was before San Francisco had begun to lose her unique and delightful
individuality--now gone forever. Among the contributors to this once
famous weekly were Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Prentice Mulford, Joaquin
Miller, Dan de Quille, Orpheus C. Kerr, C. H. Webb, "John Paul," Ada
Clare, Ada Isaacs Menken, Ina Coolbrith, and hosts of others. Fitz Hugh
Ludlow wrote for it a series of brilliant descriptive letters recounting
his adventures during a recent overland journey; they were afterward
incorporated in a volume--long out of print--entitled "The Heart of the
Continent."

In one of these letters Ludlow wrote as follows of the probable future
of Manitou: "When Colorado becomes a populous State, the springs of the
Fontaine-qui-Bouille will constitute its Spa. In air and scenery no more
glorious summer residence could be imagined. The Coloradian of the
future, astonishing the echoes of the rocky foothills by a railroad from
Denver to the springs, and running down on Saturday to stop over Sunday
with his family, will have little cause to envy us Easterners our
Saratoga as he paces up and down the piazza of the Spa hotel, mingling
his full-flavored Havana with that lovely air, unbreathed before, which
is floating down upon him from the snow peaks of the range." His
prophecy has become true in every particular. But what would he have
thought had he threaded the tortuous path now marked by glistening
railway tracks? What would he have said of the Grand Canon of the
Arkansas, the Black Canon of the Gunnison, Castle Canon and Marshall
Pass over the crest of the continent?

I suppose a narrow-gauge road can go anywhere. It trails along the slope
of shelving hills like a wild vine; it slides through gopher-hole
tunnels as a thread slides through the eye of a needle; it utilizes
water-courses; it turns ridiculously sharp corners in a style calculated
to remind one of the days when he played "snap-the-whip" and happened
to be the snapper himself. This is especially the case if one is sitting
on the rear platform of the last car. We shot a canon by daylight, and
marvelled at the glazed surface of the red rock with never so much as a
scratch over it. On the one hand we nearly scraped the abrupt
perpendicular wall that towered hundreds of feet above us; on the other,
a swift, muddy torrent sprang at our stone-bedded sleepers as if to
snatch them away; while it flooded the canon to the opposite wall, that
did not seem more that a few yard