At this point Jim Hart came very near to being left behind, he having stopped at the ground to adjust the matter of finances, and had he not made a sort of John Gilpin ride of it he might even now be browsing on the side of a Colorado mountain, and if he were, base-ball would have been none the loser.
I am very much afraid that the residents of Colorado Springs have not to this day a very high opinion of the Australian base-ball tourists, but if they are any sorer than I was after my experience with that cross-eyed sorrel, then I am sorry for them.
The trip through the Grand Canon of the Arkansas that we entered just as the sun was going down, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience, we viewing it from an observation car that had been attached to the rear of the train.

Through great walls of rock that towered far above the rails the train plunged, twisting and turning like some gigantic snake in its death agony.

Into the Royal Gorge we swung over a suspended bridge that spanned a mountain torrent, and that seemed scarcely stronger than a spider's web, past great masses of rock that were piled about in the greatest confusion, and that must have been the result of some great upheaval of which no records have ever come down to us.
We stopped for supper at the little mountain station of Solida, and then with the train divided into two sections steamed away for Marshall Pass, the huge rocks around us looking like grim battlements as they loomed up in the gathering darkness.

Up and still up we climbed, the train running at times over chasms that seemed bottomless, upon slender bridges and then darting through narrow openings in the rocks that were but just wide enough for the train to pass.

Reaching the summit of the pass, 10,858 feet above the sea level, we jumped from the coaches as the train came to a standstill and found ourselves standing knee-deep in the snow.
In the brief space of six hours we had passed from a land of sunshine to a land of snow and ice, and the transition for a time seemed to bewilder us.