his companions, while with cheers from both trains and waving of hats we steamed our different ways.  Tom was transported with admiration.  How those things please English men, don’t they?  And I am sure he thought far more of “Ruby-Mine-Bill” than all the clever people we had met in New York.  And certainly skill of this sort does affect one.  The Senator can shoot like that.  Nelson told us.  “He’s had some near squeaks in his life and come off top; and everyone in this country knows him.”

The land along which we were passing, and indeed what has been ever since we entered the mining country, is the most bleak and desolate on the earth, I should think; not a living thing or blade of grass except once when we passed a stream where low bushes bordered it; only barren hills with a little scrub on them and a rough stony surface.  What courage to have started exploring on such places!

We passed one or two smaller camps on the way to Osages, with board shanties and a shaft here and there sticking up from the earth.  “All going on,” the Senator said.  I can’t tell you, Mamma, the fun we had in the car; the party is so harmonious, and Nelson and the friend such amusing people to keep it going.  The friend is too attractive, that long lean shape like Tom, and the same assurance of manner.  Octavia says she has not enjoyed herself so much for years.

Towards evening we arrived at Osages, and a most wonderful wind-swept town it is.  Imagine a bare plain of rubbly, stony ground, with a few not very high hills round it, with shafts piercing them, and then dotted all about on the outskirts with tents; then board houses of one story high, looking rather like sheds for gardeners’ tools, and then in the middle a few stone and frame habitations, and standing out among the rest the Nelson building, a hideous structure of grey stone making the corner of a block.  We got from the train and climbed into motors; to see them seemed strange in such a wild; we ought to have been met by a Buffalo Bill stage coach;—­but there they were.  It was a gorgeous sunset, but a wind like a mistral cutting one in two, and such clouds of dust, that even driving to the hotel our hair all looked drab coloured.  The hall was full of miners, some of them in what is as near an approach to evening dress as is permitted; that is, ordinary blue serge or flannel suits, with sometimes linen collars and ties; the others in the dress I have already told you about that Nelson wears.  Nearly all were young, not twenty per cent. over forty, and none beyond fifty, and they were awfully nice-looking and strong, and couldn’t possibly have bruised if you hit them hard!