Read Ebook: Colorado Outings by Steele James W James William
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The twin ca?on to the northward held its tumbling waters too, and Seven Lakes, Monument Park, Rainbow Falls, Manitou Park, Williams' Ca?on, Cave of the Winds, Engleman's Ca?on, Red Ca?on, Crystal Park, Glen Eyrie--all these were the same as now, but unnamed and almost unnoted. Nothing in the modern world is ever done until a railroad comes.
Yet there has been a change; as great a change as the ingenuity of man can make in everlasting things. The Manitou Grand Caverns have been discovered and opened, precisely as though nature had not been lavish enough before, and must needs do some other brilliant thing through man's accident and luck. Wagon roads have been graded in all directions, and from one famous place to another, until there is no pleasure ground in America, possibly in the world, so well equipped for out-of-doors pleasure in a climate that has no vicissitudes, and amid remarkable scenes that have been clustered around this one favored spot with a profusion unknown elsewhere in all the civilized world.
To South Cheyenne Ca?on from Manitou it is nine miles; to North Cheyenne Ca?on eight and one-half; from the mouth of the ca?on to the Rainbow Falls and Grand Caverns it is one and one-half miles, and every visitor wishes it was further, because it is a road of rugged sweetness quite unequaled; to Red Ca?on it is three miles; to Crystal Park, three; to the Garden of the Gods, three--a drive lovely as pleasure knows, with an extraordinary scene at the end of it; to Glen Eyrie it is five miles; to Monument Park by "trail"--which is native for a fine riding road--it is seven and one-half miles; by carriage road it is nine miles; to Seven Lakes, again by trail, it is nine miles; to the summit of Pike's Peak, this time by the Cog Road, it is nine wonderful miles, with an elevation rarely attained in this life at the end of it; to the same by trail it is thirteen miles. There are four ways of going up this mountain, to climb which was a few years ago a remarkable feat--afoot, horseback, by carriage and by rail. All these ways are practised, according to the spirit and physical condition of the visitor. The bicycle, for only this once, is not included.
These are some of the show places, the world-renowned scenes about which there cannot easily be any exaggeration. People linger among them for months, and go to them again and again.
But in addition to these there are scores of mountain nooks and corners; ca?ons, caves, waterfalls; private places that the visitor seeks out or casually finds for himself. There are acres, and quarter and half acres that have been discovered hundreds of times, and are owned, practically without cost, by the finder for so long as he lingers amid these scenes. There may be sometimes a pair, to whom the place is a joint-stock enterprise.
Within the limits of Manitou there are nine springs, all cold mineral waters. They are of two kinds; the "soda" springs, effervescent and resembling in taste and quality appollinaris water, and the iron springs. All are medicinal, and all have records of cures. They are at least the nucleus of an agreeable supposition: the beautiful scenery, the crisp mountain air, the out-of-doors, the inducements to activity, the tiredness that is really rest--these are the health-restoring facilities of Manitou. The waters are very pleasant, and may be regarded as a duty, always with the understanding that if the visitor is made over again in the course of a few weeks, as he often is, he may ascribe it to the waters if he wishes.
It is manifest that of such a place a volume might be written. The specific attractions of each attraction cannot here be described. It would be useless space-writing if they were. Manitou, once visited, remains ever after a picture of the mind, never put into words. Over all, always, shimmers the indescribable Colorado sunshine, a light that is not of other lands.
So far as creature comforts are in question, Manitou has long been sumptuously equipped. There are five large hotels, capable of accommodating an aggregate of over twelve hundred guests. There are, besides, many small hotels, and there are cottages that may be rented for periods of weeks or months.
One of the notable works of man at Manitou is the Cog Railroad to the summit of Pike's Peak. It was completed in 1891, and is in many respects singular even for its kind. It climbs in the eight and three-quarters miles of its length to a height of 14,147 feet above sea level. It cost half a million dollars, and the construction is of the very highest class. There is a cog-rail in the center, between the two other rails, which weighs a hundred and ten tons to the mile. At intervals of two hundred feet the track is anchored to heavy masonry. Brakes are so contrived that the train can be stopped on any grade within a distance of ten inches. The trucks of the cars and engines are always tilted at the angle of the ascent, but in the case of the former the seats are level to the sitter, and the engines are built high at one end and remain so, even on level ground. The engine does not pull the train, but pushes it. Three hours are consumed in making the ascent, and a hundred passengers make a load for the train. Stops are made at interesting points on the way up.
There are many feats of engineering and in the overcoming of great physical difficulties that render this the most remarkable of the climbing passenger railroads of the world. The ascent of this big mountain was always a feat by the ordinary means; the elevation is one not usually attained in this life under any circumstances, and the sensations are indescribable in words.
No attempt is here made to describe in detail the scenes within the scenes at Manitou. No one who has been there ever attempts this even in ordinary conversation. They who return from the Cheyenne ca?ons or the Garden of the Gods are ever a silent company. That name Manitou should be applied to the entire region, as indicating vaguely that spirit far removed from the platitudes and tediousness of ordinary language and common life that pervades it all.
In almost the opposite direction from that which takes the visitor to Manitou, and still near the eastern rim of the mountains, is one ca?on that can be visited from Denver in a day. It lies upon one of the lines of the U. P., D. & G. road, and is known as Clear Creek Ca?on.
This defile in the mountains has been long known. When Colorado was young it was a miners' wagon road over the range. Tens of thousands have seen it, and it still remains, especially to one who has no time to see the overpowering scenery in the interior, an experience not to be left out.
From Denver it is fifteen miles to Golden, which is the simple name of a town, one of the original gold camps, over a stretch of country that was once an inlet of the great plains sea, and is as level as the Nebraska prairie. It is a fruit, farm and ranch country, suggesting nothing of the scene that is so near at hand. The basin in which the town lies is the bottom of this sea, and the rocks around the shore are water worn, and show where the waves once lapped. But a little distance beyond lies the opening to this famous gorge and its tumbling stream, and thence the road follows it for more than twenty miles.
The place, like most ca?ons, is apparently a cooling crock; a place that opened in the shrinking of the crust when the white-hot world began to harden. The projections of one side vaguely fit the indentations of the other. Very often the red walls come very close together, revealing, as one looks upward, only a narrow blue streak where the sky is.
In the V-shaped opening at the western end of Clear Creek Ca?on lies Idaho Springs, a mining town, where, if these scenes are new to the visitor, odd glimpses may be caught of a life and traffic to most of the world unknown. The surrounding hills are marked with white spots high up, and these scars are almost countless. Mining is everything, and everywhere, and scenery is incidental. But Idaho Springs, as its name might indicate, is also a health resort. The springs consist of both hot and cold mineral water, and there is a natural vapor bath and boiling springs. The climate is celebrated even in Colorado.
Fourteen miles further westward is Georgetown, and the road thither is simply an extension of the Clear Creek Ca?on, here taking the form of a sloping-sided and very narrow valley. The town has a population of nearly four thousand people. These mountain towns, sheltered by the high ranges, have all a more equable climate than Denver. There is hardly one that is not both a winter and summer health resort. Strong men who came to this country many years ago with weak lungs, seeking the one great desideratum of a climate where they could live all the year out of doors, have gone wherever occupation and circumstances drew them in the mountains, and are conscious as a rule of no great difference in locality within certain well-defined and very wide lines. Winter does not interfere with any industry of the country. The sheltered valley, wherever it lies in central and southern Colorado, at least, furnishes a residence for that large class who would surely die in two years in the east, who know that fact, and who live here in health until they are old.
Perched high above Georgetown is the famous "Loop," a wonderful piece of railroad engineering skill. The mining town of Silver Plume is perched at the apex of this work. Many eastern roads have "Horseshoe" and "Muleshoe" curves, and make lithographs of them, and speak of them as engineering triumphs worthy of the passenger's particular attention. So they were in their time, but they have been incalculably surpassed in dozens of cases in Colorado.
Two and one-half miles from Georgetown is the famous Green Lake. It is 10,000 feet above the sea. It is full of fish, largely mountain trout, not now, however, as easily caught as they were in early times. It is a huge basin full of perfectly clear, deep water, but there is a prevailing tint of green; water, sand, moss, and even the oar drippings, are all green. At certain hours in late afternoon, when all the shadows and reflections are right, it is possible to catch glimpses of its great depth. There is a forest there, the trees still standing, but turned to stone.
Seven miles away is Argentine Pass, where the highest wagon road in the world is. From this pass there is a view that is remarkable, and for this alone, the delightful road excursion to the pass is made by hundreds of people every year. Four miles from Green Lake is Highland Park, a resort and famous place for picnics. One day's ride by stage takes the tourist to Grand Lake, the largest body of water in Colorado. This lake is also full of trout, and its numerous tributaries afford fishing in plenty to those who like running water. The surrounding region has grouse and large game in plentifulness quite remarkable for these late times.
In Clear Creek Ca?on, coming up, a rather remarkable railway junction is found. It is called "Forks of the Creek," and there does not seem to be much room for car yards and switches, since the place is merely the running into the main ca?on of a lateral one, with its walls little less steep and high than those of the main gorge are. But the branch line from here goes to Black Hawk and Central City, famous mining towns. These places can be reached also from Idaho Springs--by stage across the six miles intervening, done in one hour. On this stage road lies Russell Gulch, where in 1858 the first paying gold east of California was discovered by a man named Russell from Georgia, one of the original pioneers from that state to Colorado. The gulch was a great camp thirty years ago, and the remains are there to-day. Three miles further on is Central City, crawling up the mountain side. It is in the little rich county of Gilpin, previously mentioned. Mining industries abound in every direction.
A few minutes' ride or walk down the ca?on brings one to Black Hawk, though by rail it is four miles--a slight illustration of the exigencies of railway building in this country. On this four miles still further exigencies are illustrated by probably the only permanent "switchback" now in use. While going backward and forward down the sloping mountain--five hundred feet of descent in the four miles--one can look out of the car window and see, hundreds of feet below, the winding ca?on down from Central City.
From Black Hawk the train may be taken back to Denver, going eleven miles to the junction mentioned in the heart of Clear Creek Ca?on.
Gray's Peak, one of the highest in Colorado, and its ascent by horses is an excursion often made either from Georgetown or Idaho Springs. The ride, to the beginning of the ascent by carriages, is one of the choicest of Colorado excursions. It is past Silver Plume to Graymont, at which point one may stop if scenery and views are the sum of his desires. Gray's Peak is a little higher than Pike's, but the ascent is easier. It is not unusual to start the horseback journey so early in the summer morning that the summit may be reached in time to see the sun rise. It is, of course, true that a description of this scene does not lie within the power of language, of colors, of the camera, or within any field but that of the remembering imagination. Painters, poets and writers come back discouraged. It changes the current of thought for the remainder of a lifetime, and tinges the creeping sordidness of the common world with a color that hereafter never entirely fades. To all, in whatever estate, this sordidness is an enveloping fog; accustomed unseen. There does not live a man or woman to whom the heights of Colorado are not necessary, once in their lives if no more.
It will be understood that it is not intended to do more here than give a sketch of an easy journey out of Denver into a celebrated mountain region. This little journey may be made over the "Loop" and back in one day. It may last a month or all summer. It is one of the remarkable features of Colorado travel that this trip among the heights and fastnesses of nature, and all other delightful journeys here, can be made without a moment of hardship, or even of inconvenience. Civilization is everywhere. Roads, railways, bridges, towns, dot the mountain world. Yet that world remains unchanged, lovely and magnificent in single phrase, and capable of being seen and enjoyed with an expenditure little greater than that which is always necessary at home or elsewhere.
The State of Colorado contains four thousand three hundred and fifty-seven miles of railroads in a mountain area of a hundred and five thousand square miles. In any other state every mile of this would be "scenic," and the most uninteresting part of it would elsewhere serve to divert extensive travel.
In this area, penetrated in every part by the astonishing railway mileage given, there are a hundred and fifty-five mountain peaks that are over thirteen thousand feet high. That is ten times as many as all Europe holds. One of these, situated so as to be seen sometimes a hundred miles across the plains, is forsooth climbed by a human railroad, and can be scaled and descended and the traveler be far on his way toward home within the daylight hours of one eventful day. When one begins to describe this country he has to deal with all the majesties, mountains, parks, crags, ca?ons, glens, waterfalls, geysers, lakes, caverns, cliffs, buttes, all spread out on a tremendous scale, none of them small. There are, it is said, seventy-two high peaks that yet stand nameless, waiting for some form of concurrent opinion as to how these colossal sons of nature shall be best called in mere human speech.
There are about five hundred lakes, large and small, some of them distinguished by a famous name, and many still asleep in mountain hollows almost unknown, where every wanderer who finds them is a discoverer for himself.
There are about six thousand miles of running water, born of snow, filled with fish, most of their countless windings still untraced by him who bears a rod and basket and would like to lure to unequal combat and certain death the mountain fishes, all "game" and difficult of capture. In the far recesses of the mountains there are places still unknown to all save one--the prospector--and here linger the mountain lion, the panther, black, cinnamon, grizzly and silver-tip bears, wildcats, lynxes, porcupines, deer, elks, antelope, and all the creatures of the wilds. These are never common; all the hunters' tales do not ever make them that, and they must be hunted. He who finds and slays them is an adventurer, and was always such.
Mineral springs abound. No one knows how many there are, yet there is a long list of them already well known. The names Manitou, Glenwood, Poncha, Pagosa, Buena Vista, Ouray, Idaho, Ca?on City, have been heard by all. Every town has its especial waters. At some of these there has been a lavish expenditure of capital and hotel palaces have arisen. Some are so especially endowed with outlying attractions that the waters are a secondary consideration, and of these is Manitou. Others have extraordinary temperatures and volume, so that nature's chemistry is the pastime of hundreds, and of these is Glenwood. Others are the favored of a few. Every prospector knows of one or more, where isolated cases believe that they must drink or die; have drunk, and did not die.
The Colorado Midland road, with less mileage and covering a much smaller extent of country, mentions fourteen resorts, besides twice or thrice as many famous pieces of scenery.
And here it may be remarked that of the famous resorts of Colorado one is reached by both the Denver & Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland. This is Glenwood Springs, sharing with Manitou an almost equal fame. The place is at the junction of Grand River and Roaring Fork, in a valley that is like an elongated bowl. The springs themselves are phenomenal, running out on both sides of the river, and varying from twenty to a thousand cubic inches a second--among the largest in the world. Those on the north side of the river discharge an immense body of water at a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and this stream is made to flow through an aqueduct on both sides of an island. On this island stands the famous bathing house. Here is found every species of bathing arrangement housed in magnificent style. There are twenty-two large two-room bathing apartments for each sex--forty-four in all--and each is supplied with hot, cold or warm mineral water, and the same temperatures of fresh water, and also showers of either. Here in the heart of the mountains will be found all the appliances of the highest grade of civilization, electric lights, smoking, billiard and eating rooms, linen rooms, hair-dressing rooms, laundries, etc. The feature of the place is perhaps the swimming bath. It is a huge out-of-doors oval tank, full of hot water, and ranging in depth from three and a half to five and a half feet. Two thousand gallons a minute of hot mineral water pours into this huge artificial swimming place, the high temperature being reduced by colder water as it enters.
These features--chief among which is, of course, the hot mineral water in immense volume, making the place remarkable among the resorts of the world--are backed by a hotel which takes rank among the palaces. It has two hundred guest rooms, in nearly all of which are open fireplaces, and there is every convenience that pertains to civilization, mention of which in detail is merely tiresome to the accustomed Colorado visitor. One of the features of our national life is seldom mentioned, and there is now only a small class for whom the mention is worth while. It is that wherever the American establishes himself he takes with him all there is. The refinement, the culture, the "style" of Newport and Saratoga are all duplicated at Manitou and Glenwood, housed magnificently of themselves and environed by scenes in comparison with which those of most of the pleasure places of the world are tame.
A third line, the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf, has all the famous country beyond Clear Creek Ca?on, full of scenery, resorts and mines; the South Park line to Leadville and Gunnison--a trip often made by the Colorado tourist for the pleasure of the journey--with the most famous mining "camp" of the world at the end of it.
The Burlington Route has a line running northwest from Denver to Lyons, whence one of the few remaining famous mountain stage rides may be taken to that which is by many--by all who know it well--considered to be the gem of the Colorado parks, Estes.
This park was in its time the most famous of the natural feeding grounds for all the Colorado animals. It is largely so yet, though in visiting it there is always a half regret that its location was ever divulged in type, so that it might have remained always a chosen spot for those only who could appreciate its original loveliness and were willing to share it with the animals who live there. It is skirted by mountains nine, eleven and fourteen thousand feet high. Two peaks of granite stand on either side of its only feasible entrance. The interior is shaped irregularly and there is little level ground. It is made up of natural lawns and of slopes and grades. It is but twenty miles in length and is not more than two miles wide in any place. One bright, swift trout stream, known prosaically as the Big Thompson, is born in the snow of Long's Peak and flows crookedly through it from end to end. This is really one of the loveliest streams in the world. There are waterfalls and little lakes, fine groupings of trees, lawns that seem the work of the landscape gardener on a large scale. Nevertheless, sublimity is the dominant feature of Estes Park, after all. There are pinnacles of rosy granite, the streams are lost in ca?ons almost or quite inaccessible, and the upper end of almost every valley is closed in mystery. There are, though it seems so far removed from the actual heart of the Rockies, seven mountain ranges between Estes Park and the plains.
The lowest part of the park is 7,500 feet high. The summer midday is very warm, but every night is cool, almost cold. People live there and farm and there is no lack of either accommodation or hospitality. Still it is isolated, with the charm of nature utterly unbroken, a good place to fish and near the best remaining hunting grounds, perhaps, after all, the loveliest summer-time resting place in all this wonderland of nature.
All this northern region of which Estes Park is the gem calls loudly to that large class who imagine they have enough of society at home, and who wish for two or three blissful summer weeks to go where the Red Gods call them; to fish, or hunt, or to lie under pines and blink at the mottled sunshine, forgetful of newspapers and telegrams, and stiff collars and polished boots. Of such as these are the churls who build railroads and conduct enterprises and write real books, and torment their days with action and their nights with thinking. Some of these shamelessly bestow their women folk and their young men at Glenwood or Manitou, or elsewhere beneath a mingling of mountain shadows and electric lights, and then abscond with other temporary satyrs like unto themselves to Estes Park and places even further away.
And there is a line of travel thus far, and amid many other enforced omissions, not mentioned at all. It is operated by the Denver & Rio Grande road, and may be said to begin at that point mentioned in a preceding chapter, a little station beyond Salida, where in the early morning a train mysteriously vanishes within a side ca?on, seemingly on a prospecting tour amid unknown depths and distances. The tour of this train they call familiarly "Around the Circle"--a circle several hundred miles in circumference.
This journey traverses the San Luis Park. It crosses the southern boundary line into New Mexico and throws out an attenuated and very crooked arm to Santa Fe, in the heart of a civilization that is the oldest and quaintest in America. One would hardly credit the fact that at the moment of disappearance this vanishing train is crossing the huge northern rim of San Luis Park, and that emerging on the inner side it proceeds to make a beeline, without a curve, across this vast mountain amphitheater for a distance of fifty-six miles. While crookedness is a wonder elsewhere, it is straightness that is a wonder here, and this unwonted tangent is deliberately mentioned as a curious thing. The grades immediately precedent were two hundred and eleven feet to the mile, and the look downward and backward through Poncha Pass was something as indescribable as any scene in Colorado. But it may be added that this is the longest stretch of straight railroad track, not alone in Colorado, but in the world.
On this circle route lies the famous Toltec Gorge, where the train crosses the range at an elevation of 10,015 feet. The line passes the corner of the Ute and Apache Indian reservations, and the aborigine has never lost his interest in the still inexplicable power that was the principal indirect cause of his being placed at last in this corner of the realm he once owned. He sits in the sun and waits for the train.
There is a place where the line is laid on a shelf in a ca?on that is five hundred feet from the bottom and five hundred feet from the top, and where the cost of construction for a single mile was 5,000.
At Mancos station the ethnologically inclined may stop and visit the ruins of the cliff dwellers in Mancos Ca?on. Rico, Lost Ca?on, the Valley of the Dolores, Rio de Las Animas Perdidas--"the River of the Lost Souls"--the queer, sharp pinnacles known as the Needle Mountains, Sultan Mountain, Lizard Head Pass, Trout Lake, the celebrated piece of engineering known as Ophir Loop, the Black Ca?on, are all places on this "circle" journey.
The mines and mining interests of Colorado are immense. They form a special feature, and about them there is already an extensive literature. It is the richest mineral region in the world, a fact illustrated by the ease with which it can turn from silver to gold, calling itself the "Silver State" for a period of years, and producing in a year immediately succeeding more than thirty millions of gold. Through all these wanderings, in every nook and corner, are the mines. The country is known truly and in detail by but one class--the prospectors. Thorough experts in mining are found in every walk in life. Information in detail would fill a space ten times as large as can be given here. The two largest mining camps, Leadville and Cripple Creek, are both easy of access by rail from Denver, and, while as towns they possess features that are unique, there is little in them outside the lines of average American citizenship and human nature, except the vast interests to which they are exclusively devoted. The home is there as elsewhere; the school, the church and the average man and woman. The frontier story has been told and is out of date. The community of a great mining center is not so strange, nor apparently half so extraordinary in its methods, as that which clusters daily around the shrine in the Chicago Board of Trade.
To the miner, the farmer and the cattle raiser of Colorado the scenery has in time naturally become as is Niagara to him who lives with the thunder of the cataract always in his ears. It is to those to whom these wonders are not a part of daily life that they appeal. The interest involved in industrial Colorado is immense. The capital involved mounts easily into millions. But it is a separate topic, interesting only to business, appealing not at all to the man and woman whose cares and toils are lessened, whose lives are strengthened by the touch of nature once a year; for whom, since the first railroad line was laid across the plains, there has existed no outing like that amid the Springs and peaks and pines of Colorado.
Now, if Colorado is a hunting country at all, it is one most of whose preserves can be nearly approached in a Pullman car. The climate, even in midwinter, is mild. There is always a town, a mine, a ranch, somewhere within tramping distance; somewhere to go, something to eat, a fire, good women, hospitable men. There is no Nimrod so hearty that these are not to him valuable considerations; if not in the morning, at least at night.
It may seem almost too much to say that nearly every prominent scenery place in the state is contiguous to good hunting. "Over the range" is always, in certain respects at least, another world. There are numbers of men here who habitually prospect in summer and hunt in winter. There is not one of these who does not know where large game is to be found. The trouble is not so much with the place as it is with the unaccustomed man. Find your appropriate and mountain-accustomed man as guide and you will get the game--if you can hit a gray or a light brown spot four hundred yards or such a matter away. It will hardly pay to come to these mountains in order to learn, for the first time, how to shoot at a mark, or how to go hungry because it was not touched.
"Youth's daring spirit, manhood's fire, Firm hand and eagle eye, Must he acquire who would aspire To see the gray boar die."
The forests still cover a large portion of Colorado. Many of these lying away from other interests so far, are almost as silent as they were in the beginning. They are the natural covert for elk, deer, antelope, the mountain sheep and a variety of smaller game. Any prospector will tell one that there is nothing more common than the fresh bear track near the stream, looking like the footprint of a barefoot negro baby. All mountain men encounter droves of elk and deer. Farmers will tell you where they think they are, because they have often seen them there.
For many sportsmen, the northwestern and parts of the northern portions of the state are the best large-game hunting grounds; Routt, Grand and Garfield counties, and the region of which Estes Park is the center. Parts of this northern region are more easily reached by the Burlington's line from Denver northwest to Lyons than by any other. The region of the foothills, the land between plain and mountain, and including both, is the natural home of the elk. It is in the more outlying regions, of course, that the big shy game now live. Once, in the days of Indian occupation, all Colorado was a hunting field, perhaps the best known. Natural fastnesses, plenty of food and a mild climate made it so. The encroachments of civilization have naturally restricted the field, but with the result that there is now more game in the places they still occupy than there was in former times. This unoccupied region is still in the aggregate, and notwithstanding all the railroad lines, as large as the entire state of New York. One would be illy occupied in prescribing given localities to an accomplished hunter under these circumstances. Every resident hunter knows, if he would always tell, of half a dozen good hunting fields.
In brief, it may be said that there is still game all over Colorado except on the plains, and there the jackrabbit lives in large numbers. In localities where there is fine fishing every summer, such as the Gunnison River, near Montrose or Delta, there is also fine deer hunting in the season, and that is a region largely interested in farming and grazing. Or an inquirer will be rewarded with valuable pointers about the region of the mildest climate in the state; the nooks and valleys on either side of the San Luis Park. A little inquiry developed, perhaps, after the employment of a companion or guide, who is undoubtedly necessary to a stranger, will elicit facts about the hunting grounds and their possibilities that a man might wander over the state for a year and not discover for himself. The best hunting here and elsewhere, is obtained only by him who departs deliberately out of civilization for a period, lives in a cabin, does nothing but hunt while he is thus engaged, and stays long enough to learn the country and the haunts of the beasts for whose life he thirsts. It is not now so easy as it was, even in Africa. The time is coming when it will be a lost art.
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