26o 



HA IVAII. 



[letter XXIX. 



a dripping fog, so dense that I had to keep within kicking 

 range of the mules for fear of being lost, we heard the lowing 

 of domestic cattle, and came to a place where felled trees, very 

 difficult for the horses to cross, were lying. Then a rude 

 boundary wall appeared, inside of which was a small, poor- look- 

 ing grass house, consisting of one partially- divided room, with 

 a small, ruinous-looking cook-house, a shed, and an unfinished 

 frame-house near it. It looked, and is, a disconsolate con- 

 clusion of a wet day's ride. I rode into the corral, and found 

 two or three very rough-looking whites and half-whites stand- 

 ing, and addressing one of them, I found he was Mr. Reid's 

 manager there. I asked if they could give me a night's lodg- 

 ing, which seemed a diverting notion to them ; and they said 

 they could give me the rough accommodation they had, but it 

 was hard even for them, till the new house was put up. They 

 brought me into this very rough shelter, a draughty grass room, 

 with a bench, table, and one chair in it. Two men came in, 

 but not the native wife and family, and sat down to a calabash 

 of pot and some strips of dried beef, food so coarse, that they 

 apologised for not offering it to me. They said they had sent 

 to the lower ranch for some flour, and in the meantime they 

 gave me some milk in a broken bowl, their " nearest approach 

 to a tumbler," they said. I was almost starving, for all our 

 food was on the pack-mule. This is the place where we 

 had been told that we could obtain tea, flour, beef, and 

 fowls ! 



By some fatality my pen, ink, and knitting were on the pack- 

 mule ; it was very cold, the afternoon fog closed us in, and 

 darkness came on prematurely, so that I felt a most absurd 

 sense of ennui, and went over to the cook-house, where I found 

 Gandle cooking, and his native wife, with a heap of children 

 and dogs lying round the stove. I joined them till my clothes 

 were dry, on which the man, who, in spite of his rough exterior, 

 was really friendly and hospitable, remarked that he saw I was 

 '■' one of the sort who knew how to take people as I found, 

 them." 



This regular afternoon mist which sets in at a certain altitude, 

 blotting out the sun and sky, and bringing the horizon within a< 

 few yards, makes me certain after all that the mists of rainless i 

 Eden were a phenomenon, the loss of which is not to be 

 regretted. 



Still the afternoon hung on, and I went back to the house 

 feeling that the most desirable event which the future could 



