672 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1877, 



Salt Lake, August 8. 



I have yours of the 30tli July, and I return in- 

 closure. Write hereafter to the Palace Hotel, San 

 Francisco. 



I trust, and expect, that the strike days are over, 

 and that you wiU severely punish the ringleaders.^ 

 Glad you have had nice weather ; but you have no air 

 like that of Colorado and Utah. . . . 



Well, much as we miss and want you, yet we 

 should have hurried you too much. We want to go 

 over a good deal of ground cursorily, rather than a 

 little thoroughly and leisurely. 



I do not write you about the oaks at Canon City, 

 because we had nothing new to say. We agree with 

 you in the complete running together of the oaks 

 down to Undulata. There is one very large-leaved 

 state, looking very difEerent ; but it is mostly on fast- 

 growing shoots, and no doubt is a state of the " Q. 

 alba, var." of Torrey. " Alba " indeed ! But we did 

 not find the entire-leaved form at the canon, and 

 Brandegee said it occurred only at the mouth of the 

 canon, and near the city. 



From Caiion City we — Mrs. Gray, Hayden, and I 

 — went in one day south to La Veta by rail, and the 

 next day, toward evening, up to La Veta Pass, 10,300 

 feet, and over and 300 feet or so lower, where we 

 camped, nice tents having been provided by Fort 

 Lyon en route, and other furnishings from Fort Gar- 

 land. Abies concolor abounded, though there was 

 more of A. Menziesii (Picea pungens) and Pinus 

 contorta, and a good amount of P. aristata and P. 

 flexilis. The A. Menziesii at that elevation is less 

 prickly, sometimes almost as soft as A. Douglasii to 



1 The bad railroad strikes of the summer of 1877. 



