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Show 482 WESTERN WILDS. tends the main dividing range of the Rocky Mountains, now spotted dull gray and dazzling white by alternations of bare rock and gulches filled with snow. But the day, though beautiful and mild, is too hazy for us to see the Holy Cross. This is formed by two enormous rifts in the mountain side near the summit, crossing each other at right angles, and never bare of snow. The two white lines form an exact Greek cross, which glitters in the sunlight of a bright day, being thrown into bold relief by the dark gray face of the mountain. From our standpoint we look down a thousand feet upon summits, which, from Georgetown, seem so high as almost to be lost in the clouds. But the greatest sight is to the eastward. For a hundred miles out from the base of the mountains the plains seem to rise, and the blue line which marks the visible horizon appears just on a level with our eyes. But the plains there are at least seven thousand feet lower than our location. This phenomenon I have often observed from commanding positions in the mountains, and can understand the statement of aeronauts, that as they rise the region directly under them seems to sink slowly into a basin, while the surrounding country re-mains on a level with them. The area we can thus survey with one quick glance now contains at least fifteen thousand miners and twice as many citizens and agri-culturists. In the year 1861 the site of central Georgetown was an immense beaver dam, the largest in this part of the Rocky Mount-ains, and known to trappers and Indians all over the country. Even now, on some of the lowest lots in town, the effects of beaver work can be seen ; and the rich, mucky soil on the common shows that it was the bed of their pond for long series of years. The first pros-pectors who pitched their tent on Clear Creek amused themselves on many a moonlight evening by watching the beavers play. Then the mountain sheep crowded these glades in hundreds, and for months the early settlers had no other meat. The black- tailed deer came in about the season when mutton was scarce. The brown bear, and more rarely the grizzly, lived in the timber below us. Even now traces of these animals are met with frequently among the hills. Then, instead of the miner's cabin, or the mouth of shaft or tunnel, one might have seen the unscarred face of nature ; and in place of pack- trains laden with ore, or miners toiling up the steep trails, a band of Utes moving through the mountain passes, and sallying out upon the plains to at-tack their hereditary enemies, the Sioux and Arapahoes. Surely there was as much beauty in these scenes then as now. And yet how sel-dom the white men who saw this country, cultivated and intelligent as |