“Over the Mountains of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
The shade replied,
“If you seek for El Dorado.”
—Edgar A. Poe.
At its lower end, as the mountains in the range we have crossed begin to grow indistinct in the distance, the Tomichi valley pushes aside the hills which have hitherto confined it, and broadens into a wide, grassy plateau, encircled by mountains, in the center of which stands Gunnison, the chief town of Western Colorado. Westward, where the river comes down, sculptured cliffs rise near and abrupt; but elsewhere the mountains are far away enough to make invisible all their lesser characteristics. Those to the north and south east have their long line of irregular summits capped with snow; but to the west the ranges grow less rugged and more rounded, while between the hills runs the valley occupied by the Gunnison river on its way to the Grand, and by which the railway enters the rich farming lands of the newly opened reservation and the territory of Utah.
Drawing rapidly nearer the center of the plateau, we approached the city and perceived that it consisted of two distinct parts, with a gap of half a mile between them. Then a new freight-house cut off the view and we came to a stoppage in one of the busiest “yards” outside of Denver.
The town, as I have said, stands in the middle of a level park, at an altitude of about 8,000 feet above the sea. There is room enough “to hold New York City,” as the people are fond of saying. No stream waters the middle of this area, but skirting the further edge, just under the bluffs, which on every one of these bright summer evenings