over nine thousand feet above the sea-level. A romantic and
ever-ascending ride of a day's length was required to reach this eyrie,
and at noon-day the driver allowed us to stop for our dinner, when our
wayside inn was improvized from the sheltering shade of grand old trees,
our table a rock, our chairs the same.

No ambrosia could have been sweeter to the gods than was our sylvan
feast, with the appetite induced by mountain air and exercise; no nectar
finer than the crystal draught, dipped from the little stream; no
orchestra more musical than its varied tones. Although it was yet
September, there was a severe snow-storm, and, the next day, when it had
subsided, a party went out to pick raspberries, which were sweet and
delicious in flavor, while beside the deep snow-banks bloomed flowers as
beautiful as the rarest exotics.

Ladies are so vigorous in that country that they think nothing of a walk
of many miles, but the intensely rarefied air of the mountains made my own
respiration very difficult.

We returned to Denver, where our few days' visit was all too short, for it
was with painful reluctance we yielded to the demands of business
interest, and left a city which to us was fraught with so much pleasure,
and went to Colorado Springs, a place of five thousand inhabitants, and
one of the most stirring towns in the State. It is very level, being
symmetrically laid out in broad and shaded streets, and derives its name
from the fact of being the station from which tourists take the stage for
the springs at Manitou, six miles distant. It is also the point from which
pleasure parties daily leave for Pike's Peak.

One of the main features of interest in our visit to Colorado Springs, was
the presence of the great "Man of the Period," over whom the stupendous
heart of Barnum throbbed with exultant pride, and scientists waxed
wondering and eloquent. This august personage, who was no other than the
since sensational "Stone Man of Colorado," was lying in state, in all the
majesty of his marbleized grandeur, and was the magnet toward which
throngs of wonder-seekers were irresistibly drawn, all of whom, as if
entering the presence chamber of the King of Terrors, seemed awed by this
silent "representative of the dead past," and with hushed voices and bated
breath, lingered over the lineaments of one, which, if it had been known
at that time was not a real petrifaction, would perhaps have excited only
feelings of ridicule and w