e miles off
to the vast prairie sea.[9]

[9] I have not curtailed this description of the roughness of a
Colorado settler's life, for, with the exceptions of the disrepair and
the Puritanism, it is a type of the hard, unornamented existence with
which I came almost universally in contact during my subsequent
residence in the Territory.

An English physician is settled about half a mile from here over a
hill. He is spoken of as holding "very extreme opinions." Chalmers
rails at him for being "a thick-skulled Englishman," for being "fine,
polished," etc. To say a man is "polished" here is to give him a very
bad name. He accuses him also of holding views subversive of all
morality. In spite of all this, I thought he might possess a map, and
I induced Mrs. C. to walk over with me. She intended it as a formal
morning call, but she wore the inevitable sun-bonnet, and had her dress
tied up as when washing. It was not till I reached the gate that I
remembered that I was in my Hawaiian riding dress, and that I still
wore the spurs with which I had been trying a horse in the morning!
The house was in a grass valley which opened from the tremendous canyon
through which the river had cut its way. The Foot Hills, with their
terraces of flaming red rock, were glowing in the sunset, and a pure
green sky arched tenderly over a soft evening scene. Used to the
meanness and baldness of settlers' dwellings. I was delighted to see
that in this instance the usual log cabin was only the lower floor of a
small house, which bore a delightful resemblance to a Swiss chalet. It
stood in a vegetable garden fertilized by an irrigating ditch, outside
of which were a barn and cowshed. A young Swiss girl was bringing the
cows slowly home from the hill, an Englishwoman in a clean print dress
stood by the fence holding a baby, and a fine-looking Englishman in a
striped Garibaldi shirt, and trousers of the same tucked into high
boots, was shelling corn. As soon as Mrs. Hughes spoke I felt she was
truly a lady; and oh! how refreshing her refined, courteous, graceful
English manner was, as she invited us into the house! The entrance was
low, through a log porch festooned and almost concealed by a "wild
cucumber." Inside, though plain and poor, the room looked a home, not
like a squatter's cabin. An old tin was completely covered by a
graceful clematis mixed with streamers of Virginia creeper, and white
muslin curtains, and above all two sh