The Pacific Railroad--Open: How to Go: What to See

I.

“THIS is Faneuil Hall—open,” said Mr. Webster on a memorable occasion in his life. This is the Pacific Railroad—open; and a more memorable event is it for our national life. I often think, with a private chuckle, of the many delightful surprises in store for those of us who go out over it now into our new and unknown West, before the tribe of guide-book makers, newspaper letter-writers, journal-keepers, and photographers have “done it to death” with pen and collodion. Europe long ago became only a familiar panorama, with the ohs and ahs and apt sentimentalism all written in at the proper places, like the “cheers” and “laughter” of a faithfully reported speech.

But thanks to the toughness of day and night stage travel for a continuous three weeks ; thanks to the greed for gold and the high prices of food, leaving no time for those who have gone into this wide new land to look at its scenery, or to study its phenomena, or at least to write about them; thanks, indeed, to the Indians, of whom all sentimental travellers have a holy horror; thanks, finally, to the rapidity with which the railroad has been built,—we have here a world of nature, fresh and tempting for the explorer. The field is too broad, also, the variety of experiences to be had too great, the forms and freaks of nature too strange and too numerous, the whole revelation too unique and too astonishing, to be readily catalogued and put into flexible covers for one’s overcoat-pocket. So the pleasure of original discovery— delicious victual for our vanity—may not unfairly be enjoyed by those who travel within the next year or two by the Pacific Railroad, and are wise enough and have leisure enough to deploy liberally to the right and left at salient points along its track.

Near two thirds of all the land of the United States lies beyond the Mississippi ; not counting in the outlying purchase of Alaska, which will doubtless prove a very good thing when we have found out what to do with it. The Pacific Railroad fairly bisects this vast area east and west, as the Rocky Mountains—the backbone and dividing line of the continent—do north and south ; the two cutting it up into huge quarters, each of which would overlay all Europe this side of Russia, and flap lustily in the wind all around the edges. It will take us long to learn what there is on and in it; how long, indeed, to subjugate it to use and the ministries of civilization ! But with one railroad of two thousand miles built across it in four years, and two others to follow within the present generation, our strides in its conquest are at least on equal scale with its majesty and its mysteries.

Skipping the Mississippi Valley as more or less familiar country to us all, and taking up the New West on the other side of the Missouri, where the Pacific Railroad proper begins, there are four great natural divisions in the country hence to the Pacific. First the Plains, that grandest of all glacial deposits according to Agassiz, five hundred miles wide and one thousand miles long, stretching from river to mountains, from Britain to Mexico; a magnificent earth-ocean, rolling up in beautiful green billows along the shores of the continental streams and continental mountains that border it, but calming down in the vast centre as if the divine voice had here again uttered its “Peace, be still.” The ocean does not give deeper sense of illimitable space; never such feeling of endless repose, as inspires the traveller amid this unchanging boundlessness. We used to call it The Great American Desert; it is really the great natural pasture-ground of the nation; and the Platte will yet prove the northern Nile. The antelope, the buffalo, and the wolf are already disappearing before the horse, the ox, and the sheep, and these, for so far as the waters of the Platte may be spread,—and volume and fall offer wide promise for that,— will give way in time to fields of corn and wheat.

Next the Mountains,—five hundred miles width of mountains, staying the continent at its centre, and feeding the great waters that fertilize two thirds its area, and keep the two oceans alive. The Cordilleras of South America, the Rocky Mountains of North America, are here broken up into a dozen subranges, with vast elevated plains lying among and between; their crests broken down and wasted away for a pathway for the iron track across the continent. This section is full of natural wonder and beauty, of scientific variety and marvel; in its centre, holding the divide of the continent, lies a great barren basin, without living streams, and almost without living springs,—a desert, indeed, which the trains should always manage to pass over in the night; and beyond is the picturesque descent into Salt Lake valley, past majestic ruins of majestic mountains, under towering walls of granite, along banks of snow and beds of flowers, through narrow canyons with frowning sides, down streams whose waters lead the locomotive a losing race, and turn the train from one novelty to another, from, one wonder to a greater,—altogether, perhaps, the most interesting and exciting portion of the whole continental ride.

Now a third stretch of five hundred miles through Utah and Nevada, whose united territory takes in little more than the vast interior basin, which, more properly than any other region in our extended territory, merits the name of the American Desert. The Colorado and its tributaries drain much of its eastern and all its southeastern portions; and some of the shorter branches of the Snake or Columbia cross its northern border ; but, with these exceptions, all the waters within its six hundred by three hundred miles’ area rise and flow and waste within itself. They contribute nothing to the common stock of the ocean. Salt Lake is its chief sheet of water,—fifty by one hundred miles in extent,—and is bountifully fed from the western slopes of the Rocky Mountain ranges, but has no visible outlet. The Humboldt River, lying east and west along its upper line, and marking the track of the railroad for some three hundred miles, though fed from various ranges of mountains, that cut the basin every dozen or twenty miles north and south, yet finally weakens and wastes itself in a huge sink within a hundred miles of the California line. So with the fresh streams that pour down on the western border from the Sierra Nevadas ; and those of feebler flow from the winter snows of the interior mountain ranges,—all, so soon as they reach the valleys, begin to be rapidly absorbed by the dry air and the drier elements of the soil, and sooner or later absolutely die away. Yet, where and while they do exist, there are strips of fertile land that yield most abundantly in grass and grain and vegetables ; and where, as in the Salt Lake valley on the east, and in the Carson on the west, the mountain streams can be divided and spread about in fertilizing ditches, agriculture wins its greatest triumphs.

As a whole, this is a barren and uninteresting country for the general traveller ; sodas and salts and sulphurs taint the waters and the soils; the dust, wherever disturbed, is as searching and poisonous as it is delicate and impalpable ; the rare grass is not green, but a sickly yellow or a faint gray; trees and shrubs huddle like starved and frightened sheep into little nooks among the hills,—stunted and peevish in growth and character, with no others near, and often none visible within the horizon’s stretch of ten or twenty miles ; no flower dreams of life in such uncongeniality; wastes of volcanic rocks lie along and around rivers that might otherwise be tempted to bless the country they pass through ; beds of furious torrents slash the hillsides and mar the valleys ; while fields of alkali look in the distance like refreshing banks of snow, and taunt approach with the suffocating reality. Some of the valleys seem indeed to realize the character of the fabled Death’s Valley of southern Nevada, within which no vegetable life ever creeps, out of which no human life ever goes ; and yet, within this grand area of distance and desert, two States have risen and are prosperous,—one planted by the fanaticism of a religion, and the other by the fanaticism for gold and silver. To these are we indebted for our path across the continent; and in these the traveller finds refreshment for his finer senses in the purity of the air, and the beauty of the rounded hills that, with the winds for architect, present such forms, unbroken by rock or trees, as are a constant exhilaration to the eye.

The final division of the journey begins with the eastern foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and carries us over these, through twice-welcome forests of unaccustomed height and variety ; by broad lakes of rare purity and beauty ; along rocky precipices unscaled until the engineer for the railroad planted his level on the walls, and the Chinaman followed with his subduing pick ; down by fathomless gorges; through long delaying foot-hills,— wasted with the miner’s ruthless touch, or green with the vineyards that promise to heal the wounds of nature; out by the muddy Sacramento, and its broad alluvials, golden brown with the summer’s decay; over long stretches of the tule marshes ; under the shadows of Mount Diablo; finally across the wide inland bay to the sand hills which the Pacific has thrown up as a barrier to its own restless ambition, and over which San Francisco roughly but rapidly creeps into her position as the second great city of America.

This is but a two hundred miles’ ride, and should be made from sun to sun, for it takes the traveller through lands already famed in our history, and introduces him to that region of wonderful wealth, of contradictory and comprehensive nature, of strange scientific revelations, of fascinations unequalled, of repulsions undisputed,—California, the seat of a new empire, the promised creator of a new race. And here the traveller’s experiences have but just begun ; his curiosity is brought only to its edge. Let us go back and look around, and see where he should linger, on what it should feed itself.

II.

Humboldt, in one of his solemn sentences, prescribes three requisites for travel in new regions : 1. Serenity of mind ; 2. Passionate love for some class of scientific labor ; 3. A pure feeling for the enjoyment which Nature, in her freedom, is ready to impart. These are all very desirable ; at least one is indispensable ; but my companions may swap off the other two for a well-filled purse and a good set of flannels. We may be as serene and scientific and sentimental as the old German traveller himself; but without these other possessions, we cannot go far or be very comfortable.

Then we must be liberal as to time, too; the average American can see Europe in thirty days, I know; but this is a bigger job. True, with that limit, he can be carried from Boston to San Francisco in ten days,—allowing for a night or two in bed, and one or two failures to connect at that,—and back in the same time, and have a third ten days to look about him in the mountains, in Utah and in ’Friscoe; and this is better than nothing, of course ; but still, comparing what he thinks he knows with what he really does, before and after such a trip, he will be immensely more ignorant when he returns than he was at starting. I cannot tolerate the idea of less than sixty days ; and we shall find three months devoted to the journey the busiest and best spent in our lives. That is as little time as any one proposing really to see our interior and Pacific States should allow himself to take for the purpose. So make a ninety-day note for your expenses.—well, say five hundred dollars a month,—the average Atlantic reader will hardly get off with less,—and leave a good indorser for any little contingency of delay, such as a pressing invitation to visit a “ friendly ” Indian village, or a long call from those persuasive gentlemen of the interior basin, “ the road agents.” We may as well count railroad travel at five cents a mile, and stage at twenty cents, and board and lodging, whether with Pullman or at the hotels, at five dollars a day. Extras and contingencies will absorb all these allowances have to spare,—if they have any.

Prejudices against sleeping-cars must be conquered at the start. They are a necessity of our long American travel. There are often no inviting or even tolerable places for stopping over night, and, besides, we cannot afford to lose the time, when so much of beauty and interest lies beyond. But the Pullman saloon, sleeping and restaurant cars of the West,—as yet unknown in the Atlantic States,—make railroad travelling a different thing from what it is in the close, cramped, ill-ventilated, dirty box-cars of common experience. They introduce a comfort, even a luxury, into life on the rail, that European travel has not yet attained to. For the Pacific Railroad excursions these cars will be offered to private parties on special charter; that is, one or two dozen people may club together, and hire one for their home by day and night as they ride through to the Pacific coast, and back, stopping over with them wherever they choose on the route. By day, they are open, roomy, broad-seated cars ; by night, they offer equally comfortable beds, with clean linen and thick blankets ; with as good toilet accommodations as space will allow, and a servant at command constantly. Those with a kitchen furnish a meal to order, equal to that of a firstclass restaurant, and with neat and fresh table appointments. But the eating-stations on the whole route already average respectably ; some of thenl are most excellent; and all will soon be at least good. The modern American mind, especially that of the Western type, gives intelligent thought to the food question ; and one of the surprises before us is the excellent victual they will give us on the Pacific coast.

The Pullman cars go along with all through trains, and the independent traveller can make such use of them, day or night, as he chooses to pay for. Those for sleeping only are attached to the trains as night approaches, and dropped in the morning, while the traveller resumes his place in the regular cars of the road. But travellers who can afford the extra expense will choose either to share in a special charter of One for the round trip, or engage a particular seat and berth in a regular one for so far as they may be going without stopping. To understand their advantages, and learn how best to make use of them, is a part of the education of the traveller in New America. Their introduction and development and popular use mark an era in the history of railroad travel; and place America at the head of nations in its convenience and comfort.

Though Pullman promises to back one of these cars to order up at our very doors in Boston or New York, we shall naturally take up our grand journey at Chicago. This is just one third the way across the continent, and the beginning of the New West, whose spirit is nowhere else so proudly rampant, in whose growth no other city is so intimately concerned. The pulse of the Pacific beats with electric sympathy on the southern shore of Lake Michigan ; and if Chicago does not hear every blow of the pick in the depths of the gold-mines of Colorado and Montana, she at least has made sure to furnish the pick, and to have a claim on the gold it brings to light.

One now, two next month, three in the fall, and another year four roads invite us across Illinois and Iowa to the junction of the Pacific road proper on the Missouri River. This five-hundred-mile ride is through the best of the rich prairie country of the Mississippi Valley. If it is stranger to us, it will arouse our enthusiasm by its widereaching openness, the evidences of its fertility, and the signs of its civilization and prosperity ; if we have been introduced before, we shall even the more wonder at the rapidity of its growth and the wealth of its accumulating harvests. It is quite worth while to stop a day either on the Mississippi River at Clinton or Davenport or Burlington, or at some such town as Geneva or Dixon in Illinois, or Grinnell or Des Moines in Iowa, and see more closely than the cars permit the character and culture of this most interesting region and its population. Last year, before the Pacific Railroad was open, it was the New West ; now it is the Old ; but it will always be the garden and granary of the continent. It is our new New England; here the Yankee has broadened and softened ; and what he can do, what he has done, with a richer soil, a broader area, a larger hope, and a surer realization, is worth the scrutiny of every American and every student of America. Those who would understand the sources of American wealth, and the courses of American politics and religion, must understand Illinois and Iowa. New England is, indeed, dwarfed in the larger life of the mellower regions of the Republic,—it may be the taunt of her enemies that hers is a departed sceptre is substantially true ; but she has a resurrection here, and her sons and daughters have come to a new glory in these prairies, heavenly by comparison with her sterile hillsides. Stop and see if you recognize them in their new robes.

Council Bluffs, the depot of the gathering lines of the East, and Omaha, opposite, the starting-point of the grand continental line, challenge attention for the striking diversity and yet striking similarity of their locations on the bottoms and bluffs of the Missouri River, as well as for the wonderful rapidity of their growth and their large future promise. Four railroads come in already from the East at Council Bluffs; very soon the number will be doubled ; and with these and the swift and strong Missouri rolling between, and carrying steamboats two thousand miles north to the very line of British America and the Rocky Mountains, and two thousand miles south to the Gulf of Mexico, the two towns are surely to be one of the largest centres of traffic and travel on the continent.

We shall not need to stop for the next five hundred miles. The first hundred and fifty are a repetition of the Iowa we have left behind,—rich rolling prairies, already broken by plough, or smoothed with the track of the mower,— beyond, the grand Plains proper, cut by the Platte, with wood-houses and water-spouts every twelve or fifteen miles, and workshops and eating-houses every seventy-five or one hundred ; the road straight as an arrow across the whole region, and apparently as level as the floor, though actually rising steadily at the rate of ten feet to the mile for the entire five hundred miles; —there is enough of the journey to satisfy curiosity and exhaust novelty ; there is none too much to absorb the grand impressions of vastness, and majesty of area, and take in the glory of sunset and sunrise along the unending horizon. The Plains introduce us, also, to that dry, pure atmosphere— that cloudless sky and far-reaching vision—which is the great and growing charm of the whole region from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Moving westward from New England, there is a constantly increasing dryness of atmosphere, with a broadening sweep and power for the eye; but, after getting fairly outside Eastern influences upon the Plains, it takes on a positive character, and the traveller feels it as a beauty, as an exhilaration, an inspiration to every sense. It surrounds him with a new world ; it fills him with a new spirit; and it gives delight and loveliness to experiences and forms, that would never have pleased under different skies and in a denser atmosphere. The nights become cold also. Glaring as may have been the day’s sun, and searching its heat, the evening brings refreshing coolness, and the night need of blankets. This phenomenon, too, will attend him through all the new countries he is now entering upon.

At Cheyenne the Plains end and the Mountains begin,—in the eye of faith and the figures of railroad subsidies. The hills at least come into sight; and though the track goes forward through an open country, the shadows of the great Rocky Mountain belt fall faintly around us. Cheyenne wondered and waited long, but finally determined to be a town. Colorado makes its connection here with the continental road ; it is as high up—near six thousand feet above the sea level—as that road will care to have the winter quarters of its supplies and machinery ; it is far enough away to be out of the shadow of Omaha ; and Denver lies one hundred miles to the south, and is off the main route. So the town has several thousand settled population, and is steadily growing. Here I make a personal point of our switching off. We must see Denver, the real Rocky Mountains, which the railroad cheats us of,—their grand snow peaks and their wonderful wide parks, the scene and the source of the central life of the continent, before we shall talk with the Mormons, hear the sigh of the Sierra Nevada pines, or listen to the roll of the Pacific waters.

III.

Though Colorado lies below the line of our first Pacific Railroad, and above the second,—which I take it will be the Southern,—she cannot be refused a first place among their revelations. Because of her mountains, which turn the tracks north and south, she allures the lovers of the grand and the picturesque in scenery ; because of her mines of gold and silver, she seduces the greedy for gain; because of the agricultural resources of her plains and her valleys, she will have steady growth, permanent prosperity, and moral rectitude,—for these are the gifts of a recompensing soil; because of her many and various mineral springs, soda, sulphur, and iron, and of her wonderfully clear, dry, and pure atmosphere, she will be the resort of the health-seeking. Within her borders, the great continental mountains display their most magnificent proportions, the great continental rivers spring from melting snows, the plains invite the farmer and the husbandman, and the best population, between the Missouri River and California, has organized itself into a State. Fifty thousand people here have more than become self-supporting ; they are already wealth-producing ; and social order and its institutions of education and religion are established. The main Pacific Railroad wisely hastens to connect itself with them by a branch from Cheyenne to Denver; and St. Louis “ builded better than she knew ” after all, when, in the apparent spirit of a blind rivalry, she pushed her Eastern Division Pacific Road straight towards their centre. Failing to go through the mountains, this road will yet find recompense in furnishing the most direct communication between Colorado and the East, and in throwing out branches from its terminus here, through the best agricultural sections of Colorado, to the main continental lines, above and below.

If the branch track is not laid to Denver when we leave Cheyenne, so much the better. The stage ride of this one hundred miles is an experience that I welcome the stranger to. It is the best representation of that sort of travel which, the rapid progress of our railway system has left us. Fine Concord coaches, six sleek and gay horses in every team, changed each ten miles, good meals on the way, the road itself generally smooth and hard over the open rolling prairie, the sky clear, the air an inspiration, the open ocean of the plains on one side, the long and high mountain battlements shadowing us on the other,—altogether this is as fine a bit of out-door life by day as will come within the range of all our summer’s journey. By night, for the ride occupies the night as well, there are other incidents which I forbear to mention in detail ; but if my companions served in the war, or have tended sick and cross babies through a winter’s night, when they had the toothache themselves, I am sure they will survive it.

We shall like Denver, spread out upon the rising plain, with the Platte River flowing through and around it, with broad streets and fine blocks of stores, and a panoramic mountain view before it, such as rises before no other town in all the circle of modern travel. For one hundred miles, buttressed on the north by Long’s Peak and on the south by Pike’s Peak, each 14,000 feet high, its line of majestic rock and snow peaks stretches before the eye, ever a surprise by its variety, ever a beauty by its form and color, ever an inspiration in its grandeur. The Alps from Berne do not compare with the Rocky Mountains from Denver; in nearness, in variety, in clearness of atmosphere, In grand sweep of distance, in majestic uplifting of height, these are vastly the superior. Any man with a susceptibility to God’s presence in nature must find it very easy to be good in Denver. Certainly, to watch these mountains, through the changes of light and cloud of a summer’s day and evening, is a joyful experience worth coming from a long distance to Denver to share.

The mining centres of Colorado are up among its mountains, twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five miles from Denver, which is but the political and business capital, and thus facilities exist for travel into the regions whither we would go for knowledge and enjoyment of nature. Ten hours of staging take us through Central City, the chief gold-mining centre, at a height of seven thousand feet above the sea, with a population of several thousands, on to Georgetown, two thousand feet higher, the centre of the silver production, with nearly three thousand inhabitants. The way is full of mountain and valley scenery of freshest interest and startling beauty. At Idaho and Fall River, little villages in the South Clear Creek valley, on the route, are accommodations for summer visitors, with cold and warm soda springs at the former place, furnishing most luxurious bathing. And at Georgetown, with larger and better hotels, we are in the very heart of the highest and finest mountain life of the State.

Gray’s Peaks, the highest explored summits of Colorado (14,500 feet), and named for the distinguished Cambridge botanist, lie just beyond and above the town, and the excursion to and from their tops may easily be made in a day with guide and horses from Georgetown. The working of mines up as high as twelve thousand feet has secured a wagon-road two thirds the way, and a trail for horses goes to either of the two summits of the mountain. The view from either, of a clear morning, is the most commanding and impressive. I truly believe, within the range of all ordinary American or European travel. Nothing in the Alps takes you so high, reaches so wide. There we overlook a petty province ; here the broad American Continent spreads itself around us as a centre, and stretches out its illimitable lengths before the eye. The rain-drops falling on one coat-sleeve flow off to the Pacific ; on the other, to the Atlantic ; we are at the very apex, the absolute physical centre of the North American Continent ; the scene assures the thought, and is worthy of the fact. Fold on fold of snow-slashed and rock-ribbed mountains lie all around,—west, east, north, and south ; they riot in luxuriant multiplicity ; for this is the fastness, the gathering and distributing point of the grand continental range; while away to the east lies the gray-green sea of the Plains, and distributed among the snow folds of the mountains are miniature copies of the same, which look like patches of prairie amid the continent of mountains, yet are, in fact, great Central Parks, from ten to thirty miles wide and forty to seventy miles long. North, Middle, South, and San Luis Parks,— they lie along through the whole line of Central Colorado,—great elevated basins or plains, directly under the highest mountains,—soft and smooth ways upon the very backbone of the continent. Some lie on the Atlantic side, others on the Pacific side of the divide ; and their height above the sea level ranges from seven thousand to ten thousand feet. In Europe or in New England this height in this latitude would be perpetual barrenness, if not perpetual ice and snow; but here in Western America, grains and vegetables are successfully cultivated and cattle graze the year round at seven thousand feet, while between that and ten thousand feet there is rich summer pasturage and often great crops of natural grass are cured for hay.

These great fertile areas among the high mountains of Colorado—this wedding of majestic hill and majestic plain, of summer and winter, of fecund life and barren rock—present abundant attractions for a full summer’s travel. For the lover of the grand and the novel in nature, or the weary seeking rest from toil and excitement, our country offers nothing so richly recompensing as a summer among the Parks and Mountains of Colorado. The dryness of the climate inviting to out-door life, is favorable to lung difficulties, though the very thin air of the higher regions must be avoided by those whose lungs are quite weak. Asthma and bronchitis flee before the breath of this dry, pure atmosphere, and it operates as an exhilarating nerve tonic to all. Denver and St. Louis are about in the same latitude, and their thermometers have nearly the same range, though Denver is nearly six thousand feet higher. Its noons are probably warmer, and its nights are certainly cooler, the year round ; but the dryer and lighter air, ever in motion from plain and mountain, makes its summer heats always tolerable. Denver is exposed to snow from October to May, but it rarely stays long; sleighing is as much of a novelty as at Washington or Philadelphia, and its winters are more like a dry, clear New England November than any other season of the East. The valleys and parks of the mountains are similar in climatic character, allowing for the difference of three or four thousand feet in elevation. The principal snows are in early spring, and the rains in late spring and early summer. Midwinter and midsummer are uniformly dry and clear. When clouds and storms do come, they are always brief. The sun soon shines through them to warm and clear the sky.

The saddle and the camp are the true conditions of extended travel or a summer’s life in Colorado. A party of four, well mounted on mules or Western ponies, with a guide and servant, and two pack-mules for tents and blankets and food, can gain such experience of rare nature, such gift of health, such endowment of pleasure, in leisurely travel over its mountains and among its parks, lingering by the side of their beautiful lakes and their abundant streams fat with trout, basking in its sunshine, hunting in its woods, and bathing in its mineral springs, as nowhere else that I know of in all America. This is surely destined to be “the correct thing to do,” for the pleasure and health seekers of the future America.

Over in Middle Park, two days’ horseback ride from Georgetown, are the famous Hot Sulphur Springs,—a douchebath and a sitz-bath united, such as only experience of their wondrous tonic can appreciate. The water is of the temperature of 110° Fahrenheit,—as hot as human flesh can bear,—and pours over a ledge of rock ten feet high into a pool below with a stream of four to six inches in diameter. When wagonroads are made to the spot, as they soon will be, invalids will flock to these springs in July and August from the whole country. Already they are a favorite local resort, despite the hard climb over the mountains into the valley where they lie.

The South Park is the most attractive and most frequented of these elevated areas; and a good wagon-road from Denver, branching out within the Park to all its various sections, and taverns and mining villages strung freely along one and through the other, invite the traveller to its easy enjoyment. Mount Lincoln, the great parent mountain of the parent range, stands at the northwestern angle of the Park, and may be ascended without too severe labor from the village of Montgomery. It is of the same height as the loftiest of Gray’s Peaks, and commands a like view. The connoisseurs in mountain views in Colorado dispute as to which summit offers the wider and grander prospect. Either view is grand enough, and one or other should be enjoyed by every visitor to Colorado. Our ascent of Lincoln was made amid contending torrents of rain, snow, hail, and sunshine ; and though the views we obtained were not so complete and satisfactory as those from Gray, the experience was perhaps the grander, because of its variety, and the terrible impressiveness of a storm on the mountaintops, opening and closing long glimpses of ghastly worlds of rocks and snow below and all around us.

The upper mountains of Colorado— at 11,000 and 12,000 feet—hold numerous pools and lakes, and not infrequent waterfalls ; a party, that made the ascent of Long’s Peak for the first time last season, report nearly forty lakes in view at once ; but the parks and lower ranges offer them but rarely. A day’s ride, in saddle or wagon, out of South Park over into the valley of the Upper Arkansas, where various new beauties of scenery await the explorer, will carry us into the presence of the Twin Lakes, as beautifully lying sheets of water as mountains ever guarded or sun shone on. They are of kindred character with the Cumberland lakes of England, the Swiss and Italian lakes, and those of Tahoe and Donner in the California Sierra Nevada, which are among the sweet revelations of the Pacific Railroad. The Twin Lakes will be one of the specialties when the world goes to Colorado for its summer vacations.

The tree life of the Rocky Mountains Is meagre ; pines and firs and aspens (or cottonwood) make up its catalogue ; nor are these so abundant or so rich in size or beauty as to challenge special attention. They grow in greatest luxuriance at elevations of from eight to eleven thousand feet, and the timber line does not cease till nearly twelve thousand feet is reached. A silver-fir or spruce is the one charm among the trees. But the flora is more varied and more beautiful ; Dr. Parry reports one hundred and forty-one different species in these higher mountains, eighty-four of which are peculiar to them; and I can report that nowhere else have I gathered such wealth, in glory of color and perfection and numbers, of fringed gentians, harebells, painter’s brush, buttercups, larkspurs, child sunflowers, dandelions, and columbines, as on these eight and ten thousand feet high hillsides, or in little nooks of grass and grove still higher. Blue and yellow are the dominant colors; but the reds flame out in the painter’s brush and the kernel of the sunflowers, like beacons of light amid darkness. With much lacking in details of beauty and interest, that are found in the country life of New England and the Middle States, as in California, Colorado more than redeems herself by the charm of her atmosphere and the magnificent majesty of her mountains and her plains. These are her title to supremacy,—her claim to be to America what Switzerland is to Europe.

But I cannot hope my Pacific Railroad travellers will give more than seven or ten days to Colorado,—an appetizer for a future summer’s feast,— and I rely on the patriotic and thrifty citizens of Denver and Georgetown to perfect some arrangements, by which, in that time, they may get a fair glimpse of its grand and rare specialties of mountain ranges and enfolded parks, and a share in the enjoyment they offer. A ride up through the mountains by Boulder Creek or South Clear Creek valleys, on to the head of the latter above Empire or at Georgetown; the ascent of Gray or Lincoln ; and a peep into and a cut across the South Park, with two or three nights in camp, and a half-day’s trout-fishing,—these I consider essential ; and under good guidance they may all be had within the time mentioned. Ascending Gray’s Peaks from Georgetown, I should recommend going down on the other side, and a night’s camp on the Snake River ; thence to the junction, of the Snake, the Blue, and Ten Mile Creek : up the Blue to Breckinridge; over the Breckinridge Pass into South Park at Hamilton or Fairplay : and thence, if there is not time for Lincoln or the Arkansas Lakes, across the Park and out to Denver by Turkey Creek Canyon and the Plains. All this could be put into seven days from Denver, though ten would be better; but through lack of a wagon-road from Georgetown over to Snake River, it would have to be done in part or altogether in the saddle. Hotels could be reached for all but one or two nights ; but these may be made, with fortunate camping-ground, choice companions, and plenty of blankets and firewood, the most memorable and happy of the whole week.

With such experience as this, we go back to the railroad at Cheyenne, with a new sense of the greatness of America, with a curious doubting wonder as to what can lie beyond, and with appetites that we shall probably have to go to Ford’s to satisfy, while waiting for our train for Salt Lake City.