DENVER & EIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



53 



If the traveler returns from the canyon late in the afternoon he 

 may see some of the beauty of the plains as it appeared to her poetic 

 imagination : 



Between the pines and the firs are wonderful vistas of the radiant plain. 

 Each glimpse is a picture in itself — now an open space of clear sunny distance ; 

 now a belt of cottonwood trees making a dar-k-green oasis in the yellow dis- 

 tance ; now the majestic bluffs, looking still more castle-like, framed in the dark 

 foreground lines of pine boughs. We are in shadow. The sun has set for us; 

 but it is yet early afternoon on the plain and it is brilliant with sun, * * * 

 The brilliance slowly fades, and the lower sunset light casts soft shadows on 

 every mound and hill and hollow. The whole plain seems dimpling with 

 shadows ; each instant they deepen and move eastward ; first revealing and then 

 slowly hiding each rise and fall in the vast surface. Away in the east, sharply 

 against the sky, lines of rocky bluffs gleam white as city walls; close at the 

 base of the mountain the foothills seem multiplied and transfigured into count- 

 less velvet mounds. The horizon line seems to curve more and more, as if 

 somehow the twilight were folding the world up for the night, and we were on 

 some outside shore watching it. 



MAIN LINE OF RAILROAD FROM COLORADO SPRINGS 



TO CANON CITY. 



On leaving Colorado Springs the Denver & Eio Grande Western 

 "Railroad follows down the valley of Fountain Creek, which is irri- 

 gated and under intensive cultivation. For a number of miles Chey- 

 enne Mountain is the most conspicuous object on the west (right), 

 and the abruptness with which the mountain ends and the plains 

 begin is striking. As explained before, this abrupt junction of plain 

 and mountain is due to a great fault, which bounds the mountain 



w. C 



Cheyenne Mtn. 



D.AND /?.G.Wff.R. 



L 



SMIIes 



Figure 13. — Section showing fault at foot of Cheyenne Mountain. 



on the east and brings its hard rocks into contact with the soft, 

 flat-lying rocks of the plains. (See fig, 13,) Consequently there are 

 no hard sandstones to form foothills, as there are about Manitou and 

 many other places along the Front Range. 



The railroad continues its southerly course down Fountain Creek, 

 and the traveler whose destination is the Pacific coast or some inter- 

 mediate point is apparently getting no nearer his destination than 

 he was at Denver or Colorado Springs, He may have wondered why 

 it is that the Denver & Rio Grande Western, an important link in one 

 80697°— 22 5 



