All of those dry uplands, where I used to pasture my cows, are now covered in season with wavy fields of wheat, maize and alfalfa--meadows, orchards and blooming garden plats. Where the Indian wigwam smoked but a few brief summers gone by, lordly mansions and pleasant homes are standing to-day. But the humble structure in which I was born has not been torn down yet. It stands on the west bank of the Platte River, near Littleton, and in Denver’s beautiful suburb, Wynetka. My parents, who still live at the old homestead, but now in a large and comfortable farm-house, have preserved the little old log cabin as a relic of bygone days.--_Written Jan. 20, 1890._ _MY NATIVE LAKES_ Of those silent pools, far remote in that wild Western land--the land of my nativity--I am dreaming to-day. Away out there, where the old, shining Rocky Mountains seem to reach off to the ends of the world, where the great plains stretch away in boundless undulations of wavy greenery, as far as the eye can see--there Colorado’s lakes rest in eternal calm. In other times--bright boyhood days, now forever flown--mounted on a shaggy broncho, with gun in hand, and followed by a long-legged, one-eyed hound, I have often driven my cattle there to drink. Again, in light canoe, with double-bladed oar, I have glided for hours along the scarcely rippled tide, chasing the diver-ducks and the blue coots so tame, or trying random shots at the mallard-ducks and wary teal that flew nearly out of range, high up overhead. Now and then a lucky shot would bring me down a great white pelican or a blue crane. Yet more often I would kill a brant or a Canadian goose. Beyond the lake a tiny cascade could be seen, pouring down its silvery flood from the lofty, snow-capped heights above. At the mountain’s foot the foamy tide fell into a little pool, and there, after forming itself into a little brook, it ran off flashing in the sunlight, across green meadows, beside leafy groves, and along flowery banks, until at last it found its way down to the great, blue, laughing lake, where it lost itself in the silent tide. At the mouth of the stream, and just beside the wood, stood an Indian village--the white tepees of which could be plainly seen, peeping out from among the green glades and leaves of the trees. The red Indian, too, was often in sight, for he loved to loiter along those pleasant shores. Many times have I met him angling patiently along the banks of the small stream. At other times I have watched him for hours chasing the wild herds of the plain. The fallow-deer, the “prong-horn,” the bison and the elk he called his “cattle,” and he claimed them as his own.