In the far West you choose your spot of ground, you dig post-holes and you pitch tents, and you set up telescopes and inhabit the land; and then the owner of the land comes to you, and asks if he may not put up a fence for you, to keep off intruders, and the nearest residents come to you and offer aid of any kind.
"Our camping-place was near the house occupied by sisters of charity, and the black-robed, sweet-faced women came out to offer us the refreshing cup of tea and the new-made bread.
"All that we needed was 'space,' and of that there was plenty.
"Our tents being up and the telescopes mounted, we had time to look around at the view.

The space had the unlimitedness that we usually connect with sea and sky.

Our tents were on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which we were about six thousand feet above the sea.

The plain was three times as high as the hills of the Hudson-river region, and there arose on the south, almost from west to east, the peaks upon peaks of the Rocky mountains.

One needs to live upon such a plateau for weeks, to take in the grandeur of the panorama.
"It is always difficult to teach the man of the people that natural phenomena belong as much to him as to scientific people.