Union County courier. [volume] (Elk Point, Union County, D.T. [S.D.]) 187?-1913, 1886-10-27
Great Things TO Be Seen In America.

4
: A leading journal strikes true chord
when it asks the question: "Is it in
order to see walled towns that they
dhe intending travelerl would have
gone 10 Europe2 Where will they
come across one more to their mind
than In the Gibraltar Of America, where
Quebec sits on her rock overlooking
her mighty river, with a view that has
few rivals in the world, with her ram
parts and citadel, her mediay.l streets
and dwellings,. her cathedrals and con-
vents, and strange schools and foreign
tongues and immortal historiese Is it
only ancient cities they desire? Then
there Is St Augustine among it's pal
mettos beside the sea, almost at the
extremity of the continent and almost
as old as the discovery III the CONT
nent IL /. semi-tropical beauty Of
landscape and weather they would
have? Not all the soft-vapored cities
by the Mediterranean will oflef, them
more than Savannah and the Sea Islands
rs 1t foreign life they want? Where
will anything more alien to all our
northern and eastern experience be
seen or heard than in the Rue Royale
and the Rue Bourbon, az the French
market or ut tie Spanish Fort of New
Orleans, with its mocking- birds and
inagnolias, where, as late rs the middle
of June, gardens full Of jasmine and
oleanders, cape mvrtles and palms,
with moonlight that might be the
northern sun filtered through domes of
crystals, make one doubt If it be plain,
matter-of'fact. progressive America?
Or where will more quaintness and de-
light be seen than in the Texas town of
Sa.N Antonio, where the roses lie on
the roofs of the long and low
dwellif., where the jalousies are
latticed Xh the vine OF the night
trees blow a,bons il the strong,
sweet southeast gales, and the lanes
are lined with figs and apricots, and one
walks under avenues of stately pecans;
where forests, draped in melancholy
moss, swaying heavily, make the land
scape all unreal; where grape-veins in
terlace the thickets with stems the size
of forest trees themselves; where the
priests go about with hocks of little
children clinging to their skirts, and
where the ruins of the old missions
rival in sculptured wonder many ruins
of old Spain? Or is it absolute Spain
itself that our friends would travel
over? Let them cross the Rio Grande
by rail, and in Chihuahua and Sonora
and the heart of Mexico they have
reached much that makes old Spain;
they have found the old pain of 400
years ago, and have gone there dry
shod.
"Do our travellers want deserts and
thirst for their summer experience?
They find deserts in Arizona rivaling
all Africa, with colors and mirages
that even the Sahel does not give. Do
they pant for mountain climbing? If
the White Mountains and the Alleghan-
les do not offer difficulties enough, are
there not Mount st. Elias, with its H.
600 feet of altitude, Shasta and Whit
ney, the, terribly INSTRUCTED heights of
Sopris and of Snow Mass Peak, all the
wild SUBMITS of the Sierras, the fear
full beauty of the Yellowstone park, and
the wild grandeur, too lovely to be
terrible, of the Yosemite? And do
the Danube, the Rhine, the Nile allure?
Then shall not the waters of the Hud-
son, with its picturesque reaches, of the
Mississippi, with its breadth and
volume, of the Columbia, with its
gorges and cataracts, wash out all
memory OF lesser and less beautiful
streams, even though ruins of robber
Businesses and of deserted temples
crown their banks?
Where, for mere beauty, for the de-
light of the eye, can all Europe show
us anything like blossoming prairie,
through which we may ride all day and
never come to the end of blossoming?
And what hoary antiquity to charm the
thought back to the source of races has
Europe to offer that shall outdo the
ancientness of the ruins of our prehis-
toric peoples in the heart of the CONT
nent In fact, America is so full of
historic interest and picturesque lovli-
ness that it is wonderful anybody
should wish to visit Europe at all be-
fore exhausting it; and if anything hap
pens to deter people from crossing the
ocean, and incites them to become ac-
quainted with their own territory, they
cannot be the losers by it."-Chi-
cdgo JTeSte,n U'Orld.