CHAPTER XI.
PIKE'S PEAK.
The name has a familiar sound; I have heard it almost every day for nearly three decades, and wherever English is spoken the name has been mentioned. Having it in sight daily, with its long slope reaching up to the apex over fourteen thousand feet high, its north face always clothed in or fretted with snow, it might seem that it would grow monotonous. Monotony is not possible with the magnificent eminence and, like the presence of one we love, it is always welcome. The great ice-field at the pole is as to the earth but the thickness of a hair, the great mountain range as a wrinkle on the surface; but we measure the thickness and the heights by miles. They who made the Bible possible loved the high places of the earth; the law was there given to the great leader, and the beloved Master sought the mountain top to pray. It lifted him away from the earth while he was of it, but brought him nearer to the Father. It is the vantage ground of humility, the sanctuary where arrogance cannot enter.
The devil was lacking in tact when he offered the world to the Master from a mountain top; his royal highness was out of his element, the atmosphere was repugnant. Neither he nor his pupils lack ambition, but on a mountain top there is nothing to which mortal may aspire, except the unknowable, and for the unknowable he is made willing to bide his time in meekness. It is no place for his majesty to proselyte; his most zealous disciples even, are liable to step into the path he never designed for them. No doubt the devil would have failed, on the occasion in question, had he selected a valley where the air was impure, but to seek a mountain top as the theatre for the bribery of One purer than the element he breathed, only goes to show that the devil, with all his accredited intelligence, was a very great ass. The only mystery to me is that he himself was not then and there led captive and future generations saved from his machinations. The solution may be that, being already condemned, he was beyond the pale of divine influence. I would, however give the devil his due, and should be glad to surmise that he longed to be clean, but was so much of a dolt as not to be worth regenerating.
The first man to climb a mountain peak may be pardoned exultation at the accomplishment of his feat. The gallant officer whose name this mountain bears essayed that exploit and failed, though history says he wrought valiantly. Grand monuments are not infrequently erected to the undeserving. We have other mountains with titles a little more satirical; there can be no objection to commemorating the memory of a dead hero, for a man is rarely a hero until he is dead, and this is no paradox. But except in a very few instances, it were well to leave the erection of memorials to the intimate friends of the dear departed, rather than to appropriate, without permission, the works of the Almighty. Mountains, however, are abundant, and we, not being the owners, can afford to give them away; it were better, though, to reward our live friends out of our own earnings. We know in such case they would have the chance at least to appreciate our acknowledgment of their merits.
He who goes up a mountain by trail may exult in a lesser degree than the first explorer. But all may not surmount unexplored mountains; many cannot do so even by trail. To him, then, who makes the happiness of conversion from the ills of this life possible to all, if only for an hour, great credit is due, and he may, with an easy conscience no doubt, exact toll for his achievement.
To the æsthetic it may seem like a sacrilege to disfigure a great mountain with a road; but a road for human needs is so slight a scratch here on the earth's surface that it does not mar the surroundings. The good that it does outweighs the apparent desecration. As the Major and myself aspire to that which is high, and as neither of us might reach the summit of the peak by the primitive methods any more than office may now be so reached, the opportunity to gratify our ambition by carriage was a blessing. The novelty must be considered as adding to the zest.
The mountain is not visible from Cascade, the initial point of the road; the intervening hills shut it out. Starting thence we follow the Fountain up a very little distance, then turn to the left along the face of the first hill, then to the right, and so winding our way for two miles we reach the vicinity of the Grotto in Cascade Cañon. In a direct line we are half a mile from the starting-point. Over and through the pines that sparsely cover the mountain side, and over beds of wild flowers that carpet the slope, we can, before this distance is accomplished, obtain a fair view of the valley of the Fountain, Cascade and Manitou, thence out on to the broad plains, rising blue and dim until they kiss the horizon. One does not look for valleys in the mountain tops, but a mountain top reached is still further surmounted, and the road winds through aspen glades and the air is freighted with the odor of pines.