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five months old. This place has sprung up like magic. The father and projector of this colony is Mr. Meeker, for many years the agricultural editor of the New York Tribune. This town is a marvel of industry and enterprise, established and managed on eastern principles. No liquor saloons are allowed in the places, which so scandalizes the rough Coloradans in that region that as one of these outsiders expressed himself to me, they are “down on the d—d Republican puritanical fanatics.” However, their heads are level, they mind their own business, ask no favors of their rough neighbors, and are going straight forward on the road to prosperity and wealth. If Greeley meets with no setback it bids fair in a few years to outstrip even Denver in population.
At Cheyenne we strike the Union Pacific line, and here commences the ascent of the great mountain range, the backbone of this continent. A steep up-grade for fifty miles brings us to Sherman—named after the tallest general in the service—the highest point on the whole route to the Pacific, and perhaps on any railway in the world. We are new 8,212 feet above the sea, nearly half a mile higher than the summit of Mount Washington. The extreme lightness of the atmosphere tries our lungs as we draw in long breaths of the pure mountain air. Active exercise is here very difficult, and although our wind may be good, a short foot race makes us puff like so many porpoises, Then comes the descent of the grade, and we pass through some of the grandest mountain scenery in the world. Another night and a day brings us across Wyoming and into Utah territory, over the Laramie plains—a splendid grazing country—through the wonderful Echo canon, where 1.000 feet above our heads we see the fortifications built by the Mormons thirteen years ago to resist the passage of Uncle Sam’s troops, under Johnston, afterward a famous general in the rebel service. Thence through the Weber canon, past the thousand mile tree, winding around the mountains on a narrow shelf, with a steep rock on one side and a dizzy precipice on the other—dashing through dark channels, rattling over high trestle-work bridges across deep gorges, and now through a narrow cleft in the rock called the “Devil’s Gate,” we emerge from the Wahsatch range of mountains to a scene of light and beauty. Before us in the dim
