BY CAR ACROSS A CONTINENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18928, 31 July 1923, Page 5

BY CAR ACROSS A CONTINENT.

RIDING THE CLOUDS IN COLORADO. EIGHT THOUSAND FEET UP PIKE’S PEAK. By S. K. No. 111. Out of the grayness and heat of the plain ■we drove into the coolness of Colorado Springs, the western playground of the United States, which stands 6100 ft above sea level. The cars of a thousand visiters were besides us in the autocamp on the shores of Prospect Lake, and Pike’s Peak towered 8000 odd feet above. Spearpoint and sentinel of a million square miles of mountains, this majestic spire is not only _ one of the loftiest in the American Rockies — it is also a snow-topped advertisement of imagination and engineering skill. When American millionaires first conceived the project of driving automobiles up Pike’s Peak the idea must have seemed as fantastic as a suggestion that the pleasure steamer Maid of the Mist should ascend Niagara Falls. To-day a faultless double-track boulevard, 20 to 50 feet wide, rises to the very crest of the mountain. Moreover, the toll of 9s on each passenger is rapidly wiping out the capital and interest represented by the highway, and a free thoroughfare will soon be one more inducement to visit the region of climaxes and caves, weird volcanic fragments, waterfalls, and prehistoric dwellings. A CHOICE OF ROUTES. There are two methods of mounting, the one by favour of the millionaires and the other by a cog railway which cost nearly a million dollars. If you believe in safety first, you cog it. if you have confidence in the human equation and the American car, you choose one of the many-cylinderod machines which carry tourists up at any hour of the day or night desired. It is an experience to visit Cloudland in the early morning and watch the sun drive the shadows through the valleys. Some visitors oscend in their own cars, but the extraordinary winding nature of the switchback, the thin air which cuts the power in half, and the long strain on engine and driver are excellent arguments for using someone else’s vehicle. On the steady climb the water boils furiously in the engine, and the driver of a small machine who incautiously removes the radiator cap to add more water dodges hastily when a small geyser plays. The descent, if not made with the engine in gear and the petrol cut off, grinds away the brake linings. On our way down wo passed through the reek of burning brake bands—the sure sign of the amateur driver.

if you ran look down the Woolworth building on to New York streets without qualms, you will enjoy Pike’s Peak and may chaff the driver on the possibilities of a thousand-foot drop. But if you normally prefer life’s lower levels, then there are times when the wise way glance is not the side way. The man at the wheel is rarely troubled. It is the imagination of the passenger which is apt to T 'lnv tricks. THE VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT. With all eight cylinders hitting in perfect time, the hired auto twisted and writhed slowly, climbing steadily in a score of loops. Soon the valley from which we started is far below, incredibly small. At the snow line the last trees struggle out and are replaced by rocks with unmelted snow in their cracks. Threads of grey mist and flakes of white on the windscreen announce the last stage. On many summer days one is literally riding above the clouds. At last we reach the highest point and behold the Cordilleras on the west and the Snanish Peaks on the south, the Continental Divide to the north, and on the east those weary plains in which doubtless our tracks bad long since vanished. Below us smaller peaks cluster like billows and the valleys between seem scratches on infinity. Treeless, chill, with continuing snow and strewn with granite debris of immense size, the summit dominates, forever unmindful of the white scar of highway and of the cog railway propped upward l like a tilted ladder. Always the Rockies hold the patience of massing centuries, and Nature which draws the snow line scatters blue wild flowers on barrenness with prodigal hands. , The child draws bis stick through the wet sand and the engineer traces his boulevard. Then the tide flows in. IN THE CAVE OF THE WINDS. There are successions of sights in Colorado Springs. One of the weirdest is the Cave of the Winds, which America 1 owes to two schoolboys, who heard a booming noise, through a mountain hole and wriggled in to investigate. The prize they found was a series of jowel-like caves resembling the Jenolan in the Blue Mountains. Lit by skilfully-placed clusters of electric lights, the caverns are full of stalactites and stalagmites which combine with flowering alabaster and tinted walls. The Altar, the Bridal Chamber, the Mam-

tou Dome, the Sea Sheila, and the FullRigger Ship are a few of the proofs of the skill of the gentlest and mightiest sculptor of the' universe. The water power which gouged out the interior of a rooky foothill, sloping into a deep canyon, has also worked in fretwork with the point of a diamond. OLD MAID’S KITCHEN. The crimson strand of superstition always colours the rope of human nature. In one cave, known at tho Old Maid’s Kitchen, we saw a mound of rusting hairpins, each one left there by some girl who believed tho legend that the woman who leaves a hairpin in this blessed spat will be married within a year. Judging by the number of hairpins and remembering the possibilities of divorce in tho West, I imagine that several prudent maids left two hairpins. It is permissible to wonder whether some ot the weddings which take place in another cave have any romantic connection with the mass of old iron from the hair of American girls. When wo emerged from the Cave of the Winds we wore amazed to sec that in 30 minutes a western cloudburst had come and gone. Wo drove slowly down to a rain-bat-tered, flooded city, with tram tracks washed away and watercourses in place of gutters. Our tent was sagging pitifully, obviously unsafe, and a miniature torrent ha cut its own channel under the canvas. That night we slept in our car and suffered sadly from tho cramp thereof. THE GARDEN OF Tllfe GODS. On the morrow we visited the Garden of the Gods—-weird castings from the cold fire of a million years, hardened ooze from the dredgings of lime. Some stupendous upheaval had loft behind grotesque suggestive shapes of red sandstone—tho Cathedral Spires, the Bear and Seal, the Frog, tho Siamese Twins, and so on over several hundred acres. This natural park vas a gift to the city. Better worth while, from the Australian standpoint, are the relics of the cliffdwellers which have been brought to Manitou, near Colorado Springs, and there reconstructed. Ancient houses, mummies, si one weapons, and quaint pottery recall a vanished civilisation, blood brother perhaps of tho Metalanim Venice in the Caroline Islands.

Three clays’ sightseeing left much unviaited, but Cheyenne, Yellowstone, and the passage of the Rockies were still ahead. Our stay at the Springs forced us to save time by driving through Denver, the Paris of America, with its 35 city parks and its splendid lighting system. Two thousand incandescent lights illumined the bronze and iron Welcome Arch which stands £sft and is 86ft wide As we drove away lire arch spelled out Mizpah—the Lord watch over thee. Denver offered a palatial camp to two Australians if they had wished to halt therein. The hospitality which Denver holds for motorists is possibly a proof of its Christianity, for in its streets we met some of the worst drivers alive. WORSHIPPING BLUENESS. A long day’s journey north and we pitch out tent in a city to which cowboys are riding from a hundred ranches. Almost from sunrise to sunset we drive parallel to the Rocky Mountains, a sponge of wondrous blue which stains the mental fingers pressed on it by fancy. In “Exotics and Retrospectives.’’ Lnlc.adio Hearn traces the sensations of colour back to primeval davs. lam convinced that ho is right and that ten thousand years ago rnv skin-clad ancestor turned f rorn mud and megalosaurus to fell rn H." knees in worship of blueness. Ten thousand years of adoration flowed through mo as I watched the range. Intermingling purples and grays changed the Rockies hourly, but nlwnv s their blueness caught fresh glory. In the earlv morning they were distinct and tangible; at

midday they seemed to move westward; at sunset they became cool, perfect, fioshly hued, an exquisite misty azure line. Blue wild flowers above the snow lino and blue marching ranges. These too the Daughters of the Sky, and the twain are Sisters of Peace.