neighborhood are also vulgarized by
grotesque names. From this we passed into a ravine, down which the
Fountain River rushed, and there I left my friends with regret, and
rode into this chill and solemn gorge, from which the mountains,
reddening in the sunset, are only seen afar off. I put Birdie up at a
stable, and as there was no place to put myself up but this huge hotel,
I came here to have a last taste of luxury. They charge six dollars a
day in the season, but it is now half-price; and instead of four
hundred fashionable guests there are only fifteen, most of whom are
speaking in the weak, rapid accents of consumption, and are coughing
their hearts out. There are seven medicinal springs. It is strange to
have the luxuries of life in my room. It will be only the fourth night
in Colorado that I have slept on anything better than hay or straw. I
am glad that there are so few inns. As it is, I get a good deal of
insight into the homes and modes of living of the settlers.

BERGENS PARK, October 31.

This cabin was so dark, and I so sleepy last night, that I could not
write; but the frost during the night has been very severe, and I am
detained until the bright, hot sun melts the ice and renders traveling
safe. I left the great Manitou at ten yesterday. Birdie, who was
loose in the stable, came trotting down the middle of it when she saw
me for her sugar and biscuits. No nails could be got, and her shoe was
hanging by two, which doomed me to a foot's pace and the dismal clink
of a loose shoe for three hours. There was not a cloud on the bright
blue sky the whole day, and though it froze hard in the shade, it was
summer heat in the sun. The mineral fountains were sparkling in their
basins and sending up their full perennial jets but the snow-clad,
pine-skirted mountains frowned and darkened over the Ute Pass as I
entered it to ascend it for twenty miles. A narrow pass it is, with
barely room for the torrent and the wagon road which has been blasted
out of its steep sides. All the time I was in sight of the Fountain
River, brighter than any stream, because it tumbles over rose-red
granite, rocky or disintegrated, a truly fair stream, cutting and
forcing its way through hard rocks, under arches of alabaster ice,
through fringes of crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in
cavernous recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with
rush and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing