en Eyrie, as wild and romantic a glen as
imagination ever pictured. The track then passed down a valley close
under some ghastly peaks, wild, cold, awe-inspiring scenery. After
fording a creek several times, I came upon a decayed-looking cluster of
houses bearing the arrogant name of Colorado City, and two miles
farther on, from the top of one of the Foot Hill ridges, I saw the
bleak-looking scattered houses of the ambitious watering place of
Colorado Springs, the goal of my journey of 150 miles. I got off, put
on a long skirt, and rode sidewise, though the settlement scarcely
looked like a place where any deference to prejudices was necessary. A
queer embryo-looking place it is, out on the bare Plains, yet it is
rising and likely to rise, and has some big hotels much resorted to.
It has a fine view of the mountains, specially of Pike's Peak, but the
celebrated springs are at Manitou, three miles off, in really fine
scenery. To me no place could be more unattractive than Colorado
Springs, from its utter treelessness.

I found the -----s living in a small room which served for parlor,
bedroom, and kitchen, and combined the comforts of all. It is
inhabited also by two prairie dogs, a kitten, and a deerhound. It was
truly homelike. Mrs. ----- walked with me to the boarding-house where
I slept, and we sat some time in the parlor talking with the landlady.
Opposite to me there was a door wide open into a bed room, and on a bed
opposite to the door a very sick-looking young man was half-lying,
half-sitting, fully dressed, supported by another, and a very
sick-looking young man much resembling him passed in and out
occasionally, or leaned on the chimney piece in an attitude of extreme
dejection. Soon the door was half-closed, and some one came to it,
saying rapidly, "Shields, quick, a candle!" and then there were movings
about in the room. All this time the seven or eight people in the room
in which I was were talking, laughing, and playing backgammon, and none
laughed louder than the landlady, who was sitting where she saw that
mysterious door as plainly as I did. All this time, and during the
movings in the room, I saw two large white feet sticking up at the end
of the bed. I watched and watched, hoping those feet would move, but
they did not; and somehow, to my thinking, they grew stiffer and
whiter, and then my horrible suspicion deepened, and while we were
sitting there a human spirit untended and desolate had