398 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



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, 



