tenance as whiskey could give them was lowed by a straggling crowd of villagers, necessary on this melancholy occasion. moved to the grave-yard. When the When the gloom of evening began to first shovelful of earth was thrown upon close upon the scene-it was between the coffin, the wailings ceased, and absothree and four o'clock-an unusual move-lute silence ensued; and if any, forgetful ment showed that the corpse was about to be removed to its last resting-place. After a while I saw the coffin issue from the cabin, supported upon the shoulders of four stalwart men; and the wailings and prayers of the previous night recommenced as the melancholy cortége, fol

of the proper observances of such occasions, had continued their lamentations, they would have been immediately checked. As the night deepened, the mourners returned to the hearth, nevermore to be visited by the companion they had left forever.

I

VACATION ASPECTS OF COLORADO.

MET the Manitou stage one pleasant| might say that they must not be held remorning on its way from the train to the Springs and the hotels, and had several minutes' view of a number of travelworn linen dusters and expectant faces.

"To how many of those people," I asked of my very intelligent companion, "will their first impressions on alighting be of disappointment, pure and simple?"

"To at least nineteen-twentieths," was the reply of this gentleman; and he was undoubtedly quite right.

It is a misfortune to a region, great or small, to have been overpraised and too much "written up," and it is this which has happened to Colorado. In some cases people have undoubtedly, for one reason or another, said that about the country and its characteristics which they knew to be untrue or exaggerated; in others, some of those who are gifted with a keen and absorbing appreciation of its peculiar and subtle delights, and rare power in describing their own impressions thereof, have given vent to their feelings. The latter

sponsible for the deficiencies of their readers, but they have undoubtedly aided in making up that unhappy nineteen-twentieths. Of these disappointed people, again, it must clearly be said that many may, after all, find the country growing upon them; but the fact of the original disappointment is an unmistakable one.

In one of the following cases persons may be advised and encouraged to expend the time and money needful to make the journey to the Rocky Mountains, and remain long enough in the Centennial State to enable them to study it.

1. If they have present or prospective business interests.

2. If they are in ill health, and if (let the proviso be heeded) they have intelligently satisfied themselves that the probabilities are in favor of the climate proving beneficial to them.

3. If they are enthusiastic devotees of some of the sciences for the study of which there is here such a grand field.

5. If, without being altogether such lovers, they have a sincere desire to study

4. If they are genuine lovers of mount- of longitude west from Washington, they ains. had best find out their mistake. If they want the pleasures of Newport and Saratoga, by all means let them go to those well-known and charming places, and not look for such things in a State where there are probably less than two inhabitants to the square mile. And finally, if they are grumbling, discontented, imperfectly developed travellers, let them, in the name of common-sense, stay at home.

Now the Colonel and the Commodore, who are already known to these pages, had mounted their

their own great country, and may expect to experience a growing degree at least of the fascination which the very atmosphere of the far West has for some people.

If, as is often the case, one can combine two or more of these conditions, the inducement to go will be proportionately increased.

On the other hand, if people will not intelligently inquire about a possible destination, if they will delude themselves into expecting to discover paradise, or the gardens of the Hesperides, or the fountain of Ponce de Leon, between the thirty-seventh and forty-first degrees of north latitude, and the twenty-fifth and thirty-second meridians

MANITOU-PIKE'S PEAK.

ridiculous-looking burros, Montezuma and Esmeralda, and were traversing a certain cañon, when the Colonel delivered himself of the sentiments just laid down, and was going on to explain how much he himself

And so it was, for a few days saw this naval worthy restored to his accustomed spirits, and the one glass fitted to his eye with its wonted jauntiness, and his appetite as much a terror to landlords as ever. He began to show a keen appreciation of the picturesque, and it was only his antipathy to hard work which induced him to spitefully reply, when some one remarked that after his investigations among sheep owners he knew enough to carry on a sheep ranch, "I know enough not to."

Of course we went to Manitou, for every one goes thither. It is called the "Saratoga of the West"-an appellation which pleases Manitou, and does not hurt Saratoga. There are some baths and some mineral springs there; and the qualities of the latter can be learned by the curious from the pamphlet written by Dr. S. E. Solly, of Colorado Springs. The responsibilities of the place seemed to be shared by a colored brother of varied accomplishments and great command of language, and a fine specimen of the great North American hotel clerk. Wishing to realize the reproduction of the gay life of Saratoga at the foot of Pike's Peak, we asked the former about the prospects of a "hop," and his reply reminded us of the man's statement that he had a match, and if he only had a pipe and tobacco, he could have a smoke, for he exclaimed, with great enthusiasm:

"Oh yes, boss-yah, yah-dat's easy enough. We'll have lots of fus'-rate hops. Jus' you get de music an' de ladies an' gen'lemen, an' I can call de dances bully-you bet!"

The latter, with a lofty superiority, stigmatized us as "tender-feet" (Coloradoan for new-comers), but we found that he was only saying, "You're another," for his own stay in the country had been brief in the extreme. Everybody, or nearly everybody, ascends Pike's Peak, but we did not do so, because the Commodore discovered that Montezuma's spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.

Manitou is a "health resort," as are several other places in Colorado, and it

admired the country, and how it grew upon many people, even if they were not enthu-may briefly be said, and with all serioussiastic at first, when the Commodore, who was as yet unacclimated, and breathed with difficulty, and was generally out of sorts, said that he "couldn't see it." And then the Colonel quoted the Autocrat, and serenely replied, "I know that you can't, my dear Commodore; but you prove it."

ness, that the Centennial State, while it is no more of a cure-all than the patent nostrums of the period, can indeed afford blessed relief, and life itself, to many a forlorn and despairing sufferer. "Words," says the Chinese proverb, "may deceive, but the eye can not play the rogue," and

worthy and busy man at Colorado Springs. | that the climate may arrest disease with"I came here from Chicago on a mattress."

If we did not go up Pike's Peak, we did | line of Duty, rather than day-dreams— go to Cheyenne Cañon and over the Chey- away up in the Sierra Madre, 9000 feet enne Mountain "toll-road." There are above the sea-of the tropical verdure, cañons and cañons, and, especially as the and the sun-lit, dancing waves of the blue country is explored and opened up, the Pacific, and the coral reefs far off on the difference between many of them is large- equator. When we offered to pay for our ly in the matter of accessibility; but Chey- refreshments, she declined, with a kindly enne holds, on all accounts, a high place. dignity, and asked us to do something for At the level spot where one leaves his the next person whom we might find in horse or burro we found a poetical sign, need of help. and complying with the invitation thereon contained, entered a neat tent, and engaged the family who furnished the refreshments in familiar converse. They had left Massachusetts not very long ago, and the young girl who attended to the egg-boiling department seemed contented enough, and took kindly to cañon climbing; but paterfamilias, when asked if he liked Colorado better than his old home, replied, with vehemence, "Better? I rather guess not. I'd sooner live on red herrings there than stay here."

Facilis descensus-which means that the Commodore made better time down the road than up. But it was a terrible pull, and found him tired and hungry enough at the close, and it was with more than his usual cynicism that he turned to the Colonel at the hotel table and said:

66

Saratoga of the West, do you call it? How is this for an entrée-'Mush and Milk'? And I wonder who superintends the French department. Look here."

But the Colonel, remembering the old Salem merchant and the name of his ship, softly asked, "If m-e-r-a-n-g don't spell meringue, what on airth do it spell?”

As we stood at the railway station in the morning, and our colored brother saw two or three tall men between him and the trunks on the one side, and the baggagecar on the other, we heard him cry out: "Don' look so large dere, gen'lemen. Look small-yah! yah!-look small, please."

The Commodore seemed rather loath to leave this domestic scene, but when once off, he crossed and recrossed the cañon on narrow and precarious logs with the skill bred of his profession. Reaching the "seven falls," one can feel rewarded for the fatigues of the ascent, and see a striking vista of the plains, framed by the abrupt walls of the gorge. Then we ascended the remarkable toll-road constructed over the end of Cheyenne Mountain, On another pleasant afternoon our train and away up and back among the peaks. rolled slowly up the valley of the ArkanHow far it goes we failed to discover, but sas, and came to a halt at Cañon City. we had on our trip an experience worth Half an hour later we sat on a platformrecording. Stopping at a very rough log- car away up in the Grand Cañon, or Roycabin, we asked a plainly dressed woman al Gorge. Two thousand feet above us if she could give us something to eat. rose the mighty rock barriers (they call She cheerfully assented, and while prepar- them, for the benefit of tourists, and with ing, with some pleasant apologies for its a curious nicety of exaggeration, three scantiness, a meal which we thought must thousand and nineteen, but we were too have nearly exhausted her supplies, she well acquainted with the engineer). The talked to us; and it was with a curious re- train was backed into just the position alization of a strange and sharp contrast to give the Commodore the view which that we heard her quiet statement that he desired, and while he was drawing, she, with no companions but another wo- the rest of us made an attempt to atman, who had "gone berrying," and a lit-tain to some adequate conception of the tle boy, was camping there for her health, and that she was a missionary from Micronesia, resting on her long vacation journey to Illinois! Her husband was still at his post, and she had come alone all the weary distance-across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Cheyenne, and down to Colorado-and we could see the patient, enduring look in her eyes, suggesting a concentration on the straight

grandeur and majesty of those great red walls, seamed and furrowed from top to bottom. In certain places trees grew on the top, and down to the very edges of the chasm, and at intervals immense lateral gorges opened out. As we turned back, the moon appeared, and her pale light streamed down only far enough into this pathway of the mammoths to emphasize the deep shadows below. As we finally