A noted citizen of Denver, who owned a large part of the Park, had reported it to us as about twenty thousand. Not that he intended to be inexact; but his imagination was naturally very vivid, and his language apt to be poetic. In purchasing property there, under an old Spanish grant, he certainly acquired any quantity of magnificent mountain, and a wide stretch of plain; but we suspected, he would wait some time before he saw his money back again. Our general ride up the San Luis Park, and so through Homan's to Poncho Pass, was unique and perfect in its way. Our route on leaving Fort Garland was first across several mountain brooks, where the trout were so abundant, that the soldiers at the fort caught them with blankets and feasted on them at will, and then directly up the Park, with the Sierra Blanca or Snowy Range towering on our right. Striking the Rio Grande, we found it alive with geese and ducks, and when we went into camp, L.--our champion sportsman--caught several noble trout, weighing from five to six pounds each. Singularly enough, the streams flowing to the Rio Grande all abound in trout, while those going to the Mississippi, we were told, all lack them. We halted two days here, attending the Indian Treaty before alluded to, and then proceeded on. At Fort Garland, we were advised to return to Denver by the same route we had come, as the season was already advancing and nobody had come through by Poncho Pass since the previous spring. Moreover, the trail was reported impracticable for ambulances, and even Kit Carson shook his head, unless we went by pack-mules. But as the pack-mules were not to be had, and we were all averse to returning over the old route, we resolved to push ahead by Poncho Pass, and get through the mountains that way, if possible. From the Treaty-Ground, our route lay nearly due north, with the snowy crest and peaks of the Sierra Blanca on our right and about parallel. Bidding our friends good-bye, we set out early (Sept. 24), with the wind dead-ahead and bitter cold. Toward noon, the weather moderated somewhat; but snow-squalls chased each other along the mountains all day, and once we counted nine in view--one careering along behind the other--at the same time. Now and then one would expand its wings, and sweep across the Park; and several times in the course of the day we were thus in the midst of real winter. The range to the west was more or less broken into foot-hills and ridges; but the Sierra Blanca to the right seemed a solid rampart, rugged, inaccessible, sublime. Its serrated crest, white with perpetual snow, rose five or six thousand feet above the level of the Park; its tree-line was distinctly marked, as with a rule; and the whole seemed so near and so gorgeous, when the sunset swallowed up the snow-squalls, that we could scarcely realize it was yet miles away. As we got farther up the Park, the soil grew thinner, and more volcanic in its origin; but we crossed several handsome streams, that