ave a bay Indian pony, "Birdie,"
a little beauty, with legs of iron, fast, enduring, gentle, and wise;
and with luggage for some weeks, including a black silk dress, behind
my saddle, I am tolerably independent. It was a most glorious ride.
We passed through the gates of rock, through gorges where the unsunned
snow lay deep under the lemon-colored aspens; caught glimpses of
far-off, snow-clad giants rising into a sky of deep sad blue; lunched
above the Foot Hills at a cabin where two brothers and a "hired man"
were "keeping bach," where everything was so trim, clean, and
ornamental that one did not miss a woman; crossed a deep backwater on a
narrow beaver dam, because the log bridge was broken down, and emerged
from the brilliantly-colored canyon of the St. Vrain just at dusk upon
the featureless prairies, when we had some trouble in finding Longmount
in the dark. A hospitable welcome awaited me at this inn, and an
English friend came in and spent the evening with me.

GREAT PLATTE CANYON, October 23.

My letters on this tour will, I fear, be very dull, for after riding
all day, looking after my pony, getting supper, hearing about various
routes, and the pastoral, agricultural, mining, and hunting gossip of
the neighborhood, I am so sleepy and wholesomely tired that I can
hardly write. I left Longmount pretty early on Tuesday morning, the
day being sad, with the blink of an impending snow-storm in the air.
The evening before I was introduced to a man who had been a colonel in
the rebel army, who made a most unfavorable impression upon me, and it
was a great annoyance to me when he presented himself on horse-back to
guide me "over the most intricate part of the journey." Solitude is
infinitely preferable to uncongeniality, and is bliss when compared
with repulsiveness, so I was thoroughly glad when I got rid of my
escort and set out upon the prairie alone. It is a dreary ride of
thirty miles over the low brown plains to Denver, very little settled,
and with trails going in all directions. My sailing orders were "steer
south, and keep to the best beaten track," and it seemed like embarking
on the ocean without a compass. The rolling brown waves on which you
see a horse a mile and a half off impress one strangely, and at noon
the sky darkened up for another storm, the mountains swept down in
blackness to the Plains, and the higher peaks took on a ghastly
grimness horrid to behold. It was first very cold, then ver