Rock strata and stuffed trophies together stage the Western sublime for tourists.

Evidence

The weather is again perfect, with a cloudless sky and a hot sun, and the snow is all off the plains and lower valleys. After lunch, the ---s in a buggy, and I on Birdie, left Colorado Springs, crossing the Mesa, a high hill with a table top, with a view of extraordinary laminated rocks, leaves of rock a bright vermilion color, against a background of snowy mountains, surmounted by Pike’s Peak. Then we plunged into cavernous Glen Eyrie, with its fantastic needles of colored rock, and were entertained at General Palmer’s “baronial mansion,” a perfect eyrie, the fine hall filled with buffalo, elk, and deer heads, skins of wild animals, stuffed birds, bear robes, and numerous Indian and other weapons and trophies. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 175

Categorization

• FICTION: The veranda of a baronial eyrie where every “wild” object is taxidermy and every rock is a stage set: a whole scene of European gentility bolted onto raw canyon.
• CANDY: General Palmer’s hall of buffalo, elk, deer heads, bear robes, and Indian weapons makes a great one-line image of gilded-age Colorado.