rass-fringed lake of two or three acres. This pond is fed
by a quick mountain-stream of a temperature of 45 deg. Fahrenheit, and the
only outlet is nearly blocked up by a tangled network of weeds and
fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick
with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little
preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get
at the deep holes in the middle.

At breakfast next morning some one growled about the closeness of the
night air, when we were told, to our surprise, that the minimum
thermometer marked 36 deg. as the lowest night temperature. Certain it is,
the out-of-door-life changes one's feelings about what is cold and what
is not. While we were discussing this a soldier brought in a five-pound
trout taken in the lake, which so excited the fishermen that presently
there was a raft builded, and the major and Mr. T., with bare feet, were
loading their frail craft with huge trout, and, alas! securing for
themselves a painful attack of sunburn. I found all these large trout to
have fatty degeneration of the heart and liver, but no worms. They took
the fly well.

August 5th, under clear skies as usual, we struck at once into a trail
which for seventeen miles might have been a park bridle-path, a little
steeper, and in places a little boggy. Our way took us east by north
into Soda Butte Canyon, a mile wide below, and narrowing with a gradual
rise, until at Miner's Camp it is quite closely bounded by high
hillsides, the upper level of the trail being over eight thousand feet
above the sea. The ride through this irregular valley is very noble. For
a mile or two on our left rose a grand mass of basalt quite two thousand
feet in height, buttressed with bold outlying rocks and presenting very
regular basaltic columns. A few miles farther the views grew yet more
interesting, because around us rose tall ragged gray or dark mountains,
and among them gigantic forms of red, brown and yellow limestone rocks,
as brilliant as the dolomites of the Southern Tyrol. These wild
contrasts of form and color were finest about ten miles up the canyon,
where lies to the west a sombre, dark square mountain, crowned by what
it needed little fancy to believe a castle in ruins, with central keep
and far-reaching walls. On the brow of a precipice fifteen hundred feet
above us, at the end of the castle-wall, a gigantic figure in full armor
seemed to stand on