A plague of flies--A melancholy charioteer--The Foot Hills--A
mountain boarding-house--A dull life--"Being agreeable"--Climate
of Colorado--Soroche and snakes.

CANYON, September 12.

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.
The beef was tough and greasy, the butter had turned to oil, and
beef and butter were black with living, drowned, and half-drowned
flies. The greasy table-cloth was black also with flies, and I
did not wonder that the guests looked melancholy and quickly
escaped. I failed to get a horse, but was strongly recommended
to come here and board with a settler, who, they said, had a
saw-mill and took boarders. 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
camping out all the summer for the benefit of their health. The
idea of a boarding-house, as I know them in America, was rather
formidable in the present state of my wardrobe, and 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 I left in a buggy drawn by light broncos
and driven by a profoundly melancholy young man. He had never
been to the canyon; there was no road. We met nobody, saw
nothing except antelope in the distance, and he became more
melancholy and lost his way, driving hither and thither for