THE PLAINS AND COLORADO 113 



it was largely due to their accounts of the trip that 

 I determined to go there in 1878. 



Through the liberality of a number of trustees 

 and friends of the college a fund was provided 

 which enabled me to undertake the proposed 

 expedition. On this journey, as on many subse- 

 quent ones, I was accompanied by Mrs. Scott, and 

 we shared together the pleasure of visiting an 

 unfamiliar country. 



Railroad travel was much slower in those days, 

 so we had a very fair look at the plains crossing 

 Kansas and eastern Colorado. This region from 

 central Kansas west was at the time a great un- 

 broken plain, and had not yet been invaded by 

 the vast cattle ranches and sheep runs which have 

 since made it famous, and which in turn have 

 given place to practical agriculture. 



Few travellers realize in crossing the United 

 States the steady ascent coincident with the 

 journey from the Missouri River to the eastern 

 edge of the Rocky Mountains, say at Denver. 

 It seems as if one were travelling over a vast flat 

 plain, which is only here and there broken by 

 undulations of so inappreciable a character as to 

 be included in the whole, and yet the rise in this 

 five hundred miles is very considerable ; for when 

 the city of Denver is reached the traveller is already 

 at an altitude of some five thousand feet above 

 the level of the sea. Beyond towers the great wall, 



