IN THE DOME OF THE SKY.

There are three ways of reaching the summit of Pike’s Peak—walking, riding a burro, or seated comfortably in one of the coaches of the Cog Road.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when the car was pulled out of the yards at the foot of the Peak. The strongly-built little engine puffed like a living thing, obedient to the task of drawing its heavy load. The wheels moved rapidly, and we ascended the steepest mountain railroad in the world. It wound about the mountain sides in little curves, climbing, always climbing higher and higher, until we shuddered at the dizzy heights as we looked down into the great yawning chasms thousands of feet below.

The air grew cooler in the deep mountain defiles densely wooded with fir, pine, cedar and quaking asp. A great fire once swept up these gorges and burned away the fir and pine in patches; in their place came the quaking asp, growing here and there in thickets.

Along the slopes and in the dells, wild flowers grew with the luxuriant profusion of a semi-tropical clime. There were columbines and tiger lilies growing at an altitude of ten thousand feet.

Nature has done some queer things in the mighty rocks which stand sentinel guard along the route.

One great boulder is named the Hooded Monk, because of its resemblance to the human head in a monk’s cowl. There is a Gog and Magog. The Sphynx, the Lone Fisherman, and many other images of man, bird and beast, wrought by nature’s hand in stone.

We glided by one of the loveliest glens in all the mountains; it was called Shady Springs. Here the oriole, the raven and the big blue jay of the mountains have builded their nests and take their morning baths in waters clear as crystal from a spring that gushed from fern and moss covered banks.

Farther on to the right a stream plunges in wild, mad swirl of clear waters and dashing from rock to rock in foamy white, forms Echo Falls. An elephant’s head in bass relief was here to be seen wrought in stone.

We rounded Cameron’s Cone and Sheep Mountain and soon began the ascent of the “Big Hill,” which has a rise of 1,300 feet to the mile.

Nearing timber line, the road ahead appears to be almost at an angle of 45 degrees.

Higher and higher; the great chasm below grew almost a mile deeper. On one side there were masses of square rock which looked like they were broken by human hands. Here, far above timber line, a variety of wild flowers blossomed, while among the rocks lived some of the strangest little animals, the whistling marmot, a fur animal about the size of an overgrown cat, and the peka, which has the legs of a rabbit and the head of a mountain rat; there were also minks, weasels, porcupines and mountain rats.

At the summit was where the magnificence of the great panorama burst upon our view. Northward, away down on the bluish haze of the horizon, rose the Arapahoe peaks—Long and Grey’s Peak, with their white summits glistening in the setting sun. Northwest, Mt. Massive and Mt. Sheridan were outlined against the clear blue sky, while the green sward of the famous South Park, a hundred miles distant, lay between. College Range, Mt. Yale, Mt. Princeton, Mt. Ouray and Cavenaugh reared their rugged heads far to the west, while green mountain ranges of lesser note lay half way between them.

Far to the southwest, far as the eye could reach, faintly outlined against the sky, rose the snowy peaks of the Sangre de Christo and Sierra Blanco Mountains on the other side of the grand San Luis Valley.

Looking to the south, were the Spanish Peaks and range of Greenhorn Mountains, and a little to the southeast rose the snow-capped Gloriettas on the borders of New Mexico.

To the east, lay the mighty plains, stretching away to where the blue of the sky blended in coppery tones with the billowy green.

There were dark spots here and there that were dense forests of pine. The cloud banners hung above, in all the gorgeous colors of sunset in crimson, purple and gold.

A dark shadow crept out upon the plain toward the east, like the finger of a mighty giant. It moved rapidly along, covering the yellow sand lines that mark the course of old river beds, and finally, this shadow of Pike’s Peak was covered by the shadows of other mountains lower down, until the plain was shrouded in the sable garb of eventide.

But westward, the gold and crimson of the sky lingered long above the distant peak of Mt. Ouray. The purple haze grew denser, and the silence of the hour was made more solemn by the mountains standing out in dark silhouette as the shadows of the night grew deeper and denser.

At such a time as this, one feels as though he stood upon the boundary of another world, while all about the wide white waste and hush of space, eternity and the infinite were calling to other glories, too great for the understanding of the human mind.

Here, in the very dome of the skies, in this clear air, the bright worlds seem to hover over, while the vault is strewn with stars, like isles of light in the misty sea above our heads. The purity of the heavenly prospect awakens that eternal predisposition to melancholy, which dwells in the depth of the soul, and soon the spectacle absorbs us in a vague and indefinable reverie. It is then that thousands of questions spring up in our mind, and a thousand points of interrogation rise to our sight—the great enigma of creation.

The harvest moon shed her yellow light over the distant plain, and gilded with a phosphorescent light the rocks and crags of the almost bottomless chasm below. The rocks took on fantastic shapes, while distant mountains rose in spectral form.

I sat throughout the night, watching the ever changing panorama, the most wondrous ever spread out to the gaze of man.

The moon and stars were bright above, while far down below storm clouds had formed where within their inky blackness the forked lightning played like so many fiery serpents.

There were thunderous crashes in the wild rocky pit below, where huge rocks were shivered by lightning bolts, while echo, echoing back the thunders of heaven’s artillery, would seem as though a legion of imprisoned Joshuas were reaching upward again for that sun which would stand still no more over the plains of Agalon.

The shades of night grew deeper and then the blackness was driven back from the east by a flush of grey, gradually changing to a deep scarlet tinged with yellow and the sun burst above a dashing sea of clouds. There were purple and crimson waves below rising and falling in mighty billows. A shipless and shoreless ocean whose raging bosom claims no living thing.

An hour more and this purple sea of clouds has drifted on forever from the sight of human eyes.

The summer sun beamed once more upon the vast panorama. Far down upon the green mesa lay Lake Moraine, glistening in the morning light like a molten mass of silver.

Smoke was seen to rise from Denver and Pueblo, both fully sixty miles away. Some smelters in Cripple Creek and Victor could be seen with the naked eye, while the streets of Colorado Springs were but sandy marks like a checkerboard upon the plain.

I descended the peak on foot amid the beauteous scenes of green mountain defiles, where dashing waters sing eternal symphonies amid ferns and flowers, and the song of birds gladden the heart in their sweet echoes from rock to rock.