chatted awhile with the workers. A pleasant-faced woman named Mrs.
Chew asked us to deliver a message at a ranch a mile or two below.
Here also was the post-office of Lodore, Colorado, located a short
distance above the canyon of the same name. Mrs. Chew informed us that
they had another ranch at the lower end of Lodore Canyon and asked us
to look them up when we got through, remarking: "You may have trouble,
you know. Two of my sons once tried it. They lost their boat, had to
climb out, and nearly starved before they reached home."

The post-office at the ranch, found as described, without another home
in sight, was a welcome sight to us for several reasons. One reason
was that it afforded shelter from a heavy downpour of rain that
greeted us as we neared it, and a better reason still was, that it
gave us a chance to write and mail some letters to those who would be
most anxious to hear from us.

Among the messages we mailed was a picture post-card of Coney Island
at night. In some way this card had slipped between the leaves of a
book that I had brought from the East. I sent it out, addressed to a
friend who would understand the joke; writing underneath the picture,
"We have an abundance of such scenery here." The young woman who had
charge of the office looked at the card in amazement. It was evidently
something new to her. She told us she had never been to the railroad,
and that her brother took the mail out on horse-back to Steamboat,
Colorado, 140 miles distant.

The rain having ceased, we returned to our boats pausing to admire a
rainbow that arched above the canyon in the mountains, toward which we
were headed. We remarked, jokingly, to Jimmy that this was a good
sign. He replied without smiling that he "hoped so." Jimmy's songs had