Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska

by Charles Warren Stoddard

Let all those who thirst for chalybeate waters bear in mind that the Ute Iron Spring of Manitou is 800 feet higher than St. Catarina, the highest iron spring in Europe, and nearly 1000 feet higher than St. Moritz; and that the bracing air at an elevation of 6400 feet has probably as much to do with the recovery of the invalid as has the judicious quaffing of medicinal waters. Of pure iron springs, the famous Schwalbach contains rather more iron than the Ute Iron, and Spa rather less. On the whole, Manitou has the advantage of the most celebrated medicinal springs in Europe, and has a climate even in midwinter preferable to all of them.

On the edge of the pretty hamlet at Manitou stands a cottage half hidden like a bird's nest among the trees. I saw only the peaks of gables under green boughs; and I wondered when I was informed that the lovely spot had been long untenanted, and wondered still more when I learned that it was the property of good Grace Greenwood. Will she ever cease wandering, and return to weave a new chaplet of greenwood leaves gathered beneath the eaves of her mountain home?

At the top of the village street stands Pike's Peak—at least it seems to stand there when viewed through the telescopic air. It is in reality a dozen miles distant; but is easily approached by a winding trail, over which ladies in the saddle may reach the glorious snow-capped summit and return to Manitou between breakfast and supper—unless one should prefer to be rushed up and down over the aerial railway. From the signal station the view reminds one of a map of the world. It rather dazes than delights the eye to roam so far, and imagination itself grows weary at last and is glad to fold its wings.

Manitou's chief attraction lies over the first range of hills—the veritable Garden of the Gods. You may walk, ride or drive to it; in any case the surprise begins the moment you reach the ridge's top above Manitou, and ceases not till the back is turned at the close of the excursion—nor then either, for the memory of that marvel haunts one like a feverish dream. Fancy a softly undulating land, delicately wooded and decked with many an ornamental shrub; a landscape that composes so well one can scarcely assure himself that the artist or the landscape gardener has not had a hand in the beautifying of it.

In this lonely, silent land, with cloud shadows floating across it, at long intervals bird voices or the bleating of distant flocks charm the listening ear. Out of this wild and beautiful spot spring Cyclopean rocks, appalling in the splendor of their proportions and the magnificence of their dyes. Sharp shafts shoot heavenward from breadths of level sward, and glow like living flames; peaks of various tinges overlook the tops of other peaks, that, in their turn, lord it among gigantic bowlders piled upon massive pedestals. It is Ossa upon Pelion, in little; vastly impressive because of the exceptional surroundings that magnify these magnificent monuments, unique in their design and almost unparalleled in their picturesque and daring outline. Some of the monoliths tremble and sway, or seem to sway; for they are balanced edgewise, as if the gods had amused themselves in some infantile game, and, growing weary of this little planet, had fled and left their toys in confusion. The top-heavy and the tottering ones are almost within reach; but there are slabs of rock that look like slices out of a mountain—I had almost said like slices out of a red-hot volcano; they stand up against the blue sky and the widespreading background in brilliant and astonishing perspective.

I doubt if anywhere else in the world the contrasts in color and form are more violent than in the Garden of the Gods. They are not always agreeable to the eye, for there is much crude color here; but there are points of sight where these columns, pinnacles, spires and obelisks, with base and capital, are so grouped that the massing is as fantastical as a cloud picture, and the whole can be compared only to a petrified after-glow. I have seen pictures of the Garden of the Gods that made me nearly burst with laughter; I mean color studies that were supremely ridiculous in my eyes, for I had not then seen the original; but none of these makes me laugh any longer. They serve, even the wildest and the worst of them, to remind me of a morning drive, in the best of company, through that grand garden where our combined vocabularies of delight and wonderment were exhausted inside of fifteen minutes; and where we drove on and on, hour after hour, from climax to climax, lost in speechless amazement.

Glen Eyrie is the valley of Rasselas—I am sure it is. The Prince of Abyssinia left the gate open when he, poor fool! went forth in search of happiness and found it not. Now any one may drive through the domain of the present possessor and admire his wealth of pictorial solitude—without, however, sharing it further. If it were mine, would I permit thus much, I wonder? Only the elect should enter there; and once the charmed circle was complete, we would wall up the narrow passage that leads to this terrestrial paradise, and you would hear no more from us, or of us, nor we of you, or from you, forever.

On my first visit to Colorado Springs I made a little pilgrimage. I heard that a gentle lady, whom I had always wished to see, was at her home on the edge of the city. No trouble in finding the place: any one could direct me. It was a cosy cottage in the midst of a garden and shaded by thickly leaved trees. Some one was bowed down among the strawberry beds, busy there; yet the place seemed half deserted and very, very quiet. Big bamboo chairs and lounges lined the vine-curtained porch. The shades in the low bay-window were half drawn, and a glint of sunshine lighted the warm interior. I saw heaps of precious books on the table in that deep window. There was a mosquito door in the porch, and there I knocked for admittance. I knocked for a long time, but received no answer. I knocked again so that I might be heard even in the strawberry bed. A little kitten came up out of the garden and said something kittenish to me, and then I heard a muffled step within. The door opened—the inner door,—and beyond the wire-cloth screen, that remained closed against me, I saw a figure like a ghost, but a very buxom and wholesome ghost indeed.

I asked for the hostess. Alas! she was far away and had been ill; it was not known when she would return. Her address was offered me, and I thought to write her,—thought to tell her how I had sought out her home, hoping to find her after years of patient waiting; and that while I talked of her through the wire-cloth screen the kitten, which she must have petted once upon a time, climbed up the screen until it had reached the face of the amiable woman within, and then purred and purred as only a real kitten can. I never wrote that letter; for while we were chatting on the porch she of whom we chatted, she who has written a whole armful of the most womanly and lovable of books, Helen Hunt Jackson, lay dying in San Francisco and we knew it not. But it is something to have stood by her threshold, though she was never again to cross it in the flesh, and to have been greeted by her kitten. How she loved kittens! And now I can associate her memory with the peacefulest of cottages, the easiest of veranda chairs, a bay-window full of books and sunshine, and a strawberry bed alive with berries and blossoms and butterflies and bees. And yonder on the heights her body was anon laid to rest among the haunts she loved so dearly.