The Old Hunter Acrimoniously Said He "Must Speak The Truth," The Miner Was Directing Me Over A Track Where For Twenty-Five Miles There Was Not A House, And Where, If Snow Came On, I Should Never Be Heard Of Again.

The miner said he "must speak the truth," the hunter was directing me over a pass where there were five feet of snow, and no trail.

The teamster said that the only road possible for a horse was so-and-so, and advised me to take the wagon road into South Park, which I was determined not to do. Mr. Link said he was the oldest hunter and settler in the district, and he could not cross any of the trails in snow. And so they went on. At last they partially agreed on a route - "the worst road in the Rocky Mountains," the old hunter said, with two feet of snow upon it, but a hunter had hauled an elk over part of it, at any rate. The upshot of the whole you shall have in my next letter. I. L. B.

Letter XI

Tarryall Creek - The Red Range - Excelsior - Importunate pedlars - Snow and heat - A bison calf - Deep drifts - South Park - The Great Divide - Comanche Bill - Difficulties - Hall's Gulch - A Lord Dundreary - Ridiculous fears.

HALL'S GULCH, COLORADO, November 6.

It was another cloudless morning, one of the many here on which one awakes early, refreshed, and ready to enjoy the fatigues of another day. In our sunless, misty climate you do not know the influence which persistent fine weather exercises on the spirits. I have been ten months in almost perpetual sunshine, and now a single cloudy day makes me feel quite depressed. I did not leave till 9:30, because of the slipperiness, and shortly after starting turned off into the wilderness on a very dim trail. Soon seeing a man riding a mile ahead, I rode on and overtook him, and we rode eight miles together, which was convenient to me, as without him I should several times have lost the trail altogether. Then his fine American horse, on which he had only ridden two days, broke down, while my "mad, bad bronco," on which I had been traveling for a fortnight, cantered lightly over the snow. He was the only traveler I saw in a day of nearly twelve hours. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of that ride. I concentrated all my faculties of admiration and of locality, for truly the track was a difficult one. I sometimes thought it deserved the bad name given to it at Link's. For the most part it keeps in sight of Tarryall Creek, one of the large affluents of the Platte, and is walled in on both sides by mountains, which are sometimes so close together as to leave only the narrowest canyon between them, at others breaking wide apart, till, after winding and climbing up and down for twenty-five miles, it lands one on a barren rock-girdled park, watered by a rapid fordable stream as broad as the Ouse at Huntingdon, snow fed and ice fringed, the park bordered by fantastic rocky hills, snow covered and brightened only by a dwarf growth of the beautiful silver spruce.

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