86 The Hunting Field With Horse and Hound 



one immovable, unchangeable, sombre, brown sea, — still, silent, 

 vast. It makes one feel so small, so insignificant, so isolated 

 — like an infinitesimal speck on some new and uninliabited 

 planet. It seems to subdue you, quiet you. You don't 

 feel like talking. A man cuts a very small figure in the 

 middle of a hundred acre lot. Think of setting him down in 

 a hundred thousand acre field, or shall I say a hundred milHon 

 acre field. No wonder the Westerner comes up with large 

 ideas; nothing is too big or vast for him. Broadmindedness 

 is one of his many virtues. 



Here and there, in whatever direction you cast your eyes, 

 you see detached herds of grazing cattle, sometimes a single 

 animal with miles between it and others, then bunches number- 

 ing from several dozen to as many hundred. The air there — 

 as all over Colorado — is wonderfully clear and transparent, 

 objects miles away seemed only half their real distance. One 

 could see cattle at a distance that made them look like black 

 spots the size of one's hat. What a beautiful morning it was, 

 clear and crisp as a new dollar bill. As we stood admiring 

 the view and in awe of its vastness and stillness, a lusty rooster 

 calls out, and behold to the eastward, comes the dawn of day; 

 the smaller stars go out, only the planets are left to burn. 

 Again the herald of the morning calls and straightway the 

 silver light of the east is tinged with the gold, which in turn 

 gives way to a ruddy cast. Then with more assurance still, 

 the barnyard trumpet sounds the final call. The cur- 

 tain of the morning falls aside and in a blazing car of fire 

 comes forth — the sun, the sun! "Glory and beauty of 

 the day." 



It has been said there was nothing to break the general 

 evenness of the horizon. Wrong ! like the white sails of a ship 

 at sea, whose hull is below the horizon, behold the majestic 

 snow-capped summit of Pike's Peak over a hundred miles 

 away. 



