The winter in this region is very mild, and may fairly be termed the pleasantest season of the year. We have no lasting rainy season, although rain falls more frequently then than in the summer months, but it rarely lasts longer than a day, and then the cloudless blue sky gleams pleasantly over us again. Frost is rare and trifling; but sometimes it sets in towards morning, and will last a whole day if accompanied by a wind blowing down from the northern Rocky Mountains. These Northers are usually called something terrible in the whole of the United States, but in reality they do not at all merit this reputation. Certainly the cold is felt much more among us than elsewhere; because, as men accustomed to warm weather, we rarely lay in a stock of winter clothes. The houses, too, are not calculated for cold, as they are built very airily and lightly, and have no stoves--only fireplaces. When the Northers blow the people fly to these fires, while the cattle seek bottoms and dense thickets, where they conceal themselves. I remember on a splendidly warm forenoon the sky becoming overcast from the north, and it began to blow and rain, which caused the whole country to be covered with ice in a short time. If such a storm assails a traveller in his light summer dress, he is certainly in an unpleasant position, and if he is a stranger it easily happens that he tells a terrible story about it when he gets home. These disagreeable storms from the north, however, are infrequent; we have perhaps six or eight in a winter, and they rarely last longer than four-and-twenty hours, and are then driven away by very bright warm days. The winter proper--which may bring cold weather--does not begin till January, frequently later; hence we have a very long delicious autumn. The days are no longer oppressively hot, and the nights become so cool that we are glad to snuggle under a buffalo robe or a woollen blanket. This is the season when we recover from the exhausting continuous summer heat, and the body regains its energy. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. IN THE MOUNTAINS.