icide
I Think When I Stand in the Presence of Death
Hope
Metabole

List of Illustrations.

Portrait of Author
"Grandeur"
Mount Wilson
Mountain View in San Juan
Scene in Ouray
Uncompahgre Canon
Mountain Scene in San Juan
Emerald Lake
Scene near Telluride
Bridal Veil Falls
Lizard Head
Trout Lake
Box Canon Looking Inward
Ouray, Colorado
Box Canon Looking Outward
Ironton Park
Bear Creek Falls

[Illustration: "A Wilderness of weird fantastic shapes."]

PREFACE

_"Of making many books there is no end."--Eccles. 12:12._

When the above words were written by Solomon, King of Israel, about
three thousand years ago, they were possibly inspired by the existence
even at that early period of an extensive and probably overweighted
literature.

The same literary conditions are as true to-day as when the above truism
emanated from that most wonderful of all human intellects. Every age and
generation, as well as every changing religious or political condition,
has brought with it its own peculiar and essentially differing current
literature, which, as a rule, continued a brief season, and then
vanished, perishing with the age and conditions which called it into
being; leaving, however, an occasional volume, masterpiece, or even
quotation, to become classic, and in the form of standard literature
survive for generations, and in many instances for ages.

Poetry has always occupied a unique position in literature; and though
from a pecuniary stand-point usually unprofitable, it enjoys the decided
advantage of longevity.

The mysterious ages of antiquity have bequeathed to all succeeding time
several of earth's noblest epics, while the contemporaneous prose, if
any existed, has long lain buried in the inscrutable archives of the
remote past.

The two most notable of these, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are believed
to have been transmitted from generation to generation, orally, by the
minstrels and minnisingers, until the introduction or inception of the
Greek alphabet, when they were reduced to parchment, and, surviving all
the vicissitudes of time and sequent political and religious change,
still occupy a prominent place in literature.

The Book of Job, generally accepted as the most ancient of writings, now
extant, whether sacred or secular, was doubtless originally a primitive
though sublime poetical effusion.

The prose works contemporaneous with Chaucer, Spencer, and even with
that most won