ins, which I had been recommended to make my starting point for the
mountains.

FORT COLLINS, September 10.

It gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains. Plains,
plains everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere rolling in
long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had fallen asleep.
They are covered thinly with buff grass, the withered stalks of
flowers, Spanish bayonet, and a small beehive-shaped cactus. One could
gallop all over them.

They are peopled with large villages of what are called prairie dogs,
because they utter a short, sharp bark, but the dogs are, in reality,
marmots. We passed numbers of villages, which are composed of raised
circular orifices, about eighteen inches in diameter, with sloping
passages leading downwards for five or six feet. Hundreds of these
burrows are placed together. On nearly every rim a small furry
reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs, looking, so far as head went,
much like a young seal. These creatures were acting as sentinels, and
sunning themselves. As we passed, each gave a warning yelp, shook its
tail, and, with a ludicrous flourish of its hind legs, dived into its
hole. The appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each eighteen
inches long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down and all
turned sunwards, is most grotesque. The Wish-ton-Wish has few enemies,
and is a most prolific animal. From its enormous increase and the
energy and extent of its burrowing operations, one can fancy that in
the course of years the prairies will be seriously injured, as it
honeycombs the ground, and renders it unsafe for horses. The burrows
seem usually to be shared by owls, and many of the people insist that a
rattlesnake is also an inmate, but I hope for the sake of the harmless,
cheery little prairie dog, that this unwelcome fellowship is a myth.

After running on a down grade for some time, five distinct ranges of
mountains, one above another, a lurid blue against a lurid sky,
upheaved themselves above the prairie sea. An American railway car,
hot, stuffy and full of chewing, spitting Yankees, was not an ideal way
of approaching this range which had early impressed itself upon my
imagination. Still, it was truly grand, although it was sixty miles
off, and we were looking at it from a platform 5,000 feet in height.
As I write I am only twenty-five miles from them, and they are
gradually gaining possession of me.

I can look at and F