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Show 120 TALES OF THE COLORADO PIONEERS. " It was late in the afternoon when we reached Chicago Lakes. How shall I find words to fittingly express the beauty of the wide panorama of mountains that surrounded us, clad in all the latest shades, gaslight green, sage green and old gold! " We raised our voices and awoke the echoes that had rested year after year, ages, perhaps, under the finger of silence. " Some spent the next day ferreting out choice nooks and bits of scenery, that were, so far as we know, as much undiscovered as when Columbus first landed. Others made war upon the finny tribe, which took the inviting bait with accommodating alacrity. One of the lady participants in the piscatorial exercise fell in, and came sud* denly to a realizing sense of the proverbial and inevitable wetness of water. With dignified gravity we fished her out. She was a sight to make Puritans weep. We wrung her out, hung her up to dry, and considered her a good subject for a tract to frighten ' small-boys-who-go-a-fish-ing.' There was one comfort, however, no danger of taking cold, and having consumption in this climate. "We did not lose our appetites in consequence of all these mishaps, as the shockingly low state of our commissary bore witness. " When we packed up to return, we had only a bag of crackers and a jar of pickles. These were entrusted to the oldest and steadiest man in the party, for we wanted to make sure of our lunch. As we threaded our way through a rugged canon, watered by a tumbling, foaming brook, the horse bearing our commissary stores stumbled, threw the rider over his head, broke the bottle into flinders, while the bag of crackers was whirled away in the |
