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Show COLORADO 469 to Salt Lake City. From Denver to Cheyenne the mixed train jogged along all one bright autumn day : to our left the blue mountains, the broad plains to our right; sometimes over flats almost as level as the sea, sometimes through gently rolling val-leys, and more rarely along the course of creeks long since dried up. On the level the plains present that uniform gray- brown ap-pearance which is natural to them at this season; but on some of the slopes and in all the little valleys were narrow strips of rich green, and a soil looking as if it might be made productive. As we progressed broad lakes continually appeared, shone for a few moments or for hours, then passed out of sight; sometimes to the eastward but oftener straight ahead, the hills beyond beautifully re-flected from their mirror like surfaces. But as the train bore down towards 1 them they shifted again and again ; sometimes moving off upon the eastern plain, sometimes keeping the same distance ahead, and yet again rising slowly into the air till lost in the clouds. But of real honest water, there was not a drop, for where there is enough of that to make humid the atmosphere the mirage is rarely seen. These were the " lying waters" of which Spanish explorers tell, and which, before they were so well known, lured many a voya-geur from his course and to his death. As the country is settled it is remarked that this mirage is more and more rare; but the best time and place to see it is on the dry plains of California, of a hot afternoon in August. An hour we stopped at Greeley, the noted " Yankee Settlement," now the center of a rich and well cultivated tract. The shade trees early planted by the colonists already relieve the monotony of the plains ; the dark mountains furnish a splendid background, and in ten years more this town will rival in rural beauty the nicest New England village. Soon after we passed the " Wyoming line ; but a year after I returned, for further travels in Colorado. The summary in the next chapter is from notes and careful study during both visits. |