life, but there are a few who, far from the mad- 

 ding crowd, are living happily the simple life. 

 Sincerity, hope, and repose enrich the lives of 

 those who live among the crags and pines of 

 mountain fastnesses. Many a happy evening I 

 have had with a family, or an old prospector, who 

 gave me interesting scraps of autobiography along 

 with a lodging for the night. 



The snow-fall on the mountains of Colorado is 

 very unevenly distributed, and is scattered through 

 seven months of the year. Two places only a few 

 miles apart, and separated by a mountain-range, 

 may have very different climates, and one of these 

 may have twice as much snow-fall as the other. 

 On the middle of the upper slopes of the moun- 

 tains the snow sometimes falls during seven 

 months of the year. At an altitude of eleven 

 thousand feet the annual fall amounts to eight- 

 een feet. This is several times the amount that 

 falls at an altitude of six thousand feet. In a lo- 

 cality near Crested Butte the annual fall is thirty 

 feet, and during snowy winters even fifty feet. 

 Most winter days are clear, and the climate less 

 severe than is usually imagined. 



7 



