The Portland daily press., 1876-03-15
Colorado and Its Scenery.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, Mar. Z, '76.

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO, Mar. z, '76.
To the Editor of the Press
DEAR SIR,-In accordance with your wish,
(too long neglected) that should send you an
occasional line for the PRESS, 1 will jot down
such notes concerning the Centennial State"
| its climate, resources and politics as may seem
likely to interest your readers.
Concerning the natural scenery of Colorado,
l must be excused if 1 say but little. 'Tis q
theme on which Horace Greeley, Bayard Tay-
lor, Canon Kingsley, "H. H." and host OF
lesser folk have exhausted their wealth OF
rhetoric and yet (their most appreciatise read
ers are bound to say it) failed adequately to
handle; though one finds in the mastery prose
of N. H." the uttermost, perhaps, that words
can do to describe the indescribable For the
difficulty is inherent in the theme itself, and
insuperable. Which of all the GLOWING
descriptions of Alpine scenery, in prose or
verse. have anything to say to him who has
climbed Mont Blanc or the JuDgfrau? Nor is
1.-The Switzerland of America" with its in
comparaby greater diversity and extent, less
difficult to paint. Sensations of stupendous
height and depth, illimitable power and su-
preme beauty refuse to be conveyed by words
however deftly marsbaled and cunningly com
bined. The "appreciative sympathy" "deli-
cate perception" 'crlical insight" et cetera,
of the practised word-painter, SO employed, 20
for nothing With the initiated, and excite only
sort of incredulous curiosity or feeble admira-
ton in the stranger.
He may laboriously pile snow-capped peax
upon peak, and exhibit. them regally clad in
all the glorious purple of rising and setting
suns; and cleave their eternal foundations with
abysmal chasms, miles in depth, the home of
laundering cataracts; and open here and there
vistas of beauty and valleys Of deIight;-but
tits he who sees it all, not L; and his, not mine,
are the sensations: for of all fruitess quests of
the imagination, the endeavor to "put yourself
in his place" and see through his eyes, is the
most ilIusory and uDsatisfying.
II your scenic Htterateur be Unfortunately
enough) Of 'poetic and emotional" nature
his description is so lamentably apt to liquefy
into raphsody, inexpensive il not grieyous TO
those who shave been there" and unintellig-
ible to those who have not. Or, if unimagina-
tive, he quotes you pages of figdred heights,
depths, distances and dimensions, closely re-
semoling sub engineers estimate, aud con-
veylng an equally vivid impression of the rare
hO hdo SCcu. LUG ldtlcN
may often happen to be the less intolerable of
the two; but must respectfully decline being
inveigled into either.
Colorado scenery is emphatically q subject
for the pencil Yet the artists of all known
schools and nationalities who swarm here
every season and return again and again-like
baffled woers to the charms which once seen
forever haunt them," confess they cannot
paint it; and seldom carry away anything mora
pretentious than sketches of some minor fea-
tures-a castellated rock or two, a unique
tatue from the Garden of the Gods. or the
outlines of its colossal gateways-I saw out
lines, for their colors no man has ever seen on
canvass. The ubiquitous photographer with
the sun god for his ally. can afford to be less
modest: and here ss elsewhere no place or
thing rs too sacred for him to lombard and
take with his silent howiizer.
But We all know what photography can do
or rather cannot do, at rendering natural
scenery, even where color is not, as il 90 en-
pnatlcally is in Colorado, of the essence Of the
picture. Read again "a Symphony in Yellow