A little leaven of good-will and good heart in
one often avails to lighten the heaviness of many.
The distance between Denver and St. Helen's is less than a hundred miles,
but as the railroad has to climb and cross a range of hills between two
and three thousand feet high, the journey occupies several hours. As the
train gradually rose higher and higher, the travellers began to get wide
views, first of the magnificent panorama of mountains which lies to the
northwest of Denver, sixty miles away, with Long's Peak in the middle, and
after crossing the crest of the "Divide," where a blue little lake rimmed
with wild-flowers sparkled in the sun, of the more southern ranges. After
a while they found themselves running parallel to a mountain chain of
strange and beautiful forms, green almost to the top, and intersected with
deep ravines and cliffs which the conductor informed them were "canyons."
They seemed quite near at hand, for their bases sank into low rounded
hills covered with woods, these melted into undulating table-lands, and
those again into a narrow strip of park-like plain across which ran the
track. Flowers innumerable grew on this plain, mixed with grass of a tawny
brown-green. There were cactuses, red and yellow, scarlet and white
gillias, tall spikes of yucca in full bloom, and masses of a superb white
poppy with an orange-brown centre, whose blue-green foliage was prickly
like that of the thistle.
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