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Show 22 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS. minious defeat. They returned to their camp almost famished, and with their feet frozen; thereby, possibly, adding to the vernacular of the West the term "tenderfoot." Their mistake in the distance, caused by the rarified atmosphere, probably originated the story of the two men who started to walk to the mountains from Denver before breakfast. After tramping what seemed to them an unconscionable distance, one suggested to the other to proceed slowly, while he returned to Denver for a carriage. When overtaken by the friend, in the carriage, the pedestrian was sitting on the bank of a clear running brook, scarcely more than a step in breadth, deliberately taking off his clothes. On being asked why he did not stef across, he replied: "I've got the dead-wood on this thing now; you don't catch me making a fool of myself by trying to straddle this stream. It looks but a step, but it may be a mile for all I know; so I shall just take off my clothes and prepare for swimming." Every one who has ever heard of Colorado or set foot in it tells that story. But to return to Pike. He did not take to himself the credit of* being the first explorer of Western Louisiana, but accords the honor to one James Pursley, of Bards-town, Ky. Pursley, with amazing generosity, credits it to Pike. The politeness of these gentlemen is without a parallel in history. Had they known the importance the country was destined to assume, half a century later, it would, no doubt, have taken coffee and pistols to decide the question of precedence. Pike subsequently indulged quite heavily in a kind of appropriation peculiar to the West, called "land-grabbing." He crossed the Sangre de Cristo Range into the |