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Show - if' ,,.,,:.:,:-:, - .... , '! 1 I : . ' n ... . ' -,. ' -i ? , : j i'.: ; -r .: r'. " .'i',- : : s . :f -. . - l ... . s: : .., ''' ' T" -. . .; t . .., . r- - v s - ' ' ' i , . ' ' I J 1 t - - 1 - ' j " t i s . v" . It it ' .'.if' 1 " ' A ' . . . ' 4 . , . v - ' f , , -, . s. , C J. " ' , . 3 GOBERNADOfr " r , ,1 " 4 t ' v . - I r f " ? V t L - ' Uv , - ' . 1 srf XJ ? ' .'i 3? v31a. j - rvv v-. - -iwJiHjv5- iNwN. JACK LAIT TELLS OF ZION CANYON'S WONDERS The Noted Writer Gives Forceful Impressions of Utah's Scenic Wonderland Following is a letter from Jack Lait atter a visit to Zion Canyon. Mr. Lait is a newspaper man, with twenty years ot experience as a writer behind him. He is noted as the originator of the story-a-day idea, which was thought impracticable impractic-able of execution until Mr. Lait proved its possibility. Mr. Lait is now in Chicago, with the Chicago Tribune syndicate. In addition to his newspaper work Mr. Lait writes for many of the top-notch magazines of the country, and is the author of three novels. His description ot Zion Canyon, which follows, is characteristic char-acteristic of his virile, gripping and colorful style: By Jack Lait Zion Canyon Written by Walt Whitman, illustrated by Sargent, set to music by Wagner, o. k.'d and published pub-lished by Almighty God as a composite com-posite masterpiece in poetry, color and symphony! Just returned from Utah's scenic wonderland en route for my Chicago home on the flat prairies midst the smoke and grit. I must pause to express my stunned impressions of the staggering stupendousness of Utah's magic-touched "hinterland." known generally as the Zion Canyon country. And I make bold to predict that before many months have come to challenge the prophecy this Utah combination of phenomenal natural manifestations will have become one of the foremost playgrounds and showspots of America for the tourists, tour-ists, explorers. vacationists and America-first devotees. There are two distinct though blending phases to the charm of the c&pyon trip the mad and mammoth whimsicalities of nature and the incredibly in-credibly fascinating, indescribably patient and heroic handiwork of the settlers thereabouts. Can Appreciate, Not Explain I am no naturalist as was my kindly companion and host, Douglas White, an official .of the Salt Lake Route, who picked me and my family fami-ly up where D. S. Spencer of the Oregon Or-egon Short Line surrendered me for the further progress of the journey, through the manifold and variegated phenomena o the west. But it is given to every man to differentiate between the commonplace and the extraordinary. I cannot explain the myriad freaks of prehistoric glacial, volcanic and erosive action, but I can gasp and rave, marvel and exclaim. ex-claim. To reach Zion Canysn one alights at Lund, where he is led to a line and suitable car which trundles him into Cedar City, thence along mountain moun-tain roads, ledges at rock bases, to the turn near Echo farm, then past mesas and over cliffs and through valleys to Grafton, Rockville. Spring-dale Spring-dale and into the National Monument, Monu-ment, slightly within which has been erected the "Wylie-Way" camp, in a cool, shady, protected nook a few-yards few-yards off the road. There horses are provided for the further journey up the chasm, past the array of hulking, towering, jagged jag-ged mountains of rock and clay and sand, no two the same, with the canyon can-yon torn among them as though cleared by the rush of some liroli-j liroli-j dingnagian bull on a delirious ram page, whirling and spinning to right and left, snorting out great holes in the earth, brushing down forests to make room for a sweep of a mile-wide mile-wide tail, gouging out interminable caverns with frantic plowing of un-trammeled un-trammeled horns. Two and a half miles high they run on the west side to the plateaus and forest jungles beyond the rim.. Along their slabs and bulges of surface sur-face the kivas of cliff dwellers, many still in splendidly illuminating state of preservation, are visible from the canyon floor and accessible by tortuous tor-tuous and labyrinthian climbs. The sun in its shading changes throws varieties of stupefying lights, high-lights and afterglows upon the metal and water and oil and rock and soil and sand and timber and slate and lava and feldspar and sand-etone sand-etone and lime formations. One may not look too long at any one optical objective it is too intoxicating. ' The traveler turns and twists and fords and steers. And from every : angle every mountain is new again. Wierd faces carved by rain and i the erosion of time and wind and J water startle one. Camels are riding j up the impossible slopes; Napoleon j meets one face to face at a bend in the roadless road; a haughty abori-i abori-i gine sneers from a gigantic boulder beyond; there is a steamboat, twenty twen-ty times life size, in relief; hard by is la sphinx; around that obliterating curve one will behold a stone god, ; 'crouched before a rock throne in the center of the Temple of Sinawava. ! the t-t illy part magnificent natural I it stlc of the cliff dwellers' heathen ! d- :-. j Up, further, the jagged path grudgingly yield highway. Then one can ride no further; even native horses who would tlare anything and go anywhere can go nowhere. Then to foot, scrambling onward along the tumbling, grumbling Zion Creek, wading, stumbling, fighting tangled brush, to where the walls rise sheer and shoreless straight from the water's purling edge and nature growls and says man shall go no further; the remaining secrets are not for his eyes only the fish, the birds, the cougars miles high above, the deer leaping the crags and traversing tra-versing the. natural - bridges, may know what transpires there. Many Romantic Xames Many romantic names are given to the mountains the West Temple, the Three Brothers, the Guardian Angels, El Gobernador, the Pipe Organ, Or-gan, the Temple of Sinawava, Weeping Weep-ing Rock, and many more. Down their sides trickle and bubble springs that come from nowhere, pelting out of the bare-faced sandstone, falling to where the eye cannot see through underbrush, all feeding the maw of the fickle Rio Virgin, which has irrigated irri-gated and fertilized here today and destroyed and ravished and exiled there tomorrow. So much for the clutch of the eye. No less thrilling is the observation of the sturdy men and women who. rockribbed in their faith, have wrestled wrest-led with the frothing might of the conscientiousless waters and with the arid stubbornness of the defiant earth. Mute witnesses stand in buildings and fences and miles of hacked ditches to prove that, once conquered, conquer-ed, th elements have yet fought fiercely and in many deplorable instances in-stances won back their own reward of undisturbed desolation. Desert ed villages wnere men naa won loot-hold loot-hold and where the river had retaken its trenches are in multitude. Beyond Be-yond them, always further up, always al-ways further beyond the reaching cia-vs of the devastating river, these men have pushed, until upon the hillsides and on the plateau one sees fields verdant and pregnant, bearing tropical profusions of fruits and grains figs, pomegranates, peaches sucking water oyer hard-fought miles from the veins" of the hostile streams themselves, flying the prosperous pros-perous banners of their yictorious battles down into the snarling and ruffled countenances of the avenging aveng-ing Rio Virgin and the smaller, but equally bestial creeks. Happy communities of these families fam-ilies who have reclaimed and reclaimed re-claimed bounties from the hard faces of rock and the barren bodies of sand and soil are scattered wherever a spade can turn or a drill can bore i or all that human can do to dislodge an inch of all that nature at bay can withstand. They have erected monumental temples to their God, dedicated in their own manner of worship, lifted by jocund hands, stone upon stone, until there they stand, the community communi-ty battlements of a triumphant people, peo-ple, symbols of permanency, fortresses fort-resses of faith, obelisks of optimism, ministers and monitors of mankind, paying homage to the Maker in sacrifice sac-rifice and courage and humility. It is good for a stranger to stand with his head bared and his soul receptive re-ceptive as he contemplates the massive mass-ive structures of nature, the fortitude forti-tude and cunning of man, the in-scrutible in-scrutible and colossal might and mercies of God. |
