randeur and sublimity, not softness, are the
features of Estes Park. The glades which begin so softly are soon lost
in the dark primaeval forests, with their peaks of rosy granite, and
their stretches of granite blocks piled and poised by nature in some
mood of fury. The streams are lost in canyons nearly or quite
inaccessible, awful in their blackness and darkness; every valley ends
in mystery; seven mountain ranges raise their frowning barriers between
us and the Plains, and at the south end of the park Long's Peak rises
to a height of 14,700 feet, with his bare, scathed head slashed with
eternal snow. The lowest part of the Park is 7,500 feet high; and
though the sun is hot during the day, the mercury hovers near the
freezing point every night of the summer. An immense quantity of snow
falls, but partly owing to the tremendous winds which drift it into the
deep valleys, and partly to the bright warm sun of the winter months,
the park is never snowed up, and a number of cattle and horses are
wintered out of doors on its sun-cured saccharine grasses, of which the
gramma grass is the most valuable.

The soil here, as elsewhere in the neighborhood, is nearly everywhere
coarse, grey, granitic dust, produced probably by the disintegration of
the surrounding mountains. It does not hold water, and is never wet in
any weather. There are no thaws here The snow mysteriously disappears
by rapid evaporation. Oats grow, but do not ripen, and, when well
advanced, are cut and stacked for winter fodder. Potatoes yield
abundantly, and, though not very large, are of the best quality, mealy
throughout. Evans has not attempted anything else, and probably the
more succulent vegetables would require irrigation. The wild flowers
are gorgeous and innumerable, though their beauty, which culminates in
July and August, was over before I arrived, and the recent snow
flurries have finished them. The time between winter and winter is
very short, and the flowery growth and blossom of a whole year are
compressed into two months. Here are dandelions, buttercups,
larkspurs, harebells, violets, roses, blue gentian, columbine,
painter's brush, and fifty others, blue and yellow predominating; and
though their blossoms are stiffened by the cold every morning, they are
starring the grass and drooping over the brook long before noon, making
the most of their brief lives in the sunshine. Of ferns, after many a
long hunt, I have only found the Cy