Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday,
Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers,
And shining in the brawling brook, whereby,
Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye
Idlesse it seem, hath its morality.
—Petrarch.
As well omit the Lions of St. Mark from a visit to Venice, as to pass by Manitou in a tour of Colorado. Manitou, the sacred health-fountains of Indian tradition, the shrine of disabled mountaineers, the “Saratoga” of the Rockies.
Leaving Colorado Springs, a branch of the railway swings gracefully around the low hills in which the Mesa terminates, and points for the gap in the mountains directly to the west. Nearly three miles from the junction we pass the driving park, and immediately after run up to Colorado City, the first capital of the Territory, and now a quiet little hamlet, whose chief industry is the production of much beer. Recalling the temperance proclivities of the Springs, it is unfortunately not strange that a drive to Colorado City in the long summer evenings should prove so attractive to the ardent youth of untamed blood. Then the road passes into the clusters of cottonwoods and willows which fringe the brook, crossing, recrossing, and dashing through patches of sunlight, whence the huge colored pinnacles in the Garden of the Gods are descried over the broken hills at the right. It is a striking ride, and curiously the location of the railway has not been allowed to mar its native beauty. Describing the contour of a projecting foothill, we obtain our first glimpse of Manitou, with its great hotels, its cut-stone cottages, and its picturesque station. Just across the way, and in the lowest depression of the narrow vale, is a charming villa, embowered in shrubbery, with quaint gables and porches, and phenomenal lawns and flower-beds. It is the home of Dr. W. A. Bell, for years vice-president of the Denver and Rio Grande railway.