A Lady's Life on a Farm in ManitobaHall, M. G. C. (Mary Georgina Caroline)
History
A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba
Hall, M. G. C. (Mary Georgina Caroline)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Manitoba; Manitoba -- Description and travel
The scenery yesterday from St. Paul's all along the banks of the
Missouri was very pretty. We both of us sat outside the Pullman as
long as daylight lasted, feasting our eyes oh the water, trees,
etc. The height and luxuriance of the latter seemed quite
incomprehensible after the total absence of forest scenery for so
many months. It is pretty round here; and by the time we get to
the Rocky Mountains we shall have got beyond the stage of thinking
a hillock a mountain, and fairish-sized trees not so wonderful
after all; but at the present moment we are in that pleasing
state, ready to admire anything and everything. We hope to get to
Denver on Saturday night, and rest there Sunday and part of
Monday, and we also hope to get to Church there. Mike offered to
drive us into Warren last Sunday; but as the service was a Swedish
Presbyterian, we didn't think we should be much edified.
* * * * *
DENVER, August 2lst.
We arrived here Saturday evening, very tired and not at all sorry
to exchange the Pullman for a comfortable room and bed, which we
had telegraphed for, and therefore not, like so many of our
fellow-passengers, obliged to seek shelter elsewhere. The
Pullman's are most comfortable, and for a long journey like ours
nothing could be so good; but I am glad that in England we don't
have either these or the ordinary American car in general use. The
publicity is so odious, and one does get bored by the passengers
constantly wandering up and down the train, and the boys who pass
and repass every ten minutes selling books, newspapers, cigars,
candy, and the unripest of fruit, which they are always pressing
you to buy; to say nothing of chewing, spitting Americans one has
to countenance all day long. The last four-and-twenty hours of our
journey have been very tiring. The scenery has been so monotonous;
endless long undulating plains like the waves of the sea, covered
with grass quite dried up, a few flowers, and a bee-shaped cactus.
The heat was very oppressive, a hot sirocco, wind blowing which;
obliged us to keep our windows shut on account of the fine
alkaline dust. E---- had her window open last night, and awoke this
morning to find herself in a layer of ashes.
We skirted the South Platte River most of the time; it was only a
bed of shingles, wide and shallow, with not a drop of water in it.
These plains, extending for thousands of miles in all directions,
are the great "ranching," or cattle-farming districts, formerly
the favourite breeding-grounds and pastures of the buffalo, which,
alas! have all disappeared. We only saw a few tame ones amongst
the herds of cattle; they have been killed in the most ruthless,
indiscriminate way for their furs, and will soon be "things of the
past."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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