ITINERARY 209 



The camp consisted of five tents pitched at the edge of the 

 great pine forest, one for the Grays, one for the Stracheys, one 

 for Hooker and Dr. Lambourne, one for the cook and black man 

 and one for the mess. On the 26th they proceeded to Fort 

 Garland, a lonely post in the midst of a vast plain, garrisoned 

 by five officers and fifty soldiers. There were no Red Indians 

 left within fifty miles or more : no skirmishes save at distant 

 outposts : the chief duty that of escorting stores. In this 

 monotonous existence the travellers' visit was a most welcome 

 break, especially to the four ladies who had accompanied their 

 husbands to the Fort. From this they ascended the Sierra 

 Blanca, said to be the highest of the Rockies, 14,500 feet, a very 

 fatiguing ascent, for to pass the timber line they had to force 

 their way for five hours through thickets of aspen, then through 

 forests of pine, the fallen branches of which encumbered the 

 ground. They slept at 13,000 feet under thick blankets on the 

 ground by a huge fire very comfortably, ' though my breath 

 turned to frost all round my head.' After a day's botanising 

 on the heights, they returned to the Fort, very tired and in 

 rags, to rise at four next morning to return to La Veta, and 

 proceed beyond Colorado Springs to the neighbourhood of 

 Pike's Peak. Two days of botanising there, and they reached 

 Denver on August 1, leaving that on the 2nd for Georgetown 

 and Gray's Peak, returning on the 5th to Denver on the way 

 to Salt Lake City, two days and a night by train, for a botanical 

 excursion to the Wahsatch Mountains. Salt Lake City was 

 left on the 9th, and from Ogden, where to Hooker's great regret 

 the Stracheys went home, the arid mining region, with its 

 astounding mushroom cities, was wearily crossed. This portion 

 of the journey began with twenty-nine hours in the train to 

 Reno and Carson City ; then by Silver City and on for ten days 

 by wagon across the Sierra Nevada to the Yosemite and 

 Calaveras Groves, winding up at San Francisco. Hooker's 

 botanical work was to end with the Forest region of the Pacific 

 Coast. With his very large collection of plants and a good 

 general idea of the Flora of the whole continent from East to 

 West, it would be, he felt, a splendid achievement in Geo- 

 graphical Botany, but a very laborious one. ' I am so sick,' 



