Five miles still beyond, nature has opened another museum of surprises, which some human invader has named Monument Park, but which might better be called Fiddler’s Green, or the Devil’s Ante-Chamber, for tradition tells us that the former place is located just five miles this side of Hades, and that all fiddlers en route stop there twenty minutes for refreshments. This assembling place of monstrosities; this parliament of satyr, sibyl, succuba and grim-visaged ogres, is rarely visited, not particularly because the sights superinduce nightmare, but probably because it is at the end of a long and dusty way, and the gruesome formations are not numerous. The views which delight those who love to fellowship with the incongruous and distempered products of nature, are pillars of white—almost calcareous—sandstone which the wind and sand have eroded into fantastic and outre shapes, leaving a top layer of dark limestone to complete the multitude of strange images.
GATEWAY TO GARDEN OF THE GODS.—The next best thing to seeing a thing itself is to see its counterpart in a good photograph. Any one who has ever looked at an object through a camera will realize the force of this assertion, for a photograph is a perfect reproduction of the view as it is reflected in the camera. There cannot be any misrepresentation. Hence a good photograph is far more valuable than a painting or a drawing, let the latter be ever so well done, for the best artist that ever lived cannot draw or paint a scene just as nature made it. We see these facts clearly illustrated in this beautiful photograph. Every line, crevice and indentation of the huge rocks is brought out and stamped upon the printed page, while in the distance we observe the snow-covered summit of Pike’s Peak just as thousands of tourists have seen it with their natural vision.
THE DUTCH WEDDING, MONUMENT PARK.
Here we find the Devil’s Anvil, apparently used by his swarthy majesty in the dim ages in fashioning his roasting spits. And near by is a concourse attending what is known as The Dutch Wedding, where all the goodly company are disattired outrageously, for not one has a stitch to his or her back. But they are more decent folks than old Mother Grundy, who stands in a nook to herself, trying to gossip with her shabby surroundings, and looking for all the world like a hag who has lost her teeth through salivation. Not far below her is The Idiot, as repulsive appearing a fellow as ever violated the laws of nature, and who might well be the offspring of a harridan like Mrs. Grundy. But there are other shapes and misshapes scarcely less wonderful; and if the visitor is at all imaginative, they take forms that are variable and astounding. Doré never pictured creatures of his fancy more weird than the wind-sculptures of Monument Park.
Turning back, and passing south of Colorado Springs some four or five miles, we are brought again into the Rocky range and enter at one of the Cheyenne Cañons, between beetling brows of tremendously high cliffs, through which a mad-dashing water-course has eaten its way. Whether we visit North or South Cañon, the view is augustly sublime and awful in its grandeur. We stand in the bed of the gorge and gaze upward on either side to a dizzy height, where the eagles float lazily about, just below the level of the summit, and build their nest upon the breast of the escarpment because the apex is sky-piercing in its loftiness. Yet tumbling down from that great eminence, where the gray spires of the peaks are dwarfed by distance until they grow thin as needles, is a stream of water, fed by springs that lie in the lap of still taller mountains in the rear, rushing in tumultuous flow until it breaks into seven waterfalls, and then checks its pace as it joins the river that runs on to the sea. A stair-way has been built alongside of the falls, by which the visitor may mount to a height of two hundred feet, and then stand upon a platform and watch the play of leaping waterfall as it breaks into rainbows and mist below, and hear its ceaseless song of praise mingling with the echoes that sport between the cañon walls. They who can feel no inspiration under the moving power of Cheyenne Mountain are hopelessly prosaic, who close their ears against the most entrancing hymns of nature.
It is not strange that the simple people who were reared centuries ago in this cradle of natural wonders entertained strange conceptions of the curious formations and mighty mountains that distinguished their surroundings from other places. Indeed, it would be matter for surprise had the primitive tribes of this region left no legends telling how Manitou, the Great Spirit, had upheaved the peaks, fashioned the grotesque images, scooped out the cañons and set his sign of ever-flowing mercy in the welling spring and roaring waterfall.