rie 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