Of Tomatoes For Winter Use, And
About Two Tons Of Squash And Pumpkin For The Cattle, Two Of The
Former Weighing 140 Lbs.
I pulled nearly a quarter of an acre of
maize, but it was a scanty crop, and the husks were poorly
filled.
I much prefer field work to the scouring of greasy pans
and to the wash tub, and both to either sewing or writing.
This is not Arcadia. "Smartness," which consists in
over-reaching your neighbor in every fashion which is not
illegal, is the quality which is held in the greatest repute, and
Mammon is the divinity. From a generation brought up to worship
the one and admire the other little can be hoped. In districts
distant as this is from "Church Ordinances," there are three ways
in which Sunday is spent: one, to make it a day for visiting,
hunting, and fishing; another, to spend it in sleeping and
abstinence from work; and the third, to continue all the usual
occupations, consequently harvesting and felling and hauling
timber are to be seen in progress.
Last Sunday a man came here and put up a door, and said he didn't
believe in the Bible or in a God, and he wasn't going to
sacrifice his children's bread to old-fashioned prejudices.
There is a manifest indifference to the higher obligations of the
law, "judgment, mercy and faith"; but in the main the settlers
are steady, there are few flagrant breaches of morals, industry
is the rule, life and property are far safer than in England or
Scotland, and the law of universal respect to women is still in
full force.
The days are now brilliant and the nights sharply frosty. People
are preparing for the winter. The tourists from the East are
trooping into Denver, and the surveying parties are coming down
from the mountains. Snow has fallen on the higher ranges, and my
hopes of getting to Estes Park are down at zero.
LONGMOUNT, September 25.
Yesterday was perfect. The sun was brilliant and the air cool
and bracing. I felt better, and after a hard day's work and an
evening stroll with my friends in the glorious afterglow, I went
to bed cheerful and hopeful as to the climate and its effect on
my health. This morning I awoke with a sensation of extreme
lassitude, and on going out, instead of the delicious atmosphere
of yesterday, I found intolerable suffocating heat, a BLAZING
(not BRILLIANT) sun, and a sirocco like a Victorian hot wind.
Neuralgia, inflamed eyes, and a sense of extreme prostration
followed, and my acclimatized hosts were somewhat similarly
affected. The sparkle, the crystalline atmosphere, and the glory
of color of yesterday, had all vanished. We had borrowed a
wagon, but Dr. H.'s strong but lazy horse and a feeble hired one
made a poor span; and though the distance here is only twenty-two
miles over level prairie, our tired animal, and losing the way
three times, have kept us eight and a half hours in the broiling
sun. All notions of locality fail me on the prairie, and Dr. H.
was not much better. We took wrong tracks, got entangled among
fences, plunged through the deep mud of irrigation ditches, and
were despondent. It was a miserable drive, sitting on a heap of
fodder under the angry sun. Half-way here we camped at a river,
now only a series of mud holes, and I fell asleep under the
imperfect shade of a cotton-wood tree, dreading the thought of
waking and jolting painfully along over the dusty prairie in the
dust-laden, fierce sirocco, under the ferocious sun. We never
saw man or beast the whole day.
This is the "Chicago Colony," and it is said to be prospering,
after some preliminary land swindles. It is as uninviting as
Fort Collins. We first came upon dust-colored frame houses set
down at intervals on the dusty buff plain, each with its dusty
wheat or barley field adjacent, the crop, not the product of the
rains of heaven, but of the muddy overflow of "Irrigating Ditch
No.2." Then comes a road made up of many converging wagon
tracks, which stiffen into a wide straggling street, in which
glaring frame houses and a few shops stand opposite to each
other. A two-storey house, one of the whitest and most glaring,
and without a veranda like all the others, is the "St. Vrain
Hotel," called after the St. Vrain River, out of which the ditch
is taken which enables Longmount to exist. Everything was
broiling in the heat of the slanting sun, which all day long had
been beating on the unshaded wooden rooms. The heat within was
more sickening than outside, and black flies covered everything,
one's face included. We all sat fighting the flies in my
bedroom, which was cooler than elsewhere, till a glorious sunset
over the Rocky Range, some ten miles off, compelled us to go out
and enjoy it. Then followed supper, Western fashion, without
table-cloths, and all the "unattached" men of Longmount came in
and fed silently and rapidly. It was a great treat to have tea
to drink, as I had not tasted any for a fortnight. The landlord
is a jovial, kindly man. I told him how my plans had faded, and
how I was reluctantly going on to-morrow to Denver and New York,
being unable to get to Estes Park, and he said there might yet be
a chance of some one coming in to-night who would be going up.
He soon came to my room and asked definitely what I could do - if
I feared cold, if I could "rough it," if I could "ride horseback
and lope." Estes Park and its surroundings are, he says, "the
most beautiful scenery in Colorado," and "it's a real shame," he
added, "for you not to see it." We had hardly sat down to tea
when he came, saying "You're in luck this time; two young men
have just come in and are going up to-morrow morning." I am
rather pleased, and have hired a horse for three days; but I am
not very hopeful, for I am almost ill of the smothering heat, and
still suffer from my fall, and not having been on horseback
since, thirty miles will be a long ride.
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