OUR NEW RANCH. 87 



row of cherry trees, and on the other a double row 

 of Italian prunes. The walk ends at an exceptionally 

 lofty Cottonwood tree, the topmost branches of which 

 have been broken off in some storm. It only wants 

 that melancholy sombre fowl, the raven, to come and 

 perch on the topmost broken branch to complete the 

 sense of weirdness and some unholy curse which the 

 sight of it suggests, especially when a tempest howls 

 about its gaunt and stiffened limbs. 



Behind the cherry trees are the greenhouses, 

 standing in a broad excavation, hewn, or rather 

 blasted, out of the sloping surface. The only level 

 ground on the whole of the ranch was too near the 

 edge of the lake for us to use it as a site for the green- 

 houses. The stoke-hole of the furnace would have 

 had to be put down below the water level, and when 

 the lake rises, as it does, ten, and sometimes fifteen, 

 feet at high wate'r in July, the furnace would almost 

 certainly have been standing in water. Consequently, 

 we were forced to excavate the site for the houses. As 

 fate would have it, we made an unfortunate choice 

 of a locality, for we chanced to stumble into the 

 middle of a stone slide, which was, in fact, as it 

 turned out, little better than a veritable stone quarry. 

 Towards the upper end we had to blasi: out almost 

 every foot of the ground. We shifted tons upon tons 

 of stone, hauling them with the horses down to the 

 boulder-strewn margin of the lake. The excavation 

 of the site for the greenhouses occupied five men for 

 nine weeks. We were, of course, prevented from 

 beginning the work of construction until the whole 

 of the site was excavated and levelled, for fear that 

 the blasting would shatter the glass, or even smash 



