The road was gradually drawing nearer to the foot-hills. Instead of a hundred miles of unbroken mountain-range, from Long’s to Pike’s Peak, that seemed to rise abruptly from the plain only an hour’s walk away, I began to be aware of the magnificent distances so strangely disguised in that clear, rarefied air, and to appreciate altitudes by comparison with lesser heights. The view lost in extent, only to gain in the grander outlines of splendid detail. And with the nearer view there grew clear the marvellous coloring in the exposed strata and the fantastic shapes which mark the play of erosion among the rocks. There were deep saffrons and reds of every hue, from a delicate flush to crimson; there were browns and grays without number, and a soft cream color deepening to yellow, and now and then a jut of rock that in certain lights appeared milk-white. To boundless variety in color was added a weird charm of form with which the imagination could play endlessly. Sitting a rugged bowlder with the dainty poise of an egg upon a conjurer’s finger would appear a round-bellied Hindu god in solid stone, and near him, in exquisitely delicate tracery, a flying buttress or the tapering spire of a cathedral, while crowning some sheer height in all the glory of gorgeous color would rise the grim towers and battlements of a mediæval fortress. It was after nightfall on Saturday evening when I entered Colorado Springs. With the aid of the electric lights I soon gathered an impression of a considerable town of large hotels and wide, regular thoroughfares, with the squares built up, many of them, in detached villas, after the manner of Eastern summer-resorts by the sea. In the course of a walk about the town I came upon an empty prairie schooner, which stood in a cluster of trees on the outskirts of an open square, and creeping under the sheltering canopy I slept there for the night.