u think he must be mistaken.

"But where is Camp Harding?" you ask. He points to an obscure
path--"trail" he calls it--which seems to throw itself over an edge. You
approach that point, and there, to your wonder and your surprise, at
your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled
with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof
gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way
downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing,
flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail
leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till
you reach the back entrance of the camp. Before it, up the narrow
valley, winds a road, the carriage-way to the Cheyenne canyons.

II.

IN THE COTTONWOODS.

A cottonwood grove is the nearest approach to our Eastern rural
districts to be found in Colorado, and a cotton storm, looking exactly
like a snowstorm, is a common sight in these groves. The white, fluffy
material grows in long bunches, loosely attached to stems, and the fibre
is very short. At the lightest breeze that stirs the branches, tiny bits
of it take to flight, and one tree will shed cotton for weeks. It clings
to one's garments; it gets into the houses, and sticks to the carpets,
often showing a trail of white footprints where a person has come in; it
clogs the wire-gauze screens till they keep out the air as well as the
flies; it fills the noses and the eyes of men and beasts. But its most
curious effect is on the plants and flowers, to which it adheres, being
a little gummy. Some flowers look as if they were encased in ice, and
others seem wrapped in the gauziest of veils, which, flimsy as it looks,
cannot be completely cleared from the leaves.

It covers the ground like snow, and strangely enough it looks in June,
but it does not, like snow, melt, even under the warm summer sunshine.
It must be swept from garden and walks, and carted away. A heavy rain
clears the air and subdues it for a time, but the sun soon dries the
bunches still on the trees, and the cotton storm is again in full blast.
This annoyance lasts through June and a part of July, fully six weeks,
and then the stems themselves drop to, the ground, still holding enough
cotton to keep up the storm for days. After this, the first rainfall
ends the trouble for that season.

In the midst of the cottonwoods, in beautiful Camp Harding, I spe