ching "the clouds that cruise the sultry sky"--a
sky so blue one never tires of it; or beside the brook he might "lie
upon its banks, and dream himself away to some enchanted ground." Or he
might study the ever-changing aspect of the mountains,--their dreamy,
veiled appearance, with the morning sun full upon them; their deep
violet blueness in the evening, with the sun behind them, and the
mystery of the moonlight, which "sets them far off in a world of their
own," as tender and unreal as mountains in a dream.

He _might_ do all these things, but he is far more likely to become
excited, and finally bewitched by guide-books, and photographs, and talk
all about him of this or that canyon, this or that pass, the Garden of
the Gods, Manitou, the Seven Sisters' Falls, the grave of "H. H.;" and
unless a fool or a philosopher, before he knows it to be in the full
swing of sight-seeing, and becoming learned in the ways of burros, the
"Ship of the Rockies," so indispensable, and so common that even the
babies take to them.

This traveler will climb peaks, and drive over nerve-shaking roads, a
steep wall on one side and a frightful precipice on the other; he will
toil up hundreds of steps, and go quaking down into mines; he will look,
and admire, and tremble, till sentiment is worn to threads, purse
depleted, and body and mind alike a wreck. For this sort of a traveler
there is no rest in Colorado; there always remains another mountain to
thrill him, another canyon to rhapsodize over; to one who is greedy of
"sights," the tameness of Harlem, or the mud flats of Canarsie, will
afford more rest.

For myself I can always bear to be near sights without seeing them. I
believed what I heard--never were such grand mountains! never such
soul-stirring views! never such hairbreadth roads! I believed--and
stayed in my cottonwood grove content. I knew how it all looked; did I
not peer down into one canyon, holding my breath the while? and, with
slightly differing arrangement of rocks and pine-trees and brooks, are
not all canyons the same? Did I not gaze with awe at the "trail to the
grave of H. H.," and watch, without envy, the sight-seeing tourist
struggle with its difficulties? Could I not supply myself with
photographs, and guide-books, and poems, and "H. H.'s" glowing words,
and picture the whole scene? I could, I did, and to me Colorado was a
delightful place of rest, with mountain air that it was a luxury to
breathe (after the mach