Beautiful Denver, the Paris of America, is not located in the mountains, as per a generally prevailing impression entertained by those who have never journeyed westward. The city stands full twenty miles from the foothills, and twice that distance from the higher peaks, which all the year 'round wear their white turbans of snow. To the untutored eye, however, the forty-mile-away peaks appear to be about four miles from Denver. Ascending to the height of the State Capitol dome, from which point of vantage many visitors view the surrounding country, a sweep of vision extending over two hundred miles up and down the long range of mountains is obtained. Pike's Peak, eighty miles away, stands out as clearly as your neighbor's barn back home, which is only half a mile distant.

Leaving Denver, the route to Colorado Springs, seventyfour miles to the southward, skirts the foothills at a distance varying from twenty miles to a few hundred yards. Colorado Springs, the great summer resort, is popularly described as being situated at the very base of Pike's Peak, and this is indeed true, in the sense in which western distances are usually discussed. Looking at the top of the Peak from Colorado Springs is like gazing at the highest story of a tall building "back east," though, as a matter of fact, it is

a seven-mile street car ride from there to the Cog Road station at Manitou, where the train for the summit is boarded. It is then nine miles farther to the top.

Immediately after leaving Manitou, the Colorado Midland trains plunge abruptly into the fastnesses of the hills, and as the train takes the big curve overlooking this little resort, the traveler looks east and sees the last vista of the great American plains, stretching out across eastern Colorado, Kansas and on to the Mississippi basin. It is then that you will need all the eyes in your head, for the panorama of scenery which there begins to unfold is like a veritable moving picture with natural stage settings. The train is laboring up a four per cent grade (211-foot rise to the mile)

for a distance of twenty-seven miles. You are going up Ute Pass, and, as the train winds in and out of numerous tunnels, first on this and then on that side of the canon, a mountain stream, called the Fountaine Qui Buoille (fountain of boiling water), leaps, dashes and churns alongside the roadbed, tossing off a silvery spray which the Colorado sunlight transforms into every color of the rainbow. Cascade Canon and Green Mountain Falls, nestling like crown jewels in the diadem of Nature's astounding wonders, are little summer resorts dotted along the now widening canon. Higher up is Woodland Park, another resort, from which point the most striking view of Pike's Peak is obtained. There she stands, rearing her proud old head among the dancing clouds, with her gaping, glacial crater of the extinct volcano, bearing mute evidence of the upheaval which, centuries and centuries ago, seamed and seared her rocks and belched ashes which even today underlay the sod for miles around. And to think. the civilized world, with its wisdom and science, has not even a hint of this early history.

The Midland describes a semi-circle around Pike's Peak. At Divide, twenty-seven miles from Colorado Springs, the highest point of the Rampart (front) range is reached. From this point the Midland Terminal branches off to Cripple Creek, the world's greatest gold-producing camp, a distance of thirty-one miles. The course is then downward, through Florrisant Canon, Granite Canon and into broad, expansive

'South Park, where Indian lore and ancient legends of early and more savage life in Colorado is still solemnly recounted by the sturdy pioneers. This flat basin, not entirely unlike an eastern prairie, is thirty by forty-five miles in dimensions. The next startling surprise is a vista of Collegiate Range, Mts. Princeton, Harvard and Yale, named for three of America's leading educational institutions. They overlook the valley of the Arkansas River at Buena Vista. This little town, as viewed from the height of the track, resembles a checker-board. It is something like looking down upon it from a balloon.

Farther up the valley is Leadville, two miles high, which sprang into prominence as a gold and silver camp in 1879, since which time she has held the lead of the world's greatest ore-producing camps. Eleven miles west the backbone of the continent is reached. A tunnel two miles and one-eighth long has been bored through the spinal vertebræ of the Divide, and when the engine stops for water after emerging from the western portal, it is standing on the Pacific slope, while the rear sleeper is on the Atlantic slope. In other words, you are simply balanced on the top of the world.

Four miles west Hell Gate, famed in song and story, is passed. Around this stupendous group of rocks and deep gorges the intrepid engineers have laid the tracks, which run in some places as close as eighteen inches to a 1,200-foot precipice. But the roadbed is chiseled out on the sides of mountains of granite as strong as the Rock of Gibraltarand considerably more massive. By easy stages and many fantastic windings, you are gradually let down to the level of the Frying Pan River, the state's most prolific trout stream, which is followed for a distance of thirty miles until the country opens up into the Roaring Fork Valley. Mt. Sopris, shown in one of the accompanying illustrations, is the sentinel of this valley. This mountain has been declared by artists to be the most impressive peak in the entire Rocky Mountain. range. Eighteen miles to the south is Aspen, the noted silver mining camp.

A few miles farther on, where the Roaring Fork empties into the Grand River, is located Glenwood Springs, now so famous as a summer resort and watering place that she scarcely needs an introduction. With her mammoth natural hot water swimming pool, splendid hotels, magnificent settings and rare mountain climate, Glenwood Springs stands in the front rank of the world's resorts.

Leaving Glenwood Springs we enter the valley of the Grand River, following this stream to Grand Junction, where it meets the Gunnison River. Grand Junction is the metropolis of the famous fruit belt on the Western Slope of Colorado, where land values have within the past decade risen as high as $4,000 per acre. Located near the Utah line, Grand Junction is the last place of especial interest in the Centennial state. A night's ride brings us to Salt Lake City, the great Mormon metropolis, around which there revolves history of progressive civilization that has made Utah respected and revered the world over. The great Temple and Tabernacle are buildings which stand as monuments to the pluck and energy of the diciples of Brigham Young, who snatched the desert from oblivion, and by the magic application of irrigation have caused it to bloom like a rose.

THE CRITIQUE'S "POOH-BAH" IN THE OPEN.

O THE CRITIQUE: Have you observed that the
distinguished member of the American Institute:

Whom THE CRITIQUE has named "Pooh-Bah;"
Editor "national homeopathic medican journal;"

Field Secretary of the Medical Council;

Diverter of about $11,000 of the Institute's cash, has at last come out in the open "forninst" the work of the transpor