Part 10

We have only two waggons working here, as nearly all the men and horses are gone over to Boyd's; and as our hay is a mile and a half away, we don't get much more than five loads a day, so that the stack does not grow very fast.

Our excitement this week has been a cricket match with Boyle's Farm; four of their men we challenged. It really was too amusing. They had a bat and ball, stumps, but no bales, and played on the prairie, which was so fearfully rough that it was almost dangerous, the ball shot in such various directions after hitting the tufts of grass. Everybody fielded, but a ball going into the wheat-field behind the wickets was not counted as a lost ball. The total score of the two innings was only ten, and in one our opponents went out without a single run; so you may fancy the howls of either applause or derision at every ball.

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August 17th.

The Farm with all its toils and pleasures is a thing of the past; we were both very low when we turned our backs upon it and its inhabitants just a week ago. We have been in such robust health the whole of our three months, hardly a headache or finger-ache. Our maid-of-all-work life has suited us, and we have acquired such an immense deal of practical knowledge that for those reasons alone, we might be gratified and pleased we came. Since then we have been staying with Mike in Minnesota, where we were either riding or driving (anything to do with horses) all day long. Driving four miles, jumping the horses over a pole, taking them down to water, having a mule race (which was truly amusing as the course was just in front of the house and several bolted home), and driving, a gang plough, were a few of the "diversions" found for us. Our host was most kind and anxious to make us comfortable; he worked heaven and earth to get his house ready, the contractors having taken so much more time than they said; anyhow, he turned the carpenters out of the house the day previous to our arrival, carried in the furniture, nailed up mosquito blinds, and did many things himself, so that everything should be in spick and span order.

As these men, Mike having two partners, are farming thirteen thousand acres, they are on a much larger scale as regards buildings, numbers of horses, etc., to anything we have seen before. Their living-houses are about double the size of C---- Farm; they have also huge stables, which A---- fancies will be cold in winter, but have a most imposing appearance, as have also their implement house, sheds, etc. The land seemed much the same as ours, a rich black loam, but very much wetter, marshes everywhere. They have broken two thousand acres since the beginning of June, and were busy, whilst we were there, cutting hay, Mike hoping he had already got over five hundred ton up!

We drove one day to see a neighbouring farm which is said to be the "boss" one in all the country, belonging to a man who has been out five years. He was just starting to cut his two square miles of wheat, and we watched the seven self-binding machines with great interest. They seem as light as a reaper, and the machinery comparatively not intricate.

We were driven through some standing corn, which was rather agonizing to our British ideas, but he thought nothing of it. The straw was four and a half feet high, and he hopes to get forty-two bushels to the acre. His farm being on the Snake River, and having many creeks running through as drainage, is a great advantage. His vats were pronounced no better, if so good, as ours at C---- Farm.

We remained at Warren a day longer than we had intended, as we got to the station just in time to see our train move off. We accused Mike's Irish groom, who is quite a character, of bringing round the carriage too late on purpose. If he did, I think all the party forgave him; we were very happy, it gave us another night of A----'s society. Mike was low at our going. Poor man! one cannot be much surprised at his liking to keep us, as, besides the fascinations of ladies' society, he has no neighbours whatsoever, and, excepting the two men he has in the house, there is not a gentleman nearer than Winnipeg. He offered me seventy-two dollars a month to be his housekeeper. E---- was to have two dollars a week as parlour-maid, which she considers an insult; or she might have seventy-five cents a day if she would drive the ploughs.

Servants and labourers get higher wages there than in Manitoba, all the men were averaging thirty-five to forty dollars a month and their keep. They were all Swedes and Germans, of whom there is an enormous colony in the state.

We are now trying to spend our day at Council Bluff, a large junction of the Grand Pacific Railway, having come in here at 8 o'clock this morning, and our train to Denver not leaving till 7 o'clock this evening. The hotel is right on the station. The weather is so hot, that as yesterday, at St. Paul's, where we also had to spend a whole day, we have never summoned up courage to go beyond the door. It was suggested we might take the tram and go up into the City; but E---- has a notion that one city is much like another, particularly on a hot day.

It is curious how Americans live in hotels; there are several families in this, and if my letter is not very intelligible you must forgive me, as I am writing in the grand corridor to try and catch the slight draughts of air blowing through, at the same time that half a dozen children are playing up and down.

The scenery yesterday from St. Paul's all along the banks of the Missouri was very pretty. We both of us sat outside the Pullman as long as daylight lasted, feasting our eyes oh the water, trees, etc. The height and luxuriance of the latter seemed quite incomprehensible after the total absence of forest scenery for so many months. It is pretty round here; and by the time we get to the Rocky Mountains we shall have got beyond the stage of thinking a hillock a mountain, and fairish-sized trees not so wonderful after all; but at the present moment we are in that pleasing state, ready to admire anything and everything. We hope to get to Denver on Saturday night, and rest there Sunday and part of Monday, and we also hope to get to Church there. Mike offered to drive us into Warren last Sunday; but as the service was a Swedish Presbyterian, we didn't think we should be much edified.

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DENVER, August 2lst.

We arrived here Saturday evening, very tired and not at all sorry to exchange the Pullman for a comfortable room and bed, which we had telegraphed for, and therefore not, like so many of our fellow-passengers, obliged to seek shelter elsewhere. The Pullman's are most comfortable, and for a long journey like ours nothing could be so good; but I am glad that in England we don't have either these or the ordinary American car in general use. The publicity is so odious, and one does get bored by the passengers constantly wandering up and down the train, and the boys who pass and repass every ten minutes selling books, newspapers, cigars, candy, and the unripest of fruit, which they are always pressing you to buy; to say nothing of chewing, spitting Americans one has to countenance all day long. The last four-and-twenty hours of our journey have been very tiring. The scenery has been so monotonous; endless long undulating plains like the waves of the sea, covered with grass quite dried up, a few flowers, and a bee-shaped cactus. The heat was very oppressive, a hot sirocco, wind blowing which; obliged us to keep our windows shut on account of the fine alkaline dust. E---- had her window open last night, and awoke this morning to find herself in a layer of ashes.

We skirted the South Platte River most of the time; it was only a bed of shingles, wide and shallow, with not a drop of water in it. These plains, extending for thousands of miles in all directions, are the great "ranching," or cattle-farming districts, formerly the favourite breeding-grounds and pastures of the buffalo, which, alas! have all disappeared. We only saw a few tame ones amongst the herds of cattle; they have been killed in the most ruthless, indiscriminate way for their furs, and will soon be "things of the past."

We wondered much, with the river and every visible stream so dry, how the large herds of cattle and horses were watered; but have since been told that water is so near the surface the herdsmen have no great depth to dig to procure any quantity. We thought we could have made a good pick or two amongst the horses, but we didn't care for long-legged ugly big-horned cattle brutes. Here and there was a herdsman mounted on a small Indian pony with a high Mexican saddle, enormous spurs, and a long lasso, galloping and dexterously turning his animals.

Our train had to pull up several times and whistle loudly to turn the animals off the track, there being, as usual, no rail or protection; but pulling up for them was not half as exciting as on Thursday night, when we stopped repeatedly to turn a man off the train who, not having paid his fare, nor apparently intending to do so, had swung himself in some marvellous way under the cars, hanging on by the break. Whenever we slackened speed he jumped off, walking quite unconcernedly alongside; but the moment we moved on he got on again. We never knew how far he continued his perilous ride, I fancy that even the officials gave up remonstrating; anyhow, as long as daylight lasted and we could watch the men, no efforts on their part seemed to make the smallest impression.

Three hours before getting into Denver we had our first glimpse of the Rockies, and although they were then only in the blue distance we were quite excited about them; and at Greely Station (much impressed on our minds by having read Miss Bird's book just before coming here), we came in full view of Long's Peak,--almost wishing "Mountain Jim" might still be alive to ascend it with us,--and the whole of the gorgeous range; and quite one of the loveliest sights I ever saw was watching two thunder-storms on either side of the Peak break and disperse, whilst the reflections from the sunset-glow lit up the rest of the heavens. The railway and Denver City itself is about thirty miles distant from the mountains, but the atmosphere is so clear that they look as if quite within an easy gallop.

It is difficult to understand why the town has been built so far from the mountains, situated as it is on a sandy, treeless plain. It is growing, like most of the western towns, at a tremendous pace, and we are lodging in a luxurious hotel, our room on the fourth floor numbers 454. We found the avenues of trees lining every street an immense boon this morning in going to church at the cathedral.

The heat, though great, is not so oppressive as either at St. Paul's or Omaha, but then we are at the height of 5,000 feet; and this afternoon the air has been cleared by a thunderstorm preceded by a great sand-storm, which we watched from our windows encircling the town, so thick that mountains and all view was obliterated for the time being.

Denver is a great resort for invalids, chiefly those suffering with asthma.

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August 22.

Before leaving Denver we went to a gunsmith and invested in a fishing-rod and numberless flies, with which we intend to do great execution. We also went to the exhibition, opened a month ago and still unfinished; one of the leading men, to whom we had a letter of introduction, showed us everything. It is chiefly interesting to miners, as the display of minerals from Western America is unrivalled. There seemed, in the specimens, enough gold and silver to make us rich for ever; unfortunately our ignorance on the subject of ore is too great to thoroughly appreciate it.

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OURAY, August 24.