The crowning architectural feature of my mansion was the corner fireplace, raised of the native granite bowlders. With what care I selected the stones!--choosing those most richly encrusted with green lichens, fitting each into its place, discarding many, ranging afar for others to take their place. Chimney building is a job for an artisan, and even then much of a gamble. Imagine my delight, then, when, the last stone in place, I built a fire on my hearth, and it roared like a furnace, and all the smoke went up, and out, the chimney! Later, the eddying winds sometimes shot prankishly down it and playfully chased the smoke back into the room, but this only blackened the stones, giving my fireplace an air of antiquity. My open fire was cook stove as well as heater. I added to my camping utensils a Dutch oven, an iron pot with a heavy, deep-rimmed, tight-fitting iron lid, and a tin basin. My furnishings were complete! Long evenings I sat on the floor before my hearth, dreaming. Sometimes I read, but the windy days outdoors, tramping and climbing, left me relaxed and drowsy. I possessed, perhaps, a dozen books; among them "Treasure Island," which I read over and over, with my door bolted. My imagination gave piratical significance to the sighing of the pine trees and the scampering of the pack rats over my roof. Yes, my dream cabin was come true. There it stood on its lofty vantage, watching over me as I fared forth on my explorations, waiting faithfully for my return, never reproaching me for my absence, its snug walls always ready to welcome me like sheltering arms, its quickly blazing hearth cheering me like a warm, loving heart. So high was it perched, that I could see it, while on my excursions, from many miles away. It was a beacon to my wandering spirit, a compass and a guide to my wandering feet. From it, as my knowledge of woodcraft, which I came to know was nothing more than common sense and resourcefulness applied to outdoor living, increased, I ranged farther and farther, into the wilder, more remote regions, which, except for an occasional trapper, no other white man had ever penetrated. The country around my homestead, Long's Peak, and the adjacent mountains, which have since been made a part of Rocky Mountain National Park, is itself exceptionally high and rugged. There, in a comparatively small area, are more than sixty peaks over twelve thousand feet high, Long's, of course, being over fourteen thousand feet. As the years passed my wanderings took me along the Continental Divide, from the Wyoming line at the north to the southern boundary of Colorado.