A Lady\'s Life in the Rocky Mountains
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Isabella L. Bird >> A Lady\'s Life in the Rocky Mountains
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14 A LADY'S LIFE
IN THE
ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Isabella L. Bird
Introduction by
Ann Ronald
University of Nevada, Reno
To My Sister,
to whom
these letters were originally written,
they are now
affectionately dedicated.
Contents
Introduction, by Ann Ronald
LETTER I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A
pioneer--A Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a
bear--Tahoe.
LETTER II
A lady's "get-up"--Grizzly bears--The "Gem of the Sierras"--A
tragic tale--A carnival of color.
LETTER III
A Temple of Morpheus--Utah--A "God-forgotten" town--A distressed
couple--Dog villages--A temperance colony--A Colorado inn
--The bug pest--Fort Collins.
LETTER IV
A plague of flies--A melancholy charioteer--The Foot Hills--A
mountain boarding-house--A dull life--"Being agreeable"--Climate
of Colorado--Soroche and snakes.
LETTER V
A dateless day--"Those hands of yours"--A Puritan--Persevering
shiftlessness--The house-mother--Family worship--A grim Sunday--A
"thick-skulled Englishman"--A morning call--Another
atmosphere--The Great Lone Land--"Ill found"--A log camp--Bad
footing for horses--Accidents--Disappointment.
LETTER VI
A bronco mare--An accident--Wonderland--A sad story--The children
of the Territories--Hard greed--Halcyon hours--Smartness--
Old-fashioned prejudices--The Chicago colony--Good luck--Three
notes of admiration--A good horse--The St. Vrain--The Rocky
Mountains at last--"Mountain Jim"--A death hug--Estes Park.
LETTER VII
Personality of Long's Peak--"Mountain Jim"--Lake of the Lilies--A
silent forest--The camping ground--"Ring"--A lady's bower--Dawn
and sunrise--A glorious view--Links of diamonds--The ascent of
the Peak--The "Dog's Lift"--Suffering from thirst--The
descent--The bivouac.
LETTER VIII
Estes Park--Big game--"Parks" in Colorado--Magnificent
scenery--Flowers and pines--An awful road--Our log
cabin--Griffith Evans--A miniature world--Our topics--A
night alarm--A skunk--Morning glories--Daily routine--The
panic--"Wait for the wagon"--A musical evening.
LETTER IX
"Please Ma'ams"--A desperado--A cattle hunt--The muster--A mad
cow--A snowstorm--Snowed up--Birdie--The Plains--A prairie
schooner--Denver--A find--Plum Creek--"Being
agreeable"--Snowbound--The grey mare.
LETTER X
A white world--Bad traveling--A millionaire's home--Pleasant
Park--Perry's Park--Stock-raising--A cattle king--The Arkansas
Divide--Birdie's sagacity--Luxury--Monument Park--Deference to
prejudice--A death scene--The Manitou--A loose shoe--The Ute
Pass--Bergens Park--A settler's home--Hayden's Divide--Sharp
criticism--Speaking the truth.
LETTER XI
Tarryall Creek--The Red Range--Excelsior--Importunate
pedlars--Snow and heat--A bison calf--Deep drifts--South
Park--The Great Divide--Comanche Bill--Difficulties--
Hall's Gulch--A Lord Dundreary--Ridiculous fears.
LETTER XII
Deer Valley--Lynch law--Vigilance committees--The silver
spruce--Taste and abstinence--The whisky fiend--Smartness--Turkey
Creek Canyon--The Indian problem--Public rascality--Friendly
meetings--The way to the Golden City--A rising settlement--Clear
Creek Canyon--Staging--Swearing--A mountain town.
LETTER XIII
The blight of mining--Green Lake--Golden
City--Benighted--Vertigo--Boulder Canyon--Financial straits--A
hard ride--The last cent--A bachelor's home--"Mountain Jim"--A
surprise--A night arrival--Making the best of it--Scanty fare.
LETTER XIV
A dismal ride--A desperado's tale--"Lost! Lost! Lost!"--Winter
glories--Solitude--Hard times--Intense cold--A pack of
wolves--The beaver dams--Ghastly scenes--Venison steaks--Our
evenings.
LETTER XV
A whisky slave--The pleasures of monotony--The mountain
lion--"Another mouth to feed"--A tiresome boy--An
outcast--Thanksgiving Day--The newcomer--A literary humbug--
Milking a dry cow--Trout-fishing--A snow-storm--A desperado's
den.
LETTER XVI
A harmonious home--Intense cold--A purple sun--A grim jest--A
perilous ride--Frozen eyelids--Longmount--The pathless prairie--
Hardships of emigrant life--A trapper's advice--The Little
Thompson--Evans and "Jim."
LETTER XVII
Woman's mission--The last morning--Crossing the St.
Vrain--Miller--The St. Vrain again--Crossing the prairie--"Jim's"
dream--"Keeping strangers"--The inn kitchen--A reputed
child-eater--Notoriety--A quiet dance--"Jim's" resolve--The
frost-fall--An unfortunate introduction.
Letter I
Lake Tahoe--Morning in San Francisco--Dust--A Pacific
mail-train--Digger Indians--Cape Horn--A mountain hotel--A
pioneer--A Truckee livery stable--A mountain stream--Finding a
bear--Tahoe.
LAKE TAHOE, September 2.
I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's
life and sigh. Not lovable, like the Sandwich Islands, but
beautiful in its own way! A strictly North American
beauty--snow-splotched mountains, huge pines, red-woods, sugar
pines, silver spruce; a crystalline atmosphere, waves of the
richest color; and a pine-hung lake which mirrors all beauty on
its surface. Lake Tahoe is before me, a sheet of water
twenty-two miles long by ten broad, and in some places 1,700 feet
deep. It lies at a height of 6,000 feet, and the snow-crowned
summits which wall it in are from 8,000 to 11,000 feet in
altitude. The air is keen and elastic. There is no sound but
the distant and slightly musical ring of the lumberer's axe.
It is a weariness to go back, even in thought, to the clang of
San Francisco, which I left in its cold morning fog early
yesterday, driving to the Oakland ferry through streets with
side-walks heaped with thousands of cantaloupe and water-melons,
tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, pears, grapes, peaches,
apricots--all of startling size as compared with any I ever saw
before. Other streets were piled with sacks of flour, left out
all night, owing to the security from rain at this season. I
pass hastily over the early part of the journey, the crossing
the bay in a fog as chill as November, the number of "lunch
baskets," which gave the car the look of conveying a great picnic
party, the last view of the Pacific, on which I had looked for
nearly a year, the fierce sunshine and brilliant sky inland, the
look of long RAINLESSNESS, which one may not call drought, the
valleys with sides crimson with the poison oak, the dusty
vineyards, with great purple clusters thick among the leaves, and
between the vines great dusty melons lying on the dusty earth.
From off the boundless harvest fields the grain was carried in
June, and it is now stacked in sacks along the track, awaiting
freightage. California is a "land flowing with milk and honey."
The barns are bursting with fullness. In the dusty orchards the
apple and pear branches are supported, that they may not break
down under the weight of fruit; melons, tomatoes, and squashes of
gigantic size lie almost unheeded on the ground; fat cattle,
gorged almost to repletion, shade themselves under the oaks;
superb "red" horses shine, not with grooming, but with condition;
and thriving farms everywhere show on what a solid basis the
prosperity of the "Golden State" is founded. Very uninviting,
however rich, was the blazing Sacramento Valley, and very
repulsive the city of Sacramento, which, at a distance of 125
miles from the Pacific, has an elevation of only thirty feet.
The mercury stood at 103 degrees in the shade, and the fine white
dust was stifling.
In the late afternoon we began the ascent of the Sierras, whose
sawlike points had been in sight for many miles. The dusty
fertility was all left behind, the country became rocky and
gravelly, and deeply scored by streams bearing the muddy wash of
the mountain gold mines down to the muddier Sacramento. There
were long broken ridges and deep ravines, the ridges becoming
longer, the ravines deeper, the pines thicker and larger, as we
ascended into a cool atmosphere of exquisite purity, and before 6
P.M. the last traces of cultivation and the last hardwood trees
were left behind.[1]
[1] In consequence of the unobserved omission of a date to my
letters having been pointed out to me, I take this opportunity of
stating that I traveled in Colorado in the autumn and early
winter of 1873, on my way to England from the Sandwich Islands.
The letters are a faithful picture of the country and state of
society as it then was; but friends who have returned from the
West within the last six months tell me that things are rapidly
changing, that the frame house is replacing the log cabin, and
that the footprints of elk and bighorn may be sought for in vain
on the dewy slopes of Estes Park.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the third edition, January 16, 1880.)
At Colfax, a station at a height of 2,400 feet, I got out and
walked the length of the train. First came two great gaudy
engines, the Grizzly Bear and the White Fox, with their
respective tenders loaded with logs of wood, the engines with
great, solitary, reflecting lamps in front above the cow guards,
a quantity of polished brass-work, comfortable glass houses, and
well-stuffed seats for the engine-drivers. The engines and
tenders were succeeded by a baggage car, the latter loaded with
bullion and valuable parcels, and in charge of two "express
agents." Each of these cars is forty-five feet long. Then came
two cars loaded with peaches and grapes; then two "silver palace"
cars, each sixty feet long; then a smoking car, at that time
occupied mainly by Chinamen; and then five ordinary passenger
cars, with platforms like all the others, making altogether a
train about 700 feet in length.
The platforms of the four front cars were clustered over with
Digger Indians, with their squaws, children, and gear. They are
perfect savages, without any aptitude for even aboriginal
civilization, and are altogether the most degraded of the
ill-fated tribes which are dying out before the white races.
They were all very diminutive, five feet one inch being, I should
think, about the average height, with flat noses, wide mouths,
and black hair, cut straight above the eyes and hanging lank and
long at the back and sides. The squaws wore their hair thickly
plastered with pitch, and a broad band of the same across their
noses and cheeks. They carried their infants on their backs,
strapped to boards. The clothing of both sexes was a ragged,
dirty combination of coarse woolen cloth and hide, the moccasins
being unornamented. They were all hideous and filthy, and
swarming with vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows, one
of them, who appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a
quiver. A few had fishing tackle, but the bystanders said that
they lived almost entirely upon grasshoppers. They were a
most impressive incongruity in the midst of the tokens of an
omnipotent civilization.
The light of the sinking sun from that time glorified the
Sierras, and as the dew fell, aromatic odors made the still air
sweet. On a single track, sometimes carried on a narrow ledge
excavated from the mountain side by men lowered from the top in
baskets, overhanging ravines from 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep, the
monster train SNAKED its way upwards, stopping sometimes in front
of a few frame houses, at others where nothing was to be seen but
a log cabin with a few Chinamen hanging about it, but where
trails on the sides of the ravines pointed to a gold country
above and below. So sharp and frequent are the curves on some
parts of the ascent, that on looking out of the window one could
seldom see more than a part of the train at once. At Cape Horn,
where the track curves round the ledge of a precipice 2,500 feet
in depth, it is correct to be frightened, and a fashion of
holding the breath and shutting the eyes prevails, but my fears
were reserved for the crossing of a trestle bridge over a very
deep chasm, which is itself approached by a sharp curve. This
bridge appeared to be overlapped by the cars so as to produce the
effect of looking down directly into a wild gulch, with a torrent
raging along it at an immense depth below.
Shivering in the keen, frosty air near the summit pass of the
Sierras, we entered the "snow-sheds," wooden galleries, which for
about fifty miles shut out all the splendid views of the region,
as given in dioramas, not even allowing a glimpse of "the Gem of
the Sierras," the lovely Donner Lake. One of these sheds is
twenty-seven miles long. In a few hours the mercury had fallen
from 103 degrees to 29 degrees, and we had ascended 6,987 feet in
105 miles! After passing through the sheds, we had several grand
views of a pine forest on fire before reaching Truckee at 11 P.M.
having traveled 258 miles. Truckee, the center of the "lumbering
region" of the Sierras, is usually spoken of as "a rough mountain
town," and Mr. W. had told me that all the roughs of the district
congregated there, that there were nightly pistol affrays in
bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of
respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the
lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying
the people in the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on
their luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street--if street
that could be called which was only a wide, cleared space,
intersected by rails, with here and there a stump, and great
piles of sawn logs bulking big in the moonlight, and a number of
irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses, many of them with
open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with men. We had
pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a partially
open front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and
smoking, and the space between it and the cars was a moving mass
of loafers and passengers. On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy
bells, were mightily moving, the glare from their cyclopean eyes
dulling the light of a forest which was burning fitfully on a
mountain side; and on open spaces great fires of pine logs were
burning cheerily, with groups of men round them. A band was
playing noisily, and the unholy sound of tom-toms was not far
off. Mountains--the Sierras of many a fireside dream--seemed to
wall in the town, and great pines stood out, sharp and clear cut,
against a sky in which a moon and stars were shining frostily.
It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an
"irrepressible rigger," who seemed to represent the hotel
establishment, deposited me and my carpetbag in a room which
answered for "the parlor," I was glad to find some remains of
pine knots still alight in the stove. A man came in and said
that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a room, but
they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The crowd
was solely masculine. It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had
a meal since 6 A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper,
with tea, I was told that no supper could be got at that hour;
but in half an hour the same man returned with a small cup of
cold, weak tea, and a small slice of bread, which looked as if it
had been much handled.
I asked the Negro factotum about the hire of horses, and
presently a man came in from the bar who, he said, could supply
my needs. This man, the very type of a Western pioneer, bowed,
threw himself into a rocking-chair, drew a spittoon beside him,
cut a fresh quid of tobacco, began to chew energetically, and put
his feet, cased in miry high boots, into which his trousers were
tucked, on the top of the stove. He said he had horses which
would both "lope" and trot, that some ladies preferred the
Mexican saddle, that I could ride alone in perfect safety; and
after a route had been devised, I hired a horse for two days.
This man wore a pioneer's badge as one of the earliest settlers
of California, but he had moved on as one place after another
had become too civilized for him, "but nothing," he added, "was
likely to change much in Truckee." I was afterwards told that
the usual regular hours of sleep are not observed there. The
accommodation is too limited for the population of 2,000,[2]
which is masculine mainly, and is liable to frequent temporary
additions, and beds are occupied continuously, though by
different occupants, throughout the greater part of the
twenty-four hours. Consequently I found the bed and room
allotted to me quite tumbled looking. Men's coats and sticks
were hanging up, miry boots were littered about, and a rifle was
in one corner. There was no window to the outer air, but I slept
soundly, being only once awoke by an increase of the same din in
which I had fallen asleep, varied by three pistol shots fired in
rapid succession.
[2] Nelson's Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad.
This morning Truckee wore a totally different aspect. The crowds
of the night before had disappeared. There were heaps of ashes
where the fires had been. A sleepy German waiter seemed the only
person about the premises, the open drinking saloons were nearly
empty, and only a few sleepy-looking loafers hung about in what
is called the street. It might have been Sunday; but they say
that it brings a great accession of throng and jollity. Public
worship has died out at present; work is discontinued on Sunday,
but the day is given up to pleasure. Putting a minimum of
indispensables into a bag, and slipping on my Hawaiian riding
dress[3] over a silk skirt, and a dust cloak over all, I
stealthily crossed the plaza to the livery stable, the largest
building in Truckee, where twelve fine horses were stabled in
stalls on each side of a broad drive. My friend of the evening
before showed me his "rig," three velvet-covered side-saddles
almost without horns. Some ladies, he said, used the horn of the
Mexican saddle, but none "in the part" rode cavalier fashion. I
felt abashed. I could not ride any distance in the conventional
mode, and was just going to give up this splendid "ravage," when
the man said, "Ride your own fashion; here, at Truckee, if
anywhere in the world, people can do as they like." Blissful
Truckee! In no time a large grey horse was "rigged out" in a
handsome silver-bossed Mexican saddle, with ornamental leather
tassels hanging from the stirrup guards, and a housing of black
bear's-skin. I strapped my silk skirt on the saddle, deposited
my cloak in the corn-bin, and was safely on the horse's back
before his owner had time to devise any way of mounting me.
Neither he nor any of the loafers who had assembled showed the
slightest sign of astonishment, but all were as respectful as
possible.
[3] For the benefit of other lady travelers, I wish to explain
that my "Hawaiian riding dress" is the "American Lady's Mountain
Dress," a half-fitting jacket, a skirt reaching to the ankles,
and full Turkish trousers gathered into frills falling over the
boots,--a thoroughly serviceable and feminine costume for
mountaineering and other rough traveling, as in the Alps or any
other part of the world.
I. L. B.
(Author's note to the second edition, November 27, 1879.)
Once on horseback my embarrassment disappeared, and I rode
through Truckee, whose irregular, steep-roofed houses and
shanties, set down in a clearing and surrounded closely by
mountain and forest, looked like a temporary encampment; passed
under the Pacific Railroad; and then for twelve miles followed
the windings of the Truckee River, a clear, rushing, mountain
stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground not to be
floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking
stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers
hang, and which leaves no greenness along its turbulent progress.
All was bright with that brilliancy of sky and atmosphere, that
blaze of sunshine and universal glitter, which I never saw till I
came to California, combined with an elasticity in the air which
removed all lassitude, and gives one spirit enough for anything.
On either side of the Truckee great sierras rose like walls,
castellated, embattled, rifted, skirted and crowned with pines of
enormous size, the walls now and then breaking apart to show some
snow-slashed peak rising into a heaven of intense, unclouded,
sunny blue. At this altitude of 6,000 feet one must learn to be
content with varieties of Coniferae, for, except for aspens,
which spring up in some places where the pines have been cleared
away, and for cotton-woods, which at a lower level fringe the
streams, there is nothing but the bear cherry, the raspberry, the
gooseberry, the wild grape, and the wild currant. None of these
grew near the Truckee, but I feasted my eyes on pines[4] which,
though not so large as the Wellingtonia of the Yosemite, are
really gigantic, attaining a height of 250 feet, their huge
stems, the warm red of cedar wood, rising straight and branchless
for a third of their height, their diameter from seven to fifteen
feet, their shape that of a larch, but with the needles long and
dark, and cones a foot long. Pines cleft the sky; they were
massed wherever level ground occurred; they stood over the
Truckee at right angles, or lay across it in prostrate grandeur.
Their stumps and carcasses were everywhere; and smooth "shoots"
on the sierras marked where they were shot down as "felled
timber," to be floated off by the river. To them this wild
region owes its scattered population, and the sharp ring of the
lumberer's axe mingles with the cries of wild beasts and the roar
of mountain torrents.
[4] Pinus Lambertina.
The track is a soft, natural, wagon road, very pleasant to ride
on. The horse was much too big for me, and had plans of his own;
but now and then, where the ground admitted to it, I tried his
heavy "lope" with much amusement. I met nobody, and passed
nothing on the road but a freight wagon, drawn by twenty-two
oxen, guided by three fine-looking men, who had some difficulty
in making room for me to pass their awkward convoy. After I had
ridden about ten miles the road went up a steep hill in the
forest, turned abruptly, and through the blue gloom of the great
pines which rose from the ravine in which the river was then hid,
came glimpses of two mountains, about 11,000 feet in height,
whose bald grey summits were crowned with pure snow. It was one
of those glorious surprises in scenery which make one feel as if
one must bow down and worship. The forest was thick, and had an
undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles, but as the horse had
become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea
of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my
stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and
snorting, out of the tangle just in front of me. I had only a
glimpse of him, and thought that my imagination had magnified a
wild boar, but it was a bear. The horse snorted and plunged
violently, as if he would go down to the river, and then turned,
still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding that I must come
off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the ground rose
considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered
with dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly
grotesque and humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and
the horse in another. I hurried after the latter, and twice he
stopped till I was close to him, then turned round and cantered
away. After walking about a mile in deep dust, I picked up first
the saddle-blanket and next my bag, and soon came upon the horse,
standing facing me, and shaking all over. I thought I should
catch him then, but when I went up to him he turned round, threw
up his heels several times, rushed off the track, galloped in
circles, bucking, kicking, and plunging for some time, and then
throwing up his heels as an act of final defiance, went off at
full speed in the direction of Truckee, with the saddle over his
shoulders and the great wooden stirrups thumping his sides, while
I trudged ignominiously along in the dust, laboriously carrying
the bag and saddle-blanket.
I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I
saw the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the
teamsters leading the horse towards me. The young man said that,
seeing the horse coming, they had drawn the team across the road
to stop him, and remembering that he had passed them with a lady
on him, they feared that there had
been an accident, and had just saddled one of their own horses to
go in search of me. He brought me some water to wash the dust
from my face, and re-saddled the horse, but the animal snorted
and plunged for some time before he would let me mount, and then
sidled along in such a nervous and scared way, that the teamster
walked for some distance by me to see that I was "all right." He
said that the woods in the neighborhood of Tahoe had been full of
brown and grizzly bears for some days, but that no one was in
any danger from them. I took a long gallop beyond the scene of
my tumble to quiet the horse, who was most restless and
troublesome.
Then the scenery became truly magnificent and bright with life.
Crested blue-jays darted through the dark pines, squirrels in
hundreds scampered through the forest, red dragon-flies flashed
like "living light," exquisite chipmunks ran across the track,
but only a dusty blue lupin here and there reminded me of earth's
fairer children. Then the river became broad and still, and
mirrored in its transparent depths regal pines, straight as an
arrow, with rich yellow and green lichen clinging to their stems,
and firs and balsam pines filling up the spaces between them, the
gorge opened, and this mountain-girdled lake lay before me, with
its margin broken up into bays and promontories, most
picturesquely clothed by huge sugar pines. It lay dimpling and
scintillating beneath the noonday sun, as entirely unspoilt as
fifteen years ago, when its pure loveliness was known only to
trappers and Indians. One man lives on it the whole year round;
otherwise early October strips its shores of their few
inhabitants, and thereafter, for seven months, it is rarely
accessible except on snowshoes. It never freezes. In the dense
forests which bound it, and drape two-thirds of its gaunt
sierras, are hordes of grizzlies, brown bears, wolves, elk, deer,
chipmunks, martens, minks, skunks, foxes, squirrels, and snakes.
On its margin I found an irregular wooden inn, with a
lumber-wagon at the door, on which was the carcass of a large
grizzly bear, shot behind the house this morning. I had intended
to ride ten miles farther, but, finding that the trail in some
places was a "blind" one, and being bewitched by the beauty and
serenity of Tahoe, I have remained here sketching, reveling in
the view from the veranda, and strolling in the forest. At this
height there is frost every night of the year, and my fingers are
benumbed.
The beauty is entrancing. The sinking sun is out of sight behind
the western Sierras, and all the pine-hung promontories on this
side of the water are rich indigo, just reddened with lake,
deepening here and there into Tyrian purple. The peaks above,
which still catch the sun, are bright rose-red, and all the
mountains on the other side are pink; and pink, too, are the
far-off summits on which the snow-drifts rest. Indigo, red, and
orange tints stain the still water, which lies solemn and dark
against the shore, under the shadow of stately pines. An hour
later, and a moon nearly full--not a pale, flat disc, but a
radiant sphere--has wheeled up into the flushed sky. The sunset
has passed through every stage of beauty, through every glory of
color, through riot and triumph, through pathos and tenderness,
into a long, dreamy, painless rest, succeeded by the profound
solemnity of the moonlight, and a stillness broken only by the
night cries of beasts in the aromatic forests.
I. L. B.
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