The Garden of the Gods.
The trains run out of Denver like quick-silver,--this is the prettiest
thing I can say of Denver. They trickle down into high, green valleys,
under the shadow of snow-capped cliffs. There the grass is of the
liveliest tint--a kind of salad-green. The air is sweet and fine;
everything looks clean, well kept, well swept--perhaps the wind is the
keeper and the sweeper. All along the way there is a very striking
contrast of color in rock, meadows, and sky; the whole is as appetizing
to the sight as a newly varnished picture.
We didn't down brakes until we reached Colorado Springs; there we
changed cars for Manitou. Already the castellated rocks were filling us
with childish delight. Fungi decked the cliffs above us: colossal,
petrified fungi, painted Indian fashion. At any rate, there is a kind of
wild, out-of-door, subdued harmony in the rock-tints upon the exterior
slopes of the famed Garden of the Gods, quite in keeping with the spirit
of the decorative red-man. Within that garden color and form run riot,
and Manitou is the restful outpost of this erratic wilderness.
It is fitting that Manitou should be approached in a rather primitive
manner. I was glad when we were very politely invited to get out of the
train and walk a plank over a puddle that for a moment submerged the
track; glad when we were advised to foot it over a trestle-bridge that
sagged in the swift current of a swollen stream; and gladder still when
our locomotive began to puff and blow and slaken its pace as we climbed
up into the mouth of a ravine fragrant with the warm scents of
summer--albeit we could boast but a solitary brace of cars, and these
small ones, and not overcrowded at that.
Only think of it! We were scarcely three hours by rail from Denver; and
yet here, in Manitou, were the very elements so noticeably lacking
there. Nature in her natural state--primitive forever; the air seasoned
with the pungent spices of odoriferous herbs; the sweetest sunshine in
abundance, and all the shade that makes sunshine most agreeable.
Manitou is a picturesque hamlet that has scattered itself up and down a
deep ravine, regardless of the limiting lines of the surveyor. The
railway station at Manitou might pose for a porter's lodge in the
prettiest park in England. Surely there is hope for America when she can
so far curb her vulgar love of the merely practical as to do that sort
of thing at the right time and in the right place.
A fine stream brawls through the bed of this lovely vale. There are
rustic cottages that cluster upon the brink of the stream, as if charmed
by the music of its song; and I am sure that the cottagers dwelling
therein have no wish to hang their harps upon any willows whatever; or
to mingle their tears, though these were indeed the waters of Babylon
that flow softly night and day through the green groves of Manitou. The
breeze stirs the pulse like a tonic; birds, bees, and butterflies dance
in the air; the leaves have the gloss of varnish--there is no dust
there,--and everything is cleanly, cheerful and reposeful. From the
hotel veranda float the strains of harp and viol; at intervals during
the day and night music helps us to lift up our hearts; there is nothing
like it--except more of it. There is not overmuch dressing among the
women, nor the beastly spirit of loudness among the men; the domestic
atmosphere is undisturbed. A newspaper printed on a hand-press, and
distributed by the winds for aught I know, has its office in the main
lane of the village; its society column creates no scandal. A solitary
bicycle that flashes like a shooting star across the placid foreground
is our nearest approach to an event worth mentioning.
Loungers lounge at the springs as if they really enjoyed it. An amiable
booth-boy displays his well-dressed and handsomely mounted foxskins, his
pressed flowers of Colorado, his queer mineralogical jewelry, and his
uncouth geological specimens in the shape of hideous bric-a-brac, as if
he took pleasure in thus entertaining the public; while everybody has
the cosiest and most sociable time over the counter, and buys only by
accident at last.
There are rock gorges in Manitou, through which the Indian tribes were
wont noiselessly to defile when on the war-path in the brave days of
old; gorges where currents of hot air breathe in your face like the
breath of some fierce animal. There are brilliant and noisy cataracts
and cascades that silver the rocks with spray; and a huge winding cavern
filled with mice and filth and the blackness of darkness, and out of
which one emerges looking like a tramp and feeling like--well! There are
springs bubbling and steeping and stagnating by the wayside; springs
containing carbonates of soda, lithia, lime, magnesia, and iron;
sulphates of potassa and soda, chloride of sodium and silica, in various
solutions. Some of these are sweeter than honey in the honeycomb; some
of them smell to heaven--what more can the pampered palate of man
desire?
Let all those who thirst for chalybeate waters bear in mind that the Ute
Iron Spring of Manitou is 800 feet higher than St. Catarina, the highest
iron spring in Europe, and nearly 1000 feet higher than St. Moritz; and
that the bracing air at an elevation of 6400 feet has probably as much
to do with the recovery of the invalid as has the judicious quaffing of
medicinal waters. Of pure iron springs, the famous Schwalbach contains
rather more iron than the Ute Iron, and Spa rather less. On the whole,
Manitou has the advantage of the most celebrated medicinal springs in
Europe, and has a climate even in midwinter preferable to all of them.
On the edge of the pretty hamlet at Manitou stands a cottage half hidden
like a bird's nest among the trees. I saw only the peaks of gables under
green boughs; and I wondered when I was informed that the lovely spot
had been long untenanted, and wondered still more when I learned that it
was the property of good Grace Greenwood. Will she ever cease wandering,
and return to weave a new chaplet of greenwood leaves gathered beneath
the eaves of her mountain home?
At the top of the village street stands Pike's Peak--at least it seems
to stand there when viewed through the telescopic air. It is in reality
a dozen miles distant; but is easily approached by a winding trail, over
which ladies in the saddle may reach the glorious snow-capped summit and
return to Manitou between breakfast and supper--unless one should prefer
to be rushed up and down over the aerial railway. From the signal
station the view reminds one of a map of the world. It rather dazes than
delights the eye to roam so far, and imagination itself grows weary at
last and is glad to fold its wings.
Manitou's chief attraction lies over the first range of hills--the
veritable Garden of the Gods. You may walk, ride or drive to it; in any
case the surprise begins the moment you reach the ridge's top above
Manitou, and ceases not till the back is turned at the close of the
excursion--nor then either, for the memory of that marvel haunts one
like a feverish dream. Fancy a softly undulating land, delicately wooded
and decked with many an ornamental shrub; a landscape that composes so
well one can scarcely assure himself that the artist or the landscape
gardener has not had a hand in the beautifying of it.
In this lonely, silent land, with cloud shadows floating across it, at
long intervals bird voices or the bleating of distant flocks charm the
listening ear. Out of this wild and beautiful spot spring Cyclopean
rocks, appalling in the splendor of their proportions and the
magnificence of their dyes. Sharp shafts shoot heavenward from breadths
of level sward, and glow like living flames; peaks of various tinges
overlook the tops of other peaks, that, in their turn, lord it among
gigantic bowlders piled upon massive pedestals. It is Ossa upon Pelion,
in little; vastly impressive because of the exceptional surroundings
that magnify these magnificent monuments, unique in their design and
almost unparalleled in their picturesque and daring outline. Some of the
monoliths tremble and sway, or seem to sway; for they are balanced
edgewise, as if the gods had amused themselves in some infantile game,
and, growing weary of this little planet, had fled and left their toys
in confusion. The top-heavy and the tottering ones are almost within
reach; but there are slabs of rock that look like slices out of a
mountain--I had almost said like slices out of a red-hot volcano; they
stand up against the blue sky and the widespreading background in
brilliant and astonishing perspective.
I doubt if anywhere else in the world the contrasts in color and form
are more violent than in the Garden of the Gods. They are not always
agreeable to the eye, for there is much crude color here; but there are
points of sight where these columns, pinnacles, spires and obelisks,
with base and capital, are so grouped that the massing is as fantastical
as a cloud picture, and the whole can be compared only to a petrified
after-glow. I have seen pictures of the Garden of the Gods that made me
nearly burst with laughter; I mean color studies that were supremely
ridiculous in my eyes, for I had not then seen the original; but none of
these makes me laugh any longer. They serve, even the wildest and the
worst of them, to remind me of a morning drive, in the best of company,
through that grand garden where our combined vocabularies of delight and
wonderment were exhausted inside of fifteen minutes; and where we drove
on and on, hour after hour, from climax to climax, lost in speechless
amazement.
Glen Eyrie is the valley of Rasselas--I am sure it is. The Prince of
Abyssinia left the gate open when he, poor fool! went forth in search of
happiness and found it not. Now any one may drive through the domain of
the present possessor and admire his wealth of pictorial
solitude--without, however, sharing it further. If it were mine, would I
permit thus much, I wonder? Only the elect should enter there; and once
the charmed circle was complete, we would wall up the narrow passage
that leads to this terrestrial paradise, and you would hear no more from
us, or of us, nor we of you, or from you, forever.
On my first visit to Colorado Springs I made a little pilgrimage. I
heard that a gentle lady, whom I had always wished to see, was at her
home on the edge of the city. No trouble in finding the place: any one
could direct me. It was a cosy cottage in the midst of a garden and
shaded by thickly leaved trees. Some one was bowed down among the
strawberry beds, busy there; yet the place seemed half deserted and
very, very quiet. Big bamboo chairs and lounges lined the vine-curtained
porch. The shades in the low bay-window were half drawn, and a glint of
sunshine lighted the warm interior. I saw heaps of precious books on the
table in that deep window. There was a mosquito door in the porch, and
there I knocked for admittance. I knocked for a long time, but received
no answer. I knocked again so that I might be heard even in the
strawberry bed. A little kitten came up out of the garden and said
something kittenish to me, and then I heard a muffled step within. The
door opened--the inner door,--and beyond the wire-cloth screen, that
remained closed against me, I saw a figure like a ghost, but a very
buxom and wholesome ghost indeed.
I asked for the hostess. Alas! she was far away and had been ill; it
was not known when she would return. Her address was offered me, and I
thought to write her,--thought to tell her how I had sought out her
home, hoping to find her after years of patient waiting; and that while
I talked of her through the wire-cloth screen the kitten, which she must
have petted once upon a time, climbed up the screen until it had reached
the face of the amiable woman within, and then purred and purred as only
a real kitten can. I never wrote that letter; for while we were chatting
on the porch she of whom we chatted, she who has written a whole armful
of the most womanly and lovable of books, Helen Hunt Jackson, lay dying
in San Francisco and we knew it not. But it is something to have stood
by her threshold, though she was never again to cross it in the flesh,
and to have been greeted by her kitten. How she loved kittens! And now I
can associate her memory with the peacefulest of cottages, the easiest
of veranda chairs, a bay-window full of books and sunshine, and a
strawberry bed alive with berries and blossoms and butterflies and bees.
And yonder on the heights her body was anon laid to rest among the
haunts she loved so dearly.