nearer the mountains i threw a few things together and came here with liim we left at and here at staying an hour for food on the way i liked the first half of the drive but the fierce blazing heat of the sun on the earth for the last half was terrible even with my white umbrella which i have not used since i left new it was sickening then the eyes have never anything green to rest upon except in the river where there is green hay grass we followed mostly the course of the a la which rises in the mountains and after supplying with falls into the which is an of the when beyond the scattered houses and great ring fence of the vigorous we were on the boundless now and then passed us we met three with white except where the dogs have the ground you can drive almost anywhere and the passage of a few over the same track makes a road we the river whose course is marked the whole way by a fringe of small cotton woods and and travelled hour after hour with nothing to see except some dog towns with their quaint little but the view in front was glorious the a s life ik letter f f i from the plains are the finest mountain i ever saw but not equal to this for not only do five high giants each nearly the height of lift their dazzling above the lower but the expanse of mountains is so vast and the whole lie in a transparent medium of the richest blue not haze � something peculiar to the r ion the lack of is a great artistic fault and the absence of is melancholy and makes me recall sadly the detail of the islands once only the second time we the river the cotton woods formed a and then the loveliness was heavenly we stopped at a log house and got a rough dinner of beef and potatoes and i was amused at the five men who shared it with us for to me for being without their coats as if coats would not be an on the plains it is the election day for the and men were ing over the to register their the three in tiie talked politics the whole time they spoke openly and of the prices given for and apparently there was not a on either side who was not accused of degrading corruption we saw a of head of cattle travelling from to they had been nine months on the way they were under the charge of twenty mounted the heavily and a light accompanied them full of extra and not unnecessary for the indians are in all directions by the reckless and useless slaughter of the which is their chief on the plains are herds of wild horses deer and and in the mountains bears wolves deer mountain lions and mountain sheep you see a rifle in every as people always hope to fall in with game by the time we reached fort i was sick and dizzy with the heat of the sun and not disposed to be pleased with a most place it was a military post but at present consists of a few frame houses put down recently on the bare and burning plain the have great but of what the mountains look hardly nearer than from one only their vicinity by the loss of higher peaks this house is from than the one at but full of these new are altogether entirely given up to talk of dollars as well as to making them with coarse speech coarse food coarse every thing nothing wherewith to satisfy the higher if they exist nothing on which the eye can rest with pleasure the lower floor of this inn with in addition to thousands of black flies the latter cover the ground and rise from it as you walk l l b letter iv k of flies � a melancholy the foot mountain boarding � a dull life � being agreeable � climate of � and september i was actually so dull and tired that i deliberately slept away the afternoon in order to forget the heat and flies thirty men in working clothes silent and sad looking came in to supper tlie beef was tough and greasy the butter had turned to oil and beef and were black with living drowned and flies the greasy table cloth was black also with flies and i did not wonder that the guests looked melancholy quickly escaped i failed to get a horse but was strongly recommended to come here and board with a who they said had a saw mill and took the person who recommended it so strongly gave me a note of introduction and told me that it was in a grand part of the mountains where many people had been out all the summer for the benefit of their health the idea of a boarding house as i know them in america was in the present state of my wardrobe and l the rocky mountains i decided on bringing my carpet bag as well as my pack lest i should be rejected for my bad clothes early the next morning t left in a drawn by light and driven by a profoundly melancholy young man he had never been to the there was no road we met nobody saw q except in the distance and he became more melancholy and lost his way driving hither and thither for about twenty miles till we came upon an old trail which eventually brought us to a fertile bottom where hay and were being and five or six frame houses looked cheerful i had been recommended to two of these which professed to take in strangers but one was full cf and in the other a child was dead so i took 