eared Denver just as the sun was sinking,
enthroned in purple and amber and gold, with a faint, delicate rosy flush
tinging the edge of the more royal hues. Its truly Italian beauty was so
vividly pictured to me by Ida, that I could almost realize the regal
splendor of a Colorado sunset. Completely tired out and covered with
alkaline dust, we were grateful for the rest and comfort afforded by the
elegant Wentworth House.

We spent a week in Denver, fraught with interest, for while it is a city
destitute of the charm of historical associations and musty memories,
which add so much interest to most foreign cities and many American
localities, it so abounds in youthful life with its warm and bounding
currents, its vim and vigor, that it teems with varying attractions. Its
broad avenues, softened by shade, its stately residences and mammoth
business blocks, render it as imposing as many old cities, and indicate
but little of its real primitive struggles for life, and the dangerous
aggressions of the "Red Man;" its truly western pluck having ranked these
among the things that were.

The elliptical basin in which Denver is built, sloping north and east,
gives it a picturesque and extended view; the mountains losing themselves
in one direction in the now historic "Black Hills," and in the other
merging into the "Spanish Peaks" and "Sangre de Christo Range," so named
from a natural symbol of the Christian faith, a snowy cross grandly
gleaming in the distance.

Taking the Colorado Central Railway we went through the Clear Creek Canyon,
with its rich and fertile fields to Golden, so beautifully sheltered in
the valley at the base of the mountain, and whose air was more life-giving
to me than that of any other portion of Colorado. In the vicinity of this
little Eden we climbed a rock seven hundred feet high, and while two
laborious hours were occupied in the ascent, we were amply recompensed
when we stood upon the smooth rock which crowned its summit, where the
merry picnicers pause amid their pastimes, absorbed in the sublimity of
their surroundings, for while they are basking in the soft sunlight the
sound of the distant thundering and lightning in the mountain tops
recalls the story of Sinai, where the multitude below stood silent and
breathless, and from the roar of Heaven's artillery above issued the
written tables of stone.

From this our lofty site the clear ether of the intervening fourteen miles
revealed the city of D