My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

A LECTURE-TOUR IN AMERICA 283walls, and the river roaring and raging in a tumultuousflood close alongside of us.I broke my journey at Denver, where I made anexcursion to Gray's Peak, one of the highest in therange. I also paid a visit to the celebrated " Gardenof the Gods" with its fantastic weather-worn andbrilliantly coloured rocks.I next went on to Chicago, where I spent only afew hours while waiting for my train to Montreal andQuebec whence I set sail for England.Before closing this brief account of my tour inAmerica, it may be interesting to record my generalimpressions as to the country and people. In myjournal I find this note :" During more than tenmonths in America, taking every opportunity ofexploring woods and forests, plains and mountains,deserts and gardens, between the Atlantic andPacific coasts, and extending over ten degrees oflatitude, I never once saw either a humming-bird or arattlesnake, or even any living snake of any kind. Inmany places I was told that humming-birds wereusually common in their gardens, but they hadn'tseen any this year ! This was my luck. And as tothe rattlesnakes, I was always on the look out inlikely places, and there are plenty still, but they arelocal.I was told of a considerable tract of land not farfrom Niagara which isso infested with them that itis absolutely useless. The reason is that it is veryrocky, with so many large masses lying about overgrownwith shrubs and briars as to afford themunlimited hiding-places, and the labour of thoroughlyclearing it would be more costly than the land wouldbe worth."The general impression left upon my mind as to 1the country itself is the almost total absence of that