398 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



of Mormons and of cultivation, or rather crop-getting, for the Mormon is 

 only a higher kind of Digger Indian. 



The thermometer has been near a hundred every day, but we have kept 

 pretty well in a dirty, miserable way. The time to come is June. Page joined 

 us at Denver and goes to Virginia. He is the same dear boy, though he is 

 becoming gray-headed and solemn. . . . Fine as these mountains are, they 

 are very mechanical things, no grace in them. At this season the land is a 

 dusty circle in the Inferno. 



Junction near VIRGINIA, MONTANA, July 30, 1897. 



I find that I stand the work well, better than do my companions, who 

 appear to suffer from the heat. The conditions are rude, but there is enough 

 to eat of a rough kind, and a chance for a bath in the ditch, good mountain 

 snow water. A splendid landscape, but one that is curiously uninviting from 

 the lack of the human quality. 



BUTTE, MONTANA, July 26, 1898. 



I am pretty well through with the blessed underground, with its dirty 

 business, and am now doing the surface, trying to extract information from 

 the [word illegible] of dust which wraps this wealth in. The place is a dry 

 hell, but far away are the snow-tipped mountains. . . . The task is interest- 

 ing, so too, in a way, are the people. A Britisher who is my guide is a good 

 fellow. The mass is Irish and the civilization inexpressibly so. Every shanty 

 has its back yard in the front street. A priest-ridden, labor-ridden, politics- 

 ridden horde of laborious vagabonds. 



CAMBRIDGE, 1899. 



... I had to go yesterday morning to Nashua. This promises to be my 

 only divagation until we go to the island. ... We are waiting the arrival 

 of the Sunday afternoon contingent. We hope there will not be many to be 

 disappointed by your absence. 



Later. The people have come and gone, a bare dozen. The new were a 

 lecturer on irrigation from the West, an able man. Another, an English- 

 woman, a patent crank. She is not permanent. And a gentleman from South 

 America. ... I would there were some news to tell you, but the town is 

 like us in being dull. 



Friday, 1899. 



After lecture I had to go to town, to see McKay on business ; to vary my 

 walk, I came back through Charlestown, a rather long way so I am 

 tired, having had no rest. I shall, therefore, take the sleep cure upstairs early. 



There is no news except that the I s' boy, I have been looking after, 



