Box Cañon Looking Outward
Ironton Park
Bear Creek Falls


[Illustration: "A Wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."]




PREFACE

_"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. 12:12._


When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about
three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence
even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted
literature.

The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism
emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and
generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition,
has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current
literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then
vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into
being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even
quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature
survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.