TWENTY YEARS IN THE ROCKIES. 30! 



and meat for the hordes of Indians dwelling on the plains. 

 Their robes were downy blankets, and could be exchanged 

 for ammunition, knives, beads, and for the gaudily woven 

 blankets of the white man. Their sinews formed the bow- 

 strings that whizzed the deadly arrows to the living mark 

 of animals or men. They were watched and guarded as the 

 white man guards and watches his costliest herds. All gone, 

 all gone, they are now things of the past. All of the wild life 

 and all of its wild nature has passed from the earth. To them 

 all I here say farewell. And farewell to the grand old 

 Rockies. 



"Farewell to the Rockies," did I say? Never. They yet 

 exist; and to them I shall never say farewell, until my eye- 

 lids, glazed by death, refuse me their sight. The grand old 

 Rockies ! with their snow-clad peaks, whose tops are lost in 

 the immensity of Heaven's own blue, where wind and storm 

 and snow, glaciers and waterfalls abound, where Indian 

 history and mythology are carved in imperishable records 

 on granite walls, where yet stands the sheep-eater's pile of 

 bones. To them I will not say farewell. Eternal in their 

 existence, the backbone of the American continent, they will 

 ever divide the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific. They 

 will still hoard up for the use of coming men the hidden 

 treasures, now concealed for uncounted centuries, treasures 

 of shining sapphires, rubies, amethysts, gold, much gold, 

 and silver, and copper, and iron. They will still send forth 

 the crystal streams of pure, life-giving water for the delec- 

 tation and refreshment of man, and that the whole land may 

 be carpeted with richest grasses, ornamented with flowers 

 of wondrous beauty, provided with a giant growth of pine, 

 hemlock, cedar, fir, aspen, willow and cottonwood. The liquid 

 streams will ever spring from solid ice fountains deep down 

 in the thousand massive glaciers of everlasting brilliancy, 

 sparkling like morning dew in the glint of the sunshine. 



