We left Denver one bright September morning for Central City and the Mines. A stage ran daily, but wanting to travel more leisurely we went by ambulance. Across the Platte, and over the Plains again for fifteen miles, brought us to the mountains and Golden City, just within the foothills. Clear Creek dashes through the "city," a broad swift stream, furnishing fine water-power for several mills already, with plenty to spare for more. Coal, iron, lead, copper and kaolin were said to exist in the mountains adjacent, and this water-power was therefore justly esteemed very valuable. Four or five miles farther on, the mountains seem to close up--a solid rampart--before you; but suddenly the road shifts and at Gate City, through a narrow rocky cañon you again pass on. The road here follows up a diminutive mountain stream, crossing and re-crossing its bed every few yards, and by a very sinuous course slowly makes its way forward between abrupt masses of red and purple rock, that everywhere seemed to block its progress. Farther on, the hills open out, and wild currant and gooseberry-bushes appear, with pines and firs here and there--many charred by former fires. The road gets wilder the farther you proceed, and the mountain views become more and more superb. You catch glimpses of the great Snowy Range from time to time; but after awhile you cross the first range, and then you have the great white-capped Sierra almost always before you. Three peaks there are especially superb--Old Chief, Squaw and Papoose--their white and glittering summits flashing gloriously in the sunshine. Sometimes we got long views of the Snowy Range, for miles on miles; and then again, deep down in some wild gorge, its rocky sides would suddenly expand, and there would stand these three grand peaks projected against the clear sky, framed in like a picture. A right "kingly spirit throned among the hills," Old Chief seemed to be keeping watch and ward over these Rocky Mountain fastnesses in solemn and solitary grandeur; but the Yankee and the miner had been too much for him.