Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods

(_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.