Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III. The Garden of the Clods. trains run out of Denver like quick-silver, — this is the prettiest thing I can say of Denver, They trickle down into high, green valleys, under the shadow of snow-capped cliffs. There the grass is of the liveliest tint — a kind of salad-green. The air is sweet and fine; everything looks clean, well kept, well swept — perhaps the wind is the keeper and the sweeper. All along the way there is a very striking contrast of color in rock, meadows, and sky; the whole is as appetizing to the sight as a newly varnished picture. We didn't down brakes until we reached Colorado Springs; there we changed cars for Manitou. Already the castellated rocks were filling us with childish delight. Fungi decked the cliff s above us: colossal, petrified fungi, painted Indian fashion. At any rate, there is a kind of wild, out- of-door, subdued harmony in the rocktints upon the exterior slopes of the famed G-arden of the Gods, quite in keeping with the spirit of the decorative red-man. Within that garden color and form run riot, and Manitou is the restful outpost of this erratic wilderness. It is fitting that Manitou should be approached in a rather primitive manner. I was glad when we were very politely invited to get out of the train and walk a plank over a puddle that for a moment submerged the track; glad when we were advised to foot it over a trestle-bridge that sagged in the swift current of a swollen stream; and gladder still when our locomotive began to puff and blow and slaken its pace as we climbed up into the mouth of a ravine fragrant with the warm scents of summer—albeit we could boast but a solitary brace of cars, and these small ones, and not overcrowded at that. Only think of it! We were scarcely three hours by rail from Denver; and yet h... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.