Quotes from Charles F. Lummis

Not far back into the foothills from Colorado Springs begins the Garden of the Gods — a wonderland fitly named. Here, walled in by rock-bound peaks, is a wild glen of 2000 acres, and in it, amid the murmuring pines, a hundred colossal towers and castles, pinnacles and battlements hewn by time from the deep red sandstone.

Walking and I were on good terms now, and every day scored from thirty to forty miles; but that spurt from Ellsworth to Ellis was the longest day's walk I ever made.

Here I got rid of one of the most troublesome parts of my load — trading my venerable and battered Winchester rifle for a splendid new Colt's six-shooter with all its trappings — a perfect weapon which has since seen me through many a "close call." The exchange was a most welcome relief, and as for effectiveness, I soon got so handy with the new arm that there was no need for the rifle.

The labors of Father Junipero Serra and other Franciscans on the coast, nearly a couple of centuries later, were heroic, but in no way comparable to the incredible achievements of the devoted frailes who penetrated and subdued the incomparable deserts of the Southwest with their ferocious savage tribes.

Any fool can write a book, and most of them are doing it

Here also I killed my first centipede — a hideous fellow, six inches long, a quarter of an inch across the back, and with about a hundred bow-legs, each tipped with a black fang. Let one walk across your hand undisturbed, and he leaves a highly inflamed red track. Hit him during that march, and he will sink those hundred fangs into your flesh, and it will rot away and drop from the bones. Rattlesnakes and huge, hairy "bush-spiders" are also common enough;

Are there not railroads and Pullmans enough, that you must walk? That is what a great many of my friends said when they learned of my determination to travel from Ohio to California on foot; and very likely it is the question that will first come to your mind in reading of the longest walk for pure pleasure that is on record.