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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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