Part 2

This outlook, 3,500 feet above the level of the sea, with mountains, foothills, ever verdant valleys, cities, towns, villages, old missions, sea beach, shipping, islands and ocean in full view, has no equal.

Thirty miles of bridle roads radiate from Echo Mountain, on which guests may roam or ride into romantic canyons, dells and nooks innumerable with freedom and safety.

These foot paths and bridle roads and the scenery they reach are not equalled at any resort on the surface of the globe. An entire week can easily be spent in rambles without visiting the same place twice, and then only a small portion of the delightful mountain and canyon recesses will have been explored.

Echo Mountain House.

On the crest of Echo Mountain Professor Lowe placed two hotels, one "The Chalet," which still remains, the other, "Echo Mountain House," which was destroyed by fire three years ago. It was a superbly equipped hotel, of magnificent proportions and unequalled outlook, where many visitors from all parts of the world congregated. It is the intention of the Pacific Electric Railway to rebuild Echo Mountain House in the near future. This decision will be gratifying to those who have experienced the delights of this beautiful hotel in the past. The exact location of the new hotel is not yet decided.

Lowe Observatory.

This Observatory is located on a slope above Echo Mountain. A walk has been constructed from the Hotel to the Observatory, so that all who desire to visit it may do so without inconvenience or fatigue.

It is presided over by Professor Edgar Larkin. The instrument with which he is now searching the heavens is a 16-inch refractor, made in his best days, by Alvan Clark, the late lamented lens-maker of Cambridge, Mass., and it is, according to the maker's testimony, the best glass he ever made.

Professor Larkin thus writes of the advantages of the Lowe Observatory for astronomical work:

"The site of this institution is ideal, both for telescopic and spectroscopic purposes. So great is the purity of the air that both these instruments can be used in the most accurate measurement. The definition of the stars and disks of the planets is perfect, and the entire year presents but few nights during which a micrometer cannot be used. Stellar spectra are clear cut and steady, and in the solar spectrum the Fraunhofer lines are perfectly defined, the thin lines, in diameter equal to that of a spider's web, can be seen without difficulty. Few observatories in the world have a clearer sky, or a location presenting less trouble from air currents and changes. To illustrate the clearness of the atmosphere, it will be merely necessary to state that the trapezium in the Great Nebula in Orion shows distinctly at the exact instant of rising over the mountain peaks! The writer has often observed the trapezium--the entire seven stars--when only one minute had elapsed since rising over the rocks forming the summit of the mountains! This will be appreciated by all who have long used a telescope in any of the Eastern observatories. The moon is white--not yellow, and the floors of the craters, the cones, whence escaped molten lava ages ago, and the delicate tracery of shadows are revealed with marvellous accuracy of detail.

"Nebulæ can be seen here that are invisible in many other instruments of equal or greater aperture. Double stars are separated at this observatory, that would seem to be beyond the power of a sixteen-inch glass. Closely packed clusters are dispersed into separate diamonds, rubies and sapphires. But no tongue or pen can describe the glories of the Milky Way. Imagine jet black velvet spread over with heaps, streamers and spirals, made up of every possible color of precious gem--with diamonds in excess. These stars all separately invisible to the unaided eye, are seen as individual points in the telescope. They glitter with supernal light, and scintillate in every hue of the spectrum. They are piled up by the million on the inconceivable blackness of infinite space, for never-ending space is black in the telescope. The Zodiacal light in autumnal evenings and mornings is seen extending almost to the zenith--a cone of pearly light.

Professor Larkin.

"Edgar Luciene Larkin was born in a log cabin, twelve miles north of Ottawa, La Salle County, Illinois, on April 5th, 1847.

"But why? To this moment it has been an inscrutable mystery why Nature allowed this event to occur. It happened on a farm. My parents were poor enough to furnish a topic to a writer of modern socialism, such as 'unequal distribution of wealth'; 'submerged nine-tenths'; 'why billionaires exist' and the like. The log hut was in a beautiful place, near a stream of clear, cool water--Indian Creek. It runs along through the north, from west to east, bending to the south, and discharges into the Illinois River at Ottawa. This stream is lined for miles with a magnificent forest, called the 'woods.' Stately trees of oak, ash, elm, maple, walnut and many other species waved in the winds, and in the autumn, colors beyond description fell on the leaves and they were all splashed with careless gold and scarlet. And the 'sear and yellow leaf' abounded. And 'Oh! those days in the woods!'--Nature days--whose memory now is enough to awaken the highest impulse in the mind. The neighbors did not find fault with my folks, and they were considered to be respectable, by even the nearest--not more than a mile away. Father was just ordinary, and the friends said that I 'took after him.' He farmed and mother merely kept house--the hut. These were pioneer days; a few cabins broke the distant line of horizon, to the west and south. As far as could be seen, even from the writer's perch in the top of a tall tree, there was one vast expanse of tall, green grass waving in the wind. But how beautiful! Climbing trees to see the 'waves roll' was ideal. The wind tumbled and tossed the grass into rolling waves, miles in length. The scene was wonderful; it was that of a prairie in Illinois. Just now, as we write, looking out of the window, the waves of the Pacific Ocean are seen thirty miles away. They are not more impressive than those majestic waves in the grass. For the writer became as expert in tree-climbing as his pre-historic and remote ancestors in South American forests. My mother--still living--is a woman of mental force and ability, of high morality and nobility of mind; but she could not bring me up right, that is, to be a farmer. The writer was sent to plow corn, and from subsequent events he now believes that he actually did; the weeds escaped entirely. I was transferred to the dairy department, and had sole charge of the cows. These loving creatures and the writer became fast friends. One was 'ring streaked,' and another 'spotted and speckled.' Old 'brindle' led the procession down to the creek for water, with the writer in the midst. And 'the lowing herds wound slowly o'er the lea,' in those happy childhood and bucolic days. A mighty event took place; grandfather put up a frame house, with boards outside, real boards of pine, brought to Ottawa on the new canal; and the boards were painted white!

"My father died when I was eleven years of age, so mother and I went to live in the new white house, with the grandparents. But there was no schoolhouse; the settlers were poor, but finally one was erected. It was not red, in fact never had a coat of paint; and was about the size of a large room in a modern dwelling. Teachers were scarce and books likewise. Another event happened; a retired German physician came to 'farm it.' He had a library. I borrowed all the books he had in English, but the great volumes in German were as hieroglyphics. School opened in September, 1858, and the onerous, difficult and discouraging job of 'educating' the writer began.

"Then the greatest event of all occurred, on an auspicious day, October 5th, 1858, and I was asleep. Grandmother came in haste at about 10 P. M., aroused me and said, 'Oh! Edgar, come and see the comet.' When behold! the mighty comet of Donati seemed to span the heavens, and looked as though it came out of the black forests and extended to the zenith. Mortal eye has not seen a more wonderful display.

"Its blazing nucleus was then passing the star Arcturus, and the scene is now in the writer's mind as though it were but yesterday. Cuts of the comet at the time of passing Arcturus may be seen in works on astronomy. Next day the writer decided to begin the study of astronomy. But how without books? The teacher had a copy of Burritt's Geography of the Heavens and Atlas. The writer asked her to sell it; she would for $1.00, although it cost her more. But the dollar! Grandfather was perpetually paying for land. Dollars were exceedingly scarce. Grandmother had one gold dollar; this she gave me and the book was purchased. A surveyor living near had a four-inch lens. He placed it in a square tube of wood, and with one eyepiece made up a telescope, which he loaned to me. So the study of astronomy was commenced with this outfit in my eleventh year. The first work was to trace the path of the comet among the stars on the atlas. The pencil mark is on the atlas yet, with 1858 scrawled in boyish figures. Five terms of school of three months each were attended, when arrangements were made for me to go to a high school and later, an academy in Ottawa. Then came disaster, weakness of the eyes. School, reading, the telescope, all had to go; and with heavy heart the little telescope was returned to the good old surveyor. Grandfather died, the dear old home was broken up; we moved to a nearby village, Earlville, Ill. In my fourteenth year my eyesight became strong enough to permit two terms in a graded school of six months each.

"This 'finished' the work of education, for events were such that I never entered school again. In 1879 the writer built a private observatory in New Windsor, Ill., and on January 1st, 1880, a fine six-inch Clark equatorial, with circles, was set upon its pier. In the spring of 1888, Knox College, in Galesburg, Ill., erected a good observatory on the campus. All the instruments were removed from New Windsor and placed in the new dome. The writer was director of the Knox Observatory from Aug. 1st, 1888, to Aug. 1st, 1895.

"Upon coming to this fairy land of the earth, Southern California, I was appointed director of this mountain observatory, the Lowe, taking charge on Aug. 11th, 1900. Everything happened in August. Here is an elegant Clark sixteen-inch telescope, with spectroscope and tele-camera, with accessories. The writer has not startled the world by capital discoveries in astronomy, but has confined his work to writing for journals and magazines. Enough has been published to make several volumes. Only one series has been printed in book form--'Radiant Energy.' Study of science has been continuous, save for one deflection of six years, which were devoted with intense interest to Hindoo, Iranian, Persian, Egyptian and Greek philosophy and Esoteric mysteries, the occult.

"The writer is a life Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the Southern California Academy of Science, and of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, but has not surprised any of these societies by the discovery of a law greater than gravity, nor what matter is, nor electricity, nor how grass grows, or why we are here on earth. None of the mean things that the writer has performed are inserted on account of the inordinate length of this note."

The Spectroscope.

About 1600 A. D., Kepler placed a prism in a beam of sunlight and saw what had not before been seen--so far as known--the first solar spectrum. A century later Newton darkened a room, admitted solar rays through a round aperture in a shutter, passed them through a prism and obtained a clearer spectrum than Kepler's. Little was thought of these things, however, until, when in 1802, Wollaston made a slit in a shutter, projected a spectrum, in which he was surprised to see a few dark lines. In 1814 Fraunhofer made a spectrum in the same way, but happened to look at it with a telescope. This act changed the course of the science of optics for all time; it was the origin of Spectrum Analysis, one of the chief products of the human mind, one of the corner-stones upon which rests the structure of modern science. Men's minds immediately began to expand, and a period of mental activity set in, the like of which was never known before. Fraunhofer saw hundreds of lines, but the great spectroscope in the Mount Lowe Observatory shows thousands, in width from that of a spider-web to one-tenth of a millimeter. They are the most valuable set of lines known. They enable finite man to tell what the earth, sun and stars, meteors, comets and nebulæ are composed of. The prism of Newton and Fraunhofer is now displaced by the diffraction grating--ruled by Rowland 14,438 lines to the inch. These striæ break up light into its elements, reflect them to the eye, and in solar and stellar light reveal the absorption lines. The spectroscope of the Lowe Observatory made by that accomplished optician Brashear is one of the finest.

Great World's Fair Searchlight.

The Great World's Fair Searchlight, which is now so well known from its operation on Echo Mountain, first became famous at the World's Fair, Chicago, where it excited great interest, and surpassed all other exhibits in its line. After the Fair, it was taken to San Francisco and exhibited at the Mid-Winter Fair, where it delighted thousands from the Bonet electric tower, 264 feet high. When the Mid-Winter Fair was over, Professor Lowe purchased it and removed it to Echo Mountain, where it rests at an altitude of 3,500 feet above sea level. Until this great searchlight was established in its present location its powers could not be brought out on account of its location so near the general level of the surrounding country. Here, however, it is so located that its rays can be seen for 150 miles on the ocean, and the most distant mountain peaks can be made visible by its penetrating rays. The beam of light is so powerful that a newspaper can be read for a distance of thirty-five miles, and its full sweep illuminates the peaks of mountains which are hundreds of miles apart.

It is of 3,000,000 candle power, and stands on a wooden base, built in octagon form, which has a diameter of about eight feet. The searchlight itself stands about eleven feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 lbs., yet it is so perfectly mounted and balanced that a child can move it in any direction.

The reflecting lens is three and a quarter inches thick at the edges and only one-sixteenth of an inch at the center, and weighs about 800 lbs. The metal ring in which the lens is mounted weighs 750 lbs., the total weight of lens, ring and cover being about 1,600 lbs. This great mirror is mounted at one end of the big drum, the outer end of which is furnished with a door, consisting of a narrow metal rim, in which are fixed a number of plate glass strips five-sixteenths of an inch thick and six inches wide. The value of this great searchlight in meteorological work has already been demonstrated on a small scale. When there is moisture in the atmosphere, and varying wind-currents, the light turned upwards discovers the directions in which the wind is conveying the clouds, and aids in revealing the conditions that cause these variations.

Operating Machinery of the Great Cable Incline.

Like many other things in connection with the Mount Lowe Railway, the machinery is unique and unlike anything ever before constructed.

The power was originally furnished by water. For the first nine months the Great Cable Incline was operated by water power and electric power generated by two monster gas engines. Now the power is supplied from the Pasadena plant of the Pacific Electric Railway. It is transmitted by large copper conductors to the Echo Mountain power house, supplying current to the 100 horsepower electric motor, which makes 800 revolutions per minute. Then by a series of gears the revolutions are reduced from 800 to 17 per minute, which is the speed at which the massive grip-sheave turns. The grip-sheave consists of a tremendously heavy wheel, on which about 70 automatic steel jaws are affixed. As the wheel revolves, these jaws close and grip the endless cable, to which the cars are permanently attached, and thus are they raised or lowered as occasion requires. By this method there is practically no wear whatever to the cable. It is not strained and chafed by the constant operation of gripping as on the street railway cars, where the inertia of trains of cars of many tons weight has to be overcome by the gripping of the ever-moving cable.

Every safety device and appliance of known utility that could be used has been placed upon the machinery and thoroughly tested, so that the unanimous verdict of the many eminent engineers who have scientifically examined in detail the machinery and its working is a deserved tribute to the foresight of Professor Lowe. That verdict is, that it is the safest railroad ever constructed; and the possibility of accident is reduced to a lower minimum than on any cable, electric or steam system in the world.

Glen Canyon.

This is one of the many quiet and secret ferny nooks reached in a few minutes from Echo Mountain House. Bridle roads and foot-paths reach these secluded spots, and there in ferny dells, surrounded by towering trees and majestic rocks, charmed by the babbling brooks, the rustling of the leaves and the sweet singing of thousands of birds, one may while away the hours in delicious restfulness.

Mount Lowe Eight.

To ride on well constructed bridle roads up mountain slopes, winding in and out on diversified paths, through and by bowers of fragrant trees, shrubs and flowers, looking _up_ through towering pines to majestic cliffs and ponderous rocks, looking _down_ into the depths of vast canyons, where deer find shady coverts, and looking _out_ upon scenes of perfect beauty and sublimity--these things fill the body with vigor and buoyant enthusiasm, and the mind with lasting pictures of increasing interest.

Realizing this Professor Lowe early had constructed more than thirty miles of wide and easy-graded bridle roads radiating from Alpine Tavern to all the higher peaks and summits of the range. The most important sections of these roads are known as the "Mount Lowe Eight," for, in making the complete ride to the summit of Mount Lowe from Echo Mountain and return, the figure "8" is described, the rider crossing his own path in one place only, and nowhere else riding twice on the same road.

The Phantom Sea As Seen from Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe.

One of the most exquisitely beautiful sights ever witnessed is when a low fog covers the San Gabriel Valley. This fog never rises above a level of about 2,700 to 3,000 feet, and when one is on Echo Mountain, 3,500 feet in elevation, the upper surface of this fog is spread out "like a phantom sea" below. The "cities of the plain" are covered with this snow-white or creamy pall. Underneath is partial gloom and dampness. Above, the sun shines upon a silent sea, whose waves are tossing and lifting, swaying and waving, until finally--generally between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning--the heat, in dissipating the glowing white ocean, builds fantastic and mysterious forms on its surface, and draws them upwards to rapidly swallow them up and make them disappear in its warm embrace. Such a sight stirs the soul to its greatest depths, and suggests thoughts sublime and soul-uplifting.

The sea is made of the exhalations from the Pacific ocean and covers the whole valley with its white, misty veil on certain mornings. It is 1,500 to 2,000 feet deep, and never reaches the summit of Echo Mountain. As seen from the great hotel it looks like a vast expanse of hummocky ice, as is often noticed in winter off the Atlantic Coast.

The Alpine Division.

The guest who has reached Echo Mountain should not conclude that he has seen the chief beauties which align the route of the Mount Lowe Railway. Not so! What he has seen are but the adornments which are festooned around the vestibule of the greater glories of the Alpine division which carries him into the very heart of the Sierra Madre range, and amid the solitude which reigns among the higher peaks and spurs. This division extends from Echo Mountain to Ye Alpine tavern, a distance of five miles. The road is a substantially built electric road, with grades but slightly exceeding seven per cent., on which the cars are easily propelled by electricity. Indorsing all that has been said of the beauties of Rubio, of the Great Cable Incline, and of Echo Mountain, yet these afford but comparatively limited ranges of vision, sometimes obscured by the fogs and smoke of the valley. On the Alpine division, however, one is above these impediments to sight, and the range of vision extends until lost on the distant horizon. The air is clear and transparent, so that mountain peaks, distant islands and far-away valleys seem to draw near and pass in review like a silent procession of giants.

Nature and Art.