3& KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



was the information obtained from the urbane gentleman behind the office coun- 

 ter on the evening before. The hour came and so did the coach, seven passen- 

 gers, six horses and the driver. At the suburbs of the town we met the Leadville 

 coach returning — cause, bridge washed out, so they must stop over twenty-four 

 hours. Just ahead was a party of three on horseback bound for Silver Cliff. 

 They had started the night before, but ten miles up in the mountains, where a 

 bridge ought to have been was a fierce torrent and the bridge gone elsewhere, and 

 before they could turn around the road was washed out behind them, in which 

 predicament they had to camp until daylight showed them the way out of he 

 difficulty, and gave them the opportunity to get back to Canon City and get a 

 fresh start. 



Straight for the nearest mountain we have started and an opening as to 

 where we aie to get through does not show. On arriving at the base of the hill 

 a road is found graded up the side of it, and here the old stagers alight, and of 

 course I was not going to ride when the rest walked. Here was the first call I 

 had to test my " wind," and somehow or other before I was a quarter of the way 

 up the ascent, I found my lungs were entirely to small for the quantity of atmos- 

 phere required in the exertion ; but by stopping and giving them an opportunity 

 to catch up, occasionally, I gained the point of the mountain where the road 

 turns, ten minutes ahead of the coach. Such a grand, magnificent view I never 

 before gazed on. A thousand feet down, at our feet, apparently, nestled Canon 

 City, with the smoke of its hundreds of household fires curling slowly upward in 

 the sunshine of a calm, glorious morning, all surrounded with a fleecy whiteness. 

 Westwardly stretched the valley of the Arkansas with its chains of mountain sum- 

 mits guarding each side of it. Eastward were the broad, wide-spreading plains 

 of Eastern Colorado. North, Pike's Peak with its summit of ice and snow reared 

 aloft, looking so close that it appeared to be only an afternoon's walk away, 

 but on inquiry I learned it was over forty miles from us. South, was hill and 

 peak piled one against the other like the backgrounds to many pictures we have 

 all seen — these were what we had yet to go over ; up hill and down, but con- 

 tinually ascending. Thirteen miles out we stopped at the half-way house for 

 dinner. From here the conveyance I was in went on to Silver Cliff, with the other 

 six passengers, and I changed to the Rosita coach which met us at this place. 

 The half-way house comes the nearest in situation and surrounding picturesque- 

 ness to the old illustration of the No'ch in the White Mountains contained in the 

 school geography I studied when a boy, of anything tha: my imagination can 

 recall to memory. 



Climbing to the driver's seat for companionship, we started, and two miles 

 further on reached another house with a wooden sign over the porch, "Yorkville." 

 Here a mail sack was left and our four horses changed for fresh ones. Six miles 

 further we had gained the highest point of the road, and from that point to Rosita 

 it was heavy wheeling through snow three feet deep most of the time; something 

 that had not bothered us before. At this ridge, or divide, the road up Hard- 



