nner at twelve is a repetition of the breakfast, but with the coffee
omitted and a gigantic pudding added. Tea at six is a repetition of
breakfast. "Eat whenever you are hungry, you can always get milk and
bread in the kitchen," Evans says--"eat as much as you can, it'll do
you good"--and we all eat like hunters. There is no change of food.
The steer which was being killed on my arrival is now being eaten
through from head to tail, the meat being hacked off quite
promiscuously, without any regard to joints. In this dry, rarefied
air, the outside of the flesh blackens and hardens, and though the
weather may be hot, the carcass keeps sweet for two or three months.
The bread is super excellent, but the poor wives seem to be making and
baking it all day.

The regular household living and eating together at this time consists
of a very intelligent and high-minded American couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Dewy, people whose character, culture, and society I should value
anywhere; a young Englishman, brother of a celebrated African traveler,
who, because he rides on an English saddle, and clings to some other
insular peculiarities, is called "The Earl"; a miner prospecting for
silver; a young man, the type of intelligent, practical "Young
America," whose health showed consumptive tendencies when he was in
business, and who is living a hunter's life here; a grown-up niece of
Evans; and a melancholy-looking hired man. A mile off there is an
industrious married settler, and four miles off, in the gulch leading
to the park, "Mountain Jim," otherwise Mr. Nugent, is posted. His
business as a trapper takes him daily up to the beaver dams in Black
Canyon to look after his traps, and he generally spends some time in or
about our cabin, not, I can see, to Evans's satisfaction. For, in
truth, this blue hollow, lying solitary at the foot of Long's Peak, is
a miniature world of great interest, in which love, jealousy, hatred,
envy, pride, unselfishness, greed, selfishness, and self-sacrifice can
be studied hourly, and there is always the unpleasantly exciting risk
of an open quarrel with the neighboring desperado, whose "I'll shoot
you!" has more than once been heard in the cabin.

The party, however, has often been increased by "campers," either elk
hunters or "prospectors" for silver or locations, who feed with us and
join us in the evening. They get little help from Evans, either as to
elk or locations, and go away disgusted and unsuccessf