Animas Cañon is one of the wildest and most picturesque gorges in the
Rocky Mountains. Through it the Rio de las Animas Perdidas, or "River
of Lost Souls," finds its way to the valley below. For a dozen miles
north of Durango the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad traverses the fertile
and cultivated valley of the Animas in its approach to the cañon. Soon
the valley becomes more broken and contracted, the approaching walls
grow more precipitous and the smooth meadows give place to stately
pines and sighing sycamores. The silvery Animas frets in its narrowing
bed and breaks into foam against the opposing boulders. The road climbs
and clings to the rising cliffs, and presently the earth and stately
pines have receded and the train rolls along a mere granite shelf
in mid-air. Above, the vertical wall rises a thousand feet; below,
hundreds of feet of perpendicular depth and a fathomless river. The
cañon is here a mere rent in the mountain, so narrow one may toss a
pebble across, and the cramped stream has assumed the deep emerald hue
of the ocean. In the shadows of the rocks, all is solitary, and weird,
and awful. The startled traveler quickly loses all apprehension in the
wondrous beauty and grandeur of the scene, and, as successive curves
repeat and enhance the enchantment, nature asserts herself in ecstasy.
Emerging from the marvelous gorge, the bed of the cañon rapidly rises,
until the roadway is but a few feet above the stream. Dark walls of
rock are replaced with clustering mountains of supreme height, whose
abruptness defies the foot of man, and The Needles, the most peculiar
and striking of the Rockies, thrust their splintered pinnacles into the
region of perpetual snow.
[Illustration: ROYAL GORGE.]