100 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



appreciation of his finenesses might shame many a professor 

 of literature. 



Fred, detailed by the colonel, was away early into the 

 hills through which we came yesterday, to aid in the search 

 for the missing man. Jay and William followed, intent on 

 both man and elk hunting, as also Art and Counter still 

 later. 



This was a gloriously clear day, warm at mid-day, the hill- 

 side clay under the sun and melting snow, which at this lower 

 level was not more than three inches deep, developing a quality 

 of slip and slide of the nth degree of lubricity. Though he would 

 rather have been without doors the artist bound himself to his 

 conceived duty, that of record of the sunset splendor, quietly 

 glowing in gold over a violet snow plain, observed the evening 

 before. 



The evening of this day was no less splendid, and the play 

 of rose light on the shoulders and bosses of the hills to the south- 

 east, their hollows toned with pure cobalt, under a goldenly 

 green sky, on whose lower border piled low, rose-glowing cumulus 

 clouds, beneath long streamers of violet-gray cirrus, was unspeak- 

 ably beautiful, viewed from the hillside above the house. The 

 band of distant firs next succeeding the hills toward the fore- 

 ground, showed in the evening light a deep greenish blue. Next 

 them lay a broad strip of sage, luminously green gray, almost 

 as the sky, but of a deeper tone. Then came a broad band of 

 willow bush marking the course of the hidden stream, deep red 

 violet, with a hint of orange here and there. Immediately be- 

 low lay a patch of snow-covered prairie, pale orange gold in the 

 last sun, with the long-lying shadows of a near haystack clear 

 violet upon it, changing as the sun left it to pale blue violet, 

 as the rose light mentioned came upon the hills far beyond. In 

 the extreme east, lay a low, long bank of cumulus clouds in rose 

 and violet, and in the west, floating bars of brilliant gold in a 

 green-gold sky above the violet blue bulk of the mountains made 

 one to feel the futility of words. 



A boulder upon the hillside, its sides embroidered with the 

 lichen that had wrought its slow patterning a thousand centuries 

 before man ever set foot in this valley — in looking upon it, its 

 sides riven with the slow process of summer heat, fall rain and 



