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 travel. When I had ridden fifteen miles I
stopped at the ranch where people usually get food, but it was
empty, and the next was also deserted. So I was compelled to go
to the last house, where two young men are "baching."
There I had to decide between getting a meal for myself or a feed
for the pony; but the young man, on hearing of my sore poverty,
trusted me "till next time." His house, for order and neatness,
and a sort of sprightliness of cleanliness - the comfort of
cleanliness without its severity - is a pattern to all women,
while the clear eyes and manly self-respect which the habit of
total abstinence gives in this country are a pattern to all men.
He cooked me a splendid dinner, with good tea. After dinner I
opened the mail-bag, and was delighted to find an accumulation of
letters from you; but I sat much too long there, forgetting that
I had twenty miles to ride, which could hardly be done in less
than six hours. It was then brilliant. I had not realized the
magnificence of that ride when I took it before, but the pony was
tired, and I could not hurry her, and the distance seemed
interminable, as after every range I crossed another range. Then
came a region of deep, dark, densely-wooded gulches, only a few
feet wide, and many fords, and from their cold depths I saw the
last sunlight fade from the brows of precipices 4,000 feet high.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 113 of 144
Words from 58587 to 59098
of 74789
