Joel Cook

“ Through this deep, contracted canyon the river winds, at times confined into such narrow crooked straits that the water rushes in swiftly-moving massive billows like the Niagara rapids. Tunnels pierce the jutting cliffs, bridges and walls carry the railway along, and at intervals wild cascades leap through fissures down the mountain sides. The ever-present and industrious Indians are seen in most perilous positions down by the river catching the bright-colored salmon, which they hang upon rude drying-poles 497 among the crags. ”

“ Then the route passes the snow-clad Uintah Mountains to the southward, and crossing the Wahsatch range, enters Utah, traversing its remarkable enclosed basin, where the waters have no outlet to the sea, but flow into salt lakes which lose their surplus supplies by 473 evaporation in the summer. Beyond, is the wild and picturesque Echo Canyon, with the green valley of Weber River and the Weber Canyon. Here is the gigantic Castle Rock, a rugged stone-pile fantastically carved by nature, having a giant doorway and all the semblance of a mountain fortress. ”

“ Wonderful is our latest American Continental possession—the rich territory of Alaska. Limitless are its resources, unmatchable its possibilities. One of its admirers thus sounds its praises: "In scenery, Alaska dwarfs the world. Think of six hundred and seventeen thousand square miles of landscape. Put Pike's Peak on Mount Washington or Mount Mitchell and it would hardly even up with Mount Logan. All the glaciers of Switzerland and the Tyrol dwindle to pitiful summer ice-wagon chunks beside the vast ice empires of Glacier Bay or mighty Malaspina. ”

“ California is a land of climatic attractiveness, where, as it has been well said, "it is always afternoon." Through vast irrigation systems, despite the dry season, much of the surface has been made a garden. Water runs everywhere copiously down from the mountains, and the shrubbery of all parts of the world has been brought hither and successfully grown. The region presents an universal landscape of foliage and flowers, luxuriant beyond imagination. ”

“ Think of a mass of blue-green ice forty miles long by twenty-five miles wide, nearly the size 510 of the whole State of Rhode Island, and five thousand feet thick, glittering resplendently in the weird, dazzling light of a midnight sun. Imagine cataracts by scores from one thousand to three thousand feet high; ocean channels thousands of feet deep, walled in by snow-capped mountains; sixty-one volcanoes, ten of them still belching fire and smoke; boiling springs eighteen miles in circumference, used by hundreds of Indians for all their cooking ”

“ The warm "Chinook" winds from the Pacific coast, coming through the mountain passes, temper the cold, making the balmy atmosphere favoring grass and animals alike. The Pacific route follows the Bow River Valley into the heart of the mountains, with magnificent snow-covered peaks all about, their saw-like edges, gaunt crags and almost denuded surfaces justifying their name of the Rockies. ”

“ Down goes the trail, one gorge opening below another until the verge of the final gorge is reached, in which the river runs at a depth of a thousand feet farther. Everything is desolate, the vegetation sparse, and a few stunted trees appearing, while the river, which seemed from above to be only a far distant silvery streak down below, is expanded by the nearer view into large proportions. This Grand Canyon of the Colorado is one of the most wonderful constructions of nature in its stupendous size and extraordinary character ”

“ Deep in the fissure are Indians spearing for salmon, and an occasional Chinaman may be seen on a sand-bar washing out the silt to find gold, as both these rivers bring down gold-bearing sands. The rocky development of the Fraser and the magnitude of its canyon increase as it plunges deeper among the higher Coast range mountains. For thirty miles below North Bend, a place where enough flat land is left on a terrace for a little railway station, is the most impressive portion, and the final scene of grandeur on this route through the Rockies. ”

“ It is one of the most extraordinarily formed mountains in existence, standing up tall, gaunt and almost square against the sky, the dominating pinnacle of the upper valley. Upon the southern 454 side rises Glacier Point, nearly thirty-four hundred feet, giving a splendid view over the valley, having to the westward the Sentinel Dome, nearly forty-three hundred feet high, ending in the conspicuous face of the Sentinel Rock. Thus environed by vast cliffs, this grand valley displays magnificent scenery. ”

“ As the railway emerges from the mountains, the gleaming white dome of the isolated snow-capped Mount Baker is seen glistening under the sunlight sixty miles away just beyond the United States border. The Fraser River finally flows into the Gulf of Georgia, after a course of six hundred miles through the mountains from the northward, the chief river of British Columbia. It was named for Simon Fraser of the Northwest Fur Company, who explored it to its source amid incredible hardships and difficulties in 1808. The finest timber grows throughout this region. ”

“ The water-soaked bank shows fissures and help is implored—bells are rung, fleet horsemen arouse the neighborhood, the people assemble and try to stop the break. But the crumbling levee soon gives way, and the swollen and muddy current pours through with a roar like Niagara, the waters spreading afar over the lowlands, and thus by reducing the stream-level bringing relief to the river, but converting the adjacent region 422 for many miles into a turbid lake and ruining the crops. ”

“ The railway repeatedly crosses this stupendous chasm in getting down the Kicking Horse Pass, giving grand views of high mountains all around, and after a scene of true alpine magnificence it comes out at the broad valley of the Columbia. This river goes northward between the Rockies and the Selkirks, the next western range, and turning westward penetrates them and flows southward on their western flanks into the United States. ”

“ These high encircling hills, diversified by ravines, give to suburban Cincinnati a singularly picturesque and beautiful environment, being covered by attractive and costly villas surrounded by lawns and gardens, making throughout a most delicious park. The Spring Grove Cemetery, about five miles to the northwest, covers a square mile, and is an appropriate home of the dead, having elaborate monuments, of which the finest is the Dexter Mausoleum, a Gothic chapel of grand proportions and splendid decoration. ”

“ Just within Tenaya Canyon is the Mirror Lake, remarkable for its wonderful reflections of the North and South Domes and adjacent mountains. Some distance to the eastward is the Cloud's Rest, a peak rising more than six thousand feet above the valley and nearly ten thousand feet above sea-level, that is ascended for its splendid view of the surrounding mountains and the enclosing walls of the valley, which can be plainly seen throughout its length, stretching far away towards the setting sun. This view of the Yosemite surpasses all others in its comprehensiveness and grandeur. ”

“ Massive rocks rise on high, 360 and the road is often on a shelf cut into their face, the river boiling along far down below. Then the valley broadens, and here, in a lovely vale surrounded by the mountains, are the North Carolina Hot Springs, a popular resort, with a climate even milder in winter than at Asheville, as the Great Smoky range protects it from the northern blasts. ”

“ The greater part of the city, however, is on the bluff, where the brow of the hill is a wide-spreading park giving a splendid outlook. Also on the bluff is a National Cemetery filled with soldiers' graves, the sad memorial of the War. There is a large river-trade at Natchez, and twelve thousand population, and in the cotton-shipping season, business along the levee is very active.
About seventy miles below, the Red River flows in, the last of the great tributaries of the Mississippi. ”

“ The Bay of San Francisco is a magnificent inland sea, fifty miles long and ten miles wide, connected with the Pacific Ocean by the strait of the Golden Gate, five miles long and a mile wide. The bay is separated from the ocean by a long peninsula, having the city of San Francisco on the inside of its northern extremity. Over opposite, on the eastern shore of the bay, is Oakland, the terminal of the Southern Pacific 515 Railway routes from the East, a city of fifty thousand people, named from the numerous live-oaks growing in its gardens and along the streets. ”

“ The Civil War ended all these conflicts, and since then Kansas has been eminently peaceful. It is now the leading State of the corn belt which broadly crosses the middle of the United States. Its vast corn crops make the wealth of the people, and as they may be good or poor, the Kansan is in joy or despair. One year the farmers will be overwhelmed with debt; the next brings an ample crop, and they pay their debts and are in affluence. Thus throbs the pulse as the sunshine and rains may make a corn crop in the State that sometimes exceeds three hundred millions of bushels ”

“ Inclined-plane railways ascend it, and there is a hotel at the top, and also another railway along the crest of the ridge. Upon the summit of this mountain, which is almost a plateau, the boundaries of the three States come together, and it overlooks to the northward the plain of Chattanooga and the windings of Tennessee River, traced far to the southwest along the base of the ridge into Alabama. The favorite post for the magnificent view from the mountain top is Point Rock, a jutting promontory of massive stone reared on high, and overhanging like a balcony the deep valley. ”

“ Denver has built for its water-works, forty-eight miles south of the city, the highest dam in the world, two hundred and ten feet, enclosing a gorge on the South Platte to make an enormous reservoir holding an ample supply.
Being so admirably located, Denver is a centre for excursions into one of the most attractive mountain regions in America. The great Colorado Front Range, or eastern ridge of the Rockies, stretches grandly across the country and has behind it one range after another, extending far westward to the Utah Basin. ”

“ Probably the best known summit of the Rockies is Pike's Peak, rearing its snowy top over Manitou, and about six miles westward from Colorado Springs, to an elevation of nearly fourteen thousand two hundred 466 feet. As it rises almost sheer, in the Colorado Front Range, this noble mountain can be seen from afar across the eastern plains. A cog-wheel railway nine miles long ascends to the summit from Manitou, rising seventy-five hundred feet. There is a small hotel at the top, and a superb view over the mountains and glens and mining camps all around. ”

“ The display of mountain scenery along the Canadian Pacific line in passing through the Rockies is the finest in North America, coming largely from two causes, each contributing to the grandeur and impressiveness of the view. The width of the Rocky Mountain ranges in Alberta and British Columbia is not much over three hundred miles, while in the United States they are scattered and spread over a thousand miles of space with intervening tameness. ”

“ This is the garden region of the Canadian Northwest for wheat-growing and cattle-grazing, and it stretches in almost 486 limitless expanse a fertile empire far northward to Edmonton and Prince Albert, with branch railways leading up there, the rich black soils testifying the wealth in the land. At Regina is the capital of the Northwest Territory, three hundred and fifty-seven miles west of Winnipeg, the headquarters of the Canadian "North West Mounted Police," a superb body of one thousand picked men who control the Indians and maintain order in the Northwest Territory. ”

“ Not a tree is seen, and all seems bleak desolation. At the Black Canyon the scene is mournfully terrific, the walls composed of an almost black sand, wherein the whirling river rapids have scooped out immense amphitheatres mounting almost perpendicularly for a thousand feet. ”

“ Whenever land can be reclaimed for agriculture or grazing on the flanks of the mountains and in the protected valleys and parks, it is done, so that the district has extensive irrigation canals, in some parts diverting practically all the available flow of water in the streams. This is particularly the case with the Upper Arkansas River, such diversion of the headwaters 464 in Colorado having robbed the river of its water to such a degree that the people of Kansas, whither it flows on its route to the Mississippi, are greatly annoyed and have protracted litigation about it. ”

“ It passes through a thriving agricultural region, with many prosperous cities on its banks, almost everyone having a great railway bridge carrying over the many lines seeking the west and south. In its whole course it descends some four hundred feet; its scenery is largely pastoral and gentle, without the grandeur given by bold cliffs, although much of the shores are beautiful, and its banks in various places disclose elevated terraces, indicating that it formerly flowed at much higher levels, whilst its winding route gives a constant succession of curves that add to the attractiveness. ”