This splendid, hilly, well-timbered, well-pastured, well-watered western edge of the state, is the grandest hunting-ground in the United States, and it will be long before the bears and mountain lions and wild cats; the wolves and foxes; the mountain-sheep, the elk, the two deers and the antelope, are driven from its shady courts and disappear from the wide and sunny ranges. Long let us say, in fond hope, if not in serious expectation, that never shall the dread word exterminated be written after the name of any of the wild animals whose utility as game or for beauty of form makes them of interest to us.
Another excursion from Leadville was out on the stub of a line to be extended down the Blue river toward Middle Park.
CRESTED BUTTE MOUNTAIN AND LAKE.
To reach the valley of Blue river “the range” must, of course, be crossed. The line from Leadville follows up the Arkansas and reveals to us how small are the beginnings of great things in the way of water-courses; how a miserable, shallow, wiggling little runlet, which you can dam with a couple of shovels of mud and stand astride of like another Colossus of Rhodes, may push its way along, undermining what it cannot overthrow; sliding around the obstacle that deemed itself impassable; losing itself in willowy bogs, tumbling headlong over the error of a precipice or getting heedlessly entrapped in a confined cañon; escaping down a gorge with indescribable turmoil, and always growing bigger, bigger, broader and stronger, deeper and more dignified; till it can leave the mountains and strike boldly across a thousand miles of untracked plain to “fling its proud heart into the sea.” Hark! what does it prattle up here where we can leap its ripplings, and the red willows tangle their blossoms and shade it from side to side?—
“Clear and cool, clear and cool,
By laughing shallow and dreaming pool,
Cool and clear, cool and clear,
By shining shingle and foaming weir.”