When I awoke in the night I heard the rain pattering on the wagon-cover. This morning the mountains were all covered with snow, and presented a magnificent picture. Those nearest our camp are covered with pine trees of an intensely dark green. The snow on the boughs and beneath the trees glittered in the sunshine. The scene was constantly changing, as the warm sun melted the snow from the boughs, and before night it was all gone except on the highest peaks, where it stays all summer.
The roads have been sloppy and muddy to-day, though the water has all run off or evaporated, so that it is comparatively dry where we are camping, notwithstanding there was so much snow and water on the ground this morning. It is too cold for comfort this evening. We are hovering around the stove with our shawls on.
SWEET WATER CAÑON.
Saturday, September 3.
We came through a deep, dark cañon this morning, and passed the grave of a man that was robbed and murdered last week. It is the deepest and darkest cañon we have traveled through. Ten men have been robbed and murdered in it in the last two years. We were in no danger of being molested. Only men who have their fortunes in gold about their person are intercepted, robbed and killed. How awful it seems. Why will men be so wicked?
In several places in the cañon the road has been widened with pick and shovel, perhaps two or three days’ work done, and we had to pay ten dollars toll for our two wagons passing over it. We stopped at noon on Black Tail Deer Creek. Are camping on the Sweet Water, about twenty-five miles from Virginia City. This is a beautiful place. There are fine large trees along the creek, high mountains around a lovely dale. It is just large enough for a fine farm. There is a deserted cabin here, where some one commenced improving a farm, became homesick and discouraged, and left it for some one else.
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Sunday, September 4.
We are camping within seven miles of Virginia City, near a freight train of about fifty wagons, with from seventy-five to one hundred people all together, men, women and children, returning to the States.
To hear these people talk of the disadvantages and disagreeable things with regard to life in Montana, would have a tendency to discourage one, if it were not so palpable that they are homesick, and everyone knows that when that disease is fairly developed, everything is colored with a deep dark blue, and even pleasant things seem extremely disagreeable to the afflicted person. The ladies seem to have the disease in its worst form, and of course they make the gentlemen do as they wish, which is to take them home to mother and other dear ones.