HALTED BY VIGILANTES AND AN ESCAPE FROM LYNCHING IN NEVADA--A
DELIGHTFUL RECEPTION AT RENO--ON THE STEAMER FOR JAPAN.
The morning of July 8 we set forth for Elko, twenty-six miles
away. Mrs. McIlrath and I were moving along at a good gait, when
a band of horsemen overtook us near Osina. They dashed across our
path and dismounted simultaneously, closing in upon us. The leader
approached me with a command to open my mouth and display my teeth. I
thought it was a joke and demanded to know who was the dentist in the
party. "None of your nonsense," growled the leader, "let's see your
teeth." My jaws immediately flew back as far as nature would permit
and the leader looked down my throat searchingly. "No, boys; 'taint
Brady," he called, and then it was my time to do some talking. Their
explanation in brief was that they were hunting for one Brady, a
bandit who had been running wild throughout for weeks. He was about
my size, they said, quite as likely to be dressed as a wheelman as
anything else, and the sole unfailing marks of identification in their
possession were the gold fillings in his molars. Goodness knows, what
would have happened to me had I been the owner of many gold-plugged
teeth. I might have been shot on the spot, or lynched, or at any
rate dragged to jail with days of delay and humiliation before me
ere I could make myself properly known. We put in a day and a night
at Elko and resumed the journey on Wednesday, July 10. The first six
miles of going outside of Elko were as good as any Eastern roads I
have ever traveled, but the white dust which fills the air makes it
advisable for all tourists to ride with gloves and their caps well
down upon the head. When this dust mingles with perspiration on any
exposed part of the body it smarts and burns like a powerful acid. Our
tires suffered also and one by one the punctures repaired in Salt
Lake City began to let go. Every revolution brought out a hiss like
an angry serpent. By pumping every half mile we managed to get into
Golconda on July 12, having made 24 miles in seven and a half hours,
the hardest traveling we had yet known. It was 20 miles further to
Winnemucca, which we covered easily next day, halting in the town for
repairs. On July 17, we were again on the road, leaving Lovelocks,
but we could make only three miles an hour in the sand and were forced
to return to the station in order to take to the railroad tracks.
Two miles from the Nevada Hot Springs, by riding the railroad trestles,
my front wheel played me another one of its tricks and threw me down
a twelve-foot embankment. Scrambling back to the trestle, I picked up
my wheel with its handle-bars snapped in two. My photographic outfit
was spilled and the camera broken. The most expert wheelman cannot ride
over Western roads without his handle-bars. I sent Mrs. McIlrath ahead
while I gathered up my belongings and pushing the wheel before me,
I set out to walk to the section house at Desert, ten miles away. As I
journeyed along the railroad tracks, bewailing my plight and rebelling
at the three hours' tramp before me, I spied a rusty bolt in the road
bed, and it occurred to me that it would prove a good substitute for my
broken bars. I lashed it with wire in place and found it answered the
purpose admirably. Slow riding was better than walking, but at that
I did not make out so poorly, for I lumbered into the section house
at Desert only fifteen minutes after Mrs. McIlrath had arrived. Our
ride through Nevada was varied. For days, we sped along rough tracks,
meeting none but illiterate laborers and camping at night upon the
hard dirty floors, often without covering. Meal after meal we partook
of without fork or spoon and in many instances, the only knife we had
was rusted and mayhap coated with plug tobacco. Table linen, napkins,
soap and even hair brushes were often total strangers to us. It seems
that the men whom fate has decreed to work in these out-of-the-way
places have for an object in life only a place of refuge from the
elements. Then again maybe the day after our dinner had been eaten from
a dry-goods box in such unpleasant surroundings, we would be at one of
the famous health resorts or hunting lodges that abound in the West,
and where everything is of the very best quality. The two extremes of
life came under our observation within our 1,800 miles out of Chicago.
At Vista, in accordance with a number of telegrams sent us at various
points, we were met by Prof. M. E. Wilson and wife on a tandem,
heading a welcoming party sent out from Reno. All preparations for
our stay in this charming city had been attended to by them before
our arrival. Following an advance guard, with Mrs. Wilson and my
wife ahead, the Professor and myself closing up the rear of the
procession, the party rode down the main streets of Reno and drew up
at the Riverside Hotel. A dinner fit for a king and sufficient for
a regiment was on the table ready for us. Our hospitable friends,
with an eye for our comfort and enormous appetites, declined to delay
sitting down any longer than it would take for us to bathe our faces
and hands. They remained for an hour or more after we had cleared the
table, arranging trips for our entertainment on the next day. For the
first time since leaving Chicago Mrs. McIlrath and I were so tired
that when we retired we slept soundly until 1 o'clock in the afternoon
of the next day. Likely as not we should have slept until the evening
had we not been called by A. S. Bragg, editor of the Reno Gazette, and
Miss Manning, a charming young lady, whom the editor had brought along
as a companion for Mrs. McIlrath. With them we rode over the entire
city, the two ladies going ahead, enabling the editor and myself to
fall behind and indulge in a discussion of our favorite theme, "Shall
it be gold, or free silver at 16 to 1?" July 20, with Professor and
Mrs. Wilson we visited the famous mines of Virginia City, and this
time we did not go upon bicycles. The Professor called for us in a
carriage, whose horses were piloted by a reliable veteran, who had
served his apprenticeship on the earlier stage coaches. The ride to
Virginia City, up the side of a mountain, is fraught with danger. Only
two weeks before our arrival there was a fatal accident, a couple of
tourists and their horses being dashed over a precipice, and after
I had arrived in San Francisco three weeks later, I learned of the
deaths of two ladies and a gentleman, who had undertaken the same
trip on horseback, and had met their end in precisely the same manner.
On Monday, July 22, we departed from Reno upon our last relay of
American touring for three years. Prof. Wilson rode with us and as we
passed Saw Mill Summit, the white dust died away and I saw nothing
but flowers, beautiful foliage and waving grass. The Professor
calmly remarked: "You have entered a new country; you are now in
California." We left Truckee July 23 in the morning, making the 160
miles to Sacramento shortly after dusk. Four days in Sacramento,
devoted to sight-seeing, and then we started for San Francisco,
arriving there July 29. We had then covered 3,002 3-8 miles from
Chicago in 52 days.
A complete overhauling of our wheels and time allowed for necessary
shopping by Mrs. McIlrath, caused us to remain in San Francisco
much longer than we had anticipated. The days did not hang heavy
upon our hands, the wheelmen of the city being universally kind in
their attentions to us both. My space is too limited to go into the
details attendant upon our sojourn in San Francisco, as much as I
should like for my cycling readers to know of the pleasure in store
for a wheelman in the metropolis of the Pacific Coast.
On October 12 the telegraph message of three words, "We are off,"
was flashed to the Inter Ocean office in Chicago. We had taken passage
on the Occidental and Oriental Line steamer City of Pekin, bound for
Yokohama, the chief city of the flowery kingdom of Japan. Everything
for our accommodation that could be done on board the steamer was
ordered, not the least of our favors being two seats at the table of
Captain Trask, commanding officer of the vessel. Our fellow passengers
were an interesting lot, including two United States naval officers; a
member of the English Parliament, his wife and a traveling companion;
an officer of the Austrian army; two French globe trotters, who
intended to write a book of travel upon their return to Paris;
a Corean nobleman; four American missionaries, and a mysterious
personage whose visiting card read, "Capt. Vladmir Samioloff," of the
army of the Czar. The steerage passengers were exclusively Japanese
and Chinese. The third day out Capt. Trask escorted me through the
steerage and showed me the hospital ward, which contained three
Japanese, who were going home to die. The captain explained to me
that in every case of the death of a Japanese on board a steamer,
the body was given a sailor's burial, but that with the Chinese it
was entirely different. The body of a dead Chinaman, even though
he were to die one day out, would be embalmed and taken home to his
relatives, a Chinese embalmer nearly always being on board a vessel
for just such emergencies.
Mrs. McIlrath, for six days out, was the most sea-sick woman that
ever tossed in a berth. She was unable to come on deck before
Friday, Oct. 18, and rough weather, which set in the next day,
sent her below again, and thus she lost one of the prettiest parts
of our voyage across the Pacific. Monday, Oct. 21, was the shortest
day I ever passed. It lasted, strictly speaking, but seven hours,
or from 12 o'clock to 7:15 a. m., at which time the City of Pekin
crossed the meridian. Having been constantly racing with the sun,
and so gaining time, at 7:16 o'clock we had entered upon Tuesday,
Oct. 22. At 11:30 on the morning of the same day we caught our first
sight of Japan, the white crest of the sacred mountain, Fujiyama,
looming in the distance. Monday evening, Oct. 28, at 8:15 o'clock,
the City of Pekin steamed into the harbor, having broken her record
thirty-seven minutes. The fact of the boat's arrival ahead of time,
made the hours so late before the steam launches of the hotel arrived
that we decided to remain on board the steamer until next morning. We
were still asleep Tuesday morning when the runners of the hotels roused
us by pounding upon our state-room door. The Club Hotel was the one we
had selected, and when the representative announced himself, we gave
a list of our baggage and hastened to dress. At the English hataba
(a long pier running out into the bay) our baggage was thoroughly
overhauled by the customs officers, and upon our wheels and camera a
duty of five per cent was imposed. As cameras are listed at 50 yen and
bicycles at 200 yen each, this would have cost us in duty 22 yen 50
sen, or about twelve dollars in gold. After a short conference and an
ostentatious display of Secretary Gresham's passports and the Inter
Ocean credentials, which the revenue officers had not understood,
our articles were franked and we entered the city.