_Aerial effects._--But perhaps as I gaze around me the rarest sight
of all is in atmospheric hues. The prairies--as I cross'd them in my
journey hither--and these mountains and parks, seem to me to
afford new lights and shades. Everywhere the aerial gradations
and sky-effects inimitable; nowhere else such perspectives, such
transparent lilacs and grays. I can conceive of some superior
landscape painter, some fine colorist, after sketching awhile out
here, discarding all his previous work, delightful to stock exhibition
amateurs, as muddy, raw and artificial. Near one's eye ranges an
infinite variety; high up, the bare whitey-brown, above timber line;
in certain spots afar patches of snow any time of year; (no trees, no
flowers, no birds, at those chilling altitudes.) As I write I see the
Snowy Range through the blue mist, beautiful and far off, I plainly
see the patches of snow.
DENVER IMPRESSIONS
Through the long-lingering half-light of the most superb of evenings
we return'd to Denver, where I staid several days leisurely exploring,
receiving impressions, with which I may as well taper off this
memorandum, itemizing what I saw there. The best was the men,
three-fourths of them large, able, calm, alert, American. And cash!
why they create it here. Out in the smelting works, (the biggest and
most improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long
rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with
pure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth
in a pan.
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