72 7^ THE EOCKY MOUNTAINS. 



the brook Shining Water, in seven tremendous 

 leaps, each more lovely than the last, and reached 

 at bottom a deep stone bowl, which flung it out 

 in a shower of spray forbidding near approach, 

 and keeping the rocks forever wet. 



The morning walk was up the road, in the 

 grateful shade of the trees, between the cool 

 rocks, beside the impetuous brook. This last 

 was an ever fresh source of interest and pleas- 

 ure, for nothing differs more widely from an 

 Eastern brook than its Western namesake. The 

 terms we apply to our mountain rivulets do not 

 at all describe a body of water on its way down 

 a Rocky Mountain valley. It does not murmur, 

 it roars and brawls ; it cannot ripple, it 

 rages and foams about the bowlders that lie in 

 its path. The name of a Colorado mountain 

 stream, the Roaring Fork, exactly character- 

 izes it. 



One warm morning in June, a small party 

 from the camp set out for a walk up the road. 

 By easy stages, resting here and there 011 con- 

 venient rocks, beguiled at every step by some- 

 thing more beautiful just ahead, they pen- 

 etrated to the end of the canon. Of that 

 party I was one, and it was my first visit. I 

 was alternately in raptures over the richness of 

 color, the glowing red standstone against the 

 violet-blue sky, and thrilled by the grandeur 



