Cyrenus Cole

“ The famous Death Valley, 400 feet below the top of the ocean, is part of this desert. It is on this journey that one learns the value of water. Water, the great alchemist, the creator and sustainer of life. How men and women follow the water, here in the semi-arid west! There is no place in the mountains where a bit of a stream trickles down that human beings are not found. A little house, a little garden, and a cow, all gathered about that bit of water which is all of life to them. In these regions water is everything and even real estate men do not sell land, but water. ”

“ What a precious thing water must be to the people—in summer time, when they need it most! There are no homes in these wheat fields. Here and there are scattered hovels which the sowers and the reapers use in their seasons, but no permanent abodes. Wire fences are stretched across the fields, far apart. How different it all is from the farming countries of the Mississippi Valley, with their well fenced farms, the homes of the farmers in the midst of groves and orchards and the grazing herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Here and there one saw a horseman riding in a pillar of dust. ”

“ The mountains clad with the green timber, the rich blue sky, fleeced with delicate clouds, over all. It is a great joy to be in the midst of these natural wonders. Why weary one’s self with the details? Why make it a place of weariness? It is a great picture gallery of the gods. Here they have left unfinished the work of creation. ”

“ You simply realize that you are looking on something that is beyond you, out of your grasp, out of your reach, beyond your comprehension. There is a certain dizziness in the air that you look through. The earth has suddenly opened up before you and instead of seeing mountains lifted in the air you see them in the earth beneath you. Everything is at first without form and void. ”

“ A great city, the creation of a few years, but to the casual traveler, more or less uninteresting, broiling and sizzling in the August sun, treeless, for the most part, and to that extent cheerless. But the volume of business transacted is large and the business buildings are fine and the people, grown richer, are building new houses and surrounding themselves with the luxuries which American people everywhere seek after and prize.
Leaving Spokane, going westward, one enters the great wheat country, a plateau lying between the Rocky Mountains and the coast ranges. ”

“ We have been very anxious about the sun for tomorrow is our day at the Canyon of the Yellowstone and there, if anywhere, one needs the sun to bring out the colors. I have heard so much about this Canyon, since coming to the Park, and read so much about it before coming here, that I am very anxious to see it and to measure it with my expectations. So far, I must confess, nothing has exceeded my expectations, and much has fallen far below them. The things as they are, often play havoc with the things as we have imagined them. ”

“ San Francisco, August 24: After spending a few days in Seattle we started southward, with Los Angeles as the end of our journeying in that direction. Tacoma has been out-distanced by Seattle, but it is itself a great and growing city. Portland, in Oregon, is a city of older appearances than Seattle. It has more leisure and more culture and, perhaps, more realized riches. It has a great river, mountains around it and the ocean only a few miles away. Portland is building for the future and the growth of Pacific Ocean commerce is in the dreams of all the business men. ”

“ Los Angeles is city mad. They have done wonders and they think of the future without dismay. All things seem possible to the promoters. On the one side they have “the back country” where the products are going to enrich all the people and on the other side they have the ocean on which they are going to carry the commerce of the orient, all paying tribute to Los Angeles. ”

“ Objects begin to express themselves in colors also, in great masses of colors, all colors and all variations of all colors. It is a creation that is going on before you. The void begins to be filled with all manner of formations. It is some such hour as when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” In those first moments we are present at another creation, and it is a creation, that is enacted for every one who comes to partake of the glories of this canyon. ”

“ It was one of the things in which the driver was interested. There is all manner of life in the Park, from weasels to antlered deer and bear, and in the air, birds from the tiniest creatures picking their livings in the pine trees, to the stately waterfowls that strut about in seven league boots. All the birds and animals; all the creatures that crawl and burrow in the earth, or that fly in the air, are protected by the omnipotent arm of the government in Washington. The soldiers who patrol the Park are the only ones who are allowed to bring guns into the preserve. ”

“ It is growing in every direction and in every way. Located on a great inland sea, in sight of the mountains and blest with a climate of wonderful evenness, at the end of the great transcontinental railways and where the large vessels are loaded and unloaded for the orient and the coastwise trade, the destiny of this city can hardly be overdrawn. Seattle has absorbed the major energies of the American northwest. ”

“ The trails of dust one sees are the only evidences of highways, or of travel. It is a great wheat producing country, when it has been revived by the rains of winter, but the men who grow that wheat ought to be well paid for their labors. It was night when we reached the Columbia River, the mighty stream that wends across these wheat fields, deep down in its channel, so deep that the use of its [Pg 27] waters for purposes of irrigation seems almost hopeless. The winds that blow across the plateau may solve the question.
Seattle is a marvel in the way of city building. ”

“ The full sun can not light the depths of it. In the darkness of the night one walks on the rim of this canyon as on the shores of some unexplored world, a world still in the process of creation.
Day after day, little parties of sightseers go down into the canyon, down Bright Angel trail, on the backs of donkeys. It is thirteen miles by the trail and then the river is still far below them, so far that they can hardly hear the noise it makes between its rocky banks. ”

“ The ocean, at Long Beach and other points is beautiful, restful and invigorating, but the great ships have found no harbors in the vicinity of Los Angeles. The harbors must be made artificially and the commerce must be wrested away from San Francisco, Portland and Seattle and Tacoma. It will be a great struggle for supremacy. No American can ride down this great Pacific coast line without feelings of pride in the developments of this western country. It is all American, intensely American. ”

“ Every one who has made the tour of the Park thinks he can tell you all about it, but the truth is that no one knows anything about the weather here, it is so variable and there is so much of it. It is clearing now and every one is buoyant. It is sunshine after a storm that makes people happy, especially the women. They like sunshine. ”

“ In these places one’s appetite always craves the things that are not placed before you. Resort hotels are the most contrary places in the world. The name of the inn is taken from that of the geyser, the largest now in action in the Park basin, Old Faithful, so named because it gives an exhibition every hour. ”

“ There is as much there as the eye has time or capacity to develop. No one has seen it all, no one will ever see it all. Each man sees but a fraction and a fragment of it. All the eyes of the world cast into one with all time at its command could not exhaust the possibilities of the combinations in forms and colors. ”

“ The four fine chestnut horses were real good company, so intelligent and so willing and so eager. It was hard work this morning to pull the coach, for there was a gradual ascent, from one hundred to two hundred feet to the mile. Plenty of clear water was running in the mountain streams. We crossed the continental divide, at an elevation of about 8,300 feet, but we soon recrossed the line and found ourselves once more on the Atlantic slope. The driver pointed out many objects of interest, among them Shoshone Lake, resting in the laps of mountain peaks, a beautiful body of water. ”

“ When the wind blows, which it is apt to do, dust fills the air. Much of the soil seems to be as fine as flour and very light when it is very dry. We rode for hours without seeing a drop of water, in creek or lake. ”

“ Most of the things are taken out of cans, but a few fresh vegetables are supplied from gardens cultivated by the hotel company. The milk also is fresh, drawn from cows kept in the Park. Cheaper modes of travel and subsistence are supplied by camping outfits. One company maintains a series of permanent camps, and others use movable camps, carrying all their bedding and their utensils with them from place to place. But whichever way one travels, he is apt to pick up many friends. Friendships, in fact, are easily made in the Park. ”

“ The continual cropping has left the soil impoverished and there is talk of cutting up the big ranches into individual small farms, watered artificially. What there may come out of this form of development is problematical. Some persons who had lived in the valley assured us that the heat is often so intense that it scalds the fruit on the trees. On the western slope of the coast range the climate is much better for fruit and also for gardening. ”

“ It is fifty-five miles from Livingston to Gardner and five or six miles from Gardner to the Mammoth Springs Hotel, the last five miles being covered by stages.
The hotel is crowded. People are coming and going. They jostle each other and rush about frantically, looking for baggage and worried about many things. Those who have “done” the Park are anxious to get away, and those who are about to “do it” are as anxious to be on their way. All sorts and conditions of people are here, the aged and the young, the rich and the poor, women always predominating in numbers and in activity. ”

“ Yellowstone National Park, Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908: We left Old Faithful Inn this morning with some regrets. One could spend several days there with profit. The inn itself is comfortable and the surroundings attractive. We have had the misfortune to be overtaken by a party of excursionists, who entered the Park from the west. An excursionist is an uninteresting traveler. He is apt to be some one who is traveling because the rates are cheap. The regular tourists were very much put out by the overcrowding. ”

“ It has been the working out of the practical American idea of getting the most money with the least care about the future. It is pity and disgust and indignation that one feels. But such are the ravages of [Pg 25] commerce in a commercial era among a commercial people.
The next day we reached Spokane, on the other side of the Rockies, mistress of a vast industrial area, reaching up into the mountains on one side, with their mines and their lumber, and stretching out over the Washington wheat fields, on the other. ”

“ Pope elected to linger longer in that city and to make many breaks in their journey, to visit the seaside resorts.
Southern California in August is not an inviting place. There is drouth, and dust. The famed orchards are simply patches of trees in plowed ground, the trees covered with dust as well as with ripening fruit. When we think of orchards at home, we think of beautiful plats of grass, with trees. ”

“ A hundred years from now all the open country may be teeming with populations. In much of the wheat country there are no country homes, only places in which the wheat growers live long enough to plant and to gather their crops. ”

“ There are also the ugly things, mud geysers, unwholesome holes bubbling with and spouting out mud, like toads. Some people insist on seeing every crevice. They tramp about until they are all tired out. ”

“ They call it the Golden West, but the man who has to work for a living finds the conditions no easier here than “back east.” In many places he finds it harder, for he has Japanese competition and the climate of which they boast so much makes men lazy. ”

“ When it is rainy, the ladies, and the ladies’ men always prefer to ride inside. But there is so much chattering inside, often about nothing, that a quiet man prefers to be outside, even in the rain. The driver is a good fellow. ”

“ The tinges of winter are already in the air, even in August, for winter comes early on this high elevation and when it comes it is severe, the mercury falling to forty degrees below zero and the snow piling up to depths of ten or twelve feet. ”

“ Where the railroads run, the country is more or less rough, with here and there formations that suggest “bad lands,” but much of the country is level and productive. It is a vast treeless region; rainless in summer. The mercury rises as high as 100 in the night time. ”

“ As we proceed on our journey, these projecting rocks become more numerous. The banks gradually grow more precipitous and the channel, narrower. The waters grow more disturbed. Signs of some impending catastrophe to the river multiply. ”

“ Incidentally, it may be remarked that the American is hardly the race that will develop this form of intensive farming. They want to do things on a bigger scale and they shun the manual labor that is necessary to make it successful. ”