[Illustration: ST. PETER'S DOME, ON THE CRIPPLE CREEK SHORT LINE]
The usual feature of the situation as trains circle around the rim of these cañons is that their beauty is seen from above. A short stroll and one finds himself between walls towering a thousand feet above his head. The beauty is all around and above. The tops of the mountains seem very far away, and lost in clouds. But in the train the situation is reversed; for, seated in a luxurious observation car of the "Short Line," the tourist is carried above the peaks and cañon walls, which from below seem inaccessible in their height, and from this startling elevation one looks down on an underworld of strange and mysterious forms. St. Peter's Dome, as it is called, looks down from its towering height with the national colors flying from its summit,--a huge mass of granite that seems to stand alone and to guard the secrets of the depths below.
The ascent of St. Peter's Dome is a triumph of engineering skill. As the train glides along, and glory succeeds to glory, vista to vista, and cañon to cañon, in ever changing but constant charm, the dizzy height is climbed apparently with so much ease that the traveller, absorbed in the entrancing surroundings, reaches the top before he is aware of it. It seems impossible that the track seen on the opposite side of the cañon hundreds of feet above should be the path the train is to follow; but a few turns, almost imperceptible, so smooth is the roadbed, and one looks down on the place just passed with equal wonder, and asks if that can be the track by which he has come. As the train climbs the side or rounds the point of each mountain peak, the matchless view of the plains is unfolded before the enraptured gaze. All description is baffled; any attempt to reproduce in words the glory of that scene is impossible. Every tourist in the Pike's Peak region regards the "Short Line" trip as the very crown of the summer's excursions, or, in the local phrase, one whose sublimity of beauty "bankrupts the English language." These forty-five miles not only condense within their limits the grandeur one might reasonably anticipate during a transcontinental journey of three thousand miles, but as an achievement of mountain engineering, railway experts in both Europe and America have pronounced it the most substantially built and the finest equipped mountain railroad in the world. It was opened in 1901, and, quite irrespective of any interest felt in visiting the gold camps of Cripple Creek, the "Short Line" has become the great excursion which all visitors to Colorado desire to make for the sublime effects of the scenery. A prominent civil engineer in Colorado said, in answer to some question regarding the problem of taking trains over mountain ranges and peaks that, given the point to start from and the point to reach, and sufficient capital, there was no difficulty in carrying a railroad anywhere. The rest is, he said, only a question of time and skill. The construction of the "Short Line" reveals the achievement of carrying a railroad around the rims of cañons and over the tops of mountains rather than that of following a trail through the bottom of the cañons. As a scenic success this feat is unparalleled. The bewildering magnificence, the incomparable sublimity, as the train winds up St. Peter's Dome, are beyond the power of painter or poet to picture. Leaving Colorado Springs, the tourist sees the strange towering pinnacles of the Garden of the Gods, in their deep red contrasting with the green background of trees; Manitou gleams from its deep cañon; the towers and spires of Colorado Springs appear in miniature from the far height, and the great expanse of the plateau looks like the sea. It is difficult to realize that one is still gazing upon land. The ascent is more like the experience in an aero-car than in a railroad train, so swift is the upward journey. The first little station on this route is Point Sublime, where the clouds and the mountain peaks meet and mingle. North Cheyenne Cañon is seen far below, and in the distance is fair Broadmoor with its Crescent Lake gleaming like silver. The Silver Cascade Falls sparkle in the air hundreds of feet up the crags. At Fair View the North and South Cheyenne Cañons meet,--those two scenic gorges whose fame is world-wide,--and from one point the traveller gazes down into each, the bottom depths so remote as to be invisible. These precipices are wooded, so that the aspect is that of sheer walls of green. St.