pations, 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 prai