Some weeks were spent traveling off the line of road among the ruined villages of the Cliff-Dwellers, and in photographing the more rugged scenery of the Rio Grande River. Then we continued our journey westward over the Atlantic and Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroads to California, where nearly three months were spent among the towns, Yosemite Valley, Big Trees and mountains of that summer-land. On the appearance of spring we traveled north by way of the California and Oregon Railroad, still making side trips by stage-coach and wagon, to Portland, from which point excursions were made up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. At Victoria, British Columbia, we took steamer for Alaska, and returning we passed through the Cascade Range over the Northern Pacific, working our way back east. But we continued to make detours a long way off the main line of road, thus visiting the Falls of the Missouri, the Black Hills, the Custer battle-field, Devil’s Tower, and Yellowstone National Park, in which latter wonderland we spent two weeks photographing its scenery and extraordinary formations.
“WHALE-BACK” BOAT of the NORTHERN LAKES.
More than three-fourths of the grandest views were inaccessible by rail, so other means of travel had to be adopted. Often it was by stage-coach, but frequently donkeys were our sole reliance; and when these little animals could not carry us to the most rugged points, we shouldered our instruments and scrambled to the peaks and abysses of necessary observation. The difficulties, dangers and hardships thus encountered were both great and numerous, while the expense involved was so far beyond our first calculations, that had it been anticipated in the beginning the enterprise would certainly never have been undertaken.
GOVERNOR’S RESIDENCE, PUEBLO OF TESUQUE, NEW MEXICO.
We resumed our eastward journey thence to Superior Lake, Dells of the St. Croix, rapids of the Wisconsin, lakes and waterfalls of Minnesota, the Upper Mississippi through Lake Pepin, and back to St. Louis, the entire trip occupying more than eighteen months.
THE URNS, MANITOU PARK.
Our camera car had served our purposes in a most gratifying manner while making the long tour of the West, but in the eastern tour, which remained to be performed, it was considered that the car would be of no special advantage, since accommodations are so much more easily obtained in the built-up sections of the East than in the thinly and sometimes totally unsettled districts of the West, where in many cases our car was our only shelter. The journey east was begun in October, from St. Louis to Chicago, thence to Niagara Falls, and then up the St. Lawrence. Our route next lay through the Green and White Mountains, and other famous sections of the New England States; thence west into the Adirondacks, Mohawk Valley and Lakes George and Champlain, then down the picturesque Hudson into the Catskills. Continuing our journey southward, we visited the points of grandest scenery in Virginia, North Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee, and then proceeded on to Florida, where a part of the winter was spent photographing everything worthy of a place in this volume. On the return trip Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and Wyandotte Cave, in Indiana, received our attention, as well as other interesting places along the way, and early in February our labors were ended by a return to St. Louis to put the results in book form. Nearly all the descriptive writing was done while our party was on the way, and while the impressions produced by the glorious visions were fresh in the author’s mind. This work, accordingly, is practically one of inspiration, the whole constituting a story of extraordinary interest and a history of incomparable value.