of singular shape, towering almost five thousand feet, and like El Capitan, at the other extrem- ity, being a most remarkable granitic cliff. Its top is inaccessible, although once it was scaled by an adven- 223 THE YOSEMlfE VALLEY turous explorer by means of a rope attached to pegs driven into the rock. It is one of the most extraordinarily formed mountains in existence, standing up tall, gaunt and almost square against the sky, the dominating pin- nacle of the upper valley. Upon the southern side rises Glacier Point, giving a splendid view over the valley, having to the westward the Sentinel Dome, end- ing in the conspicuous face of the Sentinel Rock. Just within Tenaya Canyon is Mirror Lake, remarkable for its wonderful reflections of the North and South Domes and adjacent mountains. Some distance to the east is the Cloud's Rest, a peak rising more than six thousand feet above the valley and nearly ten thousand feet above sea-level, that is ascended for its splendid view of the surrounding mountains and the enclosing walls of the valley, which can be plainly seen throughout its length, stretching far away toward the setting sun. TREES EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS OLD On the stage ride to the Yosemite, the Mariposa and Calaveras groves of Big Trees are passed. These red- wood trees (Sequoia gigantea) are a most interesting feature of the Yosemite region. Some of them are cal- culated by scientists to be not less than eight thousand years old and they occasionally attain a height of over four hundred feet, with limbs seven feet thick and cinna- mon-colored bark sometimes three feet in thickness. The wood is beautiful in color, easily worked and prac- tically imperishable. Farther south, in the Sequoia National Park, are over three thousand of these giants, each more than three hundred feet high. Among them man is dwarfed into 224 (^ < THE YOSEMITE VALLEY insignificance indeed, and his lifetime seems an inconse- quential period in comparison with theirs. Stung to reverence by their majesty it is not difficult to believe that "The groves were God's first temples" or that man before he fashioned the great cathedrals of the world received inspiration in natural wooded aisles. 16 225 CHAPTER XXVIII THE GUARDIAN OF THE GOLDEN GATE SAN FRANCISCO, THE PHCENIX CITY ^A GREAT SEA- PORT BEAUTIFUL BERKELEY COSMOPOLITAN GAYETY WHEN THE Franciscan monks built their chain of monasteries along the coast from San Diego north, look- ing over the beautiful panorama of mountain-girded bay, rolling hills and flowering vaUeys, they gave to the settlement about which the great city has grown up the name of their beloved saint, San Francisco. Built upon numerous hills, many of which bear names that have become famous in the days since the first discovery of gold, the city rises above a bay dotted with islands on the shores of which the sunny lowlands and foothills reach back to the mountains whose summits are veiled in mist. THE PHCENIX CITY Although almost completely annihilated by the quake and fire of 1906, San Francisco is today a better and more interesting city than ever before. The results which have been accomplished in so short a time are not only marvelous, but astonishing, and the masterful public spirit, so plainly evident on every hand, is proof that San Francisco always expects to wield the scepter of commercial supremacy on the Pacific Coast. Much of the city's pre-eminence is due to its location on San 226 GUARDIAN OF THE GOLDEN GATE Francisco Bay, which affords one of the finest harbors in the world, extensive enough in area to house innumer- able fleets, and well enough protected by the surrounding hills to make it well-nigh impregnable. A GREAT SEAPORT As a result of its location as related to the trade of the Pacific, San Francisco is the first city of California. It is the natural gateway to and from Hawaii, Samoa, Australia, the Philippines and the Orient, and is the railroad center and commercial metropolis of the Pacific Coast, and one of the great seaports of the United States. Ships of every nation are seen in its harbor. Its export trade has growTi in recent years to unex- pected proportions and regular lines of steamships to Honolulu, Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hongkong, and Manila, down the coast to South American ports, and north to Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver and Alaskan ports, leave the city wharves at regular intervals. The opening of the Panama Canal found San Francisco ready for new ventures, and the Panama-Pacific Exposition found a fit dwelling-place here. BEAUTIFUL BERKELEY Across the bay at Berkeley is the University of Cali- fornia, the state university, attended last year by more than eight thousand students, and second only in size to Columbia. The campus wdth its magnificent old oaks, the natural beauty of its background of rounded hiUs commanding a clear sweep of the bay and Golden Gate, its beautiful Greek Theater and graceful Campanile make it famous among institutions of learning. 227 GUARDIAN OF THE GOLDEN GATE COSMOPOLITAN GAYETY San Francisco itself is a city of cosmopolitan gayety, whose people love to gather in brilliant caf^s and move in body and spirit to the movement of the latest dance. This Paris of the West is beloved of many tourists, and its quaint Chinatown alone, with its exotic appeal, is knowTi from one end of the country to the other. 228 CHAPTER XXIX WITHIN THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION GORGEOUS SETTING OF THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSI- TION THE GENERAL PLAN WONDERFUL COURTS THE COURT OF ABUNDANCE THE COURT OF THE FOUR SEASONS THE EXHIBIT PALACES SCULPTURE AN EXPOSITION OF COLOR *'tHE ZONe" TOYLAND GROWN UP THE AEROSCOPE EXPOSITION GROUNDS RAILWAY CONTESTS AND ATHLETICS. A BIG EVENT like the completion of the Panama Canal demands world recognition, and despite the unsettled condition of commerce and transportation due to the war in Europe the Panama-Pacific International Exposition opened February 20, 1915, with due splendor. Cahfornia, always a land of enchantment to the traveler, seemed a fit setting for the celebration, and San Francisco, with its magnificent land-locked harbor midway along the coast, offered a perfect site. The beautiful new '^walled city within a city, " covering an area of 635 acres, accordingly arose. The place selected, a crescent upon the shores of San Francisco Bay, just within the Golden Gate, was not only extremely picturesque from a natural point of view, but particularly adapted to the purposes for which it was set aside. The buildings and their surrounding courts and gardens were, moreover, planned to harmonize with the natural surroundings — huge architectural blocks 229 UUllllJUUUL 13 Ox) THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION massed about great courts; buildings blazing with wonderful colors and the sheen of gold; gardens, a glory of tropical foliage and beautiful statuary. On the south, east, and west the grounds were encircled by towering hills, varying in height from 250 to 900 feet above sea-level, forming a great natural amphitheater. To the north San Francisco Bay, island-studded and alive with the shipping which makes San Francisco the western gateway to the Orient and the eastern gateway to the Occident, formed a part of the theater, and to the northwest the beautiful Golden Gate, a fitting portal. Upon the central portion of the plateau, fronting the bay, the main exposition palaces presented to the visitor the effect of an almost solid massing of a great walled city of the Orient, with outside walls rising as high as the average six-story city block, and with golden domes above them towering to heights of 250, 350, and 430 feet. THE GENERAL PLAN The main palaces were set back at a distance of some 350 feet from the water's edge, giving space for a marine promenade or esplanade which was the chief point of vantage for those viewing maritime spectacles of the exposition. The esplanade was among the show spots of the exposition and was elaborately landscaped. Myrtle, cypress, eucalyptus and great beds of hardy flowers con- trasted with the imposing fagades and lofty colonnades of the great palaces. Eight of the palaces of the center group were set in a rectangle, four facing the harbor on the north and four facing the hills of the city. The walls of the eight buildings were interconnected, forming a great outside wall unbroken save by a series of stu- 231 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION pendous archways and entrances giving access to the courts between the buildings. The buildings in this group comprised the palaces of Education, Varied In- dustries, Manufactures, Mines and Metallurgy, Liberal Arts, Transportation, Agriculture and Food Products. From afar the group presented the effect of almost a single palace, but nearer it was found to be divided from north to south by three great courts and their approaches — ^the Court of the Universe, in its center; the east court, the Court of Abundance, dividing the group upon the east, and the great west court, the Court of the Four Seasons, dividing it upon the west. Like the courts of the palaces of the Orient, these courts revealed the richest treasures of the exposition architecture, harmony and color. Flanking the walled city on the east was the Palace of Machinery, the largest single structure at the exposition. The Palace of Fine Arts, classical in the simplicity of its architecture, that of the Italian Renaissance, flanked the walled city upon the west and nearest the Golden Gate. WONDERFUL COUETS The Court of the Universe seated seven thousand persons in its central sunken gardens. Its principal features were the two great arches — the Arch of the Rising Sun and the Arch of the Setting Sun. The former was surmounted by an Oriental group symbolical of the Far East, while the latter bore an immense group en- titled ''The Nations of the West," showing the pioneers of all races who have settled the western part of the American continents from Alaska to the southern extrem- ity of South America, 232 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION The court resembled somewhat in shape the great plaza approaching St. Peter's at Rome. On the south it was dominated by a great tower gateway, the lofty Tower of Jewels, 435 feet in height, surmounted by an enormous globe, typifying the world. The shaft, pyram- idal in shape and richly sculptured, rose in lofty ter- races from a base 125 feet square through which a vaulted archway had been cut. The general details of the court were of Italian Renaissance with a suggestion of Byzantine influence, while the idea of the east and west arches was inspired by the triumphal arches of Imperial Rome. THE COURT OF ABUNDANCE The Court of Abundance or great east court was rich with Oriental suggestion. The earth, from the creation to the ultimate, was the theme which the architect ambitiously selected for the court. In the center was a still pool of dark water from which rose mysteriously bubbles of inflammable gas which ignited upon exposure to the air. Great jets of steam under high pressure played over the surface of the pool and were forced from various openings in the side of the court, causing a misty haze to hang like fog banks over the interspace between palaces. The walls of the court were treated with giant columns and a tower rose at its north end. THE COURT OF THE FOUR SEASONS , The Court of the Four Seasons paralleled the Court of the Universe upon the west. The theme of this court was the wealth which nature has lavished upon the pioneer who has ever pushed forward to the west. 233 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION The statuary in the court was particularly notable and Hadrian's villa was the source of its inspiration. In this court, as in all others, through the use of the imitation travertine marble the suggestion of plaster and stucco was eliminated and the impression given of a dream-city of palaces constructed of rare marble, soft in tint and tone and of enduring construction. Notes of contrast to the beautiful soft tones of the marble were gained by the integral castings of columns in replica of red Sienna or Numidian marble, or a verd- antique in bronze or gold, but even in these the strati- fied texture of the original surfaces was reproduced and the general treatment adhered to. For the decorations of the walls all of the figures were made of the same material, which was unprecedented in exposition con- struction and designing. THE EXHIBIT PALACES The north and south outside walls of the central group of eight exhibit palaces had a liberal treatment of the plateresque, which is so called because of its like- ness to the work of silversmiths. The east and west walls of the main group were after the Italian Renais- sance. The total length of this superb group east and west was 2,756 feet and its total length north and south was 1,235 feet. Flanking the central group upon the east was the great Palace of Machinery, the impressive architecture of which recalled the baths of the Emperor Hadrian. The architecture was essentially Roman and the decora- tion while classic in form was suggestive of modern machinery and invention. The principal architectural 234 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION features of the palace were three central longitudinal naveS; with a secondary aisle on either side. The composition of the Palace of Horticulture was Saracenic and similar in its arrangement of domes and minarets to the famous Mosque of Sultan Ahmed I at Constantinople. In detail and ornamentation the sug- gestion was of the eighteenth century French Renais- sance and the wooden trellis work was derived from the architecture of the Louis XIV period in France. The immense dome was composed almost entirely of glass as were the walls and roof. The beautiful Palace of Fine Arts, built of steel and concrete, was curved in plan with its east and west elevations forming parallel arcs, half-encompassing an immense pool of still water which reflected its archi- tecture. The Festival Hall, in which many of the principal theatrical features of the exposition were staged, had the usual theater arrangement of a foyer in front and the stage behind a circular auditorium. The architect con- ceived his plan of the building from a study of the Theatre des Beaux Arts type of French architecture and handled it in an exceptionally successful manner. SCULPTURE The plan of the sculpture for the exposition was designed to form a sequence from the first piece that greeted the visitor on his entrance from the city on the south throughout the courts and the circuit of the en- closing walls. Entering from the city through the South Gardens, between Festival Hall and Horticultural Hall, the visitor was first confronted with a great eques- 235 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION trian fountain symbolizing the creation of the Isthmian waterway between the oceans — the Fountain of Energy. This was outlined against the lofty opening of the arch- way of the Tower of Jewels, and was achieved as an imaginative equestrian group representing Energy — the Victor. The figure of a splendid nude youth, mounted on a spirited horse, was depicted as advancing steadily through the waters, while the attendant figures of Valor and Fame formed an encircling crest above his stern head. Passing beneath the arch, after viewing this monu- ment and entering the Court of the Universe beneath the great friezes of color, the visitor arrived in a vast oval courtyard around which colonnades swept to the right and to the left. On the central axis in these direc- tions were the two triumphal arches, 160 feet high, crowned by the great symbolical groups ''The Nations of the East" and ''The Nations of the West." These massive compositions placed upon the huge triumphal arches from San Francisco harbor stood out in silhouette among the vast domes and pinnacles of the Exposition City. The two main free monuments of the court were the fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, occupying positions relatively east and west. The upper portions of the fountains were the sources of the night illumina- tion of the court. Great globes surmounted by figures representing a sunburst and sunset, tj^ifying the rising and the setting sun, gave forth at night an incandescent glow, while below in the basins reclining figures of the planets surmounted globes of light, behind which the water fell in screens. 236 aj o THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION At the level of descent into the sunken garden, in which were placed the fountains of the Rising and the Setting Sun, titanic figures in horizontal compositions of the four elements, Fire, Water, Earth and Air, were designed. These, on a great scale and placed close to the ground, were given a most symbolically imaginative rendering and were of great interest. On the upper ramps of the sunken garden of the Court of the Uni- verse, in positions in front of the arches, were two ver- tical groups of two figures each, representing ''Order and Chaos" and ''Eternity and Change." Above each of the columns of the colonnade a hover- ing figure with a jeweled head, representing a scintillating star, was placed. Advancing down the forecourt one saw a pool of placid water in which the Tower of Jewels was reflected. At the end of the forecourt and fronting the Bay of San Francisco, on the sea esplanade, was erected a great figured column, the "Column of Progress." This could be seen prominently from the bay and marked the entrance to the Court of the Universe. Converging about the square base of the column a stream of figures, embodying conceptions of the great spiritual divisions of mankind, advanced to the doorway in the center of the base, and as if having mounted within, a frieze of figures appeared surmounting the capital of the column 160 feet from the ground, supporting by their united effort a single figure who spent his strength in launch- ing his arrow of adventurous progress. The capital of this column still further carried out the idea of move- ment and change in progress, for it was composed of wings and figures having a rotary motion. 237 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION The Tower of Jewels was decorated with much sculp- ture of a purely ornamental kind, as weU as a repeated typical equestrian figure of an armored horseman. At the level of the spring of the great arch of the tower were pedestals which supported standing portrait statues of types of Philosopher, Adventurer, Priest, Soldier. AN EXPOSITION OF COLOR As seen from the hills of San Francisco the exposi- tion was a great parti-colored area perhaps best de- scribed as resembling a giant Persian rug of soft, melting tones — the roofs of the palaces a reddish pink, the color of Spanish tile; the domes green, and gold and blue set within the recesses of the towers. The general color plan was faint ivory, the color of travertine stone. It was a new field, this painting an entire city with the colors of the rainbow and the artist Jules Guerin, was responsible for the harmonious effect. Expositions of the past had been "White Cities" with the exception of slight uses of color, but the Panama-Pacific Interna- tional Exposition was a " Rainbow City," a poem of color. French green was used in all the lattices, flower tubs, curbing of grass plots (where it complemented the green of the grass), in the exterior wood work and in some of the smaller doors. Oxidized copper-green was re- flected by the domes on the exhibit palaces. The only exception to this color was the domes of the Court of the Universe, which were yellow. Blue-green was found in the ornamentation of the travertine and in a darker shade at the bases of the flag poles. Pinkish-rcd-orange was used on the tall flag poles. It was briUiant and always topped with gold 238 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION and the scores that surrounded every building played an important part in the color scheme. '' There were three tones of the wall-red. They were found in the backgrounds of colonnades, backgrounds of courts, back- grounds of niches, on the tiled roofs and in the statuary. Yellow-golden-orange was used in enriching the tra- vertine and in heightening the shadow effects. Statu- aty high above the ground was of golden yellow and that which was close to the eye was of verd-antique, while much of it was left Vv^ith the natural travertine tint. In the ceilings and other vaulted recesses, in the deep shadows and in the background of ornamentation in which travertine rosettes were set, the deep cerulean blue was used. "the zone" The concessions at the exposition were unusual, not only for their high artistic value and great educational worth but also for the large outlay required in their presentation. The area devoted to them was a long narrow strip of sixty-five acres, opening out upon Van Ness Avenue, one of the principal boulevards of San Francisco, and leading thence westward to the main group of exhibit palaces. In the center of the district was a great "Plaza of Wonders," in which rose the high- est flag pole in the world, a giant fir 246 feet in height and over five feet in diameter at the base, donated by the citizens of Astoria, Oregon. TOYLAND GROWN UP Toyland Grown Up cost something like a million dol- lars to construct. It was its originator's idea to give 239 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION to the people of all the world that for which they have been seeking eagerly for as far back as history takes us — a chance to renew their youth. Toy giants in our nursery days were six inches high. When exhibited in Toy land Grown Up they measured two hundred feet. Jack and the Bean Stalk of the nursery rhymes were realities and the Giant's House and the Giant's Kitchen were of giant proportions. Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard accom- modated diners in the two lower shelves and the top shelf was the very last word in a commodious dancing floor. According to its inventor, Toyland Grown Up was not simply an architectural elaboration of toys: ^'The toy was a delight in the days of knickerbockers and knee-high gingham dresses, but in this fourteen acre, two hundred-foot high collection it must form an environment for every grown-up thrill and delight of summer amusement; its circus, its riders, its chutes, its spectacles, its music and flowers, its flags and gayety and constant carnival — a grown-up kids' millionaire delirium of something doing every minute in a grown-up environment of health and youthful play." The theory that the best and most popular entertain- ment to be found in any great exposition or county fair consists in those features which make the spectator a part of the show prevailed at San Francisco. There were more places to ride, more places to frivol, more bumps to bump and more scenic treats underground and through mid-air, than had ever before been offered a show-going public. 240 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION THE AEROSCOPE One of these, the Aeroscope, stood 264 feet high and a ride in it resembled an aerial jaunt over a down-town office building. If measured, the Aeroscope would stand seven stories higher than the Flatiron Building in New York. Infinite attention was devoted to making it a thing of safety as well as of comfort and pleasure and the outlook from on high insured its popularity. A great motion-picture building composed of ten separate theaters having a seating capacity of four thousand was another feature of the Zone. Here were shown moving pictures of the industries, the scenic beauties and all of the activities, commercial, artistic, scientific, etc., of the states and foreign nations par- ticipating in the exposition. In the Submarines visitors traveled beneath the waters of a great lagoon in models of the best types of submarines used in the world's navies, from the port- holes of the boats looking out upon a marine panorama attractively setting forth the changes in ocean life from the tropics to the frigid zone. The Panama Canal concession was a great working model of the Panama Canal with a capacity of handling two thousand sightseers through its locks every half hour. Scenes in the Canal Zone were reproduced and the visitor was treated to a running lecture upon the operation of the canal. The Evolution of the Dreadnaught portrayed the de- velopment of the modern battleship from the old wooden frigate of early colonial days. In this panoramic repro- duction scenes of the famous battle between the Monitor and the Merrunac were reproduced. 16 241 THE PORTALS O^ INSPIRATION Another interesting wartime concession was that repro- ducing the battle of Gettysburg. The concession was very realistic and an actual road bordered by growing grain merged imperceptibly into the narrow lane of the battlefield. The Dayton Flood was a realistic production of the havoc wrought when the courageous American city was overwhelmed by the waters of the Ohio River. Among other notable concessions was the Australa- sian Village, the Alligator Farm, the Bowls of Joy, the Carousels, Creation, the Parsival Dirigible, the Forty- nine Camp, the Human Roulette, the Infant Incubator, Japan Beautiful, the Marine Gardens, Mahomet's Moun- tain, the Narren Palast, the Novelty Concession, Old Nuremberg, the Old Red Mill, the Oriental Village, the Ostrich Farm, the Samoan Village, and the reproduction of Yellowstone National Park. EXPOSITION GROUNDS RAILWAY A narrow-gage railway operated on the tracks extend- ing from a point near the Palace of Machinery, by way of the north side of the grounds to the race track, polo and athletic fields along the water front, was known as the Panacific Railway. This intra-mural acconmiodation was appreciated by visitors with but limited time for sightseeing, linking, as it did, the Zone at the eastern end of the exposition area with the area where so many special events were to be staged. And the Zone throughout was girdled, crowned, gem- med, starred, streaked, arched and rendered a thing of joy and splendor by lights, for each firm or individual employed had been given this general instruction, "Go 242 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION as far as you like, but be sure we outshine all the other feUows." CONTESTS AND ATHLETICS World Series baseball was one of the features of the greatest athletic and sporting program ever given by an organization. Polo was played in the first world polo tournament; motor boats had a $10,000 race; two harness horse-racing meets carried away $227,000 in purses; amateur and professional boxing champions ap- peared in the squared arena; the Vanderbilt Cup auto- mobile race and other events enticed visitors from far and near. In keeping with the general plan of the exposition the Department of Live Stock was presented in a better manner than has usually characterized such exhibitions. Competitions for the $175,000 in prize money appro- priated by the exposition, and for the supplemental pre- miums offered by the breeders' associations, took place in the months of October and November. In addition to this there was a continuous live-stock display. In housing, classification and arrangements of the exhibits, the Department of Live Stock at San Francisco demon- strated the advancement that has been made since the last world's exposition. NATION-WIDE INTEREST In no sense was this exposition simply a California undertaking, for every state and all the people were alike interested. It was different from any prior world's fair. It surpassed all others as the industrial progress of the last decade during which the Panama Canal was 243 THE PORTALS OF INSPIRATION practically built, surpassed that of the previous half century. The world's economic and artistic accomplish- ments in the ten years preceding 1915 were assembled in the exhibit palaces and only the best in each art and craft was shown, so that in the vast display the visitor was not confused by articles of secondary worth. It glorified heroes now living. It placed a milestone in world progress toward the unknown future. 244 CHAPTER XXX A MAGIC CITY IN THE LAND OF HEART'S DESIRE ROMANTIC STAGING OF A MODERN INDUSTRIAL DRAMA PORTOLA AND HIS MEN FRAY SERRA's MIRACLE THE SPANISH TRADITIONS ^A NEW CITY OF OLD SPAIN THE OLD AND NEW IN EXPOSITIONS THE INTEN- SIVE FARM — "the PAINTED DESERT " — THE CLIMATE AS CONTRIBUTOR. FEW PERSONS who have felt the speU of CaUfomia's exuberant sunshine fail to respond to its call, and espe- cially is this true of San Diego, the garden city of the Southwest, a very real and abiding Land of Heart's Desire. The celebration which California and San Diego planned for 1915 had accordingly the charm of a pic- turesque background and perfect climate, with a wealth of romantic association. To understand fully the spirit back of the Panama- California Exposition, indeed, it is necessary to know something about the history of the Southwest. It is four hundred years since Balboa went beyond the point which Christopher Columbus had reached in 1492, crossed the Isthmus and from the highlands looked down on the Pacific. We have all read how, rushing down to the sea and planting the banner of Spain in the ocean, he claimed for his country all the lands it touched. It was a claim which was rather extravagant even in 245 A MAGIC CITY those days, and it was not until 1542 that an expedition started north to see what these lands were. Juan Rodrigues Cabriilo, a Portuguese adventurer in the service of Spain, headed the party, and it is recorded that in that year he sailed to San Diego and anchored in the Harbor of the Sun. For a long time the port went under the name of San Miguel, and it was not until many years later that the name of San Diego was substituted. Early in the next century there came Viscaino, and he had landed, leading the second Spanish party to touch on the west coast, before Samuel de Champlain carried the lihes of France up the St. Lawrence and into what is now American territory, before Hudson carried the Dutch flag into New York harbor, and before the English pilgrims landed at Plymouth in New England. PORTOLA AND HIS MEN Thus the west coast had a big start, but conditions in Spain were not such as to make possible the immediate settlement of the land so discovered. There were interior dissensions and there was trouble in the colonies; also there were long European wars, and it was not until 1769 that a really serious expedition started out from Mexico with Portola, the first governor of Lower California, in charge of the party. The sailors and adventurers who had come more than two centuries before, had hved only a httle time and then sailed away leaving nothing to show for their coming except the maps and narratives; but in 1769 the arrival was of a different sort, for with Portola there came a gallant priest. Fray Junipero Serra, as the head of a httle party of Franciscans who came not to discover, but to live, 246 A MAGIC CITY to colonize, to civilize, and to lay the foundation for a glorious new Spain in the western world. It is reported how the little colony established a garrison on Presidio Hill just above the sea, and waited for reinforcements to arrive; how the reinforcements failed to come when expected, and for a long time after; how the soldiers finally became disheartened and ill and demanded that they return to the south, and how Fray Serra implored the leader to wait just a little longer. The limit was reached and the priest was told that on that day the return must be started. ''Just one more day," he begged. And he begged so strongly that the commander consented to remain ''one more day." FRAY SERRA's MIRACLE And then Fray Serra went to the crest of the hill and prayed all through the afternoon up until evening. Finally, in despair, he gave once more the forlorn glance to sea, and there was a sight which sent him rushing down into camp shouting and weeping with joy. He had seen a distant sail. Up the slope dashed the soldiers and sailors, until they too beheld the wonderful sight. The trip to the south was delayed; the sail grew larger and larger; and there came into port a party who had mistaken the chart and had been cruising up and down the coast looking vainly for the harbor which was charted. The pious priest thought it a miracle, and perhaps it was. At any rate the settlement became permanent, the little mission at the Presidio was aban- doned and several miles up the Mission Valley was founded the mission of San Diego de Alcala. With that 247 A MAGIC* CITY started and with a small number of Indians helping the priests that were left in charge, Fray Serra marched on to the north, founding at forty-mile intervals along the road which was to become El Camino Real, the King's High- way, those picturesque missions which still add so much of romance to the California landscape. Twenty-one of these missions were finally founded, that there might be food and rest for man and beast at the end of the day's journey. Built of abode brick, these structures are simple and artistic and possessed of a dignity which the vicis- situdes and accidents of many years had left unmarred. Each of them nestles in some spot sheltered from the sea, surrounded by fertile fields, orchards and vine- yards. With the work at the north started. Fray Junipero Serra returned to San Diego, only to find that the supposedly peaceful Indians had rebelled while the soldiers far away on the shore slept, and had invaded the mission, threatening death to all. He heard how the brave Father Jaume, he of the white hair and the gentle face, had opened the door of the mission and gone out among the yelling madmen, his hands raised, telling his children to be peaceful; heard how the savages had allowed him to come within a few yards and then had riddled his body with arrows and thrown it into the little olive orchard which the priests had set out in front of the mission. The orchard is still standing and stiU bearing, and within it is a low wooden fence, with a plain cross, where sleeps the first Christian martyr of the west coast. Down the valley stands the last of the pahn trees which Fray Serra set out, apparently good for many years to come. Almost in its shade sleep the 248 A MAGIC CITY soldiers v/ho succumbed in the long wait for the relief party. ^'The seed is sown," said Fray Serra gravely, and instead of abandoning the work he set out with renewed energy, rebuilt the mission, went on again to the north, founding more missions along El Camino Real, and never returned. THE SPANISH TRADITIONS There is a wealth of interest in history of that sort, and once we study the history of Southern California we see that the finest traditions, the rarest poetry and beauty are in the recollections of the old Spanish civili- zation. It was the realization of that beauty, almost forgotten, which impelled the San Diego exposition to choose a certain beautiful and harmonious type for its buildings — not the old conventional Greek and Roman temples such as expositions of the past had built, but quaint Spanish missions and cathedrals and palaces in perfect accord with the gorgeous beauty of the mighty landscape one sees from the mesa where the exposition was to stand. There were no forbidding walls, nor entrances so massive as to overwhelm the visitor, but a quiet, friendly beauty which spread over all. The visitor to the ''Magic City" in 1915 walked or rode up the slope from the water-front, burst through the border of trees along Balboa Park and came out at the end of a quarter-mile bridge whose seven white arches rose from a pool 135 feet below in the canyon. High up along the piers slim Italian cypress trees accent- uated the height of the great Puente Cabrillo. A Httle distance from the bridge one saw the jungle of palm and 249 A MAGIC -CITY eucalyptus and acacia, a gorgeous color scheme of green with occasional flashes of brilliant crimson and the gold of the California poppy. Walking the length of the bridge, and passing a trellis of roses, one reached a somber memorial arch whose cartouche had been chipped and worn so that it looked as though it might have stood there for centuries. As though some magic wand had been waved, one left behind as one passed through the arch all the hum and rush and roar of a twentieth cen- tury tidewater city and found himself in a city of old Spain. A NEW CITY OF OLD SPAIN At one side, rising from a succession of broad stone steps, stood a gorgeous old Spanish cathedral, with a wondrously intricate frontispiece, a great tiled dome of curious design and a lofty tower. Across the little plaza, connected on both sides by a tiled cloister, was a quiet mission of the California type with plain Spanish arches, and rough-hewn beams forming its ceiling and projecting from the adobe walls; and a little chapel and shrine such as those in all the old missions along El Camino Real. The Prado was lined wuth acacia, with verdant lawn, with a low hedge of poinsettia, gladiolus and other blooming flowers, and long cloisters on both sides ran from the west gate through to the east. Portals opened from the cloister and led into cool patios, in strong contrast to the dazzling sun of the Prado. The patios were filled with a collection of California's finest trees and shrubs and blooming plants, with bright flower- ing vines clambering up the sides of the white walls, up to the beUries where mission bells swung, up to the high 250 A MAGIC CITY domes and the quaint towers which looked down into the sharp shadows of that semi-tropical city. Almost hidden by drooping shrubs plashed an occasional fountain. About the walls of the buildings nested a horde of pigeons, swooping down occasionally after grain tossed out to them by the gardeners. Broad lawns with vine- covered pergolas stretched beyond the patios and out to the edge of the canyon where one could look down to the sea a mile away, to the strand of Coronado and Fort Rosecrans and out to the distant islands half hidden in the mist, or up the valleys across orchards of olive, orange and grape, or to the foothills of the Sierras, or to the lower hills of old Mexico scarcely twenty miles away. The whole atmosphere was that of an old Spanish city, such a city perhaps as Cabrillo and his bearded sailors dreamed of as they stood on the same site nearly four hundred years ago and looked out toward the sea and forward to the hope of a New Spain. The Spanish atmosphere had been carried out to the finest detail. The guards and attendants of the exposi- tion were garbed as caballeros and conquistadores and the dancing girls who moved to the hum of the guitar and the mandolin and the click of the castanet, were Spanish dancing girls in the bright costumes of old Spain, in the dances which had been performed for hundreds of years in the plazas of Castile. It was all very quaint and very romantic and very beautiful. Down the Prado stretched the buildings, some of cathe- dral design, some of old mission, some of the palace, and one or two bearing a particularly strong touch of Moorish influence, but all uniformly and quaintly Spanish. 251 A MAGIC' CITY Here, then, was the new type of exposition architecture — not altogether new, however, since it was really a renaissance of the beautiful architecture which received such a glorious start in Mexico and Southern Cahfornia, but new as used in exposition work. THE OLD AND NEW IN EXPOSITIONS And just as novelty had been introduced in that, so was it introduced in the style and general purposes of the exposition. Instead of competing with the Panama-Pacific Exposi- tion at San Francisco, San Diego complemented it, supplying features which could exist only v^ith the co-operation of the extraordinary climate which could produce the orange orchard, the tea plantation, and the overwhelming growth of vine and shrub and tree and flower which swarmed up from the deep canyons and over the walls toward the ^' Magic City." The keynote was ''everything in motion" and almost everything within the waUs that was not turning or spinning was growing. The idea was not the showing of finished pro- ducts so much as products in the process of being made. Here was industrial activity against a background of singular natural and cultivated beauty. An orchard, a farm and the plants of tropical seas blossomed before the eyes. THE INTENSIVE FARM The world's fair of the past showed the products of the soil, displayed a handsome pyramid of oranges, a stack of apples, or numerous crates of vegetables, but there was little in that which was different from what the 252 El Prado, the Main Street op the City Beautiful. Haunting vistas of cool patios and shadowy cloisters with clinging bougainvUlea in gorgeous bursts of color, and the more delicate wistaria and rose, enhanced the beauty of this wonder city of the Southwest. A MAGIC CITY city man could see by walking to the corner grocery in his home town. These exhibits were handled differently at San Diego. For example, there was not displayed a pyramid of oranges; rather a great citrus orchard whose trees were selected from the finest orchards of Southern California and on these trees were growing lemon and orange and grape fruit and kumquat and tangerine, the trees blooming and bearing within reach of the visitor's hand. This, certainly one of the most important features of the display of the southern counties of California, was situated on the Alameda, and directly across the road was another impressive exhibit of the southern counties — the model intensive farm. To the north lay the exhibit of the International Harvester Company, show- ing not machinery in a great hall, but machinery in operation on a large tract sown to various cereals and grasses, where the heaviest tractors, the steam plows, the harvesters, the reapers, were doing the work of a hundred men, moving up and down the field and work- ing as they went, doing just what they are supposed to do in large-scale farm operation. So much for the appeal to the man with sufficient money and brawn to operate a large-scale farm. But many men are not equipped for carrying on such work, and it is for that class that financially the intensive farm of the southern counties carries the great appeal. On a model five-acre tract there were growing trees of pear and peach and apple and loquat and cherry and Enghsh walnut, and beneath these trees were a thousand rows of vegetables, some northern, some semi-tropical, but all bearing in profusion, thanks to the irrigation and scien- tific intensive cultivation, bearing nearly four or five 253 A MAGIC-CITY times as much as a tract of similar area could possibly bear under old-style methods. In one comer was the model vineyard, bearing the best grapes of which Cali- fornia is capable of producing . In the rear, partly con- cealed by a trellis of clematis, was a model poultry yard. And while the prospective farmer was seeing how modern scientific farming saved a tremendous amount of the energy which his father spent on acres back east, the wife of this prospective farmer visited the model bunga- low in the center of the farm and saw that just as machinery is saving her husband work, so is machinery saving her house work in the drudgery of the laundry and the kitchen, and allowing her time to be with the family or with the neighbors. And the spirit with which the agricultural work was carried out in the San Diego exhibition marks the spirit of all the other exhibits. There is an entirely human desire to ''watch the wheels go round," and the man who would not stand a second looking at something which he sees every day in its finished product form, will stand a long time looking at that same product in the process of making. Hence, the manufacturers who exhibited in the various buildings along the Prado showed, not the finished products, but the processes by which the products are made. ''the painted desert" In some measure the same is true of the way in which the Santa Fe railroad created its "Painted Desert," the most remarkable Indian exhibit which the country has seen. Just within the north gate it stood, covering several acres, surrounded by an adobe wall with occa- 254 A MAGIC CITY sional gaps of cedar-post stockade. Through the center of this tract running north and south was a high mesa, and the rocks and the soil and the inner walls were painted with the vivid colors of the real Painted Desert in Arizona; in fact, much of the rock and the cedar posts and other materials were brought there from Arizona and New Mexico so that the picture might be as nearly exact as possible. In one side of the mesa were cut a few cliff- dwellings such as one sees in his tours through the Southwest, and below the mesa at the west clear on to the Alameda was the reserve where wandering tribes were living their natural life, the Navajos weaving rugs and blankets and the other red men from the plains living just as they do in the places they have occupied for hundreds of years. So, too, down ''The Isthmus," the ''Midway" of the exposition, a few of the concessionaires strayed from the old lines and showed processes just as did the industrial enterprises along the Alameda and Prado. A motion- picture house, for example, exhibited, not only a motion- picture theater and films, but the studio in which the films were made, staging the comedies in and about the buildings of the exposition grounds. THE CLIMATE IS CONTRIBUTOR Of course climate was responsible for many of the finest features of San Diego's 1915 exposition. Only the climate of Southern California could allow the exposition to open on New Year's eve with a big outdoor carnival, and only Southern California's climate could aUow that exposition to remain open all through the months when in other sections of the country it is winter 256 A MAGIC CITY and spring and fall, and winter again, but months which in Southern California are always June. No other section of the~country could have had the gorgeous floral display which San Diego had, or could any other have had the tea plantation brought by Sir Thomas Lipton's agents from Ceylon. This exhibit started solely as an exhibit, but when it was found that the soil and climate of San Diego were so much Hke those of Ceylon, it was announced that this was rather an experiment, and that some day there might be in Southern Cahfornia a per- manent tea industry which would supply the demands of this country and Canada. When we reaUze that the American importations of tea last year were slightly in excess of 90,000,000 pounds we get an idea of what this industry may mean and we get also a very real concep- tion of the purposes of the Panama-California Exposition. *Thereare96 pages of illustrations in this book, which, added to the 256 pages of text, make a total of 352 pages. 352^ C 310 88 t* ^'>... y.-^i-X. .^°.:^^%\ ; -^^0^ c\. y 1^ » » .0 ^^■V %,** V' .v: - %/ / '^'"^ °- /Va^^^% <^'^'^m:S ^^.'^i^% "^* A^' .... "-^^ ' % ,<.* /.fife:- "^^o^ ..i-i^* •* ^^•^^^ V . ^o -^/..^ ^^0^ S"^^ ^OV^ '^^,^^ ^"-n.. '^' - t • ^oV^