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F the geologists have correctly judged, the universe "saw America first" when the Laurentian hills first arched their backs above the chaos of the New World. More than four hundred years ago Christopher Columbus made a great success with his first personally conducted party to America. Ever since his time discoverers and explorers, traders of fur and diggers of gold and searchers of bottom land, zoologists and archæologists, hunters and fishers, have been seeing parts of America first; till there are only a few thousand untrodden peaks and unvisited lakes in the whole area of the two American continents.

In this current phrase, as in many other ways, we of the United States arrogate to ourselves the sole right to be called “ America." Native Indians, frosty Eskimos, descendants of Spanish and Portuguese who arrived decades before the Pilgrim Fathersall these are set aside in order that we may be "The Americans." After all, there is some reason in our appropriating the name: we have more than half the population of the two Americas, and by far the larger share of scenic wonders. To apply a commercial term to natural beauties which are beyond any valuation in currency, "we have the goods." In view of our majestic ports, grand rivers,- prodigious lakes, and scenic moun tains and abysses, nothing but the native modesty of the American keeps us from openly boasting of the natural beauties of our land.

What a giant pleasure it has been for those who first reached, first viewed, and first recorded these splendors of nature ! Who would not be a Verrazano, making a long tack around a finger-shaped sand-spit, and so into a magnificent bay, where two rivers converged, and between them rose a rocky promontory which the Dutch later called Manhattan? Think of being Champlain on Lake Huron, or Radisson on Lake Superior, or one of the rowers in La Salle's galley when it reached the salt water at the mouth of the Mississippi! It were a distinction to be the only white man who had ever seen Niagara Falls, instead of the ten millionth man. Every normal and proper-minded boy would like with Lewis and Clarke and the

Bird Woman, to scramble across the divide and plunge down an unknown gorge to the Columbia and the ocean. It makes one's mouth water to think of Verendrye first viewing the far-off Rockics, or Pike discerning the far-distant cloud across the plains, which gradually solidified into a majestic mountain, later to be called Pike's Peak.

Part of the discoverer's joy may be realized by following the trail of Lewis and Clarke in a Pullman car, or completing the desperate achievement of ascending Pike's Peak in a twelve-seated autcmobile. Every American may still have the thrill of seeing great things for the first time--for him. Uncounted multitudes have climbed their first mountain, and looked for the first time on the Pacific Ocean. The writer once heard Major Powell lecture on his all but impossible boat journey down through the gorge of the Colorado; but everybody who stands on the ledge at Bright Angel may discover for himself the awful grandeur of that chasm, as though it had never before been seen by mortal eye. We Americans are just waking up to the soul-shocks which await the traveler in the far West, for it is only a few years since the Pacific roads opened up the country. The recesses of the Rocky Mountains are at last being revealed to the plain. and humble tourist. Though we all have a low opinion of tourists" in general, we except our own touring and appreciate the easy access to nature.

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The automobile has solved many problems of transport for the admirer of nature. automobilist wants to go somewhere; that means a road. He wants to see something; that means the opening up of a lake, a peak, or a gorge. He wants something to eat; that means a comfortable inn. Till recently a man who wanted to make himself familiar with the Rocky Mountains had to organize an expedition with guides, pack-horses, and camping outfit; hence most of him stayed at home. Now the United States Government and the States are co-operating in setting apart the most picturesque places and areas as permanent parks, and in building highways which intersect and connect these magnificent National playgrounds.

Some people are very set on privacy in their interviews with Lady Nature. A

dweller in Estes Park, in a house of her own, far back from any main highway, recently protested against a proposed road through the recesses of the Rockies, which would bring" such a throng of automobilists." She was sitting in her own automobile at the moment; and motorless tourists had a right to think that she was no better than those objectionable scurryers.

The truth is that no mountain is made smaller by being admired by multitudes. The "crowding" of vast areas of mountain, forest, and river, such as the Sierra Nevadas, for instance, is a myth. Anybody who dislikes the numbers in the Yosemite Valley may reduce the crowd by "hitting the trail" out into the King River Canyon. If other people "crowd into" the King River Canyon, he can take to the Hetch Hetchy. What the scenic grumbler really wants is to pitch on a particularly beautiful spot, easy of access, and then drive off anybody else who would like equally well to stay in that beautiful spot, so easy of access. If the aloof Bostonian dislikes the jostling of his city, he may hie himself to the Maine woods. One of the splendid things about the grandeurs of America is that they are open to the democracy. You may fence in the seashore at Bar Har bor, but not the prism of the Grand Canyon. Nobody need be afraid that the number of travelers will ever overwhelm the available pleasure-grounds of America.

The wise man finds every part of the United States full of natural beauty. New England offers its rugged and picturesque seacoast. Its mountains are restrained in height, and, except for such wonders as the Old Man of the Mountains, can boast few natural sculptures of cliff and peak. Still he who has not seen the Mount Monadnock region, with its forests and lake gems and roaring brooks, has not seen America. The Appalachian Mountains are in most places low, worn-down, and monotonous in their pattern of long parallel ridges and valleys. Nevertheless they include the caverns of Luray and the Natural Bridge of Virginia, which would be admired wonders in any country of the world. Down in the South you may seek Grandfather's Mountain, or Mount Mitchell, or such scenic points as Blowing Rock and Toxaway, from which stretch billowy forest slopes.

In the interior the most magnificent gift of nature is Niagara-so big, so convenient, so easy to see, that we forget its rare beauty.

The Great Lakes offer a system of navigation through broad waters, wide sweeping rivers, beautiful straits, and picturesque islands. One of the most enjoyable water journeys in the world was forever lost when the steamer trade on the Mississippi decayed. That was the poetry of travel, with its surprises of an ever-winding channel, its picturesque people, white and black, and its old towns, culminating at the crowded levee of New Orleans.

The modern all-rail substitute for the great river has its scenic advantages; such as the Burlington route from Chicago to Minneapolis, which skirts the Mississippi for hundreds of miles. There is something inspiriting in the rolling prairie of the Northwest, rising and falling like immense billows on the ocean. Greater majesty is seen on the great flat prairies of the Middle West. A ride across Texas from east to west in April is a thing to remember for a lifetime.

Beyond the Missouri the country rises slowly and steadily till from the Pullman window or from a motor car the eye catches the far-off summits of Gray's and Long's and James, and the rest of the towering hosts of the Rocky Mountains. From north to south this wonderland has at last been opened up. On the Canadian border lies Glacier Park, first explored many years ago, but recently rediscovered. The Almighty furnished the mountains; the United States Government has set them apart as a National Park; the Great Northern Railroad deposits the visitor in comfortable inns or in. magnificent hotels at the base of the mountains, in one of the most splendid regions of the earth. The scenery is alpine-lakes running up into mountain gorges, flanked with cascades and carrying the eye upward to massive mountains, glaciers, and waterfalls. Trails lead in various directions through and across these mountains, for the accommodation of man and beast.

Southward, the next scenic area is the Yellowstone, where this year the remarkable discovery has been made that automobile travel will not kill the fish nor stop the geysers. Most of the scenery is inferior to other parts of the Rocky Mountains, but the geyser glory is unsurpassed. From Laramie south to Santa Fé the Rockies abound in glorious scenery. The most highly developed tourist center is Estes Park, which is reached through the magnificent gorge of the Big Thompson. The floor of the Park is about 7,500 feet