Westeim Men 1 3 1 



and more rapid north fork of the river, the long, dry- 

 prairie grass swishing against our horses' legs with a 

 sound like a rustling wind ! Even here men are 

 working, culling the rich, natural hay and compressing 

 it into trusses to be sent to the all devouring eastern 

 states, this compressing being done by means of a 

 machine consisting of two long leaves acting down- 

 wards with great power, into a square, wooden box, 

 and worked by a cunning arrangement of tackles 

 attached to a simple horizontal windlass. A pleasant 

 chat with the bluff, kindly western men, a mixture 

 of Yorkshire shrewdness and Devonshire warm- 

 heartedness,^ and then on to the bridge. Such a 

 bridge ! Tressels rude and rough, ever being destroyed 

 by freshets and ice, ever being renewed by the in- 

 domitable energy of the Texan cattle owners ; planks 

 gaping with innumerable holes and crevasses, thinly 

 covered over with willow brush, across which our 

 horses pick their way with noses well down, but not 

 without many a rattling, thumping stumble which 



^ ' Western men and western manners are in America as in Europe. 

 They seem to get the sun longer, and to ripen, and to glow like 

 Devonshire apples ; and the nearer they are to the western sea the 

 better. Your land sunsets are but poor things as a general rule, 

 except in the desert, which after all, is a sea to all intents and purposes, 

 barring the water, as the Arabs well know. But sea sunsets are 

 glorious and rosy and warm. The sun setting behind the inland hills 

 gives a last supercilious wink, as if to say, " If you pale-faced miners 

 and you ranchers like to stop down there in the valley you may, but I 

 guess my beams won't." But as he sinks, slowly and grandly, into 

 the sea, he says, with his jolly, broad face growing gradually somnolent, 

 "Well, good evening, old fellows, sorry to leave you. You've 

 followed me thus far, follow me still." ' 



