views, first of the magnificent panorama of mountains which lies to the
northwest of Denver, sixty miles away, with Long's Peak in the middle, and
after crossing the crest of the "Divide," where a blue little lake rimmed
with wild-flowers sparkled in the sun, of the more southern ranges. After
a while they found themselves running parallel to a mountain chain of
strange and beautiful forms, green almost to the top, and intersected with
deep ravines and cliffs which the conductor informed them were "canyons."
They seemed quite near at hand, for their bases sank into low rounded
hills covered with woods, these melted into undulating table-lands, and
those again into a narrow strip of park-like plain across which ran the
track. Flowers innumerable grew on this plain, mixed with grass of a tawny
brown-green. There were cactuses, red and yellow, scarlet and white
gillias, tall spikes of yucca in full bloom, and masses of a superb white
poppy with an orange-brown centre, whose blue-green foliage was prickly
like that of the thistle. Here and there on the higher uplands appeared
strange rock shapes of red and pink and pale yellow, which looked like
castles with towers and pinnacles, or like primitive fortifications.
Clover thought it all strangely beautiful, but Mrs. Watson found fault
with it as "queer."

"It looks unnatural, somehow," she objected; "not a bit like the East. Red
never was a favorite color of mine. Ellen had a magenta bonnet once, and
it always worried--But Henry liked it, so of course--People can't see
things the same way. Now the green hat she had winter before last
was--Don't you think those mountains are dreadfully bright and distinct? I
don't like such high-colored rocks. Even the green looks red, somehow. I
like soft, hazy mountains like Blue Hill and Wachusett. Ellen spent a
summer up at Princeton once. It was when little Cynthia had
diphtheria--she's named after me, you know, and Henry he thought--But I
don't like the staring kind like these; and somehow those buildings, which