These splendidly equipped trains of the Santa Fé service admit very little dust; the swift motion keeps up a constant breeze, and some necromancy of perpetual vigilance surrounds the traveller with exceptional cleanliness and personal comfort. One experiences a certain sense of detachment from ordinary day and daylight duties that is exhilarating.
Kansas City, the gateway to the great Southwest, might well claim attention as an important manufacturing and distributing centre; Kansas itself, once the bed of an inland sea, is not without scientific interest for the deposits of gypsum and salt that have left the soil so fertile, as well as for strange fossils revealing gigantic animals, both land and aquatic, that have lived there,—the mastodon, rhinoceros, elephant, the crocodile and shark,—many of whose skeletons are preserved in the National Museum in Washington. The prosperous inland cities with their schools and colleges, their beautiful homes and constant traffic,—all these features of Kansas, the state of heroic history, are deeply impressive. But it is Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, with which these pages are chiefly concerned, and the especially picturesque aspects of the journey begin with La Junta.
ACOMA. TWO MILES DISTANT
Entering Colorado, the plateau is four thousand feet above sea level, and constantly rising. This altitude renders the climate of New Mexico particularly invigorating and delightful.
The most romantic and poetically enchanting regions of the United States are entered into on this journey, in which easy detours allow one to visit that mysterious "City in the Sky," the pueblo of Acoma, near Albuquerque in New Mexico; to make excursions to Montezuma's Well; to the mysterious ruin of Casa Grande; to the Twin Lakes (which lie on a mountain crest); and to study other marvels of nature in Arizona. The splendors of Colorado, with the myriad mountain peaks and silver lakes, the mysterious cañons and deep gorges, the rose-flushed valleys lying fair under a sapphire sky in the luminous golden atmosphere, and the profound interest inspired in the general social tone of life in its educational, economic, and religious aspects, invest a summer-day tour through the Land of Enchantment with all the glory and the freshness of a dream.
CHAPTER II
DENVER THE BEAUTIFUL