indignant, and said he could have forgiven him any adjective but that. If Matthew Arnold travelled from Pittsburg to St. Louis, from St. Louis to Corpus Christi, and from Corpus Christi back through Texas to the Indian Territory, he not only has my sympathy, but I admire him as a descriptive writer. For those who find the level farm lands of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and the ranches of upper Texas, and the cactus of Southern Texas, and the rolling prairie of the Indian Territory interesting, should travel from Liverpool to London on either line they please to select, and they will understand the Englishman’s discontent. Hundreds of miles of level mud and snow followed by a hot and sandy soil and uncultivated farm lands are not as interesting as hedges of hawthorn or glimpses of the Thames or ivy-covered country-houses in parks of oak. The soldiers who guard this land, the Indians who are being crowded out of it, and the cowboys who gallop over it and around their army of cattle, _are_ interesting, but they do not stand at the railroad stations to be photographed and to exhibit their peculiar characteristics. [Illustration: WITHIN THE GATES, GARDEN OF THE GODS] But after one leaves these different States and rides between the mountain ranges of Colorado, he commits a sin if he does not sit day and night by the car-window. It is best to say this as it shows the other side of the shield. You may, while travelling in the West, enjoy the picturesque excitement of being held up by train robbers, but you are in much more constant danger of being held up by commercial travellers and native Western men, who demand that you stand and deliver your name, your past history, your business, and your excuse for being where you are. Neither did I find the West teeming with “characters.” I heard of them, and indeed the stories of this or that pioneer or desperado are really the most vivid and most interesting memories I have of the trip. But these men have been crowded out, or have become rich and respectably commonplace, or have been shot, as the case may be. I met the men who had lynched them or who remembered them, but not the men themselves. They no longer overrun the country; they disappeared with the buffalo, and the West is glad of it, but it is disappointing to the visitor. The men I met were men of business, who would rather talk of the new court-house with the lines of the sod still showing around it than of the Indian fights and the killing of the bad men of earlier days when there was no court-house, and when the vigilance committee was a necessary evil. These were “well-posted” and “well-informed” citizens, and if there is one being I dread and fly from, it is a well-posted citizen. [Illustration: POLO ABOVE THE SNOW-LINE AT COLORADO SPRINGS]