The pride of Vernayaz in the Rhone Valley is the Gorge du Trient. Very pretty, and very interesting, what there is of it, but a comparison with Watkins Glen reminds one of Hamlet’s “no more like my father than I to Hercules.” In the splendid description of Watkins by Porte Crayon it appears that that enthusiast was so fascinated by its wonderful succession of attractions, especially those between Glen Alpha and the Cathedral Cascade, that he prolonged his stay, climbing its ladders and descending its stairways again and again. Half an hour would have sufficed for a visit to the Trient.
The boast of the Splügen is the gorge of the Heinzenberg range, through which the four-mile Via Mala runs, and which is the outlet of the Hinter Rhine. Yet this narrow defile between ridges twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height is completely overshadowed in the length and height and ruggedness of the rock walls of the Arkansas, Eagle, and Grand River Canyons, through which the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad passes in Colorado. Our natural bridges have no transatlantic rivals. They are distinctly our own, without duplications abroad. For any favorable comparison with the majestic arch over Cedar Creek, in Virginia, two hundred feet from the summit of its wonderful span to the surface of the stream below, we must look to its resemblances in Walker County, Alabama, and Christian County, Kentucky. California abounds with rock bridges, notably those over Lost River, Trinity River, and Coyote Creek, while the arches at Santa Cruz are well known to all visitors.
Travellers over the St. Gotthard Railway, between Goschenen and Altorf, are apt to regard the forward and backward turns of its loops with wonder at the constructive genius which so boldly and skilfully triumphed over formidable natural obstacles. Yet its loops cut a small figure and look tame enough when placed in contrast with the coils and spirals and sharp curves and bends in the dizzy alignment of the Marshall Pass, the Veta Pass, the Ophir Loop, and the Toltec Gorge. Stupendous and awe-inspiring beyond description are these supreme achievements of modern engineering.
The woodlands of England, and prominently among them Sherwood Forest, boast of very old and very large oaks, elms, and yews. Visitors to Stoke Pogis church-yard, the scene of Gray’s Elegy, will remember the Burnham Beeches, near Slough. The Methuselah of the forests is the Greendale Oak of Welbeck, through which, a hundred and fifty years ago, an arch was cut ten feet high and six feet wide. The largest tree, the Swilcar Oak of Needwood Forest, is twenty-one feet in girth. But in age and dimensions they shrink before the giant growths of California. Of the surprises of the far West, few, if any, are as profoundly impressive as the Sequoias of the Mariposa, Calaveras, and South Park groves, more than eighteen hundred in number. Even the stately redwoods of Vera Cruz, of the sempervirens family, on the Coast Range, though inferior in diameter and height to the gigantea, or “big tree” group, amaze all beholders. The “Wawona” in the Mariposa Grove, twenty-seven feet in diameter, has been tunnelled to admit the passage of stage coaches. The age of the “Grizzly Giant” is estimated at 4680 years. Still older is the prostrate monarch of the Calaveras Grove, known as the “Father of the Forest,” with a circumference of a hundred and ten feet, and a height when standing of four hundred and thirty-five feet. Hundreds of these time-defying veterans had attained a considerable growth before the siege of Troy.
Next to the big trees in point of popular and scientific interest are the fossil forests, especially those in the northeastern part of the Yellowstone Park. The geological agencies through which the trees were petrified must have extended through periods of many thousand years. It was a tedious process, the percolation of silicious waters until the arboreal vegetation was turned to stone by the substitution of agate and amethyst and jasper and chalcedony. Some of the petrifactions are perfect. The rings of annual growth indicate for the large trees an age of not less than five hundred years.
The monoliths, which in the form of castellated rocks, chimney rocks, and cathedral spires, serve as landmarks of nature’s handiwork, are very imposing. The sugarloaf columns among the fantastic sandstone erosions of Monument Park, and the Tower Rock, prominent in the Garden of the Gods at Manitou, are frequently visited. Not less interesting are the Witches’ Rocks in Weber Canyon, Utah, the Monument Rock in Echo Canyon, the Buttes of Green River, and the Dial Rock and Red Buttes, Wyoming. One pinnacle, in Kanab Canyon, just north of the Arizona line, is eight hundred feet in height.
Among the noteworthy creations of the artist-gardeners of Europe, who have not learned “the art to conceal art,” are the Palmgarten at Frankfort, the Boboli Gardens at Florence, the Pallavicini at Genoa, and the Parterre at Fontainebleau. Their redundant embellishment and sharp-cut box hedges, their long perspective of vistas and alleys, the mathematical precision of their terraces, their ponds and fountains and grottoes and stone carvings become wearisome by familiarity. For landscape gardening that never tires we turn to the floral wealth in the grounds of the Hotel del Monte on the bay of Monterey, a hundred and twenty-six acres of fairy-land. Between the prodigal liberality of nature and the prodigal expenditure of cultivated taste, and in view of its alluring surroundings of ocean, mountain, and forest scenery, it is justly regarded as the loveliest and most favored spot in existence.
The Yellowstone National Park is the crowning wonder of our wonderlands. Within an area of 3312 square miles, exclusive of the additional tract known as the Forest Reserve, it includes several ranges of high mountains, three large rivers with their tributaries, thirty-six lakes, and twenty-five waterfalls. The ancient volcanic energy whose subterranean outpourings disappeared in remote ages, leaving the scars and cones behind, has been replaced by eruptive geysers, or water volcanoes, in frequently described groups or basins, together with thousands of non-eruptive hot springs, and the calcareous terraces with their exquisite incrustations. Champlin says that the geysers at the headwaters of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers are the most wonderful on the globe, those in Iceland and New Zealand sinking into insignificance when compared with them. The usual tour of a week or ten days terminates in a visit to the climax of scenic grandeur, the canyon of the Yellowstone River, with its walls of gorgeous coloring, “all the colors of the land, sea, and sky,” as Talmage said.
No description of this canyon, however complete in its details, no effort of the photographer or the landscape artist, however painstaking and elaborate, can give an adequate idea of its marvellous beauty and impressiveness. Twenty years ago one of the leading landscape painters of Germany went to the Yellowstone Park to sketch the views of the canyon from Point Lookout, below the Falls, and Inspiration Point, three-quarters of a mile beyond. In the fascination of the scene he remained for hours, silenced and bewildered, and finally gave up all attempt to delineate it on canvas. He returned again and again, several summers in succession, but was never able to “screw his courage to the sticking-point.” The artist Moran, with injudicious boldness, attempted what his superior had found beyond his reach, and, as was to be expected, with resultant failure and disappointment.
So with the indescribable beauties of the Yosemite Valley and the wonders of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. No stereoscopic reflex, no moving panorama, no vitagraph can even faintly approach the point of adequate representation. The only way to realize such sublimity is to stand in its presence, awed and abashed by creations whose stupendous character has no rival in the world. “None but itself can be its parallel.”