50 



there is plenty of sublimity in sceneswhere heights of 12,000, 13,000, and 

 14,000 feet count by scores, anil vast amphitheaters and deep gorges are 

 on every hand, they are not precisely picturesque in the proper sense; 

 they are not manageable into pictures. Those who have seen both, 

 give the preference in this respect to the Sierra Nevada over the Colo- 

 rado Mountains. Especially the great volcanic peaks of the western 

 coast, raising their majestic isolated cones from a low base, are more 

 powerfully impressive than ranges where lines of peaks and crests of 

 immense but equal altitude ascend from bases already at 7,000 to 10,000 

 feet. There are few summits in Colorado which are lifted more than 

 0,000 feet above their immediate surroundings. The barrenness of 

 these mountains, too, as regards both white snow and green vegetation, 

 in the mass, detracts from their effectiveness. 



Almost everywhere the snow lies in summer only in lines and patches, 

 which, though of no small absolute dimensions, are petty as compared 

 with the great mountain -masses. The only marked exception this 

 summer (when the snow was much less, to be sure, than the average) 

 was the eastern amphitheater of one of the great peaks of the Elk Moun- 

 tains, where there is an unbroken sheet a full mile wide, and covering 

 half a mile of downward slope. Ihis does not appear among the views 

 taken; the survey were able to approach the mountain only from the 

 rear. Even here, of course, is no glacier; the snow reaches the valley 

 below only as water, after collecting in one of those intensely green 

 lakes which dot the high slopes of these mountains, as of the Alps; 

 the combined beauty and grandeur of the Swiss ice-rivers is altogether 

 wanting. At the same time the evidences of former glacial action on 

 an immense scale are abundant and striking, and views of them are 

 among the most valuable of Mr. Jackson's pictures. There is, for 

 example, the picture (taken from 1,.">0() feet above it) of the great 

 glacier-trough leading down from the Holy Cross Mountain, and filled 

 for miles with roches montonnSes on the grandest scale — sheep-backs up 

 to 50 feet high and hundreds of feet long, all rounded and smoothed, 

 and crowding one another so closely as to be almost impassable. The 

 nearer views, taken from amid these ridges themselves, and showing 

 the fallen timber with which the. spaces between them an' filled, give 

 a lively sense of the delights of traveling among them. One of the 

 most striking pictures of the series is that of this Holy Cross Mountain 

 itself, with its white cross, 1,.~>00 feet long, on its front. It was to 

 gain this view that the party (as mentioned in our October number 

 above, p. 200) had to climb all day, with 50 pounds of apparatus on 

 each man's back, and then to spend the night near the summit, without, 

 food or shelter. Other important glacial views are those of the great 

 moraines at the eastern base of the National Range, along the Arkansas 

 Valley. The most remarkable of them, stretching out from the mouth 

 of the regular and deeply penetrating valley of Clear Creek, are two 

 or three miles long ami 700 feet high, and from the opposite heights 

 seem as regular as railway embankments. The Twin Lakes, a few 

 miles farther up the valley, the lovely situation and beauty of which 

 are well illustrated by a series of views, are. themselves also interest- 

 ing results of glacial action, nestled between vast moraines in front 

 and vaster mountains behind. Even the narrow bar that separates them 

 is but a terminal moraine, dropped across their basin b,\ a freak of the 

 retreating glacier. 



In the three more easterly ranges there is great uniformity of ma- 

 terial ; almost everything is granite and gneiss; and the variety is that 

 of eroded form. In the National Range, especially, there is not a trace 



