probably from something suggestive in the forms of the rocks, which
reminded Clover of pictures she had seen of Assyrian and Egyptian rock
carvings. There were lion shapes and bull shapes like the rudely chiselled
gods of some heathen worship; there were slender, points and obelisks
three hundred feet high; and something suggesting a cat-faced deity, and
queer similitudes of crocodiles and apes,--all in the strange orange and
red and pale yellow formations of the region. It was a wonderful rather
than a beautiful place; but the day was spent very happily under those
mysterious stones, which, as the long afternoon shadows gathered over the
plain, and the sky glowed with sunset crimson which seemed like a
reflection from the rocks themselves, became more mysterious still. Of the
merry young party which made up the picnic, seven out of nine had come to
Colorado for health; but no one would have guessed it, they seemed so well
and so full of the enjoyment of life. Altogether, it was a day to be
marked; not with a white stone,--that would not have seemed appropriate to
Colorado,--but with a red one. Clover, writing about it afterward to
Elsie, felt that her descriptions to sober stay-at-homes might easily
sound overdrawn and exaggerated, and wound up her letter thus:--

"Perhaps you think that I am romancing; but I am not a bit.
Every word I say is perfectly true, only I have not made the
colors half bright or the things half beautiful enough. Colorado
is the most beautiful place in the world. [N.B.--Clover had seen
but a limited portion of the world so far.] I only wish you
could all come out to observe for yourselves that I am not
fibbing, though it sounds like it!"