Backwards March. 349 



its conclusion. I liave witnessed two really glorious sundowns in ray life. 

 Once, of an October evening, on the crest of Walnut Hills, back of Cincin- 

 nati, when the natural haze of the autumnal atmosphere had blended in 

 perfect harmony with the dust and smoke of the city below, I watched the 

 orb of day sink to his rest as to a death-bed of infinite glory. Great bars of 

 light flashed out from his setting to the very zenith of heaven, diverging 

 from the focus of t^plendor over all the western sky. The radiating bands 

 of light were of amethyst and vermilion and purple and gold. Nor could 

 any feeble expressions of human speech convey to another an adequate idea 

 of the beauty and sublimity of the scene. 



How totally different, in all of its characteristics, is this magnificent 

 sunset behind the Denver mountains! Here, everything is as clear as 

 crystal. The air is fairly lustrous in its transparency. You have no pre- 

 monition of the coming eclipse. The last moments before the sundown are 

 as bright with day as high noon itself. You are bowling along on the plain 

 toward the city, five miles away, but distinctly visible in all its outlines. All 

 of a sudden, a great shadow, stretching from left to right, overtakes you, 

 more swift than the flight of eagle's wing or passage of sailing cloud. The 

 shadow-line rushes ahead across the plain, swallowing everything into the 

 duskiness of an instantaneous twilight. I halt the carriage, and watch with 

 intense interest to see the obscuration of Denver. 



Swiftly the line of darkness sweeps on, and suddenly the spires and 

 roofs change from glitter and sheen into the half oblivion of coming night. 

 ^Farther and still farther the great shadow floats over the plain, until it 

 reaches the horizon, and all is dark. In process of time an evening shall 

 come for you and me, O my fellow travelers, when a shadow like that 

 shall oversweep the evening landscape, and the whole world, instead of 

 one peopled plain, shall pass from our vision into the mystery of eclipse 

 and the curtain of friendly darkness. May that sundown of life find us 

 all in peace, and wrap us in the drapery of a happy slumber ! 



Here, then, with the great wall of the Rocky Mountains behind us, I 

 take leave of Colorado and her principal city. The flying train is ready 

 to receive us and bear us away to the Kansas line, and thence through the 

 longer diameter of that State, to our place of starting. I still say " our," for 

 the associations of the past sixty days bring back the now well-known faces 

 of a hundred friends; and they, too, seem journeying across these limitless 

 plains of Western Kansas to the place of our departure. 



It is a twenty-four hours' ride from Denver to Kansas City. Approach- 

 ing the eastern limits of the State, I meet old acquaintances, former college 

 boys, who step on and off" at the stations. They are no longer boys, but in 

 full estate of manhood, and are making themselves felt in developing this 

 great commonwealth, where the battle of freedom was begun, full thirty 

 years ago. 



I notice, as the day wears apace, that we come by easy descent into the 

 lower levels of the Missouri river valley. Presently you perceive that a 



