dweller in Estes Park, in a house of her own, far back from any main highway, recently protested against a proposed road through the recesses of the Rockies, which would bring "such a throng of automobilists." She was sitting in her own automobile at the moment; and motorless tourists had a right to think that she was no better than those objectionable scurryers.

66

The truth is that no mountain is made smaller by being admired by multitudes. The 'crowding " of vast areas of mountain, forest, and river, such as the Sierra Nevadas, for instance, is a myth. Anybody who dislikes the numbers in the Yosemite Valley may reduce the crowd by "hitting the trail" out into the King River Canyon. If other people "crowd into" the King River Canyon, he can take to the Hetch Hetchy. What the scenic grumbler really wants is to pitch on a particularly beautiful spot, easy of access, and then drive off anybody else who would like equally well to stay in that beautiful spot, so easy of access. If the aloof Bosto

nian dislikes the jostling of his city, he may hie himself to the Maine woods. One of the splendid things about the grandeurs of America is that they are open to the democracy. You may fence in the seashore at Bar Har bor, but not the prism of the Grand Canyon. Nobody need be afraid that the number of travelers will ever overwhelm the available pleasure-grounds of America.

The wise man finds every part of the United States full of natural beauty. New England offers its rugged and picturesque seacoast. Its mountains are restrained in height, and, except for such wonders as the Old Man of the Mountains, can boast few natural sculptures of cliff and peak. Still he who has not seen the Mount Monadnock region, with its forests and lake gems and roaring brooks, has not seen America. The Appalachian Mountains are in most places low, worn-down, and monotonous in their pattern of long parallel ridges and valleys. Nevertheless they include the caverns of Luray and the Natural Bridge of Virginia, which would be admired wonders in any country of the world. Down in the South you may seek Grandfather's Mountain, or Mount Mitchell, or such scenic points as Blowing Rock and Toxaway, from which stretch billowy forest slopes.

In the interior the most magnificent gift of nature is Niagara-so big, so convenient, so easy to see, that we forget its rare beauty.

The Great Lakes offer a system of navigation through broad waters, wide sweeping rivers, beautiful straits, and picturesque islands. One of the most enjoyable water journeys in the world was forever lost when the steamer trade on the Mississippi decayed. That was the poetry of travel, with its surprises of an ever-winding channel, its picturesque people, white and black, and its old towns, culminating at the crowded levee of New Orleans.

The modern all-rail substitute for the great river has its scenic advantages; such as the Burlington route from Chicago to Minneapolis, which skirts the Mississippi for hundreds of miles. There is something inspiriting in the rolling prairie of the Northwest, rising and falling like immense billows on the ocean. Greater majesty is seen on the great flat prairies of the Middle West. A ride across Texas from east to west in April is a thing to remember for a lifetime.

Beyond the Missouri the country rises slowly and steadily till from the Pullman window or from a motor car the eye catches the far-off summits of Gray's and Long's and James, and the rest of the towering hosts of the Rocky Mountains. From north to south this wonderland has at last been opened up. On the Canadian border lies Glacier Park, first explored many years ago, but recently rediscovered. The Almighty furnished the mountains; the United States Government has set them apart as a National Park; the Great Northern Railroad deposits the visitor in comfortable inns or in magnificent hotels at the base of the mountains, in one of the most splendid regions of the earth. The scenery is alpine-lakes running up into mountain gorges, flanked with cascades and carrying the eye upward to massive mountains, glaciers, and waterfalls. Trails lead in various directions through and across these mountains, for the accommodation of man and beast.

Southward, the next scenic area is the Yellowstone, where this year the remarkable discovery has been made that automobile travel will not kill the fish nor stop the geysers. Most of the scenery is inferior to other parts of the Rocky Mountains, but the geyser glory is unsurpassed. From Laramie south to Santa Fé the Rockies abound in glorious scenery. The most highly developed tourist center is Estes Park, which is reached through the magnificent gorge of the Big Thompson. The floor of the Park is about 7,500 feet

above the sea, and a circle of snow mountains towers 5,000 to 6,500 feet above it. The city of Denver has taken up a tract of mountains farther south, which is becoming one of the noblest public parks in existence. Automobile roads are extending through the tangled range of high mountains. Still farther south, Colorado Springs is becoming one of the pleasure cities of the land, with its unique nearness to the bold mountains culminating in Pike's Peak.

New Mexico and Arizona have their peculiar splendors. The deserts are a dream of color and light. Near by lies the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, with which it is as difficult to be intimate as with the Atlantic Ocean. No human language can describe or suggest the terrific beauty of that chasm. Not to see it is to be ignorant of creation. North of it are those amazing natural bridges in southern Utah, which as yet can be reached only by well-furnished expeditions which carry their

own water.

The Pacific coast is by all odds the most scenic part of the United States. It is the only coast which breaks off from steep mountains into deep water. It is the only part of

the United States which is Mediterranean in sea and sky and vegetation. It contains almost the only group of sentimental ruins in its chain of Spanish missions. It includes the Yosemite Valley, which is as unapproachable in its kind as the Grand Canyon. It nourishes groves of big trees which are so much older than the oldest oaks of the East that they make California seem ancient. It has in the Golden Gate a waterway comparable with the Straits of Gibraltar.

Farther

north is the chain of volcanic snow peaks, which is without a parallel anywhere within the boundaries of the United States-Shasta, Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Glacier, Adams, Shukshan, Baker, and Mount Rainier, king of the whole stately line. As Izaak Walton said of the strawberry, God might have made a more magnificent mountain than Mount Rainier, but doubtless he never did.

Jumping over British Columbia, again we "See America First" in Alaska, where the combination of sea, ice, and rock create a kind of scenery outside the experience of most Americans. Words cannot describe the chain of islands, the reaches of still water, the vast snow-fields, the distant peaks running up to eighteen thousand feet, the culmination of scenic grandeur in Lynn Canal, where nearly a score of glaciers hang on the mountains or touch the sea.

66

Europe has its own attractions of city, sea, and mountains. Africa and Asia are lands of brilliant costume and unfamiliar peoples. New experiences may be found also in Chicago and New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. In natural scenery Seeing America First" means seeing many things which can nowhere else be found. Mount Rainier is finer than Mont Blanc; the Yosemite far surpasses the Engadine; Niagara has no rival this side of the Zambesi. In America the easy-going traveler may be wafted to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while the lover of nature and of camp life may plunge into any one of a hundred wildernesses. Το See America First" is to raise one's own standard of the might and majesty of our own beloved country.