In repeated statements in the consular reports concerning the large
extent of tourist travel in Switzerland, we are told that the
“money-making asset” of that little republic, the greater portion of
whose area is covered with mountains, is “scenery.” We go to Europe to
see the accumulated treasures of centuries, to review the lessons of the
past in historic localities, to observe social and industrial
conditions, to enjoy musical and dramatic art, to study the development
of the fine arts, to note the later acquisition of scientific research.
But, as our consuls at Geneva and Lucerne and Berne and Zurich tell us,
we go to Switzerland for “scenery.”
Switzerland is two hundred and ten miles in length. The Grand Canyon of
the Colorado River in northern Arizona is two hundred and nineteen miles
long, twelve to thirteen miles wide, and over a mile deep. If the main
ranges of the Helvetian Alps, between the centre and the southern
frontiers, running from the Bernese Oberland to the Grisons, could be
lifted up and dumped into the colossal chasm of Arizona, there would
still be left room in which to bury the Jura of the western border.
Thousands of American tourists gaze with awe upon the panoramic displays
from the view-points of the passes of the Simplon, the Furca, the St.
Gotthard, and the Splügen, and from the ascent of the Rigi, Pilatus,
Jungfrau, or Matterhorn. Many of our adventurous fellow-citizens contest
the palm for hardihood and endurance with experienced Alpine climbers;
but how few there are who are ambitious enough and venturesome enough to
incur the hardships and to risk the dangers of scanning at close range,
or from points of vantage, the towers, the temples, the terraces, the
ramparts, the pyramids, the domes, the pillars, the buttresses, the
buttes, the palisades, the white marble walls, the red sandstone steps,
the green serpentine cliffs of the Grand Canyon.
Excursion parties go by way of the Williams branch of the Santa Fé to
the rim of the Bright Angel trail because of its accessibility and hotel
accommodation, and content themselves with descent of the zigzags to the
deeply embedded river, or a drive of a few miles along the brink. But
the earnest and determined explorers who follow the hazardous footsteps
of the early pioneers, or of the later topographical engineers, are few
and far between. There is nothing on earth that even remotely approaches
this stupendous chasm in startling surprises, in grandeur and sublimity,
yet our tourists ignore its indescribable wonders and go to the Alps for
scenery that suffers by comparison.
When it comes to the question of orographic magnitude, our own physical
geography gives a decisive answer. The great curve of the Alpine chain
stretches from the shores of the Mediterranean to the plains of the
Danube—a little more than six hundred miles in length. The narrowest
width of the Rocky Mountains, from base to base, is three hundred miles,
whereas, at their greatest width, between Cape Mendocino and Denver, the
space enclosed by the two outer scarps of the plateau is nearly one
thousand miles in breadth. If in measuring the area of the Rocky
Mountains we include the long Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada and its
northern continuation, the Cascade Range, according to the extent of
surface they cover, we have a million square miles as the result, more
than one-fourth of the territory of the republic.
With such immense differences in view, the vastly greater capabilities
of the Rockies for scenic display are apparent. In the endless
succession of views from the heights of Pike’s Peak, or Mt. Shasta, or
Mt. Lowe, one can forget his most inspiring and exciting experiences in
the Alps. Professor J. D. Whitney declares that no such views as those
from Pike’s Peak, either for reach or magnificence, can be obtained in
Switzerland. Even with the ever-increasing facilities of
transcontinental travel, we but dimly realize the majestic proportions
of the Rocky Mountain system, which, with its towering snow-capped
peaks, its precipitous rock walls, its volcanic vestiges, its abysmal
glens and canyons, and its splendid waterfalls, glorifies every
landscape, and solves problems, as nowhere else, in chemical, physical,
and dynamical geology.
As to comparative altitudes, it may be noted that Mount St. Elias, of
the Alaska Coast Range, is three thousand five hundred feet higher than
Mont Blanc, “the monarch of mountains,” as Byron calls it, while its
namesake, the Sierra Blanca, the monarch of the Rockies, is nearly as
lofty with its triple peak. The Rock of Gibraltar towers to the height
of twelve hundred feet; its massive counterpart in the Yosemite, El
Capitan, is three times as high as Gibraltar, while the great cliff
known as Cloud’s Rest, admittedly the finest panoramic stand-point on
earth, is more than six thousand feet high and ten thousand above sea
level. As to glaciers, while it is worth a trip across the Atlantic to
see the ice masses of the Rhone glacier from the Furca Pass, or the
motionless billows of the Mer de Glace at Montanvert, they are
overmatched in Alaska by the Muir, the Guyot, the Tyndall, and the
Agassiz.
As to lakes, every school child knows that Lake Superior is the largest
body of fresh water in the world. It is large enough to bury the whole
of Scotland in its translucent depths. The area of the Lake of Geneva is
greater than that of the Yellowstone Lake; but while the former is only
twelve hundred feet above the sea, the latter is seven thousand seven
hundred and forty feet—nearly a mile and a half—above the level of the
sea. As to salt lakes, the Caspian Sea is not as salt as the ocean,
while our American Dead Sea, the Salt Lake of Utah, has six times the
saline strength of the waters of the ocean.
There is a lake in Italy—Castiglione—whose turquoise hues, paler than
those of the Blue Grotto of Capri, command merited admiration. Yet the
prismatic lakes in the Yellowstone Park are numerous, particularly in
the Midway Geyser Basin, where they reflect with remarkable brilliancy
different colors of the spectrum, prominently among them emerald green,
peacock blue, and golden yellow. The most beautiful mirror lakes are in
the Sierra Nevada region, and the gem of all mirrors is that of the
Yosemite Valley, of which Mr. Hutchings, the historian and geographer of
the valley, says,—
“There is one spot of earth known to man, where one mountain four
thousand two hundred feet high, Mt. Watkins; another over six thousand
feet, Cloud’s Rest; and another five thousand feet, the Half Dome, are
all perfectly reflected upon one small lakelet. Here, moreover, the sun
can be seen to rise many times on a single morning.”
In the lake district of the north of England there are sixteen lakes,
with many attractive features, but largely centres of pilgrimage as the
homes of Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, De Quincey, and Harriet
Martineau. Our Canadian neighbors, in the highlands of Ontario, can
point to eight hundred lakes in the Muskoka region, with five hundred
islands studded with beautiful villas and summer hotels. Two of the
Swiss waterfalls, the Falls of the Rhine at Neuhausen, with a plunge of
eighty feet in three leaps, and the falls of the Aar at Handeck, with a
broken plunge of two hundred feet, are said to be the largest in Europe.
The former is surpassed in picturesque beauty by the Virginia Cascade of
the Gibbon River in the Yellowstone Park, and the latter is not worth
naming in the same week with the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River,
as, with a magnificent sweep of three hundred and ten feet, the heavy
downpour, with its clouds of snowy spray, enters the canyon which is the
culmination of all the bewildering “formations” of the great national
reservation.
The cascades of the Reuss, near Andermatt, are justly famous for their
tumultuous rush, but the rapids of the Gardiner River in the
Yellowstone, and the Merced in the Yosemite, are more boisterous and
more beautiful. The much vaunted Giessbach in the Bernese Oberland has a
total fall of one thousand one hundred and forty-eight feet, but it is
broken into seven sections. Of the various falls in the Yosemite Valley,
the highest has a descent of two thousand six hundred feet, with only
two interruptions, the upper division having a clear plunge of one
thousand six hundred feet. Among great cataracts, as every one knows,
Niagara holds the supremacy. In the majesty and sublimity reflected in
the overwhelming torrents that are hurled over its precipice, in the
resistless energy of its roaring rapids and its turbulent whirlpools, it
sets its own standard, and “bears no brother near the throne.”
Caves and grottoes, calcareous and basaltic, are widely spread
throughout Europe, but, numerous as they are, if they were all grouped
together they could be packed in the heights and depths of the Mammoth
Cave of Kentucky. Of that stupendous cavern, with a main avenue of six
miles and branches of more than a hundred miles in extent, Bayard Taylor
said,—
“No description can do justice to its sublimity, or present a fair
picture of its manifold wonders. It is the greatest natural curiosity I
have ever visited, and he whose expectations are not satisfied by its
marvellous avenues, domes, and sparry grottoes, must be either a fool or
a demigod.”
The historic caves of Europe abound with the remains of ancient
cave-dwellers which are of great interest to archæologists, but the
lofty and almost inaccessible abodes of the cliff-dwellers in Colorado,
New Mexico, and Arizona present a wider range of curious inquiry to the
student of remote antiquity. Scientists propose to make more extended
and comprehensive investigation of these hewn-out homes of the
cliff-dwellers in the far West than has yet been made by neglectful
explorers. In the ruins of the habitations of a long extinct race in
Mancos Canyon, Colorado, they will find abundant material for
anthropological research. Perched on narrow ledges seven hundred feet
above the valley are numerous ancient dwellings, with well built
sandstone walls, with rooms in a good state of preservation, and with
scattered specimens of fine pottery and fragments of implements of war
and peace. Here and there are watch-towers commanding views of the whole
valley.
In the Chaco Canyon are ruins of pueblos still more extensive, once the
homes of thousands of people who lived thousands of years ago, and,
according to Hayden, in the Geological Survey for 1866, “pre-eminently
the finest examples of the works of the unknown builders to be found
north of the seat of ancient Aztec empire in Mexico.” A few miles
southeast of Flagstaff, Arizona, are more of these retreats far up on
rocky crags, and within a similar radius northward are many cave
dwellings, but they only stimulate conjecture; they have left behind
neither history nor tradition.
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.”
In the midst of a desolate alkali plain, in the Bad Lands of Arizona, is
a formation of rock about an acre in extent, from fissures in which
emanate melodious sounds, as though unseen hands were playing upon an
instrument underneath, or the wind were sweeping among organ-like
stalactites in a subterranean cavern. But while such “shallows murmur,
the deeps are dumb.” In the presence of the might and majesty of the
marvels and miracles of creation, silence is more eloquent than speech.
The still, small voice of nature’s teachings, “from all around, earth
and her waters and the depths of air,” speaks to us beyond the power of
words.
As to our mineral springs, they are like the stars for multitude,
presenting every variety. Some of our thermal springs, for example the
hot, vaporous sulphur caves of Glenwood, Colorado, are constantly
demonstrating their restorative efficiency. There is no need of resort
to the hot waters of Carlsbad or the cold waters of Marienbad, to Aix la
Chapelle or Kissingen.
As to ideal retreats for campers and fishers, limitless fields for
hunters, and favoring chances for seekers of precious metals, the
boundless continent is theirs; they are welcome guests of Lady
Bountiful.