have
made use of, so our camp was profusely and gayly decorated. Altogether
the day was well and duly celebrated, and it is marked with a white
stone in the calendar of my memory.

A COLORADO "ROUND-UP."

ALFRED TERRY BACON.

[Among picturesque scenes of American life there are few to
surpass those to be seen on the cattle ranges of the West, the
home of the cow-boy, and of a mode of life widely removed from
the quiet conditions of ordinary civilization. We append a
description of daily scenes during a cattle "drive."]

By a fortunate circumstance I first saw that pastoral pageant known in
the West as a "round-up" among the most picturesque surroundings that
could have been chosen for it even in Colorado. In the northern counties
the abrupt line of the Rocky Mountain foot-hills has nearly a
north-and-south direction. From their base the grass-country rolls away
in great brown undulations with a general downward slope towards the
east for twenty miles, to the depression in the Plains through which the
South Platte flows northward. Beyond the river the land rises again with
an easy slope for several miles. It is from the side of this rise of
ground that the superb panoramic view of the Rocky Mountain range is
seen in perfection. More than two hundred miles it stretches in sight,
from the masses vaguely seen beyond the snowy shoulders of Pike's Peak
to the lower mountains across the border of Wyoming.

At a considerable height on this slope runs a canal for irrigation, led
out from the swiftly-descending Platte some miles above. One brilliant
evening in July, a procession of wagons, each with its arched covering
of canvas tinted by the sunset light, moved up the ascent to the bank of
the ditch. The wagons were drawn up in line, about a hundred feet apart,
and in five minutes each driver had unharnessed and "hobbled" his horses
and a bright row of camp-fires were dancing in the twilight. The wagons
were late in making a camp. Usually they precede the herd by several
hours; but now close following is heard the lowing of the cattle, a
slowly swelling volume of sound, as the drove approaches. At a spot a
quarter of a mile from camp, where a level interrupts the general slope,
the herd is massed together, or, in technical phrase, "bunched," and
with the approach of darkness gradually all lie down for the night. One
by one the herders drop away to camp as the cattle grow quiet, till but
tw