Read "Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods" by Esther Singleton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
(_UNITED STATES_) / IZA DUFFUS HARDY
Colorado Springs -- so called because the springs are at Manitou, five / miles off, is a prairie town on a plateau six thousand feet high, / above which Pike's Peak stands sentinel, lifting his snow-capped head / fourteen thousand feet into the clear depths of azure light, in which / no fleck of cloud floats from morn to night and night to morn again. It / is April, and not a drop of rain has fallen since the previous August. / Mid-April, and not a leaf upon a tree. Not a flower or a bird seems to / flourish here. No spring-blossom scents the keen fresh life-giving air; / no warbler soars high up into the stainless sapphire sky. The leafless / cottonwood trees stand out white in the flood of sunlight like trees / of silver, their delicate bare branches forming a shining tangle of / silvery network against that intense blue background.