From Salt Lake City to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road
lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man.
For the sand of the Sahara we find substituted an impalpable powder of
alkali, white as the driven snow, stretching for ninety miles at a time
in one uninterrupted dazzling sheet, which supports not even that last
obstinate _vidette_ of vegetation, the wild-sage brush. Its springs are
far between, and, without a single exception, mere receptacles of a
salt, potash, and sulphur hell-broth, which no man would drink, save _in
extremis_. A few days of this beverage within, and of wind-drifted
alkali invading every pore of the body without, often serve to cover the
miserable passenger with an erysipelatous eruption which presently
becomes confluent and irritates him to madness. Meanwhile he jolts
through alkali-ruts, unable to sleep for six days and nights together,
until frenzy sets in, or actual delirium comes to his relief. I look
back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence.
As if Nature had not done her worst, we were doomed, on the second day
out from Salt Lake, to hear, at one station, where we stopped, horrid
rumors of Goshoots on the war-path, and, ere the day reached its noon,
to find their proofs irrefragable. Every now and then we saw in the
potash-dust moccasin-tracks, with the toes turned in, and presently my
field-glass revealed a hideous devil skulking in the mile-off ledges,
who was none other than a Goshoot spy. How far off were the scalpers and
burners?
The first afternoon-stage that day was a long and terrible one. The poor
horses could hardly drag our crazy wagon, up to its hubs in potash; and
yet we knew our only safety, in case of attack, was a running fight. We
must fire from our windows as the horses flew.
About four o'clock we entered a terrible defile, which seemed planned by
Nature for treachery and ambush. The great, black, barren rocks of
porphyry and trachyte rose three hundred feet above our heads, their
lower and nearer ledges being all so many natural parapets to fire over,
loop-holed with chinks to fire through. There were ten rifles in our
party. We ran them out, five on a side, ready to send the first red
villain who peeped over the breastworks to quick perdition. Our
six-shooters lay across our laps, our bowie-knives were at our sides,
our cartouch-boxes, crammed with ready vengeance, swung open on our
breast-straps. We sat with tight-shut teeth,--only muttering now and
then to each other, in a glum undertone, "Don't get nervous,--don't
throw a single shot away,--take aim,--remember it's for _home_!"
Something of that sort, or a silent squeeze of the hand, was all that
passed, as we sat with one eye glued to the ledges and our guns
unswerving. None of us, I think, were cowards; but the agony of sitting
there, tugging along two miles an hour, expecting to hear a volley of
yells and musketry ring over the next ledge, drinking the cup of thought
to its miscroscopic dregs,--_that_ was worse than fear!
Only one consolation was left us. In the middle of the defile stood an
overland station, where we were to get fresh horses. The next stage was
twenty miles long. If we were attacked in force, we might manage to run
it, almost the whole way, unless the Indians succeeded in shooting one
of our team,--the _coup_ they always attempt.
I have no doubt we were ambushed at several points in that defile, but
our perfect preparation intimidated our foes. The Indian is cruel as the
grave, but he is an arrant coward. He will not risk being the first man
shot, though his band may overpower the enemy afterward.
At last we turned the corner around which the station-house should come
in view.
A thick, nauseous smoke was curling up from the site of the buildings.
We came nearer. Barn, stables, station-house,--all were a smouldering
pile of rafters. We came still nearer. The whole stud of horses--a dozen
or fifteen--lay roasting on the embers. We came close to the spot.
There, inextricably mixed with the carcasses of the beasts, lay six men,
their brains dashed out, their faces mutilated beyond recognition, their
limbs hewn off,--a frightful holocaust steaming up into our faces. I
must not dwell on that horror of all senses. It comes to me now at high
noonday with a grisly shudder.
* * * * *
After that, we toiled on twenty miles farther with our nearly dying
horses; a hundred miles more of torturing suspense on top of that sight
branded into our brains before we gained Ruby Valley, at the foot of the
Humboldt Mountains, and left the last Goshoot behind us.
The remainder of our journey was horrible by Nature only, without the
atrocious aid of man. But the past had done its work. We reached Washoe
with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness, sickness, and
agony of mind. The morning before we came to the silver-mining
metropolis, Virginia City, a stout, young Illinois farmer, whom we had
regarded as the stanchest of all our fellow-passengers, became
delirious, and had to be held in the stage by main force. (A few weeks
afterward, when the stage was changing horses near the Sink of Carson,
another traveller became suddenly insane, and blew his brains out.) As
for myself, the moment that I entered a warm bath, in Virginia City, I
swooned entirely away, and was resuscitated with great difficulty after
an hour and a half's unconsciousness.
We stopped at Virginia for three days,--saw the California of '49
reënacted in a feverish, gambling, mining town,--descended to the bottom
of the exhaustlessly rich "Ophir" shaft,--came up again, and resumed our
way across the Sierra. By the mere act of crossing that ridge and
stepping over the California line, we came into glorious forests of
ever-living green, a rainbow-affluence of flowers, an air like a draught
from windows left open in heaven.
Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake
Tahoe, (once "Bigler," till the ex-Governor of that name became a
Copperhead, and the loyal Californians kicked him out of their
geography, as he had already been thrust out of their politics,)--a
crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite
bottom visible at the depth of a hundred feet, its banks a celestial
garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long by ten wide, and nearly
seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior
to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely
up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the
end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of
the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one
little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven.
* * * * *