Gleams that untravell'd world,"
exclaims Tennyson's Ulysses, and the wanderer under Western stars that hang, like blazing clusters of radiant light, midway in the air, cannot but feel that all these new experiences open to him vistas of untold significance and undreamed-of inspiration.
"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,"
is the haunting refrain of his thoughts when, through the luminous air, he gazes into the golden glory of sunsets whose splendor is forever impressed on his memory. Every hour of the journey through the Southwest is an hour of enchantment in the intense interest of the scenes. One must not miss the outlook when descending the steep grade down Raton Mountain; nor must he fail to be on the alert in passing through the strange old pueblos of Isleta and Acoma; he must not miss Cañon Diablo when crossing that wonderful chasm on the wonderful bridge, nor the gleam of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff on its pine-clad hill-slope, nor fail to gaze on the purple Franciscan peaks on which the lingering sunset rays recall to him the poet's line,—
"Day in splendid purple dying."
Like a modern Telemachus he sees "the baths of all the western stars."
Between La Junta in Colorado and Los Angeles in California there lies a journey which, in connection with its side trips, is unequalled, because there is only one Grand Cañon, one Pike's Peak with its adjacent wonderland, and because, as a rule, elsewhere in the United States—or in the world, for that matter,—forests do not turn into stone nor stars hurl themselves into the earth with a force that buries them too deep for resurrection. Through the East and the Middle West the mountains do not, on general principles, attempt any competition with the clouds, but content themselves with the gentle altitude of a mile or so; the stars stay decorously in the firmament and are not shooting madly about, trying fantastic Jules Verne experiments to determine whether or not they can shine better from the centre of the earth than from their natural place in the upper air; the stars of the Eastern skies "stand pat," so to speak, and are not flying in the face of the universe; so that, altogether, in these regions it would seem quite evident that
"The world is built in order,
And the atoms march in tune."
These exceptional variations to the established order, however,—these wonderful peaks and cañons and forests and gardens of gods,—all these enchanted things lie, naturally, within the Land of Enchantment, within this vast territorial expanse replete with many other attractions. From La Junta let the traveller journey into Colorado with its splendor of resources, and in gazing upon the stately, solemn impressiveness of the Snowy Range he cannot but feel that Nature has predestined Colorado for the theatre of noble life and realize the influence as all-pervading. Infinite possibilities open before one as an alluring vista, and he hears the refrain,—