THE PARADISE OF WILD-FLOWEES. 53 



dance, and beside them many other flowers. 

 Beginning at noon, I counted twenty-seven vari- 

 eties, so near the track that I could distinguish 

 them as we rushed past. 



The Santa Fe road enters Colorado in a pecu- 

 liarly desolate region. Flowers and birds appear 

 to have stayed behind in Kansas, and no green 

 thing shows its head, excepting one dismal-look- 

 ing bush, which serves only to accentuate the 

 poverty of the soil. As we go on, the mud is 

 replaced by sand and stones, from gravel up 

 to big bowlders, and flowers begin to struggle 

 up through the unpromising ground. 



Nothing is more surprising than the amazing 

 profusion of wild-flowers which this apparently 

 ungenial soil produces. Of a certainty, if Colo- 

 rado is not the paradise of wild-flowers, it is 

 incomparably richer in them than any State 

 east of the Mississippi River and north of 

 "Mason and Dixon's Line." To begin with, 

 there is a marvelous variety. Since I have 

 taken note of them, from about the 10th of 

 June till nearly the same date in July, I have 

 found in my daily walk of not more than a mile 

 or two, each time from one to seven new kinds. 

 A few days I have found seven, many times I 

 have brought home four, and never has a day 

 passed without at least one I had not seen be- 

 fore. That will average, at a low estimate, 



