r stems, and firs and
balsam pines filling up the spaces between them. The gorge opened, and
this mountain-girdled lake lay before me, with its margin broken up into
bays and promontories, most picturesquely clothed by huge sugar-pines."

From Lake Tabor Miss Bird returned to Truckee, and started on another
excursion which brought her within view of the Great Salt Lake and the
Mormon town of Ogden, and thence to Cheyenne, in the State of Wyoming.
Having thus crossed the mountain-range of the Sierras and descended into
the plains, she entered upon the region of the "boundless
prairies--great stretches of verdure, generally level, but elsewhere
rolling in long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen
asleep." Their monotony is broken by large villages of the so-called
prairie dogs, the Wishton-Wish, a kind of marmot, which owes its
misleading name to its short, sharp bark. The villages are composed of
raised circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, from which
a number of inclined passages slope downwards for five or six feet.
"Hundreds of these burrows are placed together. On nearly every rim a
small furry, reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as
head went, much like a young seal. These creatures were acting as
sentinels, and sunning themselves. As we passed each gave a warning
yelp, shook its tail, and, with a ludicrous flourish of his hind legs,
dived into its hole. The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each
eighteen inches long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down
and all turned sunwards, is most grotesque."

At Greeley Miss Bird entered Colorado, which she describes, as we have
seen, in such a manner as to suggest that it rivals Dr. Richardson's
imaginary "Hygeia" in all essential particulars. From Greeley she
hastened to Fort Collins, with the grand masses of the Rocky Mountains
facing her as she advanced. Still across the boundless sea-like prairie
struck the indefatigable traveller, until she came to a sort of
tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked canyon, 2,000 feet deep, and
watered by a roaring stream, where in a rude log-cabin she abode for
several days. Having obtained a horse she rode across the highlands, and
striking up the St. Vrain Canyon ascended to Esteo Park, 7,500 feet
above the sea-level. To understand the majesty of the Rocky Mountains,
the reader must think of them as a mass of summits, frequently 200 and
250 miles wide, stretc