Snowy ranges — black and white respectively — towering aloft to the right, and the intervening plains dotted with herds of antelope, complete a picture that can be seen nowhere save on the Laramie Plains.  Reaching a swell of the plains, that almost rises to the dignity of a hill, I can see the nickel-plated wheels of the Laramie wheelmen glistening in the sunlight on the opposite side of the river several miles from where I stand.  They have come out a few miles to meet me, but have taken the wrong side of the river, thinking I had crossed below Rock Creek.  The members of the Laramie Bicycle Club are the first wheelmen I have seen since leaving California; and, as I am personally acquainted at Laramie, it is needless to dwell on my reception at their hands.  The rambles of the Laramie Club are well known to the cycling world from the many interesting letters from the graphic pen of their captain, Mr. Owen, who, with two other members, once took a tour on their wheels to the Yellowstone National Park.  They have some very good natural roads around Laramie, but in their rambles over the mountains these “rough riders of the Rockies” necessarily take risks that are unknown to their fraternal brethren farther east.

Tuesday morning I pull out to scale the last range that separates me from “the plains” — popularly known as such — and, upon arriving at the summit, I pause to take a farewell view of the great and wonderful inter-mountain country, across whose mountains, plains, and deserts I have been travelling in so novel a manner for the last month.  The view from where I stand is magnificent — ay, sublime beyond human power to describe — and well calculated to make an indelible impression on the mind of one gazing upon it, perhaps for the last time.  The Laramie Plains extend northward and westward, like a billowy green sea.  Emerging from a black canon behind Jelm Mountain, the Laramie River winds its serpentine course in a northeast direction until lost to view behind the abutting mountains of the range, on which I now stand, receiving tribute in its course from the Little Laramie and numbers of smaller streams that emerge from the mountainous bulwarks forming the western border of the marvellous picture now before me.  The unusual rains have filled the numberless depressions of the plains with ponds and lakelets that in their green setting glisten and glimmer in the bright morning sunshine like gems.  A train is coming from the west, winding around among them as if searching out the most beautiful, and finally halts at Laramie City, which nestles in their midst — the fairest gem of them all — the “Gem of the Rockies.”  Sheep Mountain, the embodiment of all that is massive and indestructible, juts boldly and defiantly forward as though its mission were to stand guard over all that lies to the west.  The Medicine Bow Eange is now seen to greater advantage, and a bald mountain-top here and there protrudes above the dark forests, timidly, as if ashamed of its nakedness.