Once more our eyes were rejoiced with the sight of the lovely plains of Las Vegas, wide-spreading fields decked with flowers and dotted with flocks, bordered with ranges of softly contoured mountains, the courses of the water streams indicated by bright vegetation and by growth of trees of many kinds. From Lamy (170 miles) there is a gradual rise to Raton, which we reached at 6.30 in the evening. The appearance of the region we traverse as the train approaches the Raton Pass presents a strong contrast to the desolate country through which we have been passing. From Raton the train was drawn by two engines in front and shoved by one behind, and even then the pace was not very rapid, for the ascent is very sharp. All the more could we enjoy a very glorious sunset, as we slowly ascended the mountain. Then darkness came on rapidly, and we slid down towards La Junta into the night, and were all fast asleep long before we arrived there. In the very early morning, on June 15th, some two hours after midnight, we halted for a time at Pueblo. At 9 o'clock we had to leave our beloved Pullman and change the cars, for we were to take a fresh point of departure, starting from the Union Depôt upon the Denver and Rio Grande narrow-gauge railway for Denver, 119 miles distant, and making an excursion on the way to Manitou, to which we diverged from Colorado Springs: for to go within reach of that famous resort and not to see it would have been a great outrage on all the rules and regulations established for the observance of travellers. Certes narrow-gauge railways need an apology. Their _raison d'être_ is, at the best, that they are better than nothing. "If you won't have us, you can have nothing else." And in such a mountainous region as we were about to visit, the difficulties and expense connected with a broad-gauge line would have been enormous, if indeed it could be constructed at all. The narrow-gauge carriages, with seats to match, with which we were made acquainted for the first time, were of course much less commodious and comfortable than those we had quitted, but far superior to those on the Indian lines of the same gauge, and Indian engineers had been over to take a lesson from the Americans for the use of their carriage-builders. Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Company and Denver and Rio Grande Company have been at daggers drawn and pistols cocked--ay, and fired--and at battles waged, in times gone by; and now our friends on the former line were, like ourselves, the guests of the latter, which was represented by several official gentlemen anxious to do the honours to the Duke. The scenery becomes grander and wilder every mile as the special hurries on as well as it can over the sinuous line, which is piercing a mountain region savage and sterile, and climbing by the sides of ravines and creeping upwards in rocky valleys with pine-clad hill-tops and frowning cliffs above. The engineer who designed the line is a Scotchman named