d not cash my
circular notes. The financial straits are very serious, and the
unreasoning panic which has set in makes them worse. The present state
of matters is--nobody has any money, so nothing is worth anything. The
result to me is that, nolens volens, I must go up to Estes Park, where
I can live without ready money, and remain there till things change for
the better. It does not seem a very hard fate! Long's Peak rises in
purple gloom, and I long for the cool air and unfettered life of the
solitary blue hollow at its base.

ESTES PARK, November 20.

Would that three notes of admiration were all I need give to my grand,
solitary, uplifted, sublime, remote, beast-haunted lair, which seems
more indescribable than ever; but you will wish to know how I have
sped, and I wish you to know my present singular circumstances. I left
Longmount at eight on Saturday morning, rather heavily loaded, for in
addition to my own luggage I was asked to carry the mail-bag, which was
heavy with newspapers. Edwards, with his wife and family, were still
believed to be here. A heavy snow-storm was expected, and all the
sky--that vast dome which spans the Plains--was overcast; but over the
mountains it was a deep, still, sad blue, into which snowy peaks rose
sunlighted. It was a lonely, mournful-looking morning, but when I
reached the beautiful canyon of the St. Vrain, the sad blue became
brilliant, and the sun warm and scintillating. Ah, how beautiful and
incomparable the ride up here is, infinitely more beautiful than the
much-vaunted parts I have seen elsewhere.

There is, first, this beautiful hill-girdled valley of fair savannas,
through which the bright St. Vrain curves in and out amidst a tangle of
cotton-wood and withered clematis and Virginia creeper, which two
months ago made the valley gay with their scarlet and gold. Then the
canyon, with its fantastically-stained walls; then the long ascent
through sweeping foot hills to the gates of rock at a height of 9,000
feet; then the wildest and most wonderful scenery for twenty miles, in
which you cross thirteen ranges from 9,000 to 11,000 feet high, pass
through countless canyons and gulches, cross thirteen dark fords, and
finally descend, through M'Ginn's Gulch, upon this, the gem of the
Rocky Mountains. It was a weird ride. I got on very slowly. The road
is a hard one for any horse, specially for a heavily-loaded one, and at
the end of several weeks of severe trave