Page:A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879).djvu/185

 two brothers and a "hired man2 were "keeping bach," where everything was so trim, clean, and ornamental that one did not miss a woman; crossed a deep backwater on a narrow beaver-dam, because the log bridge was broken down, and emerged from the brilliantly-coloured canyon of the St. Vrain just at dusk upon the featureless prairies, when we had some trouble in finding Longmount in the dark. A hospitable welcome awaited me at this inn, and an English friend came in and spent the evening with me.

2em

My letters on this tour will, I fear, be very dull, for after riding all day, looking after my pony, getting supper, hearing about various routes, and the pastoral, agricultural, mining, and hunting gossip of the neighbourhood, I am so sleepy and wholesomely tired that I can hardly write. I left Longmount pretty early on Tuesday morning, the day being sad, with the blink of an impending snowstorm in the air. The evening before I was introduced to a man who had been a colonel in the rebel army, who made a most unfavourable impression upon me, and it was a great annoyance to me when he presented himself on horse-back to guide me "over the most intricate part of the journey." Solitude is infinitely preferable to uncongeniality, and is bliss when compared with repulsiveness, so I was thoroughly glad when I got rid of my