like for a fur rug, and the
cost of meals would have been seventy-five cents a day at the hotel,
seventy-five cents for life in air that was almost constant sunshine,
air as pure and life-giving as the sun on Creation's first day. That
altitude would probably not suit all invalids--that is for a doctor to
say; but certainly, whether one is out for health or play, that regimen
is cheaper and more life-giving than a stuffy hotel at $2, $3 and $5 a
day for a room alone.

It is incredible when you come to think of it. Here is a nation of
ninety million people scouring the earth for a playground; and there is
an undiscovered playground in its own back yard, the most wonderful
playground of mountain and forest and lake in the whole world; a
playground in actual area half the size of a Germany, or France, with
wonders of cave and waterway and peak unknown to Germany or France. What
are the railroads thinking about? If three million people visited an
exposition to see the West, how many would yearly visit the National
Forests if the railroads granted facilities, and the ninety million
Americans knew how? It is absurd to regard the National Forests purely
as timber; and timber for politics! They are a nation's playground and
health resort; and one of these times will come a Peary or an Abruzzi
discovering them. Then we'll give him a prize and begin going.

* * * * *

You will not find Newport; and you will not find Lenox; and you will not
find Saratoga in the National Forests. Neither will you find a dress
parade except the painter's brush with its vesture of flame in the upper
alpine meadows. And you will not find gaping on-lookers to break down
fences and report your doings, unless it be a Douglas squirrel swearing
at you for coming too near his _cache_ of pine cones at the foot of some
giant conifer. There is small noise of things doing in the National
Forests; but there is a great tinkling of waters; and there are many
voices of rills with a roar of flood torrents at rain time, or thunder
of avalanche when the snows come over a far ridge in spray fine as a
waterfall. In fair weather, you may spare yourself the trouble of a tent
and camp under a stretch of sky hung with stars, resinous of balsams,
spiced with the life of the cinnamon smells and the ozone tang. There
will be lakes of light as well as lakes of water, and an all-day diet of
condensed sunbeams every time you take a breath. Your be