William Seymour Edwards

“ The mountains kept their heights; we alone came lower, all down a single dal. Most of the road was hewn out of the side of precipices—a gallery; great stones were set endwise about two feet apart on the outer edge, and sometimes bound together by an iron rail; a slope down which we rolled at a flying trot, coasted down—the roaring, foaming river below, far below. Close to us were falls and cascades and cataracts, and the stupendous mountains, the snow-capped rock-masses lifting straight up thousands of feet. ”

“ This is our last day in Atlin. The morning was cold like late November in Virginia, the air keen and frosty. Ice has formed in the pools, though the aspen and scrub willow and a sort of stunted alder are only turned yellow in spots and patches. The mountain-tops are now all whitened with the delicate early snows, extending like blankets of hoar-frost out beyond the margins of the snow fields that never melt.
We dine sumptuously, and all through the gold fields it is the same. The one thing men will and must have is food, good food and no stint. ”

“ The bay of Mariel, next to that of Havana, is the finest harbor on the western coast. At its entrance, high on a reef, lies the Spanish warship, Alfonso XII, driven on the rocks by American naval guns. Along the shores of this beautiful bay, it is said, will grow up the Newport of Cuba. Nowhere are there so well protected waters, nowhere is there so picturesque a panorama. Here you see palms, royal, cocoanut, and date, and fields of sugar cane and groves of bananas, oranges and pomegranates, and then the foaming, restless sea far out beyond. ”

“ A hush creeps over dal and fjeld and fjord, even as do the mysterious violet and gray shadows. We ourselves are drowsed. I do not speak to H nor she to me. To the ponies Ole Mon has ceased to talk. The world is stilled. We draw long breaths, inhale the delicious air, lean back against the cushions of our seat, and daydream amidst this hush of man and thing. The old Norse driver of the Roldal cautions H to watch. “This is the hour,” he says, “when the elves and pixies stir abroad. Count the fifth meadow from where you stand and there they are always sure to be.” ”

“ There are none of the lovely lawns and gardens of Los Angeles and Tacoma in Denver, nor can there ever be. Roses do not bloom all the winter through, nor in Denver does the turf grow thick and velvety green as in Seattle, nor can they ever do so—only a few weakly roses in the summer-time and grass—only grass when you water each blade with a hose three times a day. And then, too, men do not go to Denver to make homes; they go there the rather to make fortunes, and, if successful, then to hurry away and live in a more congenial clime. ”

“ We were then in Copenhagen, and neither in that town nor in Kristiania have we been able to get hold of an English-worded guide book. We are trusting to our driver’s knowledge, and to our own eyes and wits. And so it is, that we came right upon one of the most splendid waterfalls in all Norway, and never knew aught of it until chasm and flood opened at our feet. Perhaps it is better so. We have no expectations, our eyes are perpetually strained for the next turn in the road, our ears are alert for the thundering of cascades, our minds are open for astonishment and delight. ”

“ Here is a little courtyard, at the farther end of which hangs a life-size portrait of Jose Marte, the martyred patriot. We sat in the patio, where palms waved over us, and coffee and delicious fish were brought to us along with a basket of oranges such as even Florida cannot well surpass. Lighting our cigars, we now sauntered into the fine, old-fashioned, Spanish gardens of the Plaza, laid out with precise symmetry and guarded by low iron fences set on bases of carved stone, the flowering shrubs and many blooming plants being half hid by the iron and the rock. ”

“ The increase of snows on all the mountains seemed to bring out more saliently than ever the sharp, jagged granite rock masses. It even seemed to us that we were traversing a wilder, bolder, harsher land than when three weeks ago we entered it. And the views and vistas down into the warmer valleys we were plunging into were at times magnificent. Snow around and above us, increasing greenness of foliage below us, and beyond recurring glimpses of the Lynn fiord, with Skagway nestling at its head. In every affluent valley a glacier and a roaring torrent. ”

“ We are in a huge hotel. Big men in uniform open the door; big men in livery fill the halls; the rooms are big, ours is immense, with double windows, It is steam-heated, and also has hearth fires of burning wood. The building is warmed all through, even the halls. There are French waiters in the big dining-rooms; there is delicious food and delightful coffee, whose aroma is very perfume of the Orient; the beefsteaks are juicy, thick and tender. We have had no such meals since leaving America. ”

“ On the flattened crest of this hill is the Plaza Grande, and from the Plaza down to the sea, a mile or two in length, stretches the Prado;—a wide boulevard on either side of a broad green strip of park, where a walk-way passes beneath a double row of ancient and umbrageous trees, and comfortable seats are placed at intervals.
It is on the Prado that the fashion and beauty of Habana drives and promenades and lingers to see and be seen of all the world. Along its borders, on either hand, are built many of the noblest mansions of her merchant and planter magnates. ”

“ Among the cities of the future upon the Pacific Coast, Seattle and Los Angeles are the two that impress me as affording the wider opportunity and certainty of growth, wealth and controlling influence in trade, in commerce, in politics. If I were a young man just starting out, I should choose one of them, and in and through Seattle I believe there is the larger chance. Or if I were on life’s threshold and, say, twenty-five and vigorous, I would pitch my tent within the confines of the continent of Alaska, and by energy, thrift and foresight, become one of its innumerable future millionaires. ”

“ While I had learned in America to esteem the vigor, the intelligence and the worth of our Scandinavian immigration, no finer race contributing to the citizenship of the Republic, yet it has been only when I have met the Dane and Norsk and Swede upon their native soil, and beheld their noble cities, so alert and clean and modern, and traversed their hills and valleys, and climbed their mountain heights and floated upon their fjords, that I have learned fitly to admire and appreciate the grandeur and greatness of Scandinavia. ”

“ Perhaps nowhere in the world have so many souls been shriven as in the chapel of La Cabaña, and nowhere have so many lives gone out as by this dread instrument of death. And yet, as we stood on this high platform, with the balmy air of now free Cuba filling our lungs, and watched the Cuban soldiery pacing their beat in the park below, it seemed, in the serene and restful humor of the day, almost incredible that only three short years ago, at most but four, here had been enacted a daily tragedy of cruelty and horror which no human pen will ever be adequate actually to portray. ”

“ All the valley of the Los Angeles, the innumerable towns and villages and farms and groves and orchards and vineyards stretching far as the eye could see until bounded by the mountains of Mexico to the south, and the shimmering waters of the Pacific to the west, and to the north and east a limitless expanse of scarred and serrated volcanic mountain ranges, like the gigantic petrified waves of a mighty sea. ”

“ Dirty palaces! Dirty men! Dirty women! Such is Russia, a land where the world knows not water, except to skate upon when turned to ice.
Now we are in a German car, immaculately clean! Clean, almost, as it would be in Norway! We are in the modern world again. I feel great pressure in my heart to “Hoch der Kaiser”, and this despite the fact that, like every right-minded American, I am bred to abhor the assumptions of Hohenzollern Kaisership even as strenuously as Romanoff Autocracy. ”

“ Like all those of that fast disappearing race, the lone prospector, he is visionary and sanguine of temperament, and a delightful companion for a plunge among the wild and lonely regions of the Cordilleras. His imagination is eternally fired by the ignes-fatui of mineral wealth, and he has discovered, exploited and lost a hundred fortunes with no lessening of the gold-silver-copper hunger which incessantly gnaws his vitals. His muscles are of iron, his voice is deep and resonant. Kindly by nature, his solitary life has made him reticent and self-contained. ”

“ The waters of the Missouri are as swift as those of the Yukon, but the river flows for a thousand miles through the soft muds of the Western prairies, instead of through the banks of firm gravel, and it eats its way here and there when and where it chooses, and no man can prevent. Hence the railways, while they traverse the general course of the great valley of the Missouri, do not dare follow too closely the river banks, but they rather keep far away and have just as little to do with the treacherous stream as they may. ”

“ A thousand rills and rivulets and brawling brooks streaked the green slopes with threads and lines of white; mosses and lichens softened the black rock-masses; blooming heather, and a plant with fine red and yellow leaf gave color to the heights between the sombre greenness of the fir forests below and the whiteness of the snow-fields above. I have never before seen such stupendous precipices, such tremendous heights; neither Switzerland nor Mexico, Alps nor Cordilleras lift themselves in so precipitous ascent. ”

“ I am now, at half past nine, going about in slippers, in linen trousers and my thin pajama coat, and even then I hide from the sun. By ten o’clock a silence lies upon the land profound and overwhelming, not a living thing is astir, except only the lizards and the cicadas. The daylight ends precipitately. The day lasts only as long as the sun is up. By half past five the sun hangs above the mountains on the west. Suddenly it is gone. In fifteen minutes it is dark, the stars are out, and such white stars they are! The cold air of the highlands then settles down upon us for the night. ”

“ The loveliest, grandest part of Denver is that which it does not possess. It is the splendid panorama of the Rocky Mountain chain that stretches, a monstrous mass of snow-clad summits, along the western horizon, eighteen to thirty miles away. Across a flat and treeless plain you behold the long line of lesser summits, and then lifting behind them, towering skyward, the splendid procession of snow-clad giants, glittering and flashing in the translucent light of the full shining sun. ”

“ We have traversed the shores of the Aurdal, the Stranda, the Granheim, the Slidre and the Vangsmjoesen Fjords, each and all pools of the foaming river Baegna; and have looked across their limpid waters, their clustered islets, their shimmering surfaces reflecting field and forest and fjeld, and even portraying as in a mirror the snow-fields of mountain heights so far distant as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye, distant yet two full days’ [Pg 61] journey to the west. We have been continually excited and astonished as each succeeding vista of vale and lake and mountain has burst upon us. ”

“ The last four hours the mountains both east and west of us have come closer to the shores, and risen higher, the fir mantle enveloping them has grown a darker green, larger timber than for the last few hundred miles, and then we came round a bend in our great strait—about six to ten miles wide—forty or fifty miles long—and there in front of us, bounding the horizon on the north, stretched an immense mass of jagged, serrated mountain chain, glittering like silver in the slanting sun rays. ”

“ Therefore, do you wonder, as I stroll about this fine old city, and look into the unhopeful, wistful faces of its plainly clad, not over-rich nor over-busy people, that I begin to comprehend why Copenhagen holds the highest record for suicides of any city in the world, and why so many of her vigorous, and alert and capable, young men continually forsake their native land for the greater opportunities and freer political and industrial atmosphere of the United States? ”

“ We sped between rolling grass-covered hills, passing great groves of that most graceful and stately of tropic trees, the royal palm, large plantings of luxuriant bananas, and many cocoanut palms as well. The country was more flat than toward the west, and soon we were moving through wide reaches of the feathery sugar cane. There were miles of it, leagues of it, and all taller and more robust than the cane I saw while traversing the sugar lands of Louisiana.
In the black, deep and wonderfully fertile soil, the cane grows without care or heed. ”

“ The Fraser River is a magnificent stream; as great as the Columbia, as wild as New River of West Virginia. We stood upon the platform of the rear car and snapped the kodak at the flying gorges, tempestuous rapids and cascades. All along, wherever the water grew angry and spume spun, were Indians fishing for salmon, sometimes standing alert, intent, spear in hand poised and ready, or, more often, watching their nets or drawing them in. And every rocky point held its poles for drying the fish, belonging to some individual Indian or tribe, safe from trespass or molestation by immemorial usage. ”