We Got Across The River Partly On Ice And
Partly By Fording, And I Found That This Was The Place
Where, in
spite of its somewhat dubious reputation, I had been told that I
could put up.
A man came
Out in the sapient and good-natured stage of
intoxication, and, the door being opened, I was confronted by a
rough bar and a smoking, blazing kerosene lamp without a chimney.
This is the worst place I have put up at as to food, lodging, and
general character; an old and very dirty log cabin, not chinked,
with one dingy room used for cooking and feeding, in which a
miner was lying very ill of fever; then a large roofless shed
with a canvas side, which is to be an addition, and then the bar.
They accounted for the disorder by the building operations. They
asked me if I were the English lady written of in the Denver
News, and for once I was glad that my fame had preceded me, as it
seemed to secure me against being quietly "put out of the way."
A horrible meal was served - dirty, greasy, disgusting. A
celebrated hunter, Bob Craik, came in to supper with a young man
in tow, whom, in spite of his rough hunter's or miner's dress, I
at once recognized as an English gentleman. It was their
camp-fire which I had seen on the hill side. This gentleman was
lording it in true caricature fashion, with a Lord Dundreary
drawl and a general execration of everything; while I sat in the
chimney corner, speculating on the reason why many of the upper
class of my countrymen - "High Toners," as they are called out
here - make themselves so ludicrously absurd.
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