hole region from Walnut Creek to the mouth of the
Pawnee, which includes in its area Ash Creek and Pawnee Rock, seemed to
be the greatest resort for the Indians, who hovered about the Santa Fe
Trail for the sole purpose of robbery and murder; it was a very lucky
caravan or coach, indeed, that passed through that portion of the route
without being attacked.

All the once dangerous points of the Old Trail having been successively
passed--Cow Creek, Big and Little Coon, and Ash Creek, Fort Dodge,
Fort Aubrey,[73] and Point of Rocks--the tourist arrives at last at the
foot-hills. At La Junta the railroad separates into two branches; one
going to Denver, the other on to New Mexico. Here, a relatively short
distance to the northwest, on the right of the train, may be seen the
ruins of Bent's Fort, the tourist having already passed the site of
the once famous Big Timbers, a favourite winter camping-ground of the
Cheyennes and Arapahoes; but everywhere around him there reigns such
perfect quiet and pastoral beauty, he might imagine that the peaceful
landscape upon which he looks had never been a bloody arena.

I suggest to the lover of nature that he should cross the Raton Range
in the early morning, or late in the afternoon; for then the magnificent
scenery of the Trail over the high divide into New Mexico assumes its
most beautiful aspect.

In approaching the range from the Old Trail, or now from the railroad,
their snow-clad peaks may be seen at a distance of sixty miles. In the
era of caravans and pack-trains, for hour after hour, as they moved
slowly toward the goal of their ambition, the summit of the fearful
pathway on the divide, the huge forms of the mountains seemed to recede,
and yet ascend higher. On the next day's journey their outlines appeared
more irregular and ragged. Drawing still nearer, their base presented a
long, dark strip stretching throughout their whole course, ever widening
until it seemed like a fathomless gulf, separating the world of reality
from the realms of imagination beyond.

Another weary twenty miles of dusty travel, and the black void slowly
dissolved, and out of the shadows lines of broken, sterile, ferruginous
buttes and detached masses of rocks, whose soilless surface refuses
sustenance, save to a few scattered, stunted pines and lifeless mosses,
emerged to view.

The progress of the weary-footed mules or oxen was now through ravines
and around rocks; up narrow paths which the melti