MONUMENT PARK. 61

 

ding.’ There are cowled monks, the gowned priest
who celebrates the ceremony towering above the rest,
and a score or two of women, distended as if hooped
countless ages ago for a saturnalian revel at Cape May.

“Flow this Cana of Gallilee festival—there are urns
and vases everywhere fit for water and wine—happened
to occur when heathen deities were abroad in the land,
is a chronological mystery which may not be unray-
eled. This morning I was riding along the plateau at
the base of the mountain that closes the western end
of Monument Park. Its summit was crowned with
clouds, and when these had drifted away, the black-

 

ened cliffs were white with snow. The sun reap-:

peared, and the grim old mountain, nameless and un-
traversed, glittered like the dome of St. Peter’s when
illuminated at the close of Holy Week at Rome. All
its rugged lines stood out in bold tracery, the stu-
pendous stones, the deep gorges and towering cliffs
were defined with wonderful distinctness; as the sun
went down, its latest rays played about the summit of
each towering crag, and purple shadows danced among
the rocks until the mountain peaks blazed like a bril-
liant constellation.

“No such golden sunsets are seen in Italy as bathe the
stupendous mountains in a sea of ineffable glory. The
air is clearer and purer, the stars at night more brilliant,
the sky more blue, and every aspect of nature more
wonderful than elsewhere in the world. Properly the
name Colorado (colored) was given a country whose
boundless plains, as shadows of clouds or of mountains