The Northern Autocrats

The Northern Autocrats

This page is not to be a piece of character anal- |

1 ysis, historical data nor summing up of human beings, |

| who dominate or once dominated over their fellow |

| men in the social, financial, political or the ecclesias- |

1 tical realms. No; we write of very ancient autocrats, §

= of those who have held sway over a wide region from 1

| early time, primeval autocrats — we mean The Three |

1 Tetons. §

Upon what changes the Tetons have looked down! |

1 "What's in a name?" By what name was that mass |

| of stone — the Teton Range — that looks in so cold and |

| so threatening a manner upon the surrounding land |

1 once known by the vanished tribes? If the French trap- | 1 pers or the later Anglo-Saxon emigrants ever knew,

| it is now forgotten. Those peaks have stood amid seas 1

| of ice, and, upon the far horizon, seen the lurid light of §

1 flames that once issued out of now extinct craters |

| from the nether fires. Zoned in the distance by the |

pale green of the artemesia covered plains, the Te- |

1 tons, however, are surrounded by their own shadowing |

| forests of spruce and pine. Their beauty and majesty 1

| are mirrored in the translucent lakes formed by the |

| melting of their own vast fields of snow and the lakes. 1

| themselves are the sources of famous streams. The 1

| Tetons can be seen from portions of Idaho, Wyoming, 1

| Utah and Montana. Tremendous those heights touched |

1 with the silver of dawn, the gold and red of the sunset \

| and the twilight! And when come the storms, the Te- 1

1 tons gather first the robes of cloud, they are the last |

1 to lay them aside. A law unto themselves are the North- 1

| ern Autocrats! |

| ALFRED LAMBOURNE. J

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Improvement Era

Vol. XXIV NOVEMBER, 1920 No. 1