standing on the highest terrace of the city, one looks westward over 

 its busy streets and crowded houses, and the green valley of the river, 

 to the foot-hills twelve miles away, the beginning of the first range of 

 the Eocky Mountains ; then up at once 9,000 feet over 25 miles of rocky 

 and pine-clad slopes and summits, to the great crest-peaks above all 

 timber, shining, if it be early summer, with fields of snow, and stretch- 

 ing out far to the north and south, a procession of sharp, bright peaks 

 130 miles long. 



This is the most eastern of the grand meridional ranges which together 

 make up the Eocky Chain. The abruptness with which it rises from the 

 plains— 9,000 feet in 20 to 25 miles— the great length and height of its ser- 

 rated crest, overlooking the sea of prairie for 201) miles, make it one of 

 the most imposing mountain-facades in the world, ar magnificent front to 

 the Eocky Mountains. Being unnamed, we have called it the Front or 

 Colorado range. Ascending this first ridge to one of its highest sum- 

 mits, Gray's Peak, still looking westward, it is at once evident that the 

 great mountain-wave, whose face is so impressive from the plain, is but 

 one of a number of parallel upheavals, with snow-capped crests, 20 to 30 

 miles apart. Between these ranges are great depressed troughs, some- 

 times developed as longitudinal river- valleys in the chahi ; sometimes 

 cut by cross-ranges of lower elevation into basins known as ''parks." 

 The general depression west of the Front Eange is divided into the 

 South, the Middle, the l^orth, and the North Platte Parks. Several sub- 

 ranges, or minor upheavals, run north-northwest across the Middle 

 Park. The South contains a number of very low ridges, while the North 

 Park is in general a i)lain. 



From Gray's Peak one looks across this trough of the " park" basins 

 at the Park Eange, so called, because it is the western wall of all 

 the great "parks" stretching along them for 240 miles. Many parts 

 of this range are capped with clusters of snowy peaks ; the Mount Lin- 

 coln group, the best known, and the Blue Eiver group, are the most 

 remarkable. 



Beyond this range only twenty miles west is the most elevated of all 

 the upheavals, the Sawatch Eange, set with a whole line of 14,000 ft. 

 peaks. The deep valley between it and the Park range is occupied by 

 the Eagle Eiver, running north in deep canons, and the Arkansas, flow- 

 ing south through valleys. Where the Arkansas turns eastward across 

 the chain, the Park range ends, and only twelve miles off to the south- 

 west commences the Sangre de Christo range, whose lofty and sharp 

 summits are everywhere visible from the plains of Southern Colorado. 

 Its southern extension is not yet determined. Between the Sangre de 

 Christo and the Sawatch is a long plain, known as the San Luis Yalley. 

 West of the Sawatch Eange, in the latitude of the South Park, are sev- 

 eral short but very elevated northwesterly lines of upheaval, so crowded 

 together as to form a group known as the Elk Mountains. It covers 

 the region between the Grand and Gunnison Elvers. North of the Grand 

 Eiver, between it and the White, is a very high escarped plateau, sepa- 

 rated from the Park Eange by a long depression, the northern extension 

 of that of the Eagle and Arkansas Eivers. 



From these, the most elevated features of the Eocky Chain, high 

 table-lands slope west to the great basin of Green Eiver, which, in a suc- 

 cession of remarkable plateaus, extends from the mouth of the San 

 Juan Eiver 400 miles northward, its western side bounded by the 

 Wasatch chain of mountains. 



We see, therefore, that in crossing the Eocky Chain in Colorado from 

 the plains westward, one generally finds in the first one hundred miles, 



