structions, their visitor and two
kegs of nails comprised this precious load. The day was cloudless and
fine, albeit a Colorado "zephyr" was blowing, and the party, with
perhaps the single exception of the horse, felt in fine spirits. The
jolly superintendent, who both in face and mien reminded one of the
typical German nobleman, was overflowing with story, joke and witty
repartee. The site of the works was reached in the course of time.
Excavations were in progress for the blast-furnace and accessory
buildings, and developed a strange formation. The entire mesa seems
built up of boulders packed together with a sort of alkali clay, dry
and hard as stone, and looking, as our _distingue_ guide remarked, as
though not a drop of water had penetrated five feet from the surface
since the time of the Flood. Two blast-furnaces, each with a capacity
of five hundred tons, will be speedily built, to be followed by
rail-mills, a Bessemer steel-plant and all the accessories of vast
iron-and steel-works. With the patronage of several thousand miles of
railway already assured, and its duplication in the near future
apparently beyond doubt, the success of this daring frontier enterprise
seems far removed from the domain of conjecture.

[Illustration: OLD SI SMITH.]

All this was glowingly set forth by the courtly superintendent, who,
though but three months in the country, is already at heart a Coloradan.
That there are some things about frontier life which he likes better
than others he is free to admit. Among the few matters he would have
otherwise he gives the first place to the tough "range" or "snow-fed"
beef upon which the dwellers in this favored land must needs subsist. "I
heard a story once," said he, "about a young man, a tenderfoot, who,
after long wondering what made the beef so fearfully tough, at length
arrived at the solution, as he thought, and that quite by accident. He
was riding out with a friend, an old resident, when they chanced to come
upon a bunch of cattle. The young man's attention seemed to be
attracted, and as the idea began to dawn upon him he faced his
companion, and, pointing to an animal which bore the brand "B.C. 45,"
savagely exclaimed, 'Look there! How can you expect those antediluvians
to be anything but tough? Why don't you kill your cattle before they get
two or three times as old as Methuselah?'"

We took a long ride that afternoon under a peerless sky, with blue
mountain-ranges on one hand, wh