Backwards March. 345 



For four miles you plunge along, and wind through this infinite ravine, 

 overawed by the shadows and terrors that hang around you ; afraid to speak^ 

 lest God might hear your voice and answer. These visions, my friend, 

 are not fictitious, but real ! I will say no more of what I see by this back- 

 ward look into the gloom and glory of the Royal Gorge. All the rest I leave 

 to your own thought and to the hope that some time you, also, may feel the 

 overpowering grandeur of the scene, and issue to the world again, as I did, 

 with a sort of changed purpose and spirit for the rest of the journey of life. 



This side of the continental divide the traveler strikes the source of the 

 Arkansas. He journeys down that river from the crest behind him to the 

 open world beyond at the old town of Pueblo. Many things are of interest 

 here ; but one on his homeward journey hurries along. Sometimes observ- 

 ant and sometimes dreaming, he relinquishes the sight-seeing spirit, and 

 begins to take up his old threads of thought and weave them again into 

 some practical web of present and prospective action. At Pueblo a brief 

 stop gave me opportunity to look about the old camping-ground of those 

 adventurers who, first drifting from the Middle States and fetching up against 

 the mountain wall, paused for a moment ere they plunged into the unknown 

 gorges before them. I insist that man is an ambitious little animal, and his 

 enterprise, as manifested in his conflict with the tremendous forces of the 

 material world, shines out conspicuous over the apathy and inaction of other 

 forms of life. If he were not such a rascal, you might admire him much 

 and — love him a little. 



Issuing from the Rocky Mountains, the traveler feels that he is again in 

 the United States, or at least in North America. Yonder spreads the Colo- 

 rado plain, looking as broad as Texas and as innocent as Kansas. We make 

 a formal stop (alas, how few we are by this time!) at Colorado Springs, and 

 take a rest over night at the hotel called The Antlers. As matter of fact, 

 the antlers are set up over the fire-place in the lobby. Once they belonged 

 to my lord the mountain elk ; but they have been torn from his magnificent 

 head and planted against yon wall to give a name to a Rocky Mountain car- 

 avansary, in which the accommodations are first-rate and the charges fabu- 

 lous. 



My friends, tbe Hefiiings and Dr. Cobbett, do not stop— only Mr. and 

 Mrs. Anderson and myself ; and them I am to lose at Denver. One more 

 day, however, we pass together. We visit the springs, three in number- 

 White Sulphur, Soda, and Iron — in the order of your ascent of the valley. 

 And splendid springs they are, too— among the very best of their kind in 

 the world. I should think that any alleged invalid, drinking out of their 

 waters, breathing this mountain air, and regaling his vision with the snowy 

 top of Pike's Peak, only a few miles away, would have to show good reason 

 for dying ; he would, at least, be on the defensive. 



From these springs of Manitou you take a brief and pleasant drive into 

 the Garden of the Gods. This world-famous arena of silence and spectral 

 forms of rock lies between the valley where the springs are and the open 



