of the Gods, Glen Eyrie, Pike's Peak, Monument Park, and the Ute
Pass. It has two or three immense hotels, and a few houses
picturesquely situated. It is thronged by thousands of people in the
summer who come to drink the waters, try the camp cure, and make
mountain excursions; but it is all quiet now, and there are only a few
lingerers in this immense hotel. There is a rushing torrent in a
valley, with mountains, covered with snow and rising to a height of
nearly 15,000 feet, overhanging it. It is grand and awful, and has a
strange, solemn beauty like death. And the Snowy Mountains are pierced
by the torrent which has excavated the Ute Pass, by which, to-morrow, I
hope to go into the higher regions. But all may be "lost for want of a
horseshoe nail." One of Birdie's shoes is loose, and not a nail is to
be got here, or can be got till I have ridden for ten miles up the
Pass. Birdie amuses every one with her funny ways. She always follows
me closely, and to-day got quite into a house and pushed the parlor
door open. She walks after me with her head laid on my shoulder,
licking my face and teasing me for sugar, and sometimes, when any one
else takes hold of her, she rears and kicks, and the vicious bronco
soul comes into her eyes. Her face is cunning and pretty, and she
makes a funny, blarneying noise when I go up to her. The men at all
the stables make a fuss with her, and call her "Pet." She gallops up
and down hill, and never stumbles even on the roughest ground, or
requires even a touch with a whip.

The weather is again perfect, with a cloudless sky and a hot sun, and
the snow is all off the plains and lower valleys. After lunch, the
-----s in a buggy, and I on Birdie, left Colorado Springs, crossing the
Mesa, a high hill with a table top, with a view of extraordinary
laminated rocks, LEAVES of rock a bright vermilion color, against a
background of snowy mountains, surmounted by Pike's Peak. Then we
plunged into cavernous Glen Eyrie, with its fantastic needles of
colored rock, and were entertained at General Palmer's "baronial
mansion," a perfect eyrie, the fine hall filled with buffalo, elk, and
deer heads, skins of wild animals, stuffed birds, bear robes, and
numerous Indian and other weapons and trophies. Then through a gate of
huge red rocks, we passed into the valley, called fantastically, Garden
of the Gods, in which, were I a divinity, I certainly would not choose
to dwell. Many places in this