the technical operations are entrusted to a skillful German metallurgist. The present is a favorable time for investment. The country has not yet recovered from the recoil and revulsion caused by the earlier failures. People are cautious as they should be; and when you mention Colorado mines they are as suspicious as the mice in the fable, that a cat may be concealed in the bottom of the meal tub. A year or so longer, and people will have recovered confidence, when everything of value will be bought up for the purpose of legitimate business. Reduction works also will have been erected at all favorable points, so that rich mines now almost without value, being in the vicinity of such works, will be so much enhanced in value that the same favorable opportunities for investment will not exist. CHAPTER XIX. The time had now arrived for us to turn our faces homeward, and it was with deep regret that we yielded to the inexorable necessity. After a sound and refreshing sleep, such as can only be enjoyed in its full fruition in Colorado, on the 17th of June, I was up as usual with the dawn and out for a walk to enjoy for the last time the life inspiring breath of the morning air; to view once again the sublime and gorgeous scenery of Nature's greatest and best effort, and to feel once more the emotions of enthusiastic admiration and inspiration which alone such grandeur, sublimity, yet unadorned simplicity can en kindle. Both here and at Golden, whenever awake during the night, it was a most pleasurable sensation to be soothed and lulled to sleep again by the ever-murmuring waters as they flowed down the plain. Consequently, I seemed to be in fellowship with them, and felt a strong desire to hold communion with them whenever opportunity offered. I was therefore irresistibly drawn to their side, and on to the bridge over them, ready to muse and lose myself in day dreams. Oh, how sweet it were to spend life here, where everything speaks with such irresistible eloquence, yet soothingly and feelingly, to the eye, the heart, the mind and,the imagination! There the everlasting mountains spring up at a single bound four thousand feet, to kiss the blushing, pure and smiling skies. Grand, awful and sublime are they, with a history that human pen will never record, a mystery that the human mind will never unravel, and involving laws that human reason will never 1 unfold and explain. Yet they are as beneficent as their presence is great, majestic and imperious. From the icy fountains under their stern and snow-covered crests issue these pure, limpid waters, to gladden the valleys, refresh the parched plain, clothing the land with verdure, and filling hill and dale with joyous life. From them, ye supercilious, proud, Learn the great lesson which ye so much need, Benevolent, beneficent and kind, And scatter blessings all around the land. Ah! surely this is a place for the poet to catch new inspiration and pour forth songs on themes never attempted in verse, and where the moralist can draw ennobling lessons of instruction, and enforce them by the great sanction of Nature. Listlessly and with a heavy heart I left the bridge and sauntered down the margin of the stream, then down the lane bordered by meadows and wheat-fields, through which runs the Denver road. I felt oppressed with an indefinable sadness which I could not shake off, for in my ears seemed to be ever ringing the words, "Once more, but never again." I was at last arrested by the thrilling notes of a skylark on the fence before me. Whilst listening with wrapt attention to his song, I could not refrain from repeating the following stanzas from Shelley's address to a skylark: "What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky, or plain? What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?" "Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world would listen then, as I am listening now. " But even his cheerful, joyous and ringing notes could not break the gloomy spell that had settled on my feelings. I therefore returned to the hotel to prepare for the homeward journey. After breakfast, everything being ready, our kind Boulder friends came in troops to bid us a final farewell. The drive of twelve miles down the plain, through which flows the Boulder, by Valmont, and through the village of the same name nestled at its feet, to the then terminus of the railroad at Erie, was delightful and pleasant. The sky was perfectly transparent and of that deep azure blue of which tourists in Italy speak so enthusiastically. But in the East, as usual, over the plain hung a grayish, purplish haze. I do not know how common this haze is, but every day I was out on the Plains fifteen or twenty miles from the mountains, while in Colorado and Wyoming, I encountered it. It is a meteorologic fact which should be investigated, as it is a precursor of, and synchronous with, electric disturbances to the eastward of it. Its density also indicates the intensity of the electric disturbance. From the mountains I had noticed for several days that the haze was more than usually dense and lurid. I then predicted great electric disturbances to the eastward, and got laughed at for being so weatherwise. Yet on those very days tornadoes were raging from Galveston to Nebraska and eastward to Louisiana and Ohio. It was on one of those days, namely, the 16th of June, that the town of Eldorado, in Kansas, was totally destroyed by a tornado. That night, as we left Denver, there was a brilliant aurora, which even the dense haze could not hide, seen as far east as Ohio; and the following night, the 18th, a most brilliant aurora was seen over the whole of the northern part of the continent, I therefore renewed my predictions, not only of storms but of earthquakes. The storms extended from Central Kansas to New York, and the earthquake occurred in New Jersey and Brooklyn on the 19th, and one at Lima on same date. It is well known that in California they dread an earthquake whenever a lurid haze spreads over the sky; and the recent terrible hurricane in the West Indies and the coast of Florida, accompanied by an earthquake, was synchronous with a lurid haze that spread from Western Nebraska to Central Ohio and south into Mississippi, and with a most brilliant fiery red aurora. The record of physical phenomena occurring all over the globe, which I am keeping, shows the unvarying contemporaneousness of earthquakes, cyclones and other electrical disturbances, with auroras, lurid haziness and sunspots as far as I am able to obtain the latter. In Europe, as my record also shows, these electric disturbances are often preceded by the phenomenon of mirage. Returning now to our drive to Erie: When we had ascended the terraced plateau some four miles east of Valmont looking eastward, I saw distinctly an image, though faint, of the mountains behind us reflected in the haze. It soon vanished, and I saw it no more. I called Mr. Ephraim Pound's attention to it, (who was kindly taking us in his carriage to Erie.) I remarked, " I suppose we must call that mirage, though to do so knocks all the philosophy of the wiseacres into a 'cocked hat. They have only one explanation to give of this phenomenon, and that is, that it is caused by the refraction of light through superimposed strata of atmosphere of different densities; but this is not the refraction but reflection of light. "This mirage," said he, " is a wonderful thing. I have seen it, not faint as it is now, but as clear and distinct as if it came from a looking-glass. One day I was driving along listlessly, almost in a half dreamy state, when suddenly I raised my eyes, and my first impression was that somehow my horse had turned around and was going home again. But looking behind I saw that he was all right. I then knew it was mirage, but more distinct than I had ever seen it before. I then saw that it came as though from a looking-glass more elevated than my position; for I could see objects reflected that I could not see |