Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/264

 with newspapers. Edwards, with his wife and family, were still believed to be here. A heavy snowstorm was expected, and all the sky—that vast dome which spans the plains—was overcast; but over the mountains it was a deep, still, sad blue, into which snowy peaks rose sunlighted. It was a lonely, mournful-looking morning, but when I reached the beautiful canyon of the St. Vrain, the sad blue became brilliant, and the sun warm and scintillating. Ah, how beautiful and incomparable the ride up here is, infinitely more beautiful than the much-vaunted parts I have seen elsewhere. There is, first, this beautiful hill-girdled valley of fair savannahs, through which the bright St. Vrain curves in and out amidst a tangle of cotton-wood and withered clematis and Virginia creeper, which two months ago made the valley gay with their scarlet and gold. Then the canyon, with its fantastically-stained walls; then the long ascent through sweeping foothills to the gates of rock at a height of 9000 feet; then the wildest and most wonderful scenery for twenty miles, in which you cross thirteen ranges from 9000 to 11,000 feet high, pass through countless canyons and gulches, cross thirteen dark fords, and finally descend, through M'Ginn's Gulch, upon this, the gem of the Rocky Mountains. It was a weird ride. I got on very slowly. The road is a hard one for any horse, specially for a heavily-loaded one, and at the end of several weeks