Excerpts From Letters Written on a Western Journey BY Cyrenus Cole Flower icon Cedar Rapids, Iowa The Torch Press Nineteen Hundred Eight To Mrs. N. D. Pope of Lake Charles, Louisiana, These excerpts from letters written for the Cedar Rapids Republican and Evening Times are dedicated, because she made all the ways pleasant ones and all the places happy ones for three men—one of whom is her husband...

Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth Springs Hotel, August 14, 1908: We have reached the first hotel station on the tour of the Yellowstone National Park, which, according to the legend on the arch over the entrance, has been set aside “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” We left Minneapolis on the night train and found ourselves the next morning in the wheat country, on the state lines of Minnesota and North Dakota. In the wheat country there is nothing impressive, except the magnificen

Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful Inn, August 15: It has been raining in the Park. The weather has been lowering before a blustering wind, with snow and sleet. People sat shivering in the stage coaches today, but they tell us we are more fortunate than those who have been compelled to make the journey in the dust. Mr. Jones and Mr. Pope came in dusters, but they have donned their overcoats, instead. Every one who has made the tour of the Park thinks he can tell you all about it, but the tr

Yellowstone National Park, Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908: We left Old Faithful Inn this morning with some regrets. One could spend several days there with profit. The inn itself is comfortable and the surroundings attractive. We have had the misfortune to be overtaken by a party of excursionists, who entered the Park from the west. An excursionist is an uninteresting traveler. He is apt to be some one who is traveling because the rates are cheap. The regular tourists were very much put out by the

Yellowstone National Park, Canyon Hotel, August 16: We were not disappointed in the weather today. A rarer Sunday morning never dawned, not even in the mountains. There were still some remnant clouds in the sky. Fortunately, too, these did not disappear entirely. All day bits of fleecy clouds floated between the sun and the earth, not enough to darken, but just enough for contrasts. The air was bracing and there was plenty of it. As usual, our coach led all the rest. Forty or fifty came trailing

Seattle, Washington, August 19: After spending a few hours in Livingston, which has a sightly location, at the mouth of a canyon and in sight of a mountain on which the snow lies for ten months in the year, we proceeded westward. From Montana we passed into Idaho, where the tree butchers are cutting up the last remnants of the white pine. It is, for the most part, a dreary country, where the timber has been cut over and where forest fires have left masses of charred stumpage. Waste everywhere an

San Francisco, August 24: After spending a few days in Seattle we started southward, with Los Angeles as the end of our journeying in that direction. Tacoma has been out-distanced by Seattle, but it is itself a great and growing city. Portland, in Oregon, is a city of older appearances than Seattle. It has more leisure and more culture and, perhaps, more realized riches. It has a great river, mountains around it and the ocean only a few miles away. Portland is building for the future and the gro

Los Angeles, August 27: At San Francisco our party was broken up. Mr. Jones and I proceeded to Los Angeles, while Mr. and Mrs. Pope elected to linger longer in that city and to make many breaks in their journey, to visit the seaside resorts. Southern California in August is not an inviting place. There is drouth, and dust. The famed orchards are simply patches of trees in plowed ground, the trees covered with dust as well as with ripening fruit. When we think of orchards at home, we think of bea

El Tovar, Grand Canyon, Arizona, September 3: We left Los Angeles yesterday morning. It was without any regrets that we turned our faces homeward. California in September has no charms that can be compared with those of September in Iowa. From Los Angeles to San Bernardino is a matter of two hours, through the San Gabriel Valley, one of the famous valleys of the state. We were rather disappointed. Where we had expected to see an unbroken succession of cultivated groves and gardens, we found half