ng meal, their captain put in an appearance, a very
tired but a wiser man. He started to go to the peak, and he went there!

On the summit of another rock-ribbed elevation close by, the tourist
will notice the shaft of an obelisk. It is over the grave of George
Simpson, once a noted mountaineer in the days of the great fur
companies. For a long time he made his home there, and it was his dying
request that the lofty peak he loved so well while living should be his
last resting-place. The peak is known as "Simpson's Rest," and is one of
the notable features of the rugged landscape.

Pike's Peak, far away to the north, intensely white and silvery in the
clear sky, hangs like a great dome high in the region of the clouds, a
marked object, worthy to commemorate the indefatigable efforts of the
early voyageur whose name it bears.

In this wonderful locality, both Pike's Peak and the snowy range over
two hundred miles from our point of observation really seem to the
uninitiated as if a brisk walk of an hour or two would enable one to
reach them, so deceptive is the atmosphere of these elevated regions.

About two miles from the crest of the range, yet over seven thousand
feet above the sea-level, in a pretty little depression about as large
as a medium-sized corn-field in the Eastern States, Uncle Dick Wooton
lived, and here, too, was his toll-gate. The veteran mountaineer erected
a substantial house of adobe, after the style of one of the old-time
Southern plantation residences, a memory, perhaps, of his youth, when he
raised tobacco in his father's fields in Kentucky.[76]

The most charming hour in which to be on the crest of Raton Range is in
the afternoon, when the weather is clear and calm. As the night comes
on apace in the distant valley beneath, the evening shadows drop down,
pencilled with broad bands of rosy light as they creep slowly across
the beautiful landscape, while the rugged vista below is enveloped in a
diffused haze like that which marks the season of the Indian summer
in the lower great plains. Above, the sky curves toward the relatively
restricted horizon, with not a cloud to dim its intense blue, nowhere so
beautiful as in these lofty altitudes.

The sun, however, does not always shine resplendently; there are times
when the most terrific storms of wind, hail, and rain change the entire
aspect of the scene. Fortunately, these violent bursts never last long;
they vanish as rapidly as they come, leav