WHERE NATURE IS AT HER BEST.

If one would view the wondrous surroundings of Manitou, in all their grandeur, let him some bright morning stroll up the long yellow road that winds its serpentine course through Williams Canon. A little brook with waters cold and clear as crystal, dashes along its pebbly bed beside the road, murmuring as it were, a song of regret at leaving its enchanted home on its journey to the sea. The road is known as Temple Drive, named so because many towering rocks look, at first glance, like ruined temples of India or of Egypt along the Nile.

At times the road narrows to barely carriage room between great high cliffs, and again abruptly brings the majestic panorama of the canon into view. High above, among the mountain crags is the Cathedral of St. Peter, like a massive ruin whose cornice, column and frescoed walls had fallen with decay ages past. A little farther and the Amphitheatre rises against the cliffs in hues of brown and yellow, with brighter streaks of golden ochre here and there, which fairly gleam and glisten in the morning sun. High above and in the background on either side are hills of emerald green, studded with cedar and pine, and dotted with flowers of gorgeous color and of form, found elsewhere only in Alpine lands. There are towering rocks that rise a thousand feet above the road, which resemble the ruins of a Moorish citadel. There are towers, mosques and temples, with turrets and battlements, needing only the white-robed figure of the Arab in turban to make one fancy himself suddenly transported to that enchanting and mysterious land of Sultan and slave. No sky of Tangiers was ever deeper, clearer or bluer, and no air of Geneva was ever purer or sweeter.

The road makes a sharp turn and traverses backward nearly half a mile, then turns again and runs in its original direction, climbing the mountain side like a great yellow serpent resting its head a thousand feet among the crags, where eagles build their nests; the white and red painted building that marks the entrance to the Cave of the Winds, does duty as the serpent’s head. From this dizzy point of sight, the great mountain gorge with its grey and brown rocks, and the sloping foothills of green that stretch away to where fair Manitou lies cradled in the valley, form a wondrous panorama.

Eastward, down on the horizon, far as the eye can reach, stretch the mighty plains, westward the higher range of the eternal Rockies, and above all rises the snow-capped summit of Pike’s Peak, about whose whitened crest float the fleecy clouds of the soft, still summer morning.

At the entrance of the Cave of the Winds one follows the guide into the dark pathway that leads into the subterranean chambers, where at some remote period a wild mountain cataract has whirled and plunged its maddening waters, in swirl and maelstrom into the black abyss of the earth. One is so suddenly transported from the gladsome and awe-inspiring scenes without, that the lamp and figure of the guide become spectral, his voice sounds in hollow tones and is echoed back from cavernous depths as though titanic monsters were repeating his words.

Knowing the cause, one bursts into a laugh, then the monsters laugh, too, long and loud, and still others take up the laugh, way down the black corridors, and high above in domes, as though all the imps of darkness were there to laugh at one in revenge for intrusion.

The guide flashes a magnesium light and the pilgrim beholds the wonders of Curtain Hall, which nature has ornamented with strangely colored stalactites glistening here and there on the cavern walls, and again where they form a curtain of an intricate work and beauty as though wrought by maiden hands, amid scenes of love and apple blossoms. Mutely you follow the flaring lamp of the guide into the blackness of winding passages and across bridges that span bottomless pits opening into the very breast of the mountain, and when the magnesium light is again flashed, one sees the arching dome of the great canopy hall, its stalactite nymphs, Bed of Cauliflowers, Frescoed Ceiling, Lake Basin, Grandmother’s Skillet, Bat’s Wing, Prairie Dog Village and Fairy Scene; all presenting a picture weird and ghost-like in the moment of stillness, and heightened by the demoniacal, fiendish voices that repeat your every word.

On through other crooked subterranean passages where other demons mock the sound of your footsteps, through what the guide calls Boston Avenue, one enters Diamond Hall. The lofty ceiling is decorated its entire length by graceful festoons and wreaths of coral and flowering alabaster. The walls sparkle and scintillate with the rainbow shades, thrown back from the myriad brilliants that stud these walls like diamonds set by hand in some antique mosaic work.

In these regions of darkness you are led by the guide until the Hall of Beauty is lit up to your astonished gaze. Crystal flowers of the most delicate design and exquisite workmanship hang in festoons from every nook and corner. Sparkling incrustations that rival the beauty of Arctic frosts and glitter in the bright light are sparkling on every side. Most wondrous of all there are a million stalactite figures in miniature that appear to be in a pandemonium of outlandish contortions. Maybe, who knows, but what the goblin spirits once lived here and worked out curious things in translucent stone, further down the black passages of earth and caught a glimpse of our ancestors in some of the great halls of torture way down below, and so reproduced the scene as Jack Frost has been wont to paint the leaves of summer on our frosted window panes.

The Magi of this dark abode, the guide in wide sombrero, black eyed and wearing a mustache fierce as a bandit of the Corsican isle, though harmless as a Kansas Populist, beckons on and leads the way. Here the Bridal Chamber, and there writhing reptiles, dancing devils, monkeys, beasts, birds in every form and riotous posture. Then as the weird wilderness is shut out in semi-darkness, one is inclined to ask of him with lamp and sombrero, “Mister, have I got ’em, or have you?”

The light flashes on Crystal Palace, where gems and jewels bedeck the walls, where huge chrysanthemums or chestnut burrs stand out in bold relief in fadeless crystal flowers moulded from tinted rock, and all seem to mutely plead for recognition as we pass. These silent beauties hidden away under the mountain slopes, where the rays of sun can never reach, speak with the beauty of their creation, to the soul with as great a love and power as the violet in the sequestered glens.

It is mysterious. It is strange. It is one of those unaccountable things in nature which no man can explain that here in the very bowels of the earth, human scenes have been reproduced and human passions portrayed.

Here perhaps centuries before man’s eyes gazed upon the scene, we find in moulded stone, the head of a buffalo, the skeleton of a mastodon, the drapery of a palace, the bride at the altar, the face of sorrow, the Nymphs of Love, War and Poetry are depicted upon these stones.

Once more the light of day, the great chasm beneath, the turquoise skies above, and mighty plains beyond, brings one to the realm of the outer world.

The spectral figure of an hour ago is a pleasant faced young man, who bids you follow the winding path that leads around the mountain side some three hundred yards and which ends at the entrance to the Grand Caverns.

Desiring to see all, you meekly follow another guide through a dark labyrinth and find yourself in the mighty Rotunda of the Caverns. Here loyal hands have raised monuments to Lee, Grant and McKinley. They are built of fragments of stone cast by visitors to the memory of these heroes. The Imp, the guide, motions on; you are next within a mighty auditorium and as there comes upon you the awful silence and stillness of the hour, you hear musical notes, swelling and cadencing louder and louder until they break in thunderous tones within the cavernous depths, “Nearer, Nearer, My God to Thee.” High above, mid the domes of the cavern, the light shows the organist to be playing upon the stalactites which Nature has attuned to the same chords as instruments made by human hands. These stalactites are of crystal, and have the same resonant sound as though they were of finely tempered glass. Up and down the corridors of the cave, through winding passages and circling galleries above, come echoes of “Nearer, My God to Thee,” in waves and billows of sound, such as is only heard by artificial means in the Notre Dame of Paris.

Round about somewhere, in one of the chambers, near the entrance, the visitor is shown a human skeleton, as it was found at the time of the discovery of the cave. It belonged perhaps to that race of men known as the Cliff Dwellers, who once upon a time, when the world was new, lived, loved and reared a race of men in this fair region of the west whom Saxby, a western poet, touches with his magic pen, and beautifies the tradition of them when he says,

“Dismantled towers and turrets broken,
Like grim war-worn braves who keep
A silent guard with grief unspoken
Watch o’er the graves, by the canon weep,
The nameless graves of a race forgotten
Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are one
With the mist, long ages past, begotten of the sun.”

The sun is now casting his shadows toward the east. From this point of sight we see the Midland trains creeping from tunnels like monster creatures of the Azotic period crawling from their lair. There are green valleys below, and there is also a long serpentine road leading to this side of the mountain by which visitors again reach the pleasant shades of Manitou. Silence, and even sadness, abound in the green-clad mountains beyond. They speak in whispers to themselves and you can understand them if you will. They tell you in sweet, soft voices of the song of birds, the lullaby of mountain brooks, and by gentle winds that sing a song of peace through cedar, fir and pine, that the love of nature, is the love of nature’s God.