EEL nothing else. At five in the afternoon frame
houses and green fields began to appear, the cars drew up, and two of
my fellow passengers and I got out and carried our own luggage through
the deep dust to a small, rough, Western tavern, where with difficulty
we were put up for the night. This settlement is called the Greeley
Temperance Colony, and was founded lately by an industrious class of
emigrants from the East, all total abstainers, and holding advanced
political opinions. They bought and fenced 50,000 acres of land,
constructed an irrigating canal, which distributes its waters on
reasonable terms, have already a population of 3,000, and are the most
prosperous and rising colony in Colorado, being altogether free from
either laziness or crime. Their rich fields are artificially
productive solely; and after seeing regions where Nature gives
spontaneously, one is amazed that people should settle here to be
dependent on irrigating canals, with the risk of having their crops
destroyed by grasshoppers. A clause in the charter of the colony
prohibits the introduction, sale, or consumption of intoxicating
liquor, and I hear that the men of Greeley carry their crusade against
drink even beyond their limits, and have lately sacked three houses
open for the sale of drink near their frontier, pouring the whisky upon
the ground, so that people don't now like to run the risk of bringing
liquor near Greeley, and the temperance influence is spreading over a
very large area. As the men have no bar-rooms to sit in, I observed
that Greeley was asleep at an hour when other places were beginning
their revelries. Nature is niggardly, and living is coarse and rough,
the merest necessaries of hardy life being all that can be thought of
in this stage of existence.

My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At
Greeley I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a
married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than
a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every
place was thick with black flies. The English landlady had just lost
her "help," and was in a great fuss, so that I helped her to get supper
ready. Its chief features were greasiness and black flies. Twenty men
in working clothes fed and went out again, "nobody speaking to nobody."
The landlady introduced me to a Vermont settler who lives in the "Foot
Hills," who was very kind and took a great de