Photograph by W. H. Brandel 

 TYPES OF AMERICAN GRAIN ELEVATORS : THE GREAT EAKES 



The United States is the principal grain exporting nation in the world, having more grain 

 elevators than the remainder of North and South America and Asia and Africa together 



force which stood in the way of the Con- 

 federate effort to carry the war into 

 Maryland and the North in 1862. 



From Harpers Ferry far away to the 

 south stretches the famous Shenandoah 

 Valley, the granary of the Confederacy 

 in the 6o's, of which Sheridan declared 

 that he had laid it so bare that a crow 

 flying across it would have to carry his 

 rations. The Valley Turnpike, once the 

 race-course of armies, is now the peace- 

 ful highway of the automobilists who 

 journey from the North to the South. 



WALLS OF DIAMONDS AND PEARLS 



Half way up the Shenandoah Valley 

 are the Luray Caverns, an underworld 

 palace built by the busy hands of trickling 

 waters. Aladdin, we are told, was once 

 permitted to enter a cave which exhibited 

 such decorations that its glory both daz- 

 zled and affrighted. But Aladdin never 

 beheld anything more wondrously ex- 

 quisite than the water-built architecture 

 of Luray. 



The Throne Room is canopied with 



curtains woven of diamonds and pearls. 

 The Saracen's Tent has more than Ori- 

 ental splendors of richest damasks and 

 golden samite, which drape the crystal 

 couch in festoons of magic beauty. Ti- 

 tania's Veil is woven of petrified spiders' 

 webs, while the Ball-room seems as if set 

 to celebrate a marriage between the gods. 



The visitor to Luray today shares the 

 sentiment of another visitor of long ago, 

 who exclaimed : "Mortal hath not made 

 the like, nor human fancy conceived a 

 thing more magnificent !" 



As one journeys westward from the 

 Atlantic seaboard, whether by the north- 

 ern route and by boat through the Great 

 Lakes, touching at points of interest 

 along their shores, or by one of the cen- 

 tral routes through western Pennsylvania 

 or West Virginia, or yet by a southern 

 road through New Orleans, there will be 

 discovered a continual succession of dra- 

 matic and matchless spectacles. 



Not the least of these is the Mammoth 

 Cave of Kentucky, the biggest cavern of 

 the world. The discovery of the cave 



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