Formerly almost as inaccessible as the Himalayas, the Grand Cañon in Arizona can now be reached by the most luxurious methods of modern travelling. From Williams, on the Santa Fé road, a branch line of sixty miles runs over the rolling mesas to the "Bright Angel" hotel at the "Bright Angel Trail." The journey is enchanted by beautiful views of the San Francisco mountains seen through a purple haze.
The entire journey through Arizona offers one of the most unique experiences of a lifetime. Is this "The Country God Forgot"? The vast stretch of the plains offer effects as infinite as the sea. The vista includes only land and sky. The cloud forms and the atmospheric effects are singularly beautiful. As one flies on into Arizona this wonderful color effect in the air becomes more vivid. Mountains appear here and there: the journey is up a high grade, and one realizes that he is entering the altitudes.
A special feature of interest in Arizona is the town of Flagstaff, famous for the great Lowell Observatory, established there by Percival Lowell, a nephew of the noble John Lowell, who founded the Lowell Institute in Boston. Professor Percival Lowell is a man of broad and varied culture, a great traveller, who has familiarized himself with most things worth seeing in this sublunary sphere, and has only failed to explore Mars from reasons quite beyond his own control. At his own expense he has founded here an Observatory, with a telescope of great power, by means of which he is making astronomical researches of the greatest value to science. The special advantage of Arizona in astronomical study is not the altitude, but in the fact that there is the least possible vibration in the air here. Mr. Lowell's work makes Flagstaff a scientific centre of cosmopolitan importance, and scholars and great scientists from all over the world are constantly arriving in the little Arizona mountain town to visit the Observatory.
Flagstaff has no little archæological interest, also; the famous cliff dwellings of the Zuni tribe, which Frank Cushing explored and studied so deeply, are within a few miles of the town, located on the summit and sides of an extinct volcano. They now present the appearance of black holes, a few yards deep, often surrounded with loose and broken stone walls, and broken pottery abounds all over the vicinity. The most remarkable group of the cliff dwellers is to be seen in Walnut Cañon, eight miles from Flagstaff. This is one of the deep gorges, the cliffs rising several hundred feet above the valley; and they are sheer terraced walls of limestone, running for over three miles. In these terraces, in the most singularly inaccessible places, are dozens of the cliff dwellings. Some of them are divided into compartments by means of cemented walls, and they retain traces of quite a degree of civilization.
The petrified forests of Arizona are a most extraordinary spectacle, with its acres of utter desolation in its giant masses of dead trees lying prostrate on the ground. Arizona is a land of the most mysterious charm. The Grand Cañon alone is worth a pilgrimage around the world to see,—a spectacle so bewildering that words are powerless to suggest the living, changing picture. "Long may the visitor loiter upon the rim, powerless to shake loose from the charm, tirelessly intent upon the silent transformations until the sun is low in the west. Then the cañon sinks into mysterious purple shadow, the far Shinumo Altar is tipped with a golden ray, and against a leaden horizon the long line of the Echo Cliffs reflects a soft brilliance of indescribable beauty, a light that, elsewhere, surely never was on sea or land. Then darkness falls, and should there be a moon, the scene in part revives in silver light, a thousand spectral forms projected from inscrutable gloom; dreams of mountains, as in their sleep they brood on things eternal."
I hung my verses in the wind,
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through,
Five lines lasted sound and true;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot;
These the siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And the meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five hundred did survive?
—Emerson.
Not only verses, but lives, are "winnowed through and through," and time and tide reveal their faults and their virtues. In the history of the State of Colorado there is one man whose life and work stand out in noble pre-eminence; whose character is one to inspire and to reward study as an example of intellectual and moral greatness. This man is Nathan Cook Meeker, the founder of the town of Greeley, Colorado; the founder and for many years the editor of the Greeley "Tribune;" later appointed by President Hayes, in a somewhat confidential capacity, the Indian Commissioner at White River, where he died the death of a hero, and where, marking the spot of the tragic massacre, the town of Meeker now stands, among the mountains of the Snowy Range.
Mr. Meeker, who is one of the heroes of pioneer civilization, founded this town in the very desert of sand and sage-brush. Its first inception is a wonderful idyl of the extension of progress into the unknown West. The vision of the bands of singing angels in the air that fell upon the shepherds in the Judean plains was hardly more wonderful than the vision out of which the town of Greeley arose from the desert. On a December night in the late sixties Mr. Meeker found himself one evening standing under the brilliant starry skies of Colorado near the foot of Pike's Peak. The marvellous splendor of the scene filled his mind with sublime picturings. In the very air before him he seemed to see a city arise in the desert—a city of beautiful ideals, of high purposes, of temperance, education, culture, and religion. The vision made upon him that permanent impression which the heavenly vision, revealed for one instant to a life, forever makes, however swiftly it may be withdrawn; however deep and dark the eclipse into which it fades and seems forever lost.
To Mr. Meeker had been granted the angelic vision. The ideal had been revealed, and it was revealed in order that it might be realized in the outer and actual world. He felt the power, the nameless thrill of enchantment that pervades this wonderful country. One who is a poet in heart and soul has said of this Pike's Peak region:—