_Aug_. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the Platte Valley five miles to Slaight's, through a very picturesque region. Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the mail-stage coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at a gallop: we were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which they did in a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the long-bearded, red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight's, with two houses and some fields of oats. Then eight miles to Heffron's, at the forks of the river, where there are a post-office and one house. Two miles beyond we stopped to feed our horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest of sugar pines. This species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern States, with the same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches. Many of them had been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner bark, which is a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in these mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and color of _Tetrao cupido_, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the bushes at the roadside the mountain-rabbit (_Lepus artemisia_), which from its large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron's we continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we got the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin, some hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high mountains. The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be seen the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray's Peak, Pike's Peak, Mount Lincoln, and Other Titans, without muse or name. The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the mines in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to which a stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.