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Show JOURNEY TO THE RIO GRANDE. 217 banks, is well stocked with mountain trout. Singularly enough, near the " Divide," on both sides are considerable fields cultivated without irrigation, there being sufficient rain when one draws near the summit and the timber! The timber causes the rain, or the rain produces the timber, or the mountains are the cause of both, or some other suf-ficient cause accounts for all three. The plainsmen don't know, and perhaps the scientists are equally wise. As soon as we pass the summit, and get on the head- waters of the Fontaine Que Bouille, we see on all the slopes immense herds of cattle and sheep. At Colorado Springs lives one man who has 13,000 sheep in this region, and I am reliably informed there are 250,000 head of stock in the system of valleys opening out on this stream. The coun-try is evidently one of the best in the world for sheep. It is high, dry, cool in summer, and not very cold in winter, with just moisture enough to produce good grass. For about fifty miles we traverse a beautiful grazing region. At the Springs we stop an hour for dinner. Here is one of the coming towns of Colorado, having a fine fertile val-ley, immense grazing area, and the noted chemical springs already a great place of fashionable resort. I am most agreeably surprised by Southern Colorado. There is very little desert, and, except the bare mountains, it appears to me a country of great natural richness. The valleys are very fertile, and most of the slopes furnish good past-, urage. At Little Buttes we change to the coach, the only passengers beside myself being Captain Humphreys, of the United States Army, his wife and servant, on their way to Fort Union. At dark we make a brief halt at Pueblo, and are off for the night ride. The first night in a coach is always worse than the second ; by that time one's sensibilities are dulled, and he can sleep, unless the pounding is harder than com-mon. We breakfast at Cocharas, an old- style Mexican hacienda, in a beautiful circular valley, seventy miles from Little Buttes. I am still fresh as at starting, and make havoc among the wheaten cakes, fried eggs, and chopped and stewed mutton, which, with coffee, constitute our breakfast called here, however, tortillas, huevos, came and cafe re-spectively. A plump and pretty senorita sits by, and gives me my first lesson in Spanish, with a pleasing variety of smiles and graceful gest-ures. Our driver for to- day is " Fat Jack," who, ten years before, lived in Cincinnati, and might have traveled as the " Original Living Skeleton." Some unnamable and wasting disease had reduced him to less than ninety pounds weight. He started West, began to im-prove, reached New Mexico, went to driving stage, and now weighs |