XLI. INKERMAN. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER THE FIFTH, 1854. 1. Cheerly with us that great November morn Rose, as I trace its features in my mind; A day that in the lap of winter born, Yet told of autumn scarcely left behind. 2. And we by many a hearth in all the land, Whom quiet sleep had lapped the calm night through, Changed greetings, lip with lip, and hand to hand: Old greetings, but which love makes ever new. 3. Then, as the day brought with it sweet release From this world's care, with timely feet we trod The customary paths of blessed peace, We worshipped in the temples of our God. 4. And when the sun had travelled his brief arc, 5. So fared this day with us-but how with you? 6. From cheerless watches on the cold dank ground With mist and gloom and deaths encompassed round, With even to perish in the light denied. 7. And that same season of our genial ease, It was your very agony of strife; While each of those our golden moments sees 8. 'Mid dark ravines, by precipices vast, Did there and here your dreadful conflict No Sabbath day's light work to quell at last The fearful odds of that unequal fray. sway: 9. Oh, "hope" of England, only not "forlorn," Because ye never your own hope resigned, But in worst case, beleaguered, overborne, Did help in God and in your own selves find. 10. We greet you o'er the waves, as from this time Men, to the meanest and the least of whom, In reverence of fortitude sublime, We would rise up and yield respectful room. 11. We greet you o'er the waves, nor fear to say, beleaguered encompassed ravine customary XLII. AMONG THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.-I. A Home in a Log Cabin. As I intend to make Estes Park my head-quarters until the winter sets in, I must make you acquainted with my surroundings and mode of living. The house is a log cabin made of big hewn logs. The chinks should be filled with mud and lime, but these are wanting. The roof is formed of barked young spruce, then a layer of hay, and an outer coating of mud, all nearly flat. The floors are roughly boarded. The "living-room is about sixteen feet square, and has a rough stone chimney in which pine logs are always burning. At one end there is a door into a small bedroom, and at the other a door into a small eating-room, at the table of which we feed in relays. This opens into a very small kitchen with a great American cooking-stove, and there are two "bed-closets" besides. Although rude, it is comfortable, except for the draughts. The fine snow drives in through the chinks and covers the floors, but sweeping it out at intervals is both fun and exercise. There are no heaps or rubbish-places outside. it, on the slope under the pines, is a pretty tworoomed cabin, and beyond that, near the lake, is my Near cabin—a very rough one. My door opens into a little room with a stone chimney, and that again into a small room with a hay bed, a chair with a tin basin on it, a shelf, and some pegs. A small window looks on the lake, and the glories of the sunrises which I see from it are indescribable. Neither of my doors has a lock, and, to say the truth, neither will shut, as the wood has swelled. Below the house, on the stream which issues from the lake, there is a beautiful log dairy, with a water-wheel outside, used for churning. sides this there are a corral, a shed for the waggon, a room for the hired man, and shelters for horses and weakly calves. All these things are necessaries at this height. The ranchmen are two Welshmen-Evans and Edwards-each with a wife and family. The men are as diverse as they can be. "Griff," as Evan is called, is short and small, and is hospitable, careless, reckless, jolly, social, convivial, peppery, good-natured, "nobody's enemy but his own." He had the wit and taste to find out Estes Park, where people have found him out, and have induced him to give them food and lodging, and add cabin to cabin to take them in. He is a splendid shot, an expert and successful hunter, a bold mountaineer, a good rider, and a generally "jolly fellow." His cheery laugh rings through the cabin from early morning, and is contagious, and when the rafters ring at night with such songs as "D'ye ken John Peel?" "Auld Lang Syne," and "John Brown," what would the chorus be without poor "Griff's" voice? What would Estes Park be without him indeed? When he went to Denver lately we missed him as we should have missed the sunshine, and perhaps more. In the early morning, when Long's Peak is red, and the grass crackles with the hoar-frost, he arouses me with a cheery thump on my door. "We're going cattle-hunting, will you come? or, "Will you help to drive in the cattle? you can take your pick of the horses. I want another hand." Free-hearted, lavish, popular, poor "Griff" loves liquor too well for his prosperity, and is always tormented with debt. He makes lots of money, but puts it into "a bag with holes." He has fifty horses and a thousand head of cattle, many of which are his own, wintering up here, and makes no end of money by taking in people at eight dollars a week, yet it all goes somehow. He has a most industrious wife, a girl of seventeen, and four younger children, all musical, but the wife has to work like a slave; and though he is a kind husband, her lot, as compared with her lord's, is like that of a squaw. Edwards, his partner, is his exact opposite tall, thin, and severe-looking, keen, industrious, saving, grave, a teetotaler, grieved for all reasons at Evans's follies, and rather grudging; as naturally unpopular as Evans is popular; a "decent man," who, with his industrious wife, will certainly make money as fast as Evans loses it. I pay eight dollars a week, which includes the unlimited use of a horse, when one can be found and caught. We breakfast at seven on beef, potatoes, tea, coffee, new bread, and butter. Two pitchers of cream and two of milk are replenished as fast as they are exhausted. Dinner at twelve is a repetition of the breakfast, but with the coffee omitted and a gigantic pudding added. Tea at six is a repetition of breakfast. "Eat whenever you are hungry, you can always get milk and bread in the kitchen," Evans says. "Eat as much as you can, it'll do you good;" and we all eat like hunters. There is no change of food. The steer which was being killed on my arrival is now being eaten through from head to tail, the meat being hacked off anyhow, without any regard to joints. In this dry, rarefied air, the outside of the flesh blackens and hardens, and though the weather |