Then who can overlook the place mountains have in the poetry of all peoples, of all times? And to merely recount the exquisite and strong, the beautiful and the sublime passages in literature, of which mountains are the theme, would fill many hundreds of volumes. Their heights and their unattainableness, and yet the luring of us onward and upward. The snow-capped peaks, the emblems of eternal purity. The dangerous precipices. The shady recesses. The thrilling canyons. The cooling fountains. The secret stores of waters they contain. The minerals they hide. The towering rocks looking down upon all below. The trees they nourish. The flowers they cherish. The valleys they make and sustain. The clouds they arrest and make contributors to the common good. The shields they are to the winds.
OUR ARTIST AMONG THE BOUNDERS.
Bridle Road through Castle Canyon, near Echo Mountain House, Mount Lowe.
[Health Gained in the Mountains.]
Physicians are now recognizing more than ever before the great value of conditions that exist in the mountains for the restoration of invalids to health. Hence year by year thousands of people leave the stern winters of the East, with their fierce snow-storms, blizzards, winds and tornadoes, to enjoy the equable, delicious climate of our sun-kissed land of the South, and nowhere can these benign influences be enjoyed as well as on the various elevations of the Mount Lowe Railway. Those who desire a moderate altitude find it at Echo Mountain, 3,500 feet above the sea, while to those who need the rarer atmosphere of the more elevated points, Alpine Tavern, among the pines, is an ideal spot. It is no mere formal statement that the hotels at these two points are first-class in every respect. In all essentials no modern hotel in the greatest cities of the continent surpasses them. The health conditions, too, are simply perfect. Pure water from uncontaminated sources,—springs that bubble up through the disintegrated granite and give a naturally-filtered water free from all mineral and organic matter; pure air, changing twice a day in gently flowing currents, which alternate from ocean and desert, both ideal purifiers of the atmosphere; balsamic and health-giving odors from pines, firs, spruces and other mountainous trees and plants; absolute freedom from all malarial or other injurious and noxious influences; the quietude of gentle nature; these are some of the conditions of distinct therapeutic value which minister to the physical and mental well-being of those who dwell in these favored spots.
Winter Scene, Thirty Minutes from Perpetual Roses at Echo Mountain House.
Now Reached by Alpine Division, Mount Lowe Railway.