“Those are the Rocky Mountains”--yes, and as we ride along, across the smooth, white plain, with the warm sunlight streaming down from a cloudless heaven upon us--streaming down through an atmosphere as clear as glass--as sparkling and as buoyant as any air upon the earth--as we ride along, gazing out across the great, green world and up at the blue sky, and then upon those stupendous peaks and everlasting snow-clad hills, my spirit thrills with a deep delight, and I feel a something, stranger, that you know not of. “Those are the Rocky Mountains”--yes, and oh! I was born, as it were, under the very shadow of their snow-covered heads. While yet a baby in my mother’s arms I first gazed out upon those everlasting hills. While yet a little child I used to draw mountains upon my slate. Rude sketches they were, no doubt, but how could I live and love, and yet not limn that which so much I loved? I knew not then of poet or painter’s art, nor ever dreamed that I myself should rhyme some day, and paint and write and limn with words, and tell men of my childhood’s dreams. In boyhood days how often have I lain upon the mossy river brim and gazed out, through the vistas of the leafy trees, up at those blue, bright, snow-capped peaks beyond! How often, among the warm, green meadow grass, gay with May-flowers, have I wallowed just below those rocky heights! How often, in those glad young days, have I longed to climb those dizzy cliffs and crags and towers, or to rove among those caves and rifts and dells and canons deep, to prospect there for gold and gems and fruits and blossoms rare! Oh, how I longed to cross over the range, as other boys and bearded men had done! It was there that the Indians located their “Happy Hunting Grounds,” or the “Regions of the Blest.” Over there they said it was that the good Indians went after death. I had also heard men tell of California--“a delightful, warm country,” they said, “where it is always summer, and where fruits and flowers are plentiful and can always be had just for the picking.” They said that a great, wide, blue sea, called the Pacific Ocean, rippled along the coast of that green, warm land, and that the beach of the sea was strewn with many-colored and richly-tinted shells. How I longed to visit that glorious sunset land, just over the range, but in my childish innocence I imagined it must be an almost life-long and herculean task to surmount those stupendous and lofty heights where the snows of centuries lay piled up in great banks and drifts hundreds of feet in depth. I also fancied that I could sometimes see the forms of giant warriors stalking about among those wild crags and cliffs. In my belief they were the guardian watchers of those “Happy Hunting Grounds” of the Indians. I regarded them as sentries stationed along the outposts of that blessed place, whose duty it was to turn back all adventurous travelers whom they might catch attempting to enter that terrestrial paradise of the great, wild West.