Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-08-30


topping all one great white peak, the
,Giver of gold, king of eternal hills.
A welcome awaited her in the summer
home of friend at Colorado Springs, in the
very presence of the grand mountain range,
at one end the beautiful Cheyenne, with its
tender memories, and behind and above all
the snow cap of Pixies Peak, with its
thrilling associations of gold fever times.
-Four blissful days the enchanted traveller
gave to friendship and the mountains, and
then she set up her household geods-the
few she had brought-in this cottonwood
camp on the banks of the Minnelowan Cor
shining water), a mad Colorado stream
which, formed by the junction of two from
the canyons above, comes tumbling down
from the Cheyenne, rushing and roaring as if
it had the business of the world on its should
ers and must do it man-fashion, with con-
fusion and noise enough to drown all other
sounds.
DELIGHTS OF COLORADO.
-Four things attracted the traveller to Col
orado. First, friends-few, but precious;
second, the hope of rest and change; third,
the wish to see the wonderland; fourth, to
spy out its birds. As to rest, it is to be had
in perfection, for both soul and body-if one
chooses to take it. One may swing in a
hammock and be happy all day watching
the ''clouds that cruise the sultry sky"-a
sky so blue one never tires of it; or beside
the brook he may "lie upon its banks and
dream himself away to some enchanted
ground" Or he may study the ever-chang-
ing aspects of the mountains; their dreary,
veiled appearance with the morning sun
full upon them, their deep violet blueness
in the early evening, with the sun behind
them, and the mystery of the moonlight,
which "sets them far off in world of their
own," as tender and unreal as mountains in
a dream. He may do this day after day,
and night after night, indulging his soul
in dreams and raptures and poetic flights
impossible to everyday mortals in every
day life.
He may observe, but he's far more likely
to become excited, and finally bewitehed by
guide books and photographs, and talk all
about him, of this or that canyon, this or
that pass, the Garden of the Gods, Manitou,
the Seven Sisters Falls, the grave of H. H,
and unless he is fool or philosopher, be-
fore he knows it he is in the full swing of
sight seeing. He becomes learned in bur-
ros, the "Ship of the Rockies" so indis-
pensable, so common that even the babies
take to them.
THE SIGHT SEEKERS WOE.
He climbs peaks, he drives over nerve
shaking roads, sheer wall and a frightful
precipice on either side, he tolls up hun
dreds of steps, he goes quaking down into
ruins, he looks and admires and trembles,
till sentiment is worn to threads, purse de-
pleted, and body and mind alike wreck.
For this sort of traveller there is no rest in
Colorado, there is always another mountain
to thrill him, another canyon to rhapsodize
over-to one who is greedy of "sights" the
tameness of Harlem or the muddy flats of
Canarsie will afford more rest.
As to the teller of this ever true tale,
she can bear to be near sights without
seeing them. She believes what she hears
never were such grand mountains, never
such soul-stirring views, never such hair
brea dth roads. She believes-and stays in
her cottonwood grove content. She knows
how it all looks, has she not peered down
into one canyon-holding her breath the
while-and with slightly differing arrange
ment of rocks and pine trees and brooks,
are not all canyons the same? Has she not
gazed with awe at the ''trail'' to the grave
and watched-without envy-the sight
seeing tourist struggling with its diff
culties.
ALMOST COMPLETELY HIDDEN.
Nothing is more fascinating to the
stranger in Colorado than the formation of
its canyons, not only the grand ones
running up into the heart of the mountains,
but its lesser ones, cutting into the high
table lands, or Mesa, at the foot of the hills.
The aforementioned cottonwood grove fer
example, with its dozen of dwellings and a
natural park of good many acres above it,
with tall pines that bear the marks
of age, is so curiously hidden,
that one may come almost upon
it without seeing #. 1t is reached from
Colorado Springs by an electric road which
runs along the Mesa south of the town. As
the car nears the end of the line one begins
to look around for the grove. Not tree is
in sight, right and left, as far as can be seen,
stretched the treeless plain to the feet of
the eternal hills; not even the top of tall
pine thrusts itself above the dead level Be-
fore you Is Cheyenne-grim, glorious, but
impenetrable. The conductors stops. ''This
is your place" he says. You see no place
you think he must be mistaken.
'tBut where is Camp Harding" you ask.
He points to an obscure path-"trail," he
calls (which seems to throw itself over
an edge. You approach that point, and
there, to your wonder and your surprise, at
your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling
canpon-like valleys, aspen, oak and pine,
with here and there a tent or red roof
cleaning through the green, and noisy
brook hurrying on its way down hill.
A PARADISE OF THE WEST.
By steep scramble you reach the lower
level, birds singing, flowers tempting on
every side, and the picturesque, narrow
trail leading you on, around the ledge of
rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach
the back entrance of the camp. Before it,
up the narrow valley winds road, the car
riage way to the Cheyenne Caneas.
Colorado Springs is a really beautiful
town of broad streets and pleasant homes
with every modern improvement. Its
flowers and foliage are kept green and grow
ing by constant irrigation, the whirligig
sprinkler on every lawn, and the sugges-
tive "ditch" beside each street. 1t is very
drol1 to an Easterner to see a lawn "put in
SOAK and row of trees with their feet in
the water, but these are very acceptable at
tentiops to Colorado vegetation. So per-
feet is the weather that strangers resent
rainy day as if it were personal insult,
and but one person is Oh record of wearying
of the perpetual sunshine. That was an
Englishman, who announced himself as
''tiEed of your beastly blue skies" So dry
is the air that invalids and the "night-air
fiend" sit out till bedtime, and sleep tran
GULLY in tents or with doors and windows
wide open.
Thus it is in summer, in and near the
town "east of the mountains and west Of the
sum-" as it appears to the temporary So
iourner What it may be the other IL
months one should stay year to find ont.