The one street along the river was hot and sandy and neglected.

One had not only to wade through the sand, but to step over the dried heads or horns or bones of animals left there to whiten where they died, or thrown out, possibly, when some one killed a sheep or beef.

Nothing decayed there, but dried and baked hard in that wonderful air and sun.
Then, the groups of Indians, squaws and halfbreeds loafing around the village and the store! One never felt sure what one was to meet, and although by this time I tolerated about everything that I had been taught to think wicked or immoral, still, in Ehrenberg, the limit was reached, in the sights I saw on the village streets, too bold and too rude to be described in these pages.
The few white men there led respectable lives enough for that country.
The standard was not high, and when I thought of the dreary years they had already spent there without their families, and the years they must look forward to remaining there, I was willing to reserve my judgement..