driving, we managed to steer between boulders, and get the ambulance into the neighborhood of the springs, accompanied by several gentlemen on horseback.

The springs no doubt originally bubbled up from the bed of the river, but immense depositions of Glauber's-salts, or sulphates of lime and soda, have raised the principal fountains ten feet above the creek level, and they now rise in basins at the top of immense masses of this incrustation, standing perpendicularly out of the stream.

The Glauber's-salt taste of the waters is agreeably modified by a stream of carbonic acid, which jets up through the middle of the basin, keeping them constantly in a state of violent ebullition to the height of two or three inches. There are two of the main springs on the south side, and one on the north of the stream. The last is the most pungent. There are also along the base of the south bank, higher up, a number of small and comparatively quiet springs, one of which is an inky chalybeate, and the other a white sulphur. The alkali of the larger springs is evidently undersaturated with acid. We made as good lemonsoda water as I ever tasted, by filling in the liveliest part of the main spring, and corking up instantly a bottle, which we had previously charged with half a pint of lemon syrup and half a table-spoonful of tartaric acid. The water which we bottled without any mixture, and took back to the El Paso with us by way of experiment, resembled Congress water when opened an hour or two after, though lacking the saline flavor. The northern and more pungent spring somewhat reminded me of Vichy, and the chalybeate was rather like Pyrmont.

These springs are very highly estimated among the settlers of this region for their virtues in the cure of rheumatism, all cutaneous diseases, and the special class for which the practitioner's sole dependence has hitherto been mercury. When Colorado becomes a populous State, the springs of the Fontaine qui Bouille will constitute its spa. In air and scenery no more glorious summer residence could be imagined. The Coloradian of the future, astonishing the echoes of the Rocky foot-hills by a railroad from Denver to the Springs, and running down on Saturday to stop over Sunday with his family, will have little cause to envy us Easterners our Saratoga as he paces up and down the piazza of the Spa Hotel, mingling his full-flavored Havana with that lovely air, quite unbreathed before, which is floating down upon him from the snow-peaks of the range.

Leaving the springs of the Fontaine qui Bouille, we rode to a spot about two miles northward of Colorado City, which is called "The Garden of the Gods." This fanciful name is due to the curious forms assumed by red and white sedimentary strata which have been upheaved to a perfect perpendicular on a narrow plain at the base of the foot-hills, with summits worn by the action of wind and weather into their present statuesque appearance. There is not much garden to justify the title; but it would not be difficult to imagine some of the curious rock-masses petrified gods of the old Scandinavian mythology. These masses, upon their east and west faces, are nearly tabular. Some of them reach a height of four hundred feet, with the proportions of a flat grave-stone. Two of the loftier ones make a fine portal to the gateway of the garden. Their red is

intenser than that of any of the sandstones I am acquainted with, in a bright sun seeming almost like carnelian. A rock of similar look and type which I have omitted to mention on the way from Denver, was at least four miles away, yet made as clear and conspicuous a blot of red against the mountain-side as if it had been laid on with a heavily charged paint-brush. This, from some fancied resemblance, was called "Church" or "Brick Church" Rock.

These "gods" rise abruptly out of perfectly level ground. The right hand or northern warder of the gateway is more wedge-shaped than tabular, and contains within it a cavern, which we penetrated with some difficulty by a small aperture opening near the base of the western side. Twelve feet of prostrate squeezing brought us into a vault about fifty feet long, ten feet high, and a dozen wide. We lighted our candles, but there was not much to see. The walls of the hollow were damp; but there was no dripping water, and of course, in a gritty rock like this, there were no stalactites or secondary formations of any kind. One of the other red rocks resembles a statue of Liberty standing by her escutcheon, with the usual Phrygian cap on her head. Still another is surmounted by two figures which it requires very little poetry, at the proper distance from them, to imagine a dolphin and an eagle aspecting each other across a field gules. The spinecracking curve of the dolphin, and his nice, impossibly fluted mouth would have delighted any of the old bronze-workers. Quentin Matsys would have used him for a model in some civic fountain. The eagle, too, was quite striking. Together, we regarded these animals as the emblems of our national supremacy

over field and flood, and named them The American Arms. Another rock resembles a pilgrim (poetical, not Plains' variety) pressing forward with a staff in his hand; another is supposed to look exactly like a griffin. Indeed, from the right point of view one feels that a griffin must very probably look thus, though the difficulty of comparing it with an original specimen prevents absolute certainty.

It was a great disappointment to some of our kind friends that our artist did not choose the Garden of the Gods for a "big picture." It was such an interesting place in nature that they could not understand its unavailability for art. Everywhere we went during our journey, we found the same ideas prevailing, and had to be on our guard against enthusiasms, lest we should waste time in getting at the "most magnificent scenery in the world" to find some solitary castle-rock or weird simulation of another kind, which, however impressive it might be outdoors, was absolutely incommunicable by paint and canvas, when the attempt to convey it, being simply the imitation of an imitation, must have looked either like a very poor castle, or a mountain put up by an association of stone-masons. But the artist's selective faculty is not to be looked for among practical men.

The morning after our visit to the god-patch, we bade good-by to our friends at Colorado City, and once more turned our ambulance, now considerably heavier by a rich collection of specimens, in the direction of Denver. Instead of keeping near the outer edge of that field of giant grave-stones between which we had picked our avenue on the way down, we followed the Fontaine qui Bouille up to its effervescent springs, took a last deep draught of the

champagne which Nature keeps there endlessly on tap, and, steering inward, passed the gods in final, quick review.

Just as we got to the gateway of the Garden of the Gods, one of our ambulance horses broke his whiffletree by a sudden start. His excuse was an alarm from a gun fired by a gentleman of our party at one of the numerous hares which we encountered in the furze about the Garden. He and the gentleman magnanimously divided the inconvenience of the accident; the one riding and the other letting himself be ridden down to Colorado City for a new spar.

We were not sorry for an excuse to linger beyond our intention in one of the most interesting spots of the Continent. In politeness to us, that portion of the expedition represented by the buck-board also halted. Pierce geologized, and the artist sketched. Judge Hall found sufficient employment in the mere act of admiration; expressing himself with an enthusiasm in regard to the gods, which assured me that they were gods indeed, being no respecters of persons, else had they risen and bowed to the Chief Justice of the Territory. The other member of our party went hare-hunting with good success, using the gun which the gentleman in search of the whiffletree had left behind him, a state of things which has its high moral illustration in the history of virtue from Hogarth down to the last Sunday-school book, or herein, where the bad little boy, who fires in an original style out of the coach, has to go away from the hares, and get a whiffletree, while the good little boy, who was careful not to fire till he could do it under the most proper circumstances, stays behind, and shoots a great many hares with the bad little