easy grade, across a low notch between snow-banks, and follows down an affluent of the Arkansas, also, by an easy grade. The true route into the county, however, is via Canon City and the Colorado Salt Works, crossing the Montgomery Spur south of the Buffalo Peaks, where it has not an altitude of more than five hundred feet above the South Park, striking the Arkansas at Mayol's Ranch, twenty miles below Dayton, thence up or down the river. There is besides a trail from Buckskin over the Spur into California Gulch, and it may be said in favor of the climate at so great an altitude that the mail is carried over on this trail, weekly, the year round, by a man sixty years of age.

CHAPTER XIII.

Summit County-Middle Park-Upper Blue River-Ten-Mile Di trict-Result of Assays-Work Doing-The Snakes-Peru and Montezuma Districts-Lodes and Companies and Improvements Going On-Gulch Mining, Union District, Gold Run and Buffalo Flats-Western Portion of the County.

SUMMIT COUNTY occupies all that portion of Colorado lying west of the crest of The Range and north of the 39th parallel. It may be entered by numerous passes from the South Park, from the Arkansas Park, from the Gregory or Boulder mines, the most noted of which are the Berthoud, head of Clear Creek, Boulder, head of Boulder Creek, and the Breckenridge, head of Tarryall Creek. Through the latter only, however, is there as yet a passable wagon road. The Middle Park is the most notable natural feature of the county. It is perhaps fifty miles in extent east and west, and seventy north. and south. But at the ends proper the enclosing ranges shoot in spurs so far and numerous as to make it seem largest east and west. From the Boulder Pass, precisely at its head or east end, flows down Ranch Creek; from the Berthoud, Moses Creek; from the Vasquez, Dennis Creek, the last

mentioned passes being twelve or fifteen miles south of Boulder Pass, and leading from Clear Creek into the open head of the Park, about twelve miles due north. A little west of Vasquez Pass is another called Packard, not much known, from which flows down St. Louis Creek. These Creeks unite near the head of the Park and become Frasier River. Twelve or fifteen miles down, the Grand, formed by the junction of three considerable streams which rise in the range between the Middle and North Parks, bursts into the Park and receives the Frasier. Lower down, it breaks through a low range of mountains flung directly across the Park, and receiving numerous tributaries from the mountains on either hand, among them the Blue, which rises near Montgomery and is itself sixty miles long, it breaks away from the Park to the south-west through a deep kanyon, and goes out in search of the Pacific Ocean.

For three-fourths of its course through the Park the Grand has no first bottom, the fall being too great for soil to accumulate. But the kanyon dams the stream to some extent, and for the lower ten miles it has a rich alluvial bottom perhaps a mile wide, from side to side of which it winds almost regularly, itself from two to six feet deep and fifty yards wide, the water clear, rapid, smooth and cold, as seen from the neighboring hills, one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. The larger tributaries of the Grand-William's Fork and the Blue, Troublesome and the Muddy-also have considerable arable valleys, extending five to ten

miles up from the Grand. The second bottom is perhaps a hundred feet above the stream beds, is nearly level, covered alternately with a thrifty growth of sage brush, and the most nutritious grasses, among which grow native the white and red clover, timothy and red-top, and the genuine Kentucky blue-grass. We have ridden ten miles in one direction across this table-land. It constitutes the bulk of the open country in the Middle Park, and is estimated at twenty thousand acres, unsurpassed by any in the world for pastoral purposes. Among the flowers Bayard Taylor mentions the columbine, sedum, saxifrage, flame-colored euchroma, pink geranium streaked with purple, orchid, almost identical with the cyclamen of Italy and Greece, violets, rose-colored pogonias, blue larkspur, scarlet wort, crimson and violet lupins, white and scarlet star flower, &c. In one of his Middle Park letters, Taylor says:

"The sun came out, the clouds lifted and rolled away, and one of the most remarkable landscapes of the earth was revealed to our view. The valley of the Blue, which for a length of thirty miles, with a breadth varying from five to ten, lay under our eyes, wore a tint of pearly silver-gray, upon which the ripe green of the timber along the river, and the scattered gleams of water seemed to be enamelled. Opposite to us, above this sage color, rose huge mountain foundations, where the grassy openings were pale, the forests dark, the glens and gorges filled with shadow, the rocks touched with lines of light making a checkered effect that suggested cul

tivation and settlement. Beyond these were wild ridges, all forests; then bare masses of rock streaked with snow and highest bleak snow pyramids piercing the sky. From the north to south stretched ⚫ the sublime wall-the western boundary of the Middle Park-and where it fell away toward the kanyon by which Grand River goes forth to seek the Colorado, there was a vision of dim, rosy peaks, a hundred miles distant. In breadth of effect-in airy depth and expansion-in simple yet most majestic outline, and in originality yet exquisite harmony of color, this landscape is unlike anything I have ever seen. I feel how inadequate are my words to suggest such new combinations of tints and forms. There is great vertical grandeur among the Alps; here it is the vast literal extent which impresses you, together with atmospheric effect occasioned by great elevation above the sea. You stand on the plains of the Alpine glaciers; a new vegetation surrounds you; a darker sky is over your head; yet the grand picture on which you look is complete in all its parts, or, if any element is wanting, its absence is swallowed up in the majesty that is present.”

The geology of the park is the same as that of the Plains. Rocks of the most recent Tertiary occur, although at an elevation of three thousand feet above the highest Plains on the eastern slope. A fragment of rock belonging to the Tertiary was found on the top of Long's Peak, fourteen thousand feet above the sea. In the Middle Park proper, no minerals in paying quantities except coal have been