Roughing It

arse-clad and sad-looking men, women and children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for eight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance

of that kind. We changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours-changed mules, rather-six mules-and did it nearly every time in four minutes. It was lively work. As our coa

"Alkali" or "Soda Lake," and we woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone

t might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now, and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the men could scape the soil o

the city marshal and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on up among the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City consisted of four log cabins, one if which was unfinished, and the gentleman with all those offices and titles

sently encounter lofty summits clad in the "eternal snow" which was so common place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was August and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear it, I was full as much amazed as if I never had heard

them; and with here and there, in the shade, down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow l

and nights together-and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high-grand old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populatio

g their continents of shadow after them; and catching presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded there-then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left the purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, these monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the spectator's head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his impulse was to shrink when they came closet. In the one place I speak of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague pla

rney eastward-and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet it would still be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, and canyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by would join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts and unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among snags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch the wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky channels, then endless chains of bottomless and

nds at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put

ain of many wagons, many tired men and w

ured this friendship and it had never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but chancin

n was made to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting a familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, w

y Mountains for many tedious hours-we started down the

ionally through long ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen-monuments of the huge emigration of other days-and here and

y nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert. It was because of the phosph

y under one; and if he moved his body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck. Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road, a

come

precipice where he had disappeared, replied,

have always been glad that we were not killed that night. I do not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad. In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream-stuc

eaks, and coffee-the only decent meal we tasted between the United States a

before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my

soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured, and the main bo

diaeval castles. This was the most faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would "let his team out." He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach

world was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We look

changed horses, and took supper

bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous enough, possibly, to fil

f slatternly women flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives of the Angel-or some of them, a

observe it, but hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the prophets, the capital of the only absolute