178 
NOTES ON AN AMERICAN TOUR. 
are something like small light-brown rabbits, but give a 
sharp little bark like a dog, and on that account have the 
name of prairie dogs. 
An adventure at one station in this part gave an amusing 
picture of American travelling in this thinly populated 
prairie country. A carriage was seen driving across the open 
prairie towards the station at which the train had stopped, 
but still at a great distance ; and some passengers in the 
train told the conductor they were sure it was someone 
known to them who was wanting to catch the train (it must 
be remembered there is only one through passenger train 
per day on the line). The train was actually kept a quarter 
of an hour stopping for the purpose, when up drove a carriage 
and pair of horses, and out jumped a gentleman and lady 
and caught the train before it was started; they told us they 
had driven twenty-five miles in 2J hours across the open 
prairie to catch the train, and were going on to California. 
There was hardly anyone else to get in or out of the train at 
the station, and the town consisted of little more than a 
dozen houses or huts, without an object in view but some 
cattle, to the extreme horizon, except some very distant 
mountain outlines with snow caps. 
The first sight of snow mountains was Pikes Peak, which 
is 14,000 feet high, and was seen from Las Animas Station, 
at about 150 miles distance. The clearness of the air was 
wonderful; the mountains looked only twenty or thirty miles 
distant, so bright and clearly defined with the snow seen 
lying upon them, and the light and shade of the cliffs. Such 
lovely perfection of atmosphere and weather, glorious bright 
warm sunshine, and light summer clouds with beautiful 
effects of brilliant light and colour, and the whole tempered 
by soft cool breezes from the great elevation of the prairie, 
which is 5,000 to 6,000 feet above sea level. Then getting 
into the Kocky Mountain district, at Alamosa, the level is 
7,000 feet above sea, and there the railway is carried over 
the great La Yeta Pass 9,000 feet above the -sea, and 
afterwards passed near the grand snow-capped mountains, 
“ Spanish Peaks, ’ which are 18,000 feet high (as much as 
the Jungfrau and its neighbours) ; lovely objects they were, 
two grand peaks of dazzling whiteness with their snow caps 
standing out in the clear atmosphere, so that the cliffs and 
ravines could be plainly distinguished, though about twenty 
miles distant. This atmosphere is the great charm of the 
country, so exhilarating and free ; it seems another sensation 
of life altogether. 
