In the afternoon we saw the mountains rising like a gigantic wall at no great distance on our right.  “Des sauvages! des sauvages!” exclaimed Delorier, looking round with a frightened face, and pointing with his whip toward the foot of the mountains.  In fact, we could see at a distance a number of little black specks, like horsemen in rapid motion.  Henry Chatillon, with Shaw and myself, galloped toward them to reconnoiter, when to our amusement we saw the supposed Arapahoes resolved into the black tops of some pine trees which grew along a ravine.  The summits of these pines, just visible above the verge of the prairie, and seeming to move as we ourselves were advancing, looked exactly like a line of horsemen.

We encamped among ravines and hollows, through which a little brook was foaming angrily.  Before sunrise in the morning the snow-covered mountains were beautifully tinged with a delicate rose color.  A noble spectacle awaited us as we moved forward.  Six or eight miles on our right, Pike’s Peak and his giant brethren rose out of the level prairie, as if springing from the bed of the ocean.  From their summits down to the plain below they were involved in a mantle of clouds, in restless motion, as if urged by strong winds.  For one instant some snowy peak, towering in awful solitude, would be disclosed to view.  As the clouds broke along the mountain, we could see the dreary forests, the tremendous precipices, the white patches of snow, the gulfs and chasms as black as night, all revealed for an instant, and then disappearing from the view.  One could not but recall the stanza of “Childe Harold”: 

     Morn dawns, and with it stern Albania’s hills,
     Dark Suli’s rocks, and Pindus’ inland peak,
     Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills,
     Array’d in many a dun and purple streak,
     Arise; and, as the clouds along them break,
     Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer: 
     Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak,
     Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear,
     And gathering storms around convulse the closing year.

Every line save one of this description was more than verified here.  There were no “dwellings of the mountaineer” among these heights.  Fierce savages, restlessly wandering through summer and winter, alone invade them.  “Their hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against them.”

On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance.  A black cloud descended upon them, and a tremendous explosion of thunder followed, reverberating among the precipices.  In a few moments everything grew black and the rain poured down like a cataract.  We got under an old cotton-wood tree which stood by the side of a stream, and waited there till the rage of the torrent had passed.