Colorado Springs, forty-five miles from Pueblo, is nearly 6000 feet above the level of the sea. The character of the line to it is best described in the fact that the average grade per mile is 44·14, the maximum curvature 6°. There are "no Springs" here, but the little town, charmingly situated, is a halting-place much frequented in tourist-time by travellers, and reputed to be healthful. There are some pleasant houses visible from the station, at which we descended to take our places in the carriages provided to take us to Manitou Springs, five miles away. Mr. Palmer--if General, I beg his pardon--the President of the Railroad, had important business to attend to, but he was so well represented by Mr. Bell, the Vice-President, that no one regretted his absence, and it cannot be said in his case _les absents ont toujours tort_. He is reported to have made a very large fortune with much ingenuity, and to have business talents which even in this country excite admiration. Mr. Bell is an Irish gentleman, a member of the medical profession, who has a delightful villa embowered in a garden in the environs of Manitou, where the Duke and his friends found a charming interior and an Irish-American welcome, and discovered that strawberries and cream were almost as good in Colorado as in Covent Garden. A quaint, odd place, Manitou--an American Martigny, with Pike's Peak rising (14,300 feet above the sea) over it in the clear sky, inspiring regret that we could not make the excursion to the summit, which is rewarded, we were told, and I can believe, by one of the grandest views in the world--the usual service of guides, horses, and mules, and _calèches_--a naturalist's store with skins, minerals, feathers, and stuffed "objects"--detached wooden houses and villas in small plots of garden--a straggling street, and large hotels for invalids. But there was the unusual feature of encampments here and there by the roadside, and notices forbidding the pitching of tents within certain limits which were explained by the fact that the high reputation of the waters and air induces people to come from great distances for the treatment of consumption, and diseases of throat and lungs. Many of them find it cheaper to travel in horse waggons and pitch their canvas dwellings when they wish to make a halt, than to take up their quarters at hotels. Poor people! what pale, hectic cheeks and wasted forms we saw; little groups picnicking by the sides of the rivulets along the roads--each with a gnawing care--anxiety about some dear one's health in the midst of them. Our driver, an intelligent, chatty lad, was full of information, and we had to drive the prescribed road by the wells out to the Ute Pass, a mountain-gorge wild enough--a small _Tête Noire_--to points to which magniloquent names have been given.