Lost! Lost!" - Winter
glories - Solitude - Hard times - Intense cold - A pack of
wolves - The beaver dams - Ghastly scenes - Venison steaks - Our
evenings.
LETTER XV
A whisky slave - The pleasures of monotony - The mountain
lion - "Another mouth to feed" - A tiresome boy - An
outcast - Thanksgiving Day - The newcomer - A literary humbug -
Milking a dry cow - Trout-fishing - A snow-storm - A desperado's
den.
LETTER XVI
A harmonious home - Intense cold - A purple sun - A grim jest - A
perilous ride - Frozen eyelids - Longmount - The pathless prairie -
Hardships of emigrant life - A trapper's advice - The Little
Thompson - Evans and "Jim."
LETTER XVII
Woman's mission - The last morning - Crossing the St.
Vrain - Miller - The St. Vrain again - Crossing the prairie - "Jim's"
dream - "Keeping strangers" - The inn kitchen - A reputed
child-eater - Notoriety - A quiet dance - "Jim's" resolve - The
frost-fall - An unfortunate introduction.
Letter I
Lake Tahoe - Morning in San Francisco - Dust - A Pacific
mail-train - Digger Indians - Cape Horn - A mountain hotel - A
pioneer - A Truckee livery stable - A mountain stream - Finding a
bear - Tahoe.
LAKE TAHOE, September 2.
I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's
life and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but
beautiful in its own way! A strictly North American
beauty - snow-splotched mountains, huge pines, red-woods, sugar
pines, silver spruce; a crystalline atmosphere, waves of the
richest color; and a pine-hung lake which mirrors all beauty on
its surface.
