The Lone Star State—The Sunset Route—Port Arthur—Galveston—Houston—Dallas—Fort Worth—Great Staked Plain—Austin—San Antonio—The Alamo—David Crockett—James Bowie—Sam Houston—Cattle Ranches—Rio Grande River—El Paso—Arizona—Tucson—Phœnix—Prehistoric Cities—Yuma—Canyons of the Colorado—Colorado Desert—Southern California—San Bernardino Valley—San Diego—Coronado Beach—The Early Missions—Climate and Scenery—Los Angeles—Santa Monica Bay—San Gabriel Valley—Santa Barbara—Monterey Bay—Del Monte—Santa Cruz—Santa Clara Valley—San José—Lick Observatory—San Joaquin Valley—Stockton—Gold Mining—The Big Trees—Yosemite Valley—Rocky Mountains—The Atchison Route—Indian Territory—Oklahoma—Raton Pass—Las Vegas—Santa Fé—Albuquerque—Mesa Encantada—Flagstaff—Mojave Desert—The Union Pacific Route—Cheyenne—Colorado—Denver—Boulder Canyon—Clear Creek Canyon—Colorado Springs—Pike's Peak—Manitou—Garden of the Gods—Pueblo—Veta Pass—Cripple Creek—Leadville—Grand Canyon of the Arkansas—Marshall Pass—Black Canyon of the Gunnison—Wyoming Fossils—Utah—Echo and Weber Canyons—Ogden—Great Salt Lake—Salt Lake City—The Mormons—Promontory Point—Nevada—Virginia City—Comstock Lode—Lake Tahoe—Donner Lake—Sacramento—The Northern Pacific Route—Butte—Anaconda Mine—Helena—Idaho—Spokane—Columbia River—Oregon—Snake River Canyon—Shoshoné Falls—The Dalles—Cascade Locks—The Great Northern Route—The Canadian Pacific Route—Regina—Moose Jaw—Medicine Hat—Calgary—Banff—Mount Stephen—Kicking Horse Pass—Rogers Pass—Mount Sir Donald—Glacier House—Eagle Pass—Great Shuswap Lake—Kamloops—Thompson Canyon—Fraser Canyon—Vancouver—Victoria—Gulf of Georgia—Alaska—Fort Wrangell—Sitka—Juneau—Treadwell Mine—Muir Glacier—Lynn Canal—Chilkoot and Chilkat—Skaguay and Dyea—The Yukon River—The Klondyke—St. Michaels—Cape Nome—Puget Sound—Port Townsend—Everett—Seattle—Tacoma—Mount Tacoma—Mount St. Helens—Portland—Crater Lake—Mount Shasta—Benicia—Mare Island—Oakland—University of California—Menlo Park—Leland Stanford, Jr., University—San Francisco—Point Lobos—The Golden Gate.
THE LONE STAR STATE.
Westward from the Mississippi River the "Sunset Route" to the Pacific leads across the sugar plantations of Louisiana. This Southern Pacific railway passes many bayous having luxuriant growth of bordering live oaks, magnolias and cypress, hung with festoons of Spanish moss, crosses the Atchafalaya River at Morgan City, and beyond, skirts along the picturesque and winding Bayou Teche in a region originally peopled by colonies of French Acadian refugees from Nova Scotia. Ultimately the route crosses Calcasieu River at Lake Charles, and thirty-eight miles beyond, goes over the Sabine River into the "Lone Star State" of Texas, the largest in the Union. The name of Texas comes from a tribe of Indians found there when La Salle made the first European settlement on the coast at Fort St. Louis on Lavaca River in 1685, but after the Spanish occupation in the eighteenth century the country was long known as the New Philippines, that being the official designation in their records. At the mouth of Sabine River is Sabine Lake, where Port Arthur has been established as a prosperous railway terminal, having access to the Gulf by a ship canal with terminating jetties, deepening the channel outlet to the sea. Farther along the coast is Galveston, the chief Texan seaport, built on the northeastern extremity of Galveston Island, which spreads for thirty miles in front of the spacious Galveston Bay, covering nearly five hundred miles surface. The entrance from the sea is obstructed by a bar through which the Government excavated at great expense a channel, flanked by stone jetties five miles long. It is a low-lying city with wide, straight streets, embowered in luxuriant tropical vegetation, while the equable winter temperature makes it a charming health-resort. A magnificent sea-beach spreads along the Gulf front of the island for many miles. Galveston, in September, 1900, was swept by a most terrific cyclone and tidal wave, destroying thousands of lives and a vast number of buildings.
Texas was a Province of Mexico, under Spanish and afterwards Mexican rule, and its many attractions in the early nineteenth century brought a large accession of colonists to the eastern portions from the adjacent parts of the United States. The Americans became so numerous that in 1830 the Mexican Congress prohibited further immigration, and the result was a revolt in 1835, the organization of a Provisional Government, a war which ended in the defeat of the Mexicans in the battle of San Jacinto in 1836, and the final independence of Texas. The people then sought annexation to the United States, but the State was not admitted until 1845, the Mexican War following. Two men of that time were prominent in Texas, Stephen F. Austin, who brought the first large colony from the United States settling on the Colorado and Brazos Rivers, and Sam Houston, who, after being Governor of Tennessee, migrated to Texas, led the revolt, commanded their army, and was made the first President of the independent State. The latter has his name preserved in the active city of Houston on Buffalo Bayou, a tributary of Galveston Bay, and about fifty miles northwest of Galveston. Houston is a busy railway centre, handling large amounts of cotton, sugar and timber, and is rapidly expanding, having sixty thousand people.
The Trinity River is the chief affluent of Galveston Bay, flowing down from Northern Texas, and having upon its banks another busy railway centre, Dallas, with fifty thousand people and an extensive trade. About thirty miles above, on Trinity River, is the old Indian frontier post of Fort Worth, now a town of forty thousand population and the headquarters of the cattle-raisers of Northern Texas. For many miles in all directions are the extensive cattle ranges, and to the north and west spreads the "Great Staked Plain," a vast plateau elevated nearly five thousand feet above the sea, covering some fifty thousand square miles, and being surrounded by a bordering escarpment of erosion to the lower levels, much resembling palisades. The stakes driven by the early Spaniards to mark their way are said to have given this plain its name, and it has now become an almost limitless cattle pasturage. When Austin's American colony settled on the Colorado River west of Houston, his name was given the town which was ultimately selected as the State Capital, where there are now twenty thousand people who look out upon the magnificent view of the Colorado Mountains. Here is the Texas State University with seven hundred and fifty students, and one of the finest State Capitols in the country, a splendid red granite structure, which was built by a syndicate in exchange for a grant of three million acres of land, the building occupying seven years in construction and costing $3,500,000. Two miles above the city an enormous dam seventy feet high encloses the waters of Colorado River for the water supply and manufacturing power, and thus makes Lake McDonald, twenty-five miles long. A heavy storm and flood in the spring of 1900 broke this dam and let out the lake, causing great loss of life and damage in the city.
Eighty miles southwest of Austin is the ancient city of San Antonio, known as the "cradle of Texas liberty," a Spanish town upon the San Antonio and San Pedro Rivers, small streams dividing it into irregular parts, the former receiving the latter and flowing into the Gulf at Espiritu Santo Bay. There are sixty thousand people in San Antonio, of many races, chiefly Americans, Mexicans and Germans, and it is a leading wool, cattle, horse, mule and cotton market. The Spaniards penetrated into this region in the latter part of the seventeenth century and established one of their usual joint religious-military posts among the Indians upon the plan of colonization then in vogue. The Presidio or military station was called San Antonio de Bexar, while during the early eighteenth century there were founded various religious Missions, the chief being by Franciscan monks, the Mission of San Antonio de Valero. There are four other Missions in and near the city, dating from that early period, their ancient buildings partly restored, but some of them also considerably in ruins. To the eastward of San Antonio River was built in a grove of the alamo or cottonwood trees in 1744 a low, strong, thick-walled church of adobé for the Franciscans, called from its surroundings the Alamo. When the Texans revolted, they held San Antonio as an outpost with a garrison of one hundred and forty-five men, commanded by Colonel James Bowie, the famous duellist and inventor of the "bowie knife," who was originally from Louisiana. Bowie fell ill of typhoid fever, and Colonel Travis took command. Among the garrison was the eccentric David Crockett of Tennessee, who had been a member of Congress, and joined them as a volunteer. General Santa Anna marched with a large Mexican army against them, arriving February 22, 1836, and the little garrison retired within the church of the Alamo, which they defended against four thousand Mexicans in a twelve days' siege. The final assault was made at daylight, March 6th, a lodgment was effected, and until nine o'clock a battle was fought from room to room within the church, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict at short range, and not ceasing until every Texan was killed; but this was not until two thousand three hundred Mexicans had fallen. Upon the memorial of this terrible contest, at the Texas State Capital, is the inscription: "Thermopylæ had her messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had none." This butchery caused a thrill of horror throughout the United States. "Remember the Alamo" became the watchword of the Texans, much aid was sent them, and the succor, coming from the desire to avenge the massacre, contributed largely to their ability to defeat the Mexicans in the subsequent decisive battle on San Jacinto River, down near Galveston Bay, which was fought in April. The old Church of the Alamo, since restored, is preserved as a national monument on the spacious Alamo plaza. The name of Houston, the Texan leader, is given to Fort Sam Houston, the United States military post on a hill north of San Antonio. The old Alamo is the shrine of Texas; and as visitors stroll around the place they are weirdly told how the spirits of the departed heroes, Crockett, Bowie, Travis and others, when the storms rage at night about the ancient building, wander through the sacristy with the heavy measured tread of armed troopers. It was in the midst of a storm that the Mexicans broke through a barred window and thus gained entrance in the siege. On the southern border of San Antonio are the extensive Fair Grounds, where Roosevelt's Rough Riders, largely recruited from the neighboring Texan ranches, were organized for the Spanish War in 1898. The most extensive Texas cattle ranches are south and west of San Antonio, the largest of them, King's Ranch, near the Gulf to the southward, covering seven hundred thousand acres, and being stocked with three thousand brood mares and a hundred thousand cattle.
ARIZONA.
The railway from San Antonio goes westward across the cattle ranges to the Rio Pecos, flowing for eight hundred miles down from the Rockies in a region largely reclaimed by irrigation, and then falling into the Rio Grande del Norte, the national boundary between Texas and Mexico. This noble stream, the Spanish "Grand River of the North," comes out of Colorado and New Mexico, and is eighteen hundred miles long. The Southern Pacific Railway crosses the Pecos on a fine cantilever bridge three hundred and twenty-eight feet high, and reaches the Rio Grande a short distance beyond, following it up northwest and passing the Apache Mountains, where at Paisano it crosses the summit grade at five thousand and eight feet elevation, the highest pass on this route to the Pacific coast. It finally reaches El Paso on the upper Rio Grande, a town of twelve thousand people, having on the Mexican bank of the river, with a long wooden bridge between, the twin town of Juarez, or El Paso del Norte, the road over the bridge being the chief route of trade into Mexico. The original Spanish explorer, Juan de Onate, named this crossing "the Pass of the North" in 1598, and after long waiting it has finally developed into an active town in cattle raising and silver mining, and also a health-resort, its balmy atmosphere being most attractive. The muddy river by its periodic inundations has made a very fertile intervale, which has a population of sixty-five thousand, and here are seen picturesque Mexican figures, the men in peaked sombreros and scarlet zarapes, and the women with blue rebozas. Beyond, the route crosses the southwest corner of New Mexico and enters Arizona, passing amid the mountain ranges to Tucson, the chief town of the Territory, having six thousand people, a quaint and ancient Spanish settlement, which has considerable Mexican trade. It was originally an appanage to the old Spanish mission of St. Xavier, nine miles southward, and it now thrives on its cattle trade, mining and magnificent climate, being also the location of the Territorial University.
To the northwest, in the well-irrigated valley of Salt River, is Phœnix, the capital of Arizona, with fifteen thousand population, the irrigation systems having produced great fertility in the adjacent region. The Salt River is a tributary of the Gila, the latter flowing out westward to the Colorado. In these Arizona valleys have been disclosed the remains of several prehistoric cities, chiefly located on a broad and sloping plain beginning at the confluence of the Salt with the Gila, and stretching down to the Mexican boundary. At Casa Grande is a famous ruin of a prehistoric temple with enormous adobé walls, the Government having made a reservation for its protection. These people were worshippers of the sun, and there have been discovered the remains of many towns with large population, the Gila Valley for ninety square miles disclosing these ruins, which are relics of the Stone age. Irrigation canals made by these prehistoric people, the oldest in the world, are also found throughout the region. Extensive explorations of these ancient cities have been made, and several have been named, among them Los Acequias, Los Muertos and Los Animos, the last being the largest, and there being strong evidence that it was destroyed by an earthquake which killed many thousands of the inhabitants. The railway follows the Gila Valley westward to its confluence with the Colorado, and here at the California boundary is Yuma, another of the early Spanish missions to the Indians, situated just north of the Mexican border, the Yuma Indians still living on a reservation adjoining the Colorado, their name meaning "the sons of the river." This town has its tragic history, for in 1781 the Indians made a savage raid upon the mission, destroyed the buildings and massacred the missionary priests.
The Colorado and its tributaries drain nearly the whole of Arizona, and it is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its head branches have their sources in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, uniting in the latter State, flowing four hundred miles across Arizona and seventy miles into Mexico to discharge through a delta into the Gulf of California. The river and most of its tributaries in Arizona pass through canyons that are among the wonders of the world, exposing to view geological strata of all the formations in their regular places to the thickness of twenty-five thousand feet. At first, the Colorado flows out of Utah and south into Arizona for one hundred and eighty miles, passing through the Marble Canyon, so called from the limestone walls, nearly four thousand feet deep. It then turns westward by irregular course, flowing nearly two hundred and fifty miles through the Grand Canyon, the most stupendous in existence, and having at places six thousand feet depth and walls spreading at the surface five or six miles apart. These huge walls are terraced and carved into myriads of pinnacles and towers, often brilliantly colored, and far down in the bottom the river is seen like a silvery thread of foam. Major Powell, who first explored it in 1869, went through in a boat. He calls it "the most profound chasm known on the globe," and believes the river was running there before the mountains were formed, and that the canyon was made by the erosion of the water acting simultaneously with the slow upheaval of the rocks. The river has a rapid flow in the canyon, winding generally through a lower chasm and having a descent of five to twelve feet to the mile, sometimes with placid reaches, but frequently plunging down rapids filled with rocks. The surrounding country is largely volcanic, with lava-beds and extinct craters. When the visitor first approaches the brink of the great chasm, he is almost appalled with the sight. There seem to be scores of deep ravines and enclosed mountains, the main wall opposite being miles away, and the intervening space filled with peaks and ridges of every imaginable shape and color, rising from the abyss below. There is a trail down the side of the canyon, a steep and narrow path winding along the face of the Grand View Gorge, giving startling glimpses into ravines thousands of feet deep, and disclosing the massive magnificence of this enormous abyss. Down goes the trail, one gorge opening below another until the verge of the final gorge is reached, in which the river runs at a depth of a thousand feet farther. Everything is desolate, the vegetation sparse, and a few stunted trees appearing, while the river, which seemed from above to be only a far distant silvery streak down below, is expanded by the nearer view into large proportions. This Grand Canyon of the Colorado is one of the most wonderful constructions of nature in its stupendous size and extraordinary character; with the myriads of pinnacles, towers, castles, walls, chasms and profound depths it contains and the gorgeous coloring given most of the surfaces. It is among the greatest of the attractions that America, the land of wonders, presents to the seeker after the picturesque.