veral skunks, some chipmunks and gray
squirrels, owls, crows, and crested blue-jays. As the sun was getting
low I reached Bergens Park, which was to put me out of conceit with
Estes Park. Never! It is long and featureless, and its immediate
surroundings are mean. It reminded me in itself of some dismal
Highland strath--Glenshee, possibly. I looked at it with special
interest, as it was the place at which Miss Kingsley had suggested that
I might remain. The evening was glorious, and the distant views were
very fine. A stream fringed with cotton-wood runs through the park;
low ranges come down upon it. The south end is completely closed up,
but at a considerable distance, by the great mass of Pike's Peak, while
far beyond the other end are peaks and towers, wonderful in blue and
violet in the lovely evening, and beyond these, sharply defined against
the clear green sky, was the serrated ridge of the Snowy Range, said to
be 200 miles away. Bergens Park had been bought by Dr. Bell, of
London, but its present occupant is Mr. Thornton, an English gentleman,
who has a worthy married Englishman as his manager. Mr. Thornton is
building a good house, and purposes to build other cabins, with the
intention of making the park a resort for strangers. I thought of the
blue hollow lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak, and rejoiced
that I had "happened into it."

The cabin is long, low, mud roofed, and very dark. The middle place is
full of raw meat, fowls, and gear. One end, almost dark, contains the
cooking-stove, milk, crockery, a long deal table, two benches, and some
wooden stools; the other end houses the English manager or partner, his
wife, and three children, another cooking-stove, gear of all kinds, and
sacks of beans and flour. They put up a sheet for a partition, and
made me a shake-down on the gravel floor of this room. Ten hired men
sat down to meals with us. It was all very rough, dark, and
comfortless, but Mr. T., who is not only a gentleman by birth, but an
M.A. of Cambridge, seems to like it. Much in this way (a little
smoother if a lady is in the case) every man must begin life here.
Seven large dogs--three of them with cats upon their backs--are usually
warming themselves at the fire.

TWIN ROCK, SOUTH FORK OF THE PLATTE, November 1.

I did not leave Mr. Thornton's till ten, because of the slipperiness.
I rode four miles along a back trail, and then was so tired that I
stayed for two hours