lonely
mines on the mountain-sides; which fills the mining towns on their
highest crests, and which keeps the miners busy, whether on their
highest heights, or in the closeness of their deepest depths.

While on my way, a gentleman met me on the train, and pressed me to
stop over at Leadville, promising that he would take me down the
deepest gold mine in the place. I could not stay, even for that
approach to the presence of all-powerful gold.

I am sure that the underground view of Leadville would be better than
that which the sun looks upon. It is not an inviting-looking place. It
lies on the great top surges of the mountains, having all the bleakness
of a plain, and the rarefied atmosphere of the mountain summit, which
it really is.

It is always a weird thing to look at the scenes of early mining days
in Leadville, when the fame of the fabulous wealth therein, entered
into men's brains, with an intoxication, like that of some Oriental
drug. California Gulch looks like the dried bed of a mountain torrent.
What must it have been when every inch of it was staked out in claims,
and men, by men, close together, but widely separate in their
interests, shovelled up the dirt, and peered with eager gaze therein
for the yellow gold.

It is well to realize that even in Colorado, which is considered more a
mining than an agricultural State, the farm products, at the present
time, far outweigh in value the entire annual output of the mines. The
prosaic toil, as some may deem it, of the spade, and the plough; and
the pastoral occupation of stock-raising and dairy farming, are better
wealth-makers than the pick of the miner, or the labors of the mining
engineer.

The great day of our run through the giant attractions of the mountains
comes to a close at Pueblo, a busy railroad centre, where our track
bends to the north, and brings us at nightfall to Colorado Springs.

When we remembered all the glories of the day, the great mountain
clefts through which we passed, the roaring torrents which accompanied
us, the fantastic coloring of the rocks, and the evidences of labor and
energy which we had seen on every hand; and remembered also the untold
wealth which lay concealed, whether gold and silver, or rock oil, or
the produce of ranch and cattle range, our thoughts gathered up a
splendid impression of opulence, actual, and future.

Yet, wild and vast as it all was, we could not help thinking also, that
the nearest approach we