The Dalles times-mountaineer. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1882-1904, 1890-01-11
Great Things TO Be Seen in America

A leading journal strikes true chord
when it asks the question: '.ls it in
order to sec walled towns that they (the
intending traveler) would have gone
to EuropeP 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 view that has few rivals in
the world, with her ramparts and cita-
del, her medieval streets and dwellings,
her cathedrals and converts, and
strange schools and foreign tongues and
immortal histories? Is it only ancient
cities they desire? Then there is st.
Augustine among its palmettos beside
the sea, almost at the extremity OF the
continent and almost rs old as the dis
coyery of the continent Is 1t semi.
tropical beauty of landscape and weather
they would have? Not all the soft
yapored cities by the Mediterranean will
offer them more than Savannah and the
Sea Islands.
lis it foreign life they wantp Where
will anything more alien to all our
northern and eastern experience be seen
or heard than in the Rue Royale ana
the Rue Bourbon. at the French market
or st the Spanish Fort of New Orleans,
with its mocking-birds and magnolias,
where, as late as the middle Of June.
gardens full of jasmine and oleanders.
cape niyrtIes and palms, with moon
light that might be the northern sun
filtered throug III domcs of crystals, make
one doubt if it bo plain, matter-ot-fact
progressive America? Or where will
more uuaintness and delight DO seen
than in the Texas town of San Antonio.
where the roses lie on the red roofs OF
the long and low dwellings,, where the
ialousies are latticed with the vine OF
the -night-blooming cereus. where the
banana trees blow to ribbons in the
strong. sweet southeast gales aud tho
lanes are nneu with ugs ana aprIcots
and ore walks under avenues of stately
pecans; where forests, draped in mel
/ ancholy moss, swaying heavily. make
the landscape all unreal; where grape
vines interlace the thickets with stems
the size of forest trees themselves; where
the priests 90 about with f1ocks 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 1t 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 Spain Of 4O0 years ago, and hav
gone there dryshod.
"Do our travellers want deserts and
thirst for their summer experienced
They will find deserts in Arizona rival
| 81. md ,voa
that even the Sahel does not give. Do
they pant for Notwithstanding? II
the White Mountains and tho Alleghan-
les do not offer difficulties enough, are
there not Mount St Elias, with its H.
OOO feet of altitude, Shasta and Whit
ney, the terribly obstruc;ed heights OF
Sogrls and of Snow Mass Peak. all the
wild SUBMITS of the Sierras, the fearful
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 allureP Then shau
not the waters of the Hudson. 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.
Where, for mere beauty, for the de-
light of the eye, can all Europe show Us
anything like a blossomIng prairie
through which we may ride all day and
never come to the end of the blossom
ingP And what hoary antiquity to
charm the thought back to the source of
races has Europe to offer that shall out
do the ancientness of the ruins of our
prehistoric peoples in the heart of the
continent? In fact, America is so full
of historic interest and picturesque
loveliness that it is wonderful anybody
should wish to visit Europe Mt all be-
fore exhausting it; and if ifanything 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."-Chicago
Weskern World