took the buggy on, glad to leave the glaring,
prosaic settlement behind. There was a most curious loneliness about
the journey up to that time. Except for the huge barrier to the right,
the boundless prairies were everywhere, and it was like being at sea
without a compass. The wheels made neither sound nor indentation as we
drove over the short, dry grass, and there was no cheerful clatter of
horses' hoofs. The sky was cloudy and the air hot and still. In one
place we passed the carcass of a mule, and a number of vultures soared
up from it, to descend again immediately. Skeletons and bones of
animals were often to be seen. A range of low, grassy hills, called
the Foot Hills, rose from the plain, featureless and monotonous, except
where streams, fed by the snows of the higher regions, had cut their
way through them. Confessedly bewildered, and more melancholy than
ever, the driver turned up one of the wildest of these entrances, and
in another hour the Foot Hills lay between us and the prairie sea, and
a higher and broken range, with pitch pines of average size, was
revealed behind them. These Foot Hills, which swell up uninterestingly
from the plains on their eastern side, on their western have the
appearance of having broken off from the next range, and the break is
abrupt, and takes the form of walls and terraces of rock of the most
brilliant color, weathered and stained by ores, and, even under the
grey sky, dazzling to the eyes. The driver thought he had understood
the directions given, but he was stupid, and once we lost some miles by
arriving at a river too rough and deep to be forded, and again we were
brought up by an impassable canyon. He grew frightened about his
horses, and said no money would ever tempt him into the mountains
again; but average intelligence would have made it all easy.

The solitude was becoming somber, when, after driving for nine hours,
and traveling at the least forty-five miles, without any sign of
fatigue on the part of the broncos, we came to a stream, by the side of
which we drove along a definite track, till we came to a sort of
tripartite valley, with a majestic crooked canyon 2,000 feet deep
opening upon it. A rushing stream roared through it, and the Rocky
Mountains, with pines scattered over them, came down upon it. A little
farther, and the canyon became utterly inaccessible. This was
exciting; here was an inner world. A rough and shaky bridge, made of
the outside