Martineau: "Eastern Life," ii., 81, 82.

[40] Harriet Martineau; "Eastern Life," ii. 162-165.

MISS BIRD AND OTHERS.

"The climate of Colorado is the finest in North America; and
consumptives, asthmatics, dyspeptics, and sufferers from nervous
diseases are here in hundreds and thousands, either trying the 'camp
cure' for three or four months, or settling here permanently. People can
safely sleep out of doors for six months of the year. The plains are
from 4,000 to 6,000 feet high, and some of the settled 'parks,' or
mountain valleys, are from 8,000 to 10,000. The air, besides being much
rarefied, is very dry; the rainfall is far below the average, dews are
rare, and fogs nearly unknown. The sunshine is bright and almost
constant, and three-fourths of the days are cloudless."

This is not Eden, but Colorado; yet, seeing it reproduces as nearly as
possible what we may suppose to have been the primary characteristics of
that first Garden, to us dwellers in a land where mists and fogs are
frequent and sunbeams are rare, Miss Bird's description of it reads like
an effort of the imagination. Miss Bird traversed a portion of Colorado
in 1878, on her way to explore the recesses of the Rocky Mountains.
Starting from San Francisco, she travelled by railway to Truckee. Here
she hired a horse, and for greater convenience assumed what she styled
her "Hawaiian riding dress"--that is, a half-fitting jacket, a skirt
reaching to the ankles, and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills,
which fell over the boots--"a thoroughly serviceable and feminine
costume for mountaineering and other rough travelling in any part of the
world." Throwing over these habiliments a dust-cloak, she rode through
Truckee, and then followed up the windings of the Truckee river--a
loud-tongued, rollicking mountain-stream, flowing between ranges of
great castellated and embattled sierras. Through the blue gloom of a
pine-forest she gallantly made her way, charmed by the magic of the
scenery that opened out before her. "Crested blue-jays darted through
the dark pines, squirrels in hundreds scampered through the forest, red
dragon-flies flashed like 'living light,' exquisite chipmonks ran across
the track, but only a dusty blue legion here and there reminded one of
earth's fairer children. Then the river became broad and still, and
mirrored in its transparent depths regal pines, straight as an arrow,
with rich yellow and green lichen clinging to thei