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Show 572 WESTERN WILDS. up on the other side, the sight is sufficient to give some people the vertigo. At last we reach the Royal Gorge, which is over a mile in length, and is, indeed, only an enormous tunnel two thousand feet under the solid rock, with a slight crack opened to the sky - and sun-light above. The canon walls above the stream recede from each other for one thousand feet, then slowly approach to within thirty- five feet, making an enormous curve like the two sides of a (). Since the above was written the railroad has forced its way through this chasm. The original surveys were made while the stream was frozen over; then workmen were lowered from above and a foot-hold blasted out of the cliif, and then rock masses of hundreds of tons were blown out with dynamite and tumbled into the river bed. May 7th, 1879, the first passenger train passed through the gorge, and then came a lawsuit! The merits of the case need not be discussed, but the company whose energy opened the way was not permitted to enjoy it. After a tedious suit, and riots and seizures which amounted to civil war, the courts, early in 1880, gave judgment for the Denver and Rio Grande Railway Company ; and in April of that year, on payment of construction costs, that company took possession of the line. It at once hurried on the work and completed the road to Leadville that summer. And now the traveler may reach Leadville or Silver Cliff* in the most comfortable of passenger cars. But we had to stage it, and, in the early morning of February 18th, took seat in one of Barlow and Sanderson's coaches, paying $ 14.00 fare, or about eleven cents, a mile, for the one hundred and twenty-six miles to Leadville. The morning was stinging cold, and the ice and snow forbade all enjoyment of scenery. All we note is a bewil-dering succession of mountain, valley, and timbered slope; the coach laboring away from the Arkansas and uphill for hours, and then com-ing thundering down to it again wherever the valley was broad enough for a road, till we reached Bayles's Ranche, where we . concluded to stop for the night. At Cleora, a station on our line, coaches start on branch lines for Ouray and Saguache. N. B. They spell this name right, but pro-nounce it Sowahchay ! But it's all the same in Spanish. By the same diabolical process of lingual gymnastics they write the name of the junction where the New Mexican branch of the railway starts, La Junta, and call it Lah Hoontay. So, too, they call San Juan, San Wahn; Juanita, Wahneeta; Albuquerque, Albookairkay ; and San Luis, San Looeece. They will even laugh at a pilgrim who pronounces them as they are spelled. But it ' s a way they have out |