preserved many of the ideals of civilized life, who took a number of papers and magazines, had a good library, and was successfully toiling to make himself a picturesque and comfortable home.

A couple of miles beyond Sprague's, the rocks, which had been menacing us on the right, withdrew further west, and left a long sloping embankment next us, crowned by another of those remarkable geological freaks which I have before mentioned. On the plateau of the embankment, and not far from its edge, stood Windsor Castle.

The resemblance was astonishing. Towers, battlements, imposing façade, proportions, all were remarkably imitated. If the bareness about it had been broken up by fine old trees, and the royal colors had floated over the flag-staff turret, one might have been compelled to think twice before asserting that this was not the palace of the Old World transported bodily by magic to America. The structure stood so abruptly perpendicular out of the table-land, was so entirely unsupported and unexplained, that it was almost impossible to imagine it a mere mass of Rocky Mountain conglomerate or sandstone. Our road ran within half a mile of it, and at that distance little fancy was necessary to discern regular rows of windows, stately door-ways, and all other details requisite for completing the realization. It is very difficult to get any idea from an engraving of the impression produced by these castellated formations of the West. If the picture makes its mimicry as strong as the formation has it, it is apt to look less like a good picture of the formation than a bad picture of the architecture or sculpture imitated.

The divide continued tolerably level for about ten

miles further, flanked on our right by a series of lofty undulations, crested with pine and fir, leading into the Rocky Mountain foot-hills. An occasional spot of more brilliant yellow on their amber slopes below the tree-line betrayed an antelope grazing in the sunshine; but otherwise the loneliness of the view was intense. An everlasting Sabbath bathed the silent brown mountains, climbing range on range to the far glittering snow. They were like the stairs of heaven after the last soul had ascended out of earth. Not the faintest cry of bird or hum of insect broke the stillness of the shining hills next us. It was so strange to look southward over placid fields, yellow with noon, and be sure that, in all that great receding stretch, man was a wanderer, a guest, and not a master; to think, as some deep gorge caught our eye, far up the range, what an unknown region lay there, virgin to man's tread; that it might be ages ere its quiet were disturbed; and that this was but one small spot among myriads as mysterious and inaccessible. The mountains seemed hopelessly apart from us, like the glories we try to grasp in a dream; yet this very hopelessness gave them all a dream's grandeur, and made them seem rather great thoughts than great things. To see the Rocky Mountains in bright sunlight, to drink from the vast, voiceless happiness which they seem set there to embody, is one of the strangest mixtures of pleasure and pain in all scenery.

On one of the rolling hills of the divide we stopped to get what we considered the finest view of Pike's Peak, obtained during our trip. We stopped our horses for an hour at the foot of the hill, and ascended on foot to enjoy the sight, while our artist took his box from the buck-board and made a color study.

In the midst of this virgin solitude, Nature kept repeating fantastic freaks of sculpture and of architecture, as if she were diverting herself with trifles from the strain of that mighty mood in which she brought forth the mountains. The strangeness of effect produced by coming suddenly on ruined temples or Moorish summer-houses in that untamed solitude, and against that tremendous background, is quite indescribable. You thought you were in the most untrodden wild of a late discovered continent; but here is Luxor, here Palmyra, here the Parthenon, Nineveh, and Baalbec. In one place the tawny columns of the ruin were arranged at regular intervals around an oblong; a well defined, though broken pediment, rested on the front row; and about the bases of the entire columns lay splintered shafts and shattered capitals. There was such unity in the design, and such a wonderfully natural posture in the ruins of this structure, that at the moment of first sight, its character absolutely posed one. Further on, a charming little country-house was nestled in just the nook an artist would have chosen, an indentation of the hill-side, under the shadow of some fine evergreens. But the main architecture was all templar or monumental, as if Nature, even in her play, had not quite got down to the secular level from her mountain inspiration. But, though religious, she was still catholic in her taste, and moulded in Athenian or Egyptian, Gothic or Syrian, styles with equal largeness of appreciation. In these conglomerate structures. I saw models belonging to the art of almost every country and time.

About noon we came to a small trickling rill, which was the first water flowing to the Arkansas from the grand divide. It was an affluent of the Monument

Creek, which we were to intersect later in the afternoon. It was a miserable little rivulet. Any Eastern gutter would have leaked a healthier one, on an ordinary drizzly day. But water is precious in this almost rainless region; and even this poor rill has a family dependent upon it,-a family which takes in travellers too. There is a small log-house here, with a board over the door, on which, in rude black letters, appears the inscription, "P. Garlick." One of our company was anxious to know if P stood for Pill; as in such case it was an appropriate place for that noted party to live. The actual Mr. Garlick was not aware of any member of his family with that Christian name. He himself was a kindly dispositioned man of forty, who had edged over into Colorado from his native Virginia, taking Missouri on the way, and adding a sort of Pike flavor to his original chivalry. It was surprising to see either Pike or Virginia in such good flesh as he. He weighed about two hundred, though in height not much over five feet six. He was apparently contented with his lot, and complained of nothing except a pair of frozen feet, which had left him badly maimed the past winter. It required an easy soul to put up with that cabin, in the absence of any energetic soul to mend it. It seemed miserably dilapidated, had broken floors or none at all, was chinked by numerous yawning crevices, and in the winter must have been about as much shelter as a good picket-fence. Still, in this house a family of two grown people and their children were satisfied to spend their lives. I found it easy to tell, in all our journey through the wilds, which of the cabins were settled from the Free, and which from the Slave States.

Perhaps, in justice to the present occupants of the

cabin, I ought to mention that they have struggled under one great disadvantage. We have noticed in the case of Richardson's place how plain-spoken Coloradian nomenclature is when intended to be complimentary; but it no more hesitates to tell the uncomplimentary facts of a case. During the occupancy of Mr. P. Garlick's predecessors, this cabin got the name of "the Dirty Woman's Ranch." I fear that the multitudinous seas, aided by what little water Mr. P. Garlick can bring to the task, will not wash clean the reputation of that ranch.

If it were possible for a Virginian Pike to be as neat as a Connecticut housewife, Mr. P. Garlick could not redeem the reputation of the Dirty Woman's Ranch. What's in a name? Dreadful things! I heard one Coloradian say to another, "Did you see the Dirty Woman?" and the other answered, "No; she isn't at the Dirty Woman's Ranch any more." What an acknowledgment of the hopelessness of Mr. Garlick's job! The ranch is still the Dirty Woman's, though the Dirty Woman has left forever. I was interested to see the Dirty Woman as a geographical landmark; but my nearest approach to such a view was when a Colorado City friend showed me a very respectable looking young woman on horseback, with the words, "That's the Dirty Woman's daughter." I think she must have been an improvement on the first generation, which was said to have licked the milkpans, stirred people's tea with an unwashed finger, and deserved the inseparable soubriquet mentioned, in multitudinous other ways too unpleasant to chronicle. Mr. P. Garlick seemed to be aware of the name of his ranch, referring to the circumstances with a subdued air, as if he had once entertained hard feel