To Ruby Valley.
Mounted upon a fine mule, here worth $240, and “bound” to fetch in
California $400, and accompanying a Gentile youth who answered to the
name of Joe, I proceeded to take my first lesson in stock-driving.
We were convoying ten horses, which, not being wild, declined to
herd together, and, by their straggling, made the task not a little
difficult to a tyro. The road was that leading to Camp Floyd before
described. At the Brewery near Mountain Point we found some attempts at
a station, and were charged $1 50 for frijoles, potatoes, and bread:
among other decorations on the wall was a sheet of prize-fighters, in
which appeared the portraiture of an old man, once the champion of the
light weights in the English ring, now a Saint in Great Salt Lake City.
The day was fine and wondrous clear, affording us a splendid back view
of the Happy Valley before it was finally shut out from sight, and
the Utah Lake looked a very gem of beauty, a diamond in its setting
of steely blue mountains. After fording the Jordan we were overtaken
by Mr. Kennedy, who had been delayed by more last words, and at the
dug-out we drank beer with Shropshire Joe the Mormon, who had been
vainly attempting to dig water by a divining rod of peach-tree. When
moonlight began to appear, Joe the Gentile was ordered by the “boss”
to camp out with the horses, where fodder could be found gratis, a
commandment which he obeyed with no end of grumbling. It was deep in
the night before we entered Frogtown, where a creaking little Osteria
supplied us with supper, and I found a bed at the quarters of my friend
Captain Heth, who obligingly insisted upon my becoming his guest.
The five days between the 20th and the 26th of September sped merrily
at my new home, Camp Floyd; not pressed for time, I embraced with
pleasure the opportunity of seeing the most of my American brothers
in arms. My host was a son of that Old Dominion of Queen Elizabeth,
where still linger traces of the glorious Cavalier and the noble feudal
spirit, which (alas!) have almost disappeared from the mother country;
where the genealogical tree still hangs against the wall; where the
principal families, the Nelsons, Harrisons, Pages, Seldens, and Allens,
intermarry and bravely attempt to entail; and where the houses,
built of brick brought out from England, still retain traces of the
seventeenth century. A winter indeed might be passed most pleasantly
on the banks of James River and in the west of Virginia--a refreshing
winter to those who love, as I do, the traditions of our ancestors.
[SPREES.]
From Captain Heth I gathered that in former times, in Western America
as in British India, a fair aborigine was not unfrequently the
copartner of an officer’s hut or tent. The improved communication,
however, and the frequency of marriage, have abolished the custom by
rendering it unfashionable. The Indian squaw, like the Beebee, seldom
looked upon her “mari” in any other light but her banker. An inveterate
beggar, she would beg for all her relations, for all her friends, and
all her tribe, rather than not beg at all, and the lavatory process
required always to be prefaced with the bribe. Officers who were long
thrown among the Prairie Indians joined, as did the Anglo-Indian, in
their nautches and other amusements, where, if whisky was present, a
cut or stab might momentarily be expected. The skin was painted white,
black, and red, the hair was dressed and decorated, and the shirt
was tied round the waist, while broadcloth and blanket, leggins and
moccasins completed the costume. The “crack thing to do” when drinking
with Indians, and listening to their monotonous songs and tales, was
to imitate Indian customs; to become, under the influence of the jolly
god, a Hatim Tai; exceedingly generous; to throw shirt to one man,
blanket to another, leggins to a third--in fact, to return home in
breech-cloth. Such sprees would have been severely treated by a highly
respectable government; they have now, however, like many a pleasant
hour in British India, had their day, and are sunk, many a fathom deep,
in the genuine Anglo-Scandinavian gloom.
[ARMY GRIEVANCES.]
I heard more of army grievances during my second stay at Camp Floyd.
The term of a soldier’s enlistment, five years, is too short,
especially for the cavalry branch, and the facilities for desertion
are enormous. Between the two, one third of the army disappears every
year. The company which should number 84 has often only 50 men. The
soldier has no time to learn his work; he must drive wagons, clear
bush, make roads, and build huts and stables. When thoroughly drilled
he can take his discharge, and having filled a purse out of his very
liberal pay ($11 per mensem), he generally buys ground and becomes
a landed proprietor. The officers are equally well salaried; but
marching, countermarching, and contingent expenses are heavy enough to
make the profession little better than it is in France. The Secretary
of War being a civilian, with naturally the highest theoretical idea of
discipline and command combined with economy, is always a martinet; no
one can exceed the minutest order, and leave is always obtained under
difficulties. As the larger proportion of the officers are Southern
men, especially Virginians, and as the soldiers are almost entirely
Germans and Irish--the Egyptians of modern times--the federal army will
take little part in the ensuing contest. It is more than probable that
the force will disband, break in two like the nationalities from which
it is drawn. As far as I could judge of American officers, they are
about as republican in mind and tone of thought as those of the British
army. They are aware of the fact that the bundle of sticks requires a
tie, but they prefer, as we all do, King Stork to King Log, and King
Log to King Mob.
I took sundry opportunities of attending company inspections, and found
the men well dressed and tolerably set up, while the bands, being
German, were of course excellent. Mr. Chandless and others talk of
the United States army discipline as something Draconian; severity is
doubtless necessary in a force so constituted, but--a proof of their
clemency--desertion is the only crime punishable by flogging. The
uniform is a study. The States have attempted in the dress of their
army, as in the forms of their government, a moral impossibility. It is
expected to be at once cheap and soldier-like, useful and ornamental,
light and heavy, pleasantly hot in the arctic regions, and agreeably
cool under the tropics. The “military tailors” of the English army
similarly forget the number of changes required in civilian raiment,
and, looking to the lightness of the soldier’s kit, wholly neglect
its efficiency, its capability of preserving the soldier’s life. The
federal uniform consists of a brigand-like and bizarre sombrero, with
Mephistophelian cock-plume, and of a blue broadcloth tunic, imitated
from the old Kentuckian hunter’s surtout or wrapper, with terminations
sometimes made to match, at other times too dark and dingy to please
the eye. Its principal merit is a severe republican plainness, very
consistent with the prepossessions of the people, highly inconsistent
with the customs of military nations. Soldiers love to dress up Mars,
not to clothe him like a butcher’s boy.
The position of Camp Floyd is a mere brick-yard, a basin surrounded
by low hills, which an Indian pony would have little difficulty in
traversing; sometimes, however, after the fashion of the land, though
apparently easy from afar, the summits assume a mural shape, which
would stop any thing but a mountain sheep. The rim shows anticlinal
strata, evidencing upheavals, disruption, and, lastly, drainage
through the kanyons which break the wall. The principal vegetation is
the dwarf cedar above, the sage greenwood and rabbit-bush below. The
only animals seen upon the plain are jackass-rabbits, which in places
afford excellent sport. There are but few Mormons in the valley; they
supply the camp with hay and vegetables, and are said to act as spies.
The officers can not but remark the coarse features and the animal
expression of their countenances. On the outskirts of camp are a few
women that have taken sanctuary among the Gentiles, who here muster
too strong for the Saints. The principal amusement seemed to be that
of walking into and out of the sutlers’ stores, the hospitable Messrs.
Gilbert’s and Livingston’s--a _passe temps_ which I have seen at
“Sukkur Bukkur Rohri”--and in an evening ride, dull, monotonous, and
melancholy, as if we were in the vicinity of Hyderabad, Sindh.
I had often heard of a local lion, the Timpanogos Kanyon, and my
friends Captains Heth and Gove had obligingly offered to show me its
curiosities. After breakfast on the 23d of September--a bright warm
day--we set out in a good ambulance, well provided with the materials
of a two days’ picnic, behind a fine team of four mules, on the road
leading to the Utah Lake. After passing Simple Joe’s dug-out we sighted
the water once more; it was of a whitish-blue, like the milky waves of
Jordan, embosomed in the embrace of tall and bald-headed hills and
mountains, whose monarch was Nebo of the jagged cone. Where the wind
current sets there are patches of white sand strewn with broken shells
and dried water-weed. Near Pelican Point, a long, projecting rocky
spit, there is a fine feeding-ground for geese and ducks, and swimmers
and divers may always be seen dotting the surface. On the south rises a
conspicuous buttress of black rock, and thirty miles off we could see
enormous dust columns careering over the plain. The western part of
the valley, cut with suncracks and nullahs, and dotted with boulders,
shelves gradually upward from the selvage of the lake to small divides
and dwarf-hill ranges, black with cedar-bush, and traversed only by
wood roads. On the east is the best wheat country in this part of the
Territory; it is said to produce 106 bushels per acre.
[JORDAN BRIDGE.]
After seventeen miles we crossed Jordan Bridge, another rickety affair,
for which, being Mormon property, we paid 50 cents; had we been Saints
the expense would have been one half. Two more miles led us to Lehi, a
rough miniature of Great Salt Lake City, in which the only decent house
was the bishop’s; in British India it would have been the collector
and magistrate’s. My companions pointed out to me a hut in which
an apostate Mormon’s throat had been cut by blackened faces. It is
gratifying to observe that throughout the United States, as in the Old
Country, all historical interest pales before a barbarous murder. As we
advanced a wall of rock lay before us; the strata were in confusion as
if a convulsion had lately shuddered through their frame, and tumbled
fragments cumbered the base, running up by precipitous ascents to the
middle heights. The colors were as grotesque: the foreground was a mass
of emerald cane, high and bushy; beyond it, the near distance was pink
with the beautiful bloom most unpoetically termed “hogweed,” and azure
with a growth like the celebrated blue-grass of Kentucky; while the
wall itself was a bloodstone dark green with cedar--which, 100 feet
tall, was dwarfed to an inch--and red stained with autumnal maple, and
below and around the brightest yellow of the faded willow formed the
bezel, a golden rim.
[AMERICAN FORK.]
Two miles and a half from Lehi led us to American Fork, a soft sweet
spring of snow-water, with dark shells adhering to white stones, and
a quantity of trout swimming the limpid wave. The bridge was rickety
and loose planked--in fact, the worst I ever saw in the United States,
where, as a rule, the country bridges can never be crossed without
fear and trembling; the moderate toll was $1 both ways. Three miles
and a half more placed us at Battle Creek, where in 1853 the Yuta
Indians fled precipitately from a Mormon charge. Six miles over a
dusty beach conducted us to the mouth of the kanyon, a brown tract
crossed by a dusty road and many a spring, and showing the base of
the opposite wall encumbered with degraded masses, superimposed upon
which were miniature castles. The mouth of the ravine was a romantic
spot: the staples were sister giants of brown rock--here sheer, their
sloping--where pines and firs found a precarious root-hold, and ranged
in long perspective lines, while between them, through its channel,
verdant with willow, and over a clear pebbly bed, under the screes and
scaurs, coursed a mountain torrent more splendid than Ruknabad.
We forded the torrent and pursued the road, now hugging the right, then
the left side of the chasm. The latter was exceedingly beautiful, misty
with the blue of heaven, and rising till its solidity was blent with
the tenuity of ether. The rest of the scenery was that of the great
Cotton-wood Kanyon; painting might express the difference, language can
not. After six miles of a narrow winding road, we reached the place of
Cataracts, the principal lion of the place, and found that the season
had reduced them to two thin milky lines coursing down bitumen-colored
slopes of bare rock, bordered by shaggy forests of firs and cedars. The
shrinking of the water’s volume lay bare the formation of the cascades,
two steps and a slope, which at a happier time would have been veiled
by a continuous sheet of foam.
After finding a suitable spot we outspanned, and, while recruiting
exhausted nature, allowed our mules to roll and rest. After dining
and collecting a few shells, we remounted and drove back through a
magnificent sunset to American Fork, where the bishop, Mr. Lysander
Dayton, of Ohio, had offered us bed and board. The good episkopos
was of course a Mormon, as we could see by his two pretty wives; he
supplied us with an excellent supper as a host, not as an innkeeper.
The little settlement was Great Salt Lake City on a small scale--full
of the fair sex; every one, by-the-by, appeared to be, or about to be,
a mother. Fair, but, alas! not fair to us; it was verily
“Water, water every where,
And not a drop to drink!”
[THE OLD “DANITE.”]
Before setting out homeward on the next day we met O. Porter Rockwell,
and took him to the house with us. This old Mormon, in days gone by,
suffered or did not suffer imprisonment for shooting or not shooting
Governor Boggs, of Missouri: he now herds cattle for Messrs. Russell
and Co. His tastes are apparently rural; his enemies declare that
his life would not be safe in the City of the Saints. An attempt had
lately been made to assassinate him in one of the kanyons, and the
first report that reached my ears when _en route_ to California was
the murder of the old Danite by a certain Mr. Marony. He is one of
the triumvirate, the First Presidency of “executives,” the two others
being Ephe Hanks and Bill Hickman--whose names were loud in the land;
they are now, however, going down; middle age has rendered them
comparatively inactive, and the rising generation, Lot Huntington,
Ike Clawson, and other desperadoes, whose teeth and claws are full
grown, are able and willing to stand in their stead. Peter Rockwell
was a man about fifty, tall and strong, with ample leather leggins
overhanging his huge spurs, and the saw-handles of two revolvers
peeping from his blouse. His forehead was already a little bald, and
he wore his long grizzly locks after the ancient fashion of the United
States, plaited and gathered up at the nape of the neck; his brow,
puckered with frowning wrinkles, contrasted curiously with his cool,
determined gray eye, jolly red face, well touched up with “paint,”
and his laughing, good-humored mouth. He had the manner of a jovial,
reckless, devil-may-care English ruffian. The officers called him
Porter, and preferred him to the “slimy villains” who will drink with
a man and then murder him. After a little preliminary business about
a stolen horse, all conducted on the amiable, he pulled out a dollar,
and sent to the neighboring distillery for a bottle of Valley Tan. The
_aguardiente_ was smuggled in under a cloth, as though we had been
respectables in a Moslem country, and we were asked to join him in a
“squar’ drink,” which means spirits without water. The mode of drinking
was peculiar. Porter, after the preliminary sputation, raised the
glass with cocked little finger to his lips, with a twinkle of the eye
ejaculated “Wheat!” that is to say, “good,” and drained the tumbler
to the bottom: we acknowledged his civility with a “here’s how,” and
drank Kentucky-fashion, which in English is midshipman’s grog. Of these
“squar’ drinks” we had at least four, which, however, did not shake
Mr. Rockwell’s nerve, and then he sent out for more. Meanwhile he told
us his last adventure--how, when ascending the kanyon, he suddenly
found himself covered by two long rifles; how he had thrown himself
from his horse, drawn his revolver, and crept behind a bush, and how
he had dared the enemy to come out and fight like men. He spoke of
one Obry, a Frenchman, lately killed in a street-quarrel, who rode on
business from Santa Fé to Independence, about 600 miles, in 110 hours.
Porter offered, for the fun of the thing, to excel him by getting over
900 in 144. When he heard that I was preparing for California, he
gave me abundant good advice--to carry a double-barreled gun loaded
with buck-shot; to “keep my eyes skinned,” especially in kanyons and
ravines; to make at times a dark camp--that is to say, unhitching for
supper, and then hitching up and turning a few miles off the road;
ever to be ready for attack when the animals were being inspanned and
outspanned, and never to trust to appearances in an Indian country,
where the red varmint will follow a man for weeks, perhaps peering
through a wisp of grass on a hill-top till the time arrives for
striking the blow. I observed that, when thus speaking, Porter’s eyes
assumed the expression of an old mountaineer’s, ever rolling as if
set in quicksilver. For the purpose of avoiding “White Indians,” the
worst of their kind, he advised me to shun the direct route, which he
represented to be about as fit for traveling as is h--ll for a powder
magazine, and to journey _viâ_ Fillmore and the wonder-bearing White
Mountains;[225] finally, he comforted me with an assurance that either
the Indians would not attempt to attack us and our stock--ever a sore
temptation to them--or that they would assault us in force and “wipe us
out.”
[225] An emigrant company lately followed this road, and when obliged
by the death of their cattle to abandon their kit, they found on the
tramp a lump of virgin silver, which was carried to California: an
exploring party afterward dispatched failed, however, to make the
lead. At the western extremity of the White Mountains there is a
mammoth cave, of which one mile has been explored: it is said to end
in a precipice, and the enterprising Major Egan is eager to trace its
course.
When the drinking was finished we exchanged a cordial _poignée de main_
with Porter and our hospitable host, who appeared to be the _crême de
la crême_ of Utah County, and soon found ourselves again without the
limits of Camp Floyd.
On the evening of the 25th of September, the judge, accompanied by his
son and the Marshal of the Territory, entered the cantonment, and our
departure was fixed for the next day. The morning of the start was
spent in exchanging adieux and little gifts with men who had now become
friends, and in stirrup-cups which succeeded one another at no longer
intervals than quarter hours. Judge Crosby, who had arrived by the last
mail, kindly provided me with fishing-tackle which could relieve a diet
of eggs and bacon, and made me regret that I had not added to my outfit
a Maynard. This, the best of breech-loading guns, can also be loaded at
the muzzle; a mere carbine in size, it kills at 1300 yards, and in the
United States costs only $40 = £8. The judge, a remarkable contrast to
the usual Elijah Pogram style that still affects bird’s-eye or speckled
white tie, black satin waistcoat, and swallow-tailed coat of rusty
broadcloth, with terminations to match, had been employed for some time
in Oregon and at St. Juan: he knew one of my expatriated friends--poor
J. de C., whose exile we all lament--and he gave me introductions which
I found most useful in Carson Valley. Like the best Americans, he spoke
of the English as brothers, and freely owned the deficiencies of his
government, especially in dealing with the frontier Indians.
We started from Lieutenant Dudley’s hospitable quarters, where a crowd
had collected to bid us farewell. The ambulance, with four mules
driven by Mr. Kennedy in person, stood at the door, and the parting
stirrup-cup was exhibited with a will. I bade farewell with a true
regret to my kind and gallant hosts, whose brotherly attentions had
made even wretched Camp Floyd a pleasant _séjour_ to me. At the moment
I write it is probably desolate, the “Secession” disturbances having
necessitated the withdrawal of the unhappies from Utah Territory.
[JOHNSTON’S SETTLEMENT.]
About 4 P.M., as we mounted, a furious dust-storm broke over the plain;
perhaps it may account for our night’s _méprise_, which a censorious
reader might attribute to our copious libations of whisky. The road
to the first mail station, “Meadow Creek,” lay over a sage barren; we
lost no time in missing it by forging to the west. After hopelessly
driving about the country till 10 P.M. in the fine cool night, we
knocked at a hut, and induced the owner to appear. He was a Dane who
spoke but little English, and his son, “skeert” by our fierceness,
began at once to boo-hoo. At last, however, we were guided by our
“foreloper” to “Johnston’s settlement,” in Rock Valley, and we entered
by the unceremonious process of pulling down the zigzag fences. After
some trouble we persuaded a Mormon to quit the bed in which his wife
and children lay, to shake down for us sleeping-places among the cats
and hens on the floor, and to provide our animals with oats and hay.
Mr. Grice, the marshal, one of the handiest of men, who during his
volunteer service in Mexico had learned most things from carrying a
musket to cooking a steak, was kind enough to prepare our supper, after
which, still sorely laden with whisky dying within us, we turned in.
[A MEAN PLACE.]
_To Meadow Creek. 27th September._
We rose with the dawn, the cats, and the hens, sleep being impossible
after the first blush of light, and I proceeded to inspect the
settlement. It is built upon the crest of an earth-wave rising from
grassy hollows; the haystacks told of stock, and the bunch-grass on the
borders of the ravines and nullahs rendered the place particularly fit
for pasturage. The land is too cold for cereals: in its bleak bottoms
frost reigns throughout the year; and there is little bench-ground.
The settlement consisted of half a dozen huts, which swarmed, however,
with women and children. Mr. Kennedy introduced us to a Scotch widow
of mature years, who gave us any amount of butter and buttermilk in
exchange for a little tea. She was but a lukewarm Mormon, declaring
polygamy to be an abomination, complaining that she had been inveigled
to a mean place, and that the poor in Mormondom were exceedingly poor.
Yet the canny body was stout and fresh, her house was clean and neat,
and she washed her children and her potatoes.
We had wandered twenty-five miles out of the right road, and were
still distant fifteen to sixteen from the first mail station. For the
use of the floor, flies, and permission to boil water, we paid our
taciturn Mormon $2, and at noon, a little before the bursting of the
dusty storm-gusts, which reproduced the horrors of Sindh, we found
ourselves once more in the saddle and the ambulance. We passed by a
cattle track on rolling ground dotted with sage and greasewood, which
sheltered hosts of jackass-rabbits, and the sego with its beautiful
lily-like flowers. After crossing sundry nullahs and pitch-holes with
deep and rugged sides, we made the mail station at the west end of
Rush Valley, which is about twenty miles distant from Camp Floyd. The
little green bottom, with its rush-bordered sinking spring, is called
by Captain Simpson “Meadow Creek.” We passed a pleasant day in revolver
practice with Al. Huntington, the renowned brother of Lot, who had
lately bolted to South California, in attempts at rabbit-shooting--the
beasts became very wild in the evening--and in dining on an antelope
which a youth had ridden down and pistoled. With the assistance of the
station-master, Mr. Faust, a civil and communicative man, who added
a knowledge of books and drugs to the local history, I compiled an
account of the several lines of communication between Great Salt Lake
City and California.
Three main roads connect the land of the Saints with the El Dorado of
the West--the northern, the central, and the southern.
The northern road rounds the upper end of the Great Salt Lake, and
falls into the valleys of the Humboldt and Carson Rivers. It was
explored in 1845 by Colonel Frémont,[226] who, when passing over the
seventy waterless miles of the western, a continuation of the eastern
desert, lost ten mules and several horses. The “first overland trip”
was followed in 1846 by a party of emigrants under a Mr. Hastings,
who gave his name to the “cut-off” which has materially shortened the
distance. The road has been carefully described in Kelly’s California,
in Horn’s “Overland Guide,” and by M. Remy. It is still, despite its
length, preferred by travelers, on account of the abundance of grass
and water: moreover, there are now but two short stretches of desert.
[226] Explored is used in a modified sense. Every foot of ground
passed over by Colonel Frémont was perfectly well known to the old
trappers and traders, as the interior of Africa to the Arab and
Portuguese pombeiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the
honors of the man who first surveyed and scientifically observed
the country. Among those who preceded Colonel Frémont, the most
remarkable, perhaps, was Sylvester Pattie, a Virginian, who, having
lost his wife in his adopted home on the Missouri, resolved to trap
upon and to trace out the head-waters of the Yellow River. The little
company of five persons, among whom were Pattie and his son, set out
on the 20th of June, 1824, and on the 22d of August arrived at the
head-waters of the Platte, where they found General Pratt proceeding
toward Santa Fé. Pattie, in command of 116 men, crossed the dividing
ridge, descended into the valley of the Rio Grand del Norto, entered
Santa Fé, and trapped on the Gila River. The party broke up on the
27th of November, 1826, when Pattie, accompanied by his son and six
others, descended the Colorado, and, after incredible hardships,
reached the Hispano-American missions, where they were received
with the customary inhumanity. The father died in durance vile; the
son, after being released and vaccinated at San Diego, reached San
Francisco, whence he returned home _viâ_ Vera Cruz and New Orleans,
after an absence of six years. The whole tale is well told in
“Harper’s Magazine.”
[PIONEER EXPLORERS.]
The southern road, _viâ_ Fillmore and San Bernardino, to San Pedro,
where the traveler can embark for San Francisco, is long and tedious;
water is found at thirty-mile distances; there are three deserts; and
bunch and other grasses are not plentiful. It has one great merit,
namely, that of being rarely snowed up, except between the Rio Virgen
and Great Salt Lake City: the best traveling is in Spring, when the
melting snows from the eastern hills fill the rivulets. This route
has been traveled over by Messrs. Chandless and Remy, who have well
described it in their picturesque pages. I add a few notes, collected
from men who have ridden over the ground for several years, concerning
the stations: the information, however, it will be observed, is merely
hearsay.[227]
[227] The distance from Great Salt Lake City to San Bernardino is,
according to my informant, about 750 miles, and has been accomplished
in fourteen days. The road runs through Provo to Salt Cruz, formed by
a desert of 50-60 miles, and making Sevier River the half-way point
to the capital. At Corn Creek is an Indian farm, and Weaver is 64
miles from Fillmore. Cedar Spring is the entrance to Paravan Valley,
where as early as 1806 there was a fort and a settlement. Then comes
Fillmore, the territorial capital, and 96 miles afterward it passes
through Paravan City in Little Salt Lake Valley. At Cold Creek it
forks, the central road being that mostly preferred. The next station
is Mountain Meadows, the Southern Rim of the Basin, celebrated for
its massacre; ensues the Santa Clara River, and thence a total of 70
miles, divided into several stages, lead to the Rio Virgen. After
following the latter for 20-30 miles, the path crosses the divide
of Muddy River, and enters a desert 55-67 miles in breadth leading
to Las Vegas. Thirty miles beyond that point lies a pretty water
called “Mountain Springs,” a preliminary to “Dry Lake,” a second
desert 40-45 miles broad, and ending at an alkaline water called
Kingston Springs. The third desert, 40 miles broad, leads to a post
established for the protection of emigrants, and called Bitter or
Bidder’s Springs, 115 miles from Las Vegas. The next stage of 35 is
to the Indian River, a tributary of the Colorado, whence there is
another military establishment: the land is now Californian. Thence
following and crossing the course of the stream, the traveler sights
the Sierra Nevada. After 50 miles down the Mohave Kanyon is San
Bernardino, once a thriving Mormon settlement, 90 miles from San
Pedro and 120 from San Diego, where water conveyance is found to San
Francisco.
The central route is called Egan’s by the Mormons, Simpson’s by the
Gentiles. Mr. or Major Howard Egan is a Saint and well-known guide, an
indefatigable mountaineer, who for some time drove stock to California
in the employ of Messrs. Livingston, and who afterward became
mail-agent under Messrs. Chorpenning and Russell. On one occasion he
made the distance in twelve days, and he claims to have explored the
present post-office route between 1850 and the winter of 1857-1858.
Captain J. H. Simpson, of the federal army, whose itinerary is given
in Appendix I., followed between May and June, 1859. He traveled along
Egan’s path, with a few unimportant deviations, for 300 miles, and
left it ten miles west of Ruby Valley, trending southward to the suite
of the Carson River. On his return he pursued a more southerly line,
and fell into Egan’s route about thirty miles west of Camp Floyd. The
_employés_ of the route prefer Egan’s line, declaring that on Simpson’s
there is little grass, that the springs are mere fiumaras of melted
snow, and that the wells are waterless. Bad, however, is the best, as
the following pages will, I think, prove.
_To Tophet. 28th September._
On a cool and cloudy morning, which at 10 A.M. changed into a clear
sunny day, we set out, after paying $3 for three feeds, to make the
second station. Our road lay over the seven miles of plain that
ended Rush Valley: we saw few rabbits, and the sole vegetation was
stunted sage. Ensued a rough divide, stony and dusty, with cahues
and pitch-holes: it is known by the name of General Johnston’s
Pass. The hills above it are gray and bald-headed, a few bristles
of black cedar protruding from their breasts, and the land wears an
uninhabitable look. After two miles of toil we halted near the ruins
of an old station. On the right side of the road was a spring half way
up the hill: three holes lay full of slightly alkaline water, and the
surplus flowed off in a black bed of vegetable mud, which is often
dry in spring and summer. At “Point Look-out,” near the counterslope
of the divide, we left on the south Simpson’s route, and learned by a
sign-post that the distance to Carson is 533 miles. The pass led to
Skull Valley, of ominous sound. According to some, the name is derived
from the remains of Indians which are found scattered about a fine
spring in the southern parts. Others declare that the mortal remains
of bison here lie like pavement-stones or cannon balls in the Crimean
Valley of Death. Skull Valley stretches nearly southwest of the Great
Salt Lake plain, with which it communicates, and its drainage, as in
these parts generally, feeds the lake. Passing out of Skull Valley, we
crossed the cahues and pitch-holes of a broad bench which rose above
the edge of the desert, and after seventeen miles beyond the Pass
reached the station which Mormons call Egan’s Springs, anti-Mormons
Simpson’s Springs, and Gentiles Lost Springs.
Standing upon the edge of the bench, I could see the Tophet in prospect
for us till Carson Valley: a road narrowing in perspective to a point
spanned its grisly length, awfully long, and the next mail station
had shrunk to a little black knob. All was desert: the bottom could
no longer be called basin or valley: it was a thin fine silt, thirsty
dust in the dry season, and putty-like mud in the spring and autumnal
rains. The hair of this unlovely skin was sage and greasewood: it was
warted with sand-heaps; in places mottled with bald and horrid patches
of salt soil, while in others minute crystals of salt, glistening
like diamond-dust in the sunlight, covered tracts of moist and oozy
mud. Before us, but a little to the right or north, and nearly due
west of Camp Floyd, rose Granite Mountain, a rough and jagged spine
or hog’s-back, inhabited only by wolves and antelopes, hares and
squirrels, grasshoppers, and occasionally an Indian family. Small sweet
springs are found near its northern and southern points. The tradition
of the country declares it to be rich in gold, which, however, no
one dares to dig. Our road is about to round the southern extremity,
wheeling successively S. and S.E., then W. and N.W., then S.W. and
S.E., and S.W. and N.W.--in fact, round three quarters of the compass;
and for three mortal days we shall sight its ugly frowning form. A
direct passage leads between it and the corresponding point of the
southern hill: we contemplate, through the gap, a blue ridge where lies
Willow-Spring Station, the destination of our party after to-morrow;
but the straight line which saves so much distance is closed by bogs
for the greater part of the year, and the size of the wild sage would
impede our wagon-wheels.
[THE GREAT DESERT.]
The great desert of Utah Territory extends in length about 300 miles
along the western side of the Great Salt Lake. Its breadth varies: a
little farther south it can not be crossed, the water, even where not
poisonous, being insufficient. The formation is of bottoms like that
described above, bench-lands, with the usual parallel and perfectly
horizontal water-lines, leaving regular steps, as the sea settled down,
by the gradual upheaval of the land. They mark its former elevation
upon the sides of the many detached ridges trending mostly N. and S.
Like the rim of the Basin, these hills are not a single continuous
mountain range which might be flanked, but a series of disconnected
protrusions above the general level of the land. A paying railway
through this country is as likely as a profitable canal through the
Isthmus of Suez: the obstacles must be struck at right angles, with
such assistance as the rough kanyons and the ravines of various levels
afford.
We are now in a country dangerous to stock. It is a kind of central
point, where Pávant, Gosh Yuta (popularly called Gosh Ute), and Panak
(Bannacks) meet. Watches, therefore, were told off for the night.
Next morning, however, it was found that all had stood on guard with
unloaded guns.
_To Fish Springs. 29th September._
[OUR PARTY.]
At Lost Springs the party was mustered. The following was found to
be the material. The Ras Kafilah was one Kennedy, an Irishman, whose
brogue, doubly Dublin, sounded startlingly in the Great American
Desert. On a late trip he had been victimized by Indians. The savages
had driven off two of his horses into a kanyon within sight of the
Deep-Creek Station. In the hurry of pursuit he spurred up the ravine,
followed by a friend, when, sighting jerked meat, his own property,
upon the trees, he gave the word _sauve qui peut_. As they whirled
their horses the Yutas rushed down the hill to intercept them at the
mouth of the gorge, calling them in a loud voice dogs and squaws, and
firing sundry shots, which killed Kennedy’s horse and pierced his right
arm. Most men, though they jest at scars before feeling a wound, are
temporarily cowed by an infliction of the kind, and of that order was
the good Kennedy.
The next was an excellent traveler, by name Howard. On the road between
Great Salt Lake City and Camp Floyd I saw two men, who addressed me as
Mr. Kennedy the boss, and, finding out their mistake, followed us to
the place of rendezvous. The party, with one eye gray and the other
black, mounted upon a miserable pony, was an American. After a spell at
the gold diggings of California he had revisited the States, and he now
wished to return to his adopted country without loss of time. He was a
hardy, fine-tempered fellow, exceedingly skilled in driving stock. His
companion was a Frenchman and ex-Zouave, who, for reasons best known
to himself, declared that he came from Cuba, and that he had forgotten
every word of Spanish. Like foreigners among Anglo-Scandinavians
generally, the poor devil fared badly. He could not hold his own. With
the most labor, he had the worst of every thing. He felt himself _mal
placé_, and before the end of the journey he slunk away.
At Lost Springs we were joined by two Mormon fugitives, “pilgrims of
love,” who had, it was said, secretly left the city at night, fearing
the consequences of having “loved not wisely, but too well.” The first
of the Lotharios was a Mr. R----, an English farrier-blacksmith,
mounted upon an excellent horse and leading another. He soon took
offense at our slow rate of progress, and, afflicted by the thought
that the avenger was behind him, left us at Deep Creek, and “made
tracks” to Carson City in ten days, with two horses and a total
traveling kit of two blankets. We traced him to California by the
trail of falsehoods which he left on the road. His comrade, Mr. A----,
a New Englander, was also an apostate Mormon, a youth of good family
and liberal education, who, after ruining himself by city sites and
copper mines on Lake Superior, had permanently compromised himself
with society by becoming a Saint. Also a Lothario, he had made his
escape, and he proved himself a good and useful member of society. I
could not but admire the acuteness of both these youths, who, flying
from justice, had placed themselves under the protection of a judge.
They reminded me of a debtor friend who found himself secure from the
bailiff only within the walls of Spike Island or Belvidere Place,
Southwark.
Another notable of the party was an apostate Jew and _soi disant_
apostate Mormon who answered to the name of Rose. He had served as
missionary in the Sandwich Islands, and he spoke Kanaka like English.
His features were those which Mr. Thackeray loves to delineate;
his accents those which Robson delights to imitate. He denied his
connection with the Hebrews. He proved it by eating more, by driving
a better bargain, by doing less work than any of the party. It was
truly refreshing to meet this son of old Houndsditch in the land of
the Saints, under the shadow of New Zion, and the only drawback to our
enjoyment was the general suspicion that the honorable name of apostate
covered the less respectable calling of spy. He contrasted strongly
with Jim Gilston of Illinois, a lath-like specimen of humanity,
some six feet four in length--a perfect specimen of the Indianized
white, long hair, sun-tanned, and hatchet-faced; running like an
ostrich, yelping like a savage, and ready to take scalp at the first
provocation. He could not refrain, as the end of the journey drew
nigh, from deserting without paying his passage. Mr. Colville, a most
determined Yankee, far advanced in years, was equally remarkable.
He had $90 in his pocket. He shivered for want of a blanket, and he
lived on hard bread, bacon, and tea, of which no man was ever seen to
partake. Such were the seven “free men,” the independent traders of the
company. There were also six “broths of boys,” who paid small sums up
to $40 for the benefit of our escort, and who were expected to drive
and to do general work. Traveling soon makes friends. No illusions of
_amicitia_, however, could blind my eyes to the danger of entering an
Indian country with such an escort. Untried men for the most part, they
would have discharged their weapons in the air and fled at the whoop
of an Indian, all of them, including Jake the Shoshonee, who had been
permitted to accompany us as guide, and excepting our stanch ones,
Howard, “Billy” the colt, and “Brandy” the dog.
[“GENTLE ANNIE.”--“YOU _BET_.”]
The station was thrown somewhat into confusion by the presence of a
petticoat, an article which in these regions never fails to attract
presents of revolvers and sides of bacon. “Gentle Annie,” attended by
three followers, was passing in an ambulance from California to Denver
City, where her “friend” was. To most of my companions’ inquiries about
old acquaintances in California, she replied, in Western phrase, that
the individual subject of their solicitude had “got to git up and git,”
which means that he had found change of air and scene advisable. Most
of her sentences ended with a “you _bet_,” even under circumstances
where such operation would have been quite uncalled for. So it is
related that when Dr. P----, of Camp Floyd, was attending Mrs. A. B. C.
at a most critical time, he asked her tenderly, “Do you suffer much,
Mrs. C.?” to which the new matron replied, “You _bet_!”
We set out about noon, on a day hot as midsummer by contrast with the
preceding nights, for a long spell of nearly fifty miles. Shortly
after leaving the station the road forks. The left-hand path leads to
a grassy spring in a dwarf kanyon near the southern or upper part of a
river bottom, where emigrants are fond of camping. The hills scattered
around the basin were of a dark metallic stone, sunburnt to chocolate.
The strata were highly tilted up and the water-lines distinctly drawn.
After eight miles we descended into the yellow silty bed of a bald
and barren fiumara, which was not less than a mile broad. The good
judge sighed when he contrasted it with Monongahela, the “river of the
falling banks.” It flows northward, and sinks near the western edge of
the lake. At times it runs three feet of water. The hills around are
white-capped throughout the winter, but snow seldom lies more than a
week in the bottoms.
After twenty miles over the barren plain we reached, about sunset,
the station at the foot of the Dugway. It was a mere “dug-out”--a
hole four feet deep, roofed over with split cedar trunks, and
provided with a rude adobe chimney. The tenants were two rough young
fellows--station-master and express rider--with their friend, an
English bull-dog. One of them had amused himself by decorating the
sides of the habitation with niches and Egyptian heads. Rude art seems
instinctively to take that form which it wears on the banks of Nilus,
and should some Professor Rafinesque discover these traces of the
aborigines after a sepulture of a century, they will furnish materials
for a rich chapter on ante-Columbian immigration. Water is brought to
the station in casks. The youths believe that some seven miles north of
the “Dugway” there is a spring, which the Indians, after the fashion of
that folk, sensibly conceal from the whites. Three wells have been sunk
near the station. Two soon led to rock; the third has descended 120
feet, but is still bone dry. It passes first through a layer of surface
silt, then through three or four feet of loose, friable, fossilless,
chalky lime, which, when slaked, softened, and, mixed with sand, is
used as mortar. The lowest strata are of quartz gravel, forming in the
deeper parts a hard conglomerate. The workmen complained greatly of the
increasing heat as they descend. Gold now becomes uppermost in man’s
mind. The youths, seeing me handle the rubbish, at once asked me if I
was prospecting for gold.
After roughly supping we set out, with a fine round moon high in the
skies, to ascend the “Dugway Pass” by a rough dusty road winding
round the shoulder of a hill, through which a fiumara has burst its
way. Like other Utah mountains, the highest third rises suddenly
from a comparatively gradual incline, a sore formation for cattle,
requiring draught to be at least doubled. Arriving on the summit, we
sat down, while our mules returned to help the baggage-wagons, and
amused ourselves with the strange aspect of the scene. To the north, or
before us, and far below, lay a long broad stretch, white as snow--the
Saleratus Desert, west of the Great Salt Lake. It wore a grisly aspect
in the silvery light of the moon. Behind us was the brown plain,
sparsely dotted with shadows, and dewless in the evening as in the
morning. As the party ascended the summit with much noisy shouting,
they formed a picturesque group--the well-bred horses wandering to
graze, the white-tilted wagons with their panting mules, and the men
in felt capotes and huge leather leggins. In honor of our good star
which had preserved every hoof from accident, we “liquored up” on that
summit, and then began the descent.
[THE DEVIL’S HOLE.]
Having reached the plain, the road ran for eight miles over a broken
surface, with severe pitch-holes and wagon-tracks which have lasted
many a month; it then forked. The left, which is about six miles the
longer of the two, must be taken after rains, and leads to the Devil’s
Hole, a curious formation in a bench under “High Mountain,” about
ninety miles from Camp Floyd, and south, with a little westing, of the
Great Salt Lake. The Hole is described as shaped like the frustrum of
an inverted cone, forty feet in diameter above, twelve to fifteen
below. As regards the depth, four lariats of forty feet each, and a
line at the end, did not, it is said, reach the bottom. Captain Simpson
describes the water as brackish. The drivers declare it to be half
salt. The Devil’s Hole is popularly supposed to be an air-vent or
shaft communicating with the waters of the Great Salt Lake in their
subterraneous journey to the sea (Pacific Ocean). An object cast into
it, they say, is sucked down and disappears; hence, if true, probably
the theory.
[SLOUGHS.]
We chose the shorter cut, and, after eight miles, rounded Mountain
Point, the end of a dark brown butte falling into the plain. Opposite
us and under the western hills, which were distant about two miles,
lay the station, but we were compelled to double, for twelve miles,
the intervening slough, which no horse can cross without being mired.
The road hugged the foot of the hills at the edge of the saleratus
basin, which looked like a furrowed field in which snow still lingers.
In places, warts of earth tufted with greasewood emerged from hard,
flaky, curling silt-cakes; in others, the salt frosted out of the damp
black earth like the miniature sugar-plums upon chocolate bonbons. We
then fell into a saline resembling freshly-fallen snow. The whiteness
changes to a slaty blue, like a frozen pond when the water still
underlies it; and, to make the delusion perfect, the black rutted path
looked as if lately cut out after a snow-storm. Weird forms appeared in
the moonlight. A line of sand-heaps became a row of railroad cars; a
raised bench was mistaken for a paling; and the bushes were any thing
between a cow and an Indian. This part of the road must be terrible in
winter; even in the fine season men are often compelled to unpack half
a dozen times.
After ascending some sand-hills we halted for the party to form up
in case of accident, and Mr. Kennedy proceeded to inspect while we
prepared for the worst part of the stage--the sloughs. These are three
in number, one of twenty and the two others of 100 yards in length.
The tule, the bayonet-grass, and the tall rushes enable animals to
pass safely over the deep slushy mud, but when the vegetation is well
trodden down, horses are in danger of being permanently mired. The
principal inconvenience to man is the infectious odor of the foul
swamps. Our cattle were mad with thirst; however, they crossed the
three sloughs successfully, although some had nearly made Dixie’s Land,
in the second.
Beyond the sloughs we ascended a bench, and traveled on an improved
road. We passed sundry circular ponds garnished with rush; the water
is sulphury, and, according to the season, is warm, hot, or cold. Some
of these debord, and send forth what the Somal would call Biya Gora,
“night-flowing streams.” About 3 A.M., cramped with cold, we sighted
the station, and gave the usual “Yep! yep!” A roaring fire soon revived
us; the strong ate supper and the weak went to bed, thus ending a
somewhat fatiguing day.
_To Willow Creek. 30th September._
On this line there are two kinds of stations--the mail station, where
there is an agent in charge of five or six “boys,” and the express
station--every second--where there is only a master and an express
rider. The boss receives $50-$75 per mensem, the boy $35. It is a
hard life, setting aside the chance of death--no less than three
murders have been committed by the Indians during this year--the work
is severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a little
boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water; a pound of
tea comes occasionally, but the droughty souls are always “out” of
whisky and tobacco. At “Fish Springs,” where there is little danger of
savages, two men had charge of the ten horses and mules; one of these
was a German Swiss from near Schaffhausen, who had been digging for
gold to little purpose in California.
A clear cool morning succeeding the cold night aroused us betimes.
Nature had provided an ample supply of warm water, though slightly
sulphury, in the neighboring pot-holes, and at a little distance
from the station was one conveniently cool. The fish from which the
formation derives its name is a perch-like species, easily caught on a
cloudy day. The men, like the citizens of Suez, accustom themselves to
the “rotten water,” as strangers call it, and hardly relish the purer
supplies of Simpson’s Springs or Willow Springs: they might have built
the station about one mile north, near a natural well of good cool
water, but apparently they prefer the warm bad.
The saleratus valley looked more curious in daylight than in moonlight.
The vegetation was in regular scale; smallest, the rich bunch-grass
on the benches; then the greasewood and the artemisia, where the
latter can grow; and largest of all, the dwarf cedar. All was of
lively hue, the herbage bright red, yellow, and sometimes green, the
shrubs were gray and glaucous, the cedars almost black, and the rim
of hills blue-brown and blue. We had ample time to contemplate these
curiosities, for Kennedy, whose wits, like those of Hiranyaka, the
mouse, were mightily sharpened by the possession of wealth, had sat up
all night, and wanted a longer sleep in the morning. After a breakfast
which the water rendered truly detestable, we hitched up about 10 A.M.,
and set out _en route_ for Willow Springs.
[THE DESERT VIEW.]
About an hour after our departure we met the party commanded by
Lieutenant Weed, two subaltern officers, ninety dragoons, and ten
wagons; they had been in the field since May, and had done good service
against the Gosh Yutas. We halted and “liquored up,” and, after
American fashion, talked politics in the wilderness. Half an hour then
led us to what we christened “Kennedy’s Hole,” another circular bowl,
girt with grass and rush, in the plain under a dark brown rock, with
black bands and scatters of stone. A short distance beyond, and also on
the right of the road, lay the “Poison Springs,” in a rushy bed: the
water was temptingly clear, but the bleached bones of many a quadruped
skeleton bade us beware of it. After turning a point we saw in front a
swamp, the counterpart of what met our eyes last night; it renewed also
the necessity of rounding it by a long southerly sweep. The scenery was
that of the Takhashshua near Zayla, or the delicious land behind Aden,
the Arabian sea-board. Sand-heaps--the only dry spots after rain--fixed
by tufts of metallic green salsolæ, and guarded from the desert wind
by rusty cane-grass, emerged from the wet and oozy plain, in which
the mules often sank to the fetlock. The unique and snowy floor of
thin nitre, bluish where deliquescent, was here solid as a sheet of
ice; there a net-work of little ridges, as if the salt had expanded
by crystallization, with regular furrows worked by rain. After heavy
showers it becomes a soft, slippery, tenacious, and slushy mud, that
renders traveling exceeding laborious; the glare is blinding by day,
and at night the refrigerating properties of the salt render the wind
bitterly cold, even when the mercury stands at 50° F.
[SPORTING.]
We halted to bait at the half-way house, the fork of the road leading
to Pleasant Valley, an unpleasant place, so called because discovered
on a pleasant evening. As we advanced the land improved, the salt
disappeared, the grass was splendidly green, and, approaching the
station, we passed Willow Creek, where gophar-holes and snipes, willows
and wild roses, told of life and gladdened the eye. The station lay
on a bench beyond the slope. The express rider was a handsome young
Mormon, who wore in his felt hat the effigy of a sword; his wife was
an Englishwoman, who, as usual under the circumstances, had completely
thrown off the Englishwoman. The station-keeper was an Irishman, one
of the few met among the Saints. Nothing could be fouler than the log
hut; the flies soon drove us out of doors; hospitality, however, was
not wanting, and we sat down to salt beef and bacon, for which we were
not allowed to pay. The evening was spent in setting a wolf-trap,
which consisted of a springy pole and a noose: we strolled about after
sunset with a gun, but failed to bag snipe, wild-fowl, or hare, and
sighted only a few cunning old crows, and black swamp-birds with yellow
throats. As the hut contained but one room, we slept outside. The Gosh
Yuta are apparently not a venturesome people; still, it is considered
advisable at times to shift one’s sleeping quarters, and to acquire the
habit of easily awaking.
_To Deep Creek and halt. 1st and 2d of October, 1860._
A “little war” had been waging near Willow Springs. In June the station
was attacked by a small band of Gosh Yuta, of whom three were shot
and summarily scalped; an energetic proceeding, which had prevented
a repetition of the affair. The savages, who are gathering their
pine-nut harvest, and are driven by destitution to beg at the stations,
to which one meal a week will attach them, are now comparatively
peaceful: when the emigration season recommences they are expected
to be troublesome, and their numbers--the Pa Yutas can bring 12,000
warriors into the field--render them formidable. “Jake,” the Shoshonee,
who had followed us from Lost Springs, still considered his life in
danger; he was as unwilling to wend his way alone as an Arab Bedouin
or an African negro in their respective interiors. With regard to
ourselves, Lieutenant Weed had declared that there was no danger; the
station people thought, on the contrary, that the snake, which had
been scotched, not killed, would recover after the departure of the
soldiers, and that the work of destruction had not been carried on with
sufficient vigor.
At 6 A.M. the thermometer showed 45° F.; we waited two hours, till the
world had time to warm. After six miles we reached “Mountain Springs,”
a water-sink below the bench-land, tufted round with cotton-wood,
willow, rose, cane, and grass. On our right, or eastward, lay Granite
Rock, which we had well-nigh rounded, and through a gap we saw
Lost-Springs Station, distant apparently but a few hours’ canter.
Between us, however, lay the horrible salt plain--a continuation of the
low lands bounding the western edge of the Great Salt Lake--which the
drainage of the hills over which we were traveling inundates till June.
After twelve miles over the bench we passed a dark rock, which protects
a water called Reading’s Springs, and we halted to form up at the mouth
of Deep-Creek Kanyon. This is a dangerous gorge, some nine miles long,
formed by a water-course which sheds into the valley of the Great Salt
Lake. Here I rode forward with “Jim,” a young express rider from the
last station, who volunteered much information upon the subject of
Indians. He carried two Colt’s revolvers, of the dragoon or largest
size, considering all others too small. I asked him what he would do if
a Gosh Yuta appeared. He replied that if the fellow were civil he might
shake hands with him, if surly he would shoot him; and, at all events,
when riding away, that he would keep a “stirrup eye” upon him: that he
was in the habit of looking round corners to see if any one was taking
aim, in which case he would throw himself from the saddle, or rush
on, so as to spoil the shooting--the Indians, when charged, becoming
excited, fire without effect. He mentioned four Red Men who could “draw
a bead” against any white; usually, however, they take a minute to
load; they require a long aim, and they stint their powder. He pointed
out a place where Miller, one of the express riders, had lately been
badly wounded, and lost his horse. Nothing, certainly, could be better
fitted for an ambuscade than this gorge, with its caves and holes in
snow-cuts, earth-drops, and lines of strata, like walls of rudely-piled
stone; in one place we saw the ashes of an Indian encampment; in
another, a whirlwind, curling, as smoke would rise, from behind a
projecting spur, made us advance with the greatest caution.
As we progressed the valley opened out, and became too broad to be
dangerous. Near the summit of the pass the land is well lined with
white sage, which may be used as fodder, and a dwarf cedar adorns the
hills. The ground gives out a hollow sound, and the existence of a
spring in the vicinity is suspected. Descending the western water-shed,
we sighted, in Deep-Creek Valley, St. Mary’s County, the first patch of
cultivation since leaving Great Salt Lake. The Indian name is Aybá-pá,
or the Clay-colored Water; pity that America and Australia have not
always preserved the native local terms. It is bisected by a rivulet
in which three streamlets from the southern hills unite; like these
features generally, its course is northward till it sinks: fields
extend about one mile from each bank, and the rest of the yellow bottom
is a tapestry of wire grass and wheat grass. An Indian model farm
had been established here; the war, however, prevented cultivation;
the savages had burned down the house, and several of them had been
killed by the soldiers. On the west of the valley were white rocks of
the lime used for mortar: the hills also showed lias and marble-like
limestones. The eastern wall was a grim line of jagged peaks, here
bare with granite, there black with cedar; they are crossed by a short
cut leading to the last station, which, however, generally proves the
longest way, and in a dark ravine Kennedy pointed out the spot where he
had of late nearly left his scalp. Coal is said to be found there in
chunks, and gold is supposed to abound; the people, however, believing
that the valley can not yet support extensive immigration, conceal it
probably by “counsel.”
[DEEP-CREEK STATION.--MR. WADDINGTON.]
At 4 P.M. we reached the settlement, consisting of two huts and a
station-house, a large and respectable-looking building of unburnt
brick, surrounded by fenced fields, water-courses, and stacks of good
adobe. We were introduced to the Mormon station-master, Mr. Sevier,
and others. They are mostly farm-laborers, who spend the summer here
and supply the road with provisions: in the winter they return to
Grantsville, where their families are settled. Among them was a Mr.
Waddington, an old Pennsylvanian and a bigoted Mormon. It is related
of him that he had treasonably saved 300 Indians by warning them of
an intended attack by the federal troops. He spoke strongly in favor
of the despised Yutas, declared that they are ready to work, and can
be led to any thing by civility. The anti-Mormons declared that his
praise was for interested motives, wishing the savages to labor for him
gratis; and I observed that when Mr. Waddington started to cut wood in
the kanyon, he set out at night, lest his dust should be seen by his
red friends.
The Mormons were not wanting in kindness; they supplied us with
excellent potatoes, and told us to make their house our home. We
preferred, however, living and cooking afield. The station was dirty to
the last degree: the flies suggested the Egyptian plague; they could
be brushed from the walls in thousands; but, though sage makes good
brooms, no one cares to sweep clean. This, I repeat, is not Mormon,
but Western: the people, like the Spaniards, apparently disdain any
occupation save that of herding cattle, and will do so till the land is
settled. In the evening Jake the Shoshonee came in, grumbling loudly
because he had not been allowed to ride; he stood cross-legged like an
African, ate a large supper at the station, and a second with us. No
wonder that the savage in civilization suffers, like the lady’s lapdog,
from “liver.” He was, however, a first-rate hand in shirking any work
except that of peering and peeping into every thing; neither Gospel
nor gunpowder can reform this race. Mr.R----, the English farrier and
Lothario, left us on this day, after a little quarrel with Kennedy. We
were glad to receive permission to sleep upon the loose wheat in an
inner room: at 8 A.M. the thermometer had shown 59° F., but on this
night ice appeared in the pails.
The next day was a halt; the stock wanted rest and the men provisions.
A “beef”--the Westerns still retain the singular of “beeves”--was
killed, and we obtained a store of potatoes and wheat. Default of oats,
which are not common, this heating food is given to horses--12 lbs.
of grain to 14 of long forage--and the furious riding of the Mormons
is the only preventive of its evil effects. The people believe that
it causes stumbling by the swelling of the fetlock and knee joint;
similarly every East Indian ghorewalla will declare that wheaten bread
makes a horse tokkar khana--“eat trips.” The _employés_ of the station
were quiet and respectable, a fact attributed by some of our party to
the want of liquor, which is said to cause frequent fights. Our party
was less peaceable; there had been an extensive prigging of blankets;
the cold now made them valuable, and this drove the losers “fighting
mad.”
_En route again. 3d October._
The severity of the last night made us active; the appearance of deep
snow upon the mountains and of ice in the valleys was an intelligible
hint that the Sierra Nevada which lay before us would be by no means
an easy task. Despite, therefore, the idleness always engendered by a
halt, and the frigid blasts which poured down from the eastern hills,
where rain was falling in torrents, we hitched up, bade adieu to our
Mormon host, and set out about 4 P.M. Antelope Springs, the next
station, was 30 miles distant; we resolved, therefore, to divide it,
after the fashion of Asia and Africa, by a short forenoon march.
The road runs to the southwest down the Deep-Creek Valley, and along
the left bank of the western rivulet. Near the divide we found a
good bottom, with plenty of water and grass; the only fuel was the
sage-bush, which crackled merrily, like thorns, under the pot, but
tainted the contents with its medicinal odor. The wagons were drawn
up in a half circle to aid us in catching the mules; the animals were
turned out to graze, the men were divided into watches, and the masters
took up their quarters in the wagons. Age gave the judge a claim to the
ambulance, which was admitted by all hands; I slept with “Scotch Joe,”
an exceedingly surly youth, who apparently preferred any thing to work.
At 8 P.M. a storm of wind and rain burst upon us from the S.W.: it was
so violent that the wagons rocked before the blast, and at times the
chance of a capsize suggested itself. The weather was highly favorable
for Indian plundering, who on such nights expect to make a successful
attack.
_To the Wilderness. 4th October._
[EIGHT-MILE SPRINGS.]
We awoke early in the frigid S.W. wind, the thermometer showing 39° F.
After a few hundred yards we reached “Eight-mile Springs,” so called
from the distance to Deep Creek. The road, which yesterday would have
been dusty to the hub, was now heavy and viscid; the rain had washed
out the saleratus, and the sight and scent, and the country generally,
were those of the environs of a horse-pond. An ugly stretch of two
miles, perfectly desert, led to Eight-mile-Spring Kanyon, a jagged
little ravine about 500 yards long, with a portaled entrance of tall
rock. It is not, however, considered dangerous.
Beyond the kanyon lay another grisly land, if possible more deplorable
than before; its only crops were dust and mud. On the right hand were
turreted rocks, around whose base ran Indian trails, and a violent
west wind howled over their summits. About 1 30 P.M. we came upon the
station at Antelope Springs: it had been burned by the Gosh Yutas in
the last June, and had never been rebuilt. “George,” our cook, who had
been one of the inmates at the time, told us how he and his _confrères_
had escaped. Fortunately, the corral still stood: we found wood in
plenty, water was lying in an adjoining bottom, and we used the two to
brew our tea.
[SHELL CREEK.]
Beyond Antelope Springs was Shell Creek, distant thirty miles by
long road and eighteen by the short cut. We had some difficulty in
persuading Kennedy to take the latter; property not only sharpens the
intellect, it also generates prudence, and the ravine is a well-known
place for ambush. Fortunately two express riders came in and offered
to precede us, which encouraged us. About 3 P.M. we left the springs
and struck for the mouth of the kanyon, which has not been named;
Sevier and Farish are the rival claimants. Entering the jagged fir
and pine-clad breach, we found the necessity of dismounting. The bed
was dry--it floods in spring and autumn--but very steep, and in a
hole on the right stood water, which we did not touch for fear of
poison. Reaching the summit in about an hour we saw below the shaggy
foreground of evergreens, or rather ever-blacks, which cast grotesque
and exaggerated shadows in the last rays of day, the snowy-white
mountains, gloriously sunlit, on the far side of Shell Creek. Here for
the first time appeared the piñon pine (_P. Monophyllus_), which forms
the principal part of the Indian’s diet; it was no beauty to look upon,
a dwarfish tree, rendered shrub-like by being feathered down to the
ground. The nut is ripe in early autumn, at which time the savages stow
away their winter provision in dry ravines and pits. The fruit is about
the size of a pistachio, with a decided flavor of turpentine, tolerably
palatable, and at first laxative. The cones are thrown upon the fire,
and when slightly burnt the nuts are easily extracted; these are eaten
raw, or like the Hindoo’s toasted grains. The harvest is said to fail
every second year. Last season produced a fine crop, while in this
autumn many of the trees were found, without apparent reason but frost,
dead.
We resumed the descent along a fiumara, which presently “sank,” and at
5 P.M. halted in a prairillon somewhat beyond. Bunch-grass, sage-fuel,
and water were abundant, but the place was favorable for an attack.
It is a golden rule in an Indian country never to pitch near trees or
rocks that can mask an approach, and we were breaking it in a place of
danger. However, the fire was extinguished early, so as to prevent its
becoming a mark for Indians, and the pickets, placed on both sides of
the ravine, were directed to lie motionless a little below the crest,
and to fire at the first comer. I need hardly say we were not murdered;
the cold, however, was uncommonly piercing.
_To “Robber’s Roost.” 5th October._
We set out at 6 A.M. the next morning, through a mixture of snow and
hail and howling wind, to finish the ravine, which was _in toto_
eight miles long. The descent led us to Spring Valley, a bulge in the
mountains about eight miles broad, which a sharp divide separates from
Shell Valley, its neighbor. On the summit we fell into the line of
rivulet which gives the low lands a name. At the foot of the descent
we saw a woodman, and presently the station. Nothing could more want
tidying than this log hut, which showed the bullet-marks of a recent
Indian attack. The master was a Français de France, Constant Dubail,
and an ex-Lancier: his mother’s gossip had received a remittance of
2000 francs from a son in California, consequently he had torn himself
from the _sein_ of _sa pauvre mère_, and with three others had started
in search of fortune, and had nearly starved. The express riders were
three roughs, of whom one was a Mormon. We passed our time while the
mules were at bait in visiting the springs. There is a cold creek 200
yards below the station, and close by the hut a warm rivulet, said to
contain leeches. The American hirudo, however, has a serious defect
in a leech--it will not bite; the faculty, therefore, are little
addicted to hirudination; country doctors rarely keep the villainous
bloodsuckers, and only the wealthy can afford the pernicious luxury,
which, imported from Spain, costs $12 per dozen, somewhat the same
price as oysters at Nijni Novgorod.
The weather, which was vile till 10 A.M., when the glass showed 40°
(F.), promised to amend, and as the filthy hole--still full of flies,
despite the cold--offered no attraction, we set out at 2 P.M. for
Egan’s Station, beyond an ill-omened kanyon of the same name. We
descended into a valley by a regular slope--in proportion as we leave
distance between us and the Great Salt Lake the bench formation on this
line becomes less distinct--and traversed a barren plain by a heavy
road. Hares and prairie-hens seemed, however, to like it, and a frieze
of willow thicket at the western end showed the presence of water. We
in the ambulance halted at the mouth of the kanyon; the stock and the
boys had fallen far behind, and the place had an exceedingly bad name.
But the cold was intense, the shades of evening were closing in, so we
made ready for action, looked to the priming of gun and revolver, and
then _en avant_! After passing that kanyon we should exchange the land
of the Gosh Yuta for those of the more friendly Shoshonee.
[AN UGLY PLACE.]
An uglier place for sharp-shooting can hardly be imagined. The floor
of the kanyon is almost flush with the bases of the hills, and in such
formations, the bed of the creek which occupies the sole is rough
and winding. The road was vile--now winding along, then crossing the
stream--hedged in with thicket and dotted with boulders. Ahead of us
was a rocky projection which appeared to cross our path, and upon this
Point Dangerous every eye was fixed.
[COLD COMFORT.]
Suddenly my eye caught sight of one fire--two fires under the black
bunch of firs half way up the hill-side on our left, and as suddenly
they were quenched, probably with snow. Nothing remained but to hear
the war-whoop, and to see a line of savages rushing down the rocks.
We loosed the doors of the ambulance, that we might jump out, if
necessary, and tree ourselves behind it; and knowing that it would be
useless to return, drove on at our fastest speed, with sleet, snow,
and wind in our faces. Under the circumstances, it was cold comfort
to find, when we had cleared the kanyon, that Egan’s Station at the
farther mouth had been reduced to a chimney-stack and a few charred
posts. The Gosh Yutas had set fire to it two or three days before
our arrival, in revenge for the death of seventeen of their men by
Lieutenant Weed’s party. We could distinguish the pits from which the
wolves had torn up the corpses, and one fellow’s arm projected from
the snow. After a hurried deliberation, in which Kennedy swore, with
that musical voice in which the Dublin swains delight, that “shure
we were all kilt”--the possession of property not only actuates the
mind, and adds industry to its qualities, it also produces a peculiar
development of cautiousness--we unhitched the mules, tethered them to
the ambulance, and planted ourselves behind the palisade, awaiting all
comers, till the boys could bring re-enforcement. The elements fought
for us: although two tongues of high land directly in front of us would
have formed a fine mask for approach, the snow lay in so even a sheet
that a prowling coyote was detected, and the hail-like sleet which beat
fiercely on our backs would have been a sore inconvenience to a party
attacking in face. Our greatest disadvantage was the extreme cold; it
was difficult to keep a finger warm enough to draw a trigger. Thomas,
the judgeling, so he was called, was cool as a cucumber, mentally and
bodily: youths generally are. Firstly, they have their “_preuves_” to
make; secondly, they know not what they do.
After an hour’s freezing, which seemed a day’s, we heard with quickened
ears the shouts and tramp of the boys and the stock, which took a
terrible load off the exile of Erin’s heart. We threw ourselves into
the wagons, numbed with cold, and forgot, on the soft piles of saddles,
bridles, and baggage, and under heaps of blankets and buffalos, the
pains of Barahut. About 3 A.M. this enjoyment was brought to a close
by arriving at the end of the stage, Butte Station. The road was six
inches deep with snow, and the final ascent was accomplished with
difficulty. The good station-master, Mr. Thomas, a Cambrian Mormon, who
had, he informed me, three brothers in the British army, bade us kindly
welcome, built a roaring fire, added meat to our supper of coffee and
doughboy, and cleared by a summary process among the snorers places
for us on the floor of “Robber’s Roost,” or “Thieves’ Delight,” as the
place is facetiously known throughout the country-side.
_Halt at “Robber’s Roost.” 6th October._
[THE WESTERN MAN’S HOME.]
The last night’s sound sleep was allowed to last through the morning.
This day was perforce a halt: the old white mare and her colt had
been left at the mouth of the kanyon, and one of the Shoshonee Indian
servants of the station had been persuaded by a bribe of a blanket and
some gunpowder to return for them. About noon we arose, expecting a
black fog, and looked down upon Butte Valley, whose northern edge we
had traversed last night. Snow still lay there--that bottom is rarely
without frost--but in the fine clear sunny day, with the mercury at 43°
F. in the shade, the lowest levels re-became green, the hill cedars
turned once more black, earth steamed like a garment hung out to dry,
and dark spots here and there mottled the hills, which were capped with
huge turbans of muslin-like mist. While the Shoshonee is tracking and
driving the old mare, we will glance around the “Robber’s Roost,” which
will answer for a study of the Western man’s home.
It is about as civilized as the Galway shanty, or the normal
dwelling-place in Central Equatorial Africa. A cabin fronting east and
west, long walls thirty feet, with port-holes for windows, short ditto
fifteen; material, sandstone and bog ironstone slabs compacted with
mud, the whole roofed with split cedar trunks, reposing on horizontals
which rested on perpendiculars. Behind the house a corral of rails
planted in the ground; the inclosed space a mass of earth, and a mere
shed in one corner the only shelter. Outside the door--the hingeless
and lockless backboard of a wagon, bearing the wounds of bullets--and
resting on lintels and staples, which also had formed parts of
locomotives, a slab acting stepping-stone over a mass of soppy black
soil strewed with ashes, gobs of meat offals, and other delicacies. On
the right hand a load of wood; on the left a tank formed by damming a
dirty pool which had flowed through a corral behind the “Roost.” There
was a regular line of drip distilling from the caked and hollowed snow
which toppled from the thick thatch above the cedar braces.
The inside reflected the outside. The length was divided by two
perpendiculars, the southernmost of which, assisted by a half-way
canvas partition, cut the hut into unequal parts. Behind it were two
bunks for four men: standing bedsteads of poles planted in the ground,
as in Australia and Unyamwezi, and covered with piles of ragged
blankets. Beneath the frame-work were heaps of rubbish, saddles,
cloths, harness, and straps, sacks of wheat, oats, meal, and potatoes,
defended from the ground by underlying logs, and dogs nestled where
they found room. The floor, which also frequently represented bedstead,
was rough, uneven earth, neither tamped nor swept, and the fine end of
a spring oozing through the western wall kept part of it in a state of
eternal mud. A redeeming point was the fireplace, which occupied half
of the northern short wall: it might have belonged to Guy of Warwick’s
great hall; its ingle nooks boasted dimensions which one connects with
an idea of hospitality and jollity; while a long hook hanging down it
spoke of the bouillon-pot, and the iron oven of hot rolls. Nothing
could be more simple than the furniture. The chairs were either posts
mounted on four legs spread out for a base, or three-legged stools with
reniform seats. The tables were rough-dressed planks, two feet by two,
on rickety trestles. One stood in the centre for feeding purposes; the
other was placed as buffet in the corner near the fire, with eating
apparatus--tin coffee-pot and gamelles, rough knives, “pitchforks,”
and pewter spoons. The walls were pegged to support spurs and pistols,
whips, gloves, and leggins. Over the door, in a niche, stood a broken
coffee-mill, for which a flat stone did duty. Near the entrance, on a
broad shelf raised about a foot from the ground, lay a tin skillet and
its “dipper.” Soap was supplied by a handful of gravel, and evaporation
was expected to act towel. Under the board was a pail of water with
a floating can, which enabled the inmates to supply the drainage of
everlasting chaws. There was no sign of Bible, Shakspeare, or Milton;
a Holywell-Street romance or two was the only attempt at literature.
_En revanche_, weapons of the flesh, rifles, guns, and pistols, lay and
hung all about the house, carelessly stowed as usual, and tools were
not wanting--hammers, large borers, axe, saw, and chisel. An almost
invariable figure in these huts is an Indian standing cross-legged at
the door, or squatting uncomfortably close to the fire. He derides
the whites for their wastefulness, preferring to crouch in parties of
three or four over a little bit of fuel than to sit before a blazing
log. These savages act, among other things, as hunters, bringing home
rabbits and birds. We tried our revolvers against one of them, and beat
him easily; yet they are said to put, three times out of four, an arrow
through a keyhole forty paces off. In shooting they place the thumb and
forefinger of the right hand upon the notch, and strengthen the pull by
means of the second finger stretched along the bowstring. The left hand
holds the whipped handle, and the shaft rests upon the knuckle of the
index.
From Mr. Thomas we heard an account of the affair which took place near
Egan’s Kanyon. In the last August, Lieutenant Weed happened to be “on
a scout,” with seventeen mounted riflemen, after Indians. An express
rider from the West had ridden up to the station, which, being in a
hollow, can not be seen from afar, and found it surrounded by Gosh
Yuta Indians. The fellows had tied up the master and the boy, and were
preparing with civilized provisions a good dinner for themselves, to be
followed by a little treat in the form of burning down the house and
roasting their captives. The Indians allowed the soldiers brought up
by the express rider to draw near, thinking that the dust was raised
by fresh arrivals of their own people; and when charged, at once fled.
The mounted riflemen were armed with revolvers, not with sabres, or
they would have done considerable execution; as it was, seventeen of
the enemy remained upon the field, besides those who were carried off
by their friends. The Indian will always leave a scalped and wounded
fellow-tribesman in favor of an unscalped corpse.
In the evening the Shoshonee returned, bringing with him the white mare
and her colt, which he had recovered _selon lui_ from the hands of two
Gosh Yutas. The weather still held up; we had expected to be snowed up
in five days or so; our departure, therefore, was joyfully fixed for
the morrow.
_To Ruby Valley. 7th October._
A frosty night was followed by a Tuscan day: a cold tramontana from the
south, and a clear hot sun, which expanded the mercury at 10 A.M. to
70° F. After taking leave of the hospitable station-master, we resumed
the road which ran up the short and heavy ascent, through a country
here and there eighteen inches deep in snow, and abounding in large
sage and little rabbits. A descent led into Long Valley, whose northern
end we crossed, and then we came upon a third ascent, where, finding a
sinking creek, a halt was called for lunch. The formation of the whole
country is a succession of basins and divides. Ensued another twelve
miles’ descent, which placed us in sight of Ruby Valley, and a mile
beyond carried us to the station.
[RUBY VALLEY.]
Ruby Valley is a half-way house, about 300 miles from Great Salt Lake
City, and at the same distance from Carson Valley. It derives its
name from the small precious stones which are found like nuggets of
gold in the crevices of primitive rock. The length of the valley is
about 100 miles, by three or four broad, and springs are scattered
in numbers along the base of the western mountains. The cold is said
to be here more severe than in any place on the line of road, Spring
Valley excepted. There is, however, excellent bench-land for grazing.
In this season the scenery is really pretty. The white peaks tower over
hill-land black with cedar, and this looks down upon the green bottom
scattered over with white sage--winter above lying by the side of
summer below.
[“UNCLE BILLY.”]
We were received at the Ruby-Valley Station by Colonel Rogers, better
known as “Uncle Billy.” He had served in the troublous days of
California as marshal, and has many a hairbreadth escape to relate.
He is now assistant Indian agent, the superintendent of a government
model farm, and he lives _en garçon_, having left his wife and children
at Frogtown. We were soon introduced to the chief of the country,
Chy̆ŭkŭpĭchyă (the “old man”), a word of unpronounceable slur, changed
by whites into Chokop (“earth”). His lands are long to the north and
south, though of little breadth. He commands about 500 warriors, and,
as Uncle Billy is returning to Frogtown, he is collecting a large
hunting-party for the autumnal battue. In 1849 his sister was wantonly
shot by emigrants to California. He attacked the train, and slew
in revenge five men, a fact with which we were not made acquainted
till after our departure. His father and grandfather are both alive,
but they have abdicated under the weight of years and infirmities,
reserving their voices for the powwow.
We dined in the colonel’s stone hut, and then saw the lions feed;
after us, Chokop and five followers sat down with knife and fork
before a huge tureen full of soft pie, among which they did terrible
execution, champing and chewing with the noisiness of wild beasts, and
eating each enough for three able-bodied sailors. The chief, a young
man twenty-five years old, had little to denote the Indian except
vermilion where soap should have been; one of his companions, however,
crowned with eagle’s feathers disposed in tulip shape, while the claws
depended gracefully down his back, was an object worthy of Guinea. All
were, however, to appearance, happy, and for the first time I heard
an Indian really laugh outright. Outside squatted the common herd in a
costume which explains the prevalence of rheumatism. The men were in
rags, yet they had their coquetry, vermilion streaked down their cheeks
and across their foreheads--the Indian fashion of the omnilocal rouge.
The women, especially the elders, were horrid objects, shivering and
half dressed in breech-cloths and scanty capes or tippets of wolf and
rabbit skin: the existence of old age, however, speaks well for the
race. Both are unclean; they use no water where Asiatics would; they
ignore soap, and rarely repair to the stream, except, like animals, in
hot weather.
We then strolled about the camp and called upon the two Mistresses
Chokop. One was a buxom dame, broad and strong, with hair redolent of
antelope marrow, who boasted of a “wikeap” or wigwam in the shape of
a conical tent. The other, much her junior, and rather pretty, was
sitting apart in a bower of bushes, with a newly-born pappoose in a
willow cage to account for her isolation: the poor thing would have
been driven out even in the depth of winter, and were she to starve,
she must do without meat. As among the Jews, whenever the Great Father
is angry with the daughters of Red Men, they sit apart; they never
touch a cooking utensil, although it is not held impure to address
them, and they return only when the signs of wrath have passed away.
The abodes of the poorer clansmen were three-quarter circles of earth,
sticks, and sage-bush to keep off the southerly wind. A dog is usually
one of the occupants. Like the African, the Indian is cruel to his
brute, starves it and kicks it for attempting to steal a mouthful:
“Love me, love my dog,” however, is his motto, and he quarrels with
the stranger that follows his example. The furniture was primitive.
Upon a branch hung a dried antelope head used in stalking: concerning
this sport Uncle Billy had a story of his nearly being shot by being
mistaken for the real animal; and tripods of timber supporting cloths
and moccasins, pans, camp-kettles, stones for grinding grass-seed, and
a variety of baskets. The material was mostly willow twig, with a layer
of gum, probably from the pine-tree. Some were water-tight like the
“Hán” of Somaliland; others, formed like the Roman amphora, were for
storing grain; while others, in giant cocked-hat shape, were intended
for sweeping in crickets and the grass-seeds upon which these Indians
feed. The chief gramineæ are the atriplex and chenopodaceous plants.
After inspecting the camp we retired precipitately: its condition was
that of an Egyptian army’s last nighting-place.
[PRICE OF A GOVERNMENT FARM.]
About two miles from the station there is a lake covered with
water-fowl, from the wild swan to the rail. I preferred, however, to
correct my Shoshonee vocabulary under the inspection of Mose Wright,
an express rider from a neighboring station. None of your “one-horse”
interpreters, he had learned the difficult dialect in his youth, and
he had acquired all the intonation of an Indian. Educated beyond the
reach of civilization, he was in these days an oddity; he was convicted
of having mistaken a billiard cue for a whip handle, and was accused
of having mounted the post supporting the electric telegraph wire in
order to hear what it was saying. The evening was spent in listening to
Uncle Billy’s adventures among the whites and reds. He spoke highly of
his _protégés_, especially of their affection and fidelity in married
life: they certainly appeared to look upon him as a father. He owed
something to legerdemain; here, as in Algeria, a Houdin or a Love would
be great medicine-men with whom nobody would dare to meddle. Uncle
Billy managed to make the post pay by peltries of the mink, wolf,
woodchuck or ground-hog, fox, badger, antelope, black-tailed deer, and
others. He illustrated the peculiarities of the federal government by a
curious anecdote. The indirect or federal duties are in round numbers
$100,000,000, of which $60,000,000 are spent, leaving a surplus of
forty for the purpose of general corruption: the system seems to date
from the days of the “ultimus Romanorum,” President Jackson. None but
the largest claimants can expect to be recognized. A few years ago one
of the Indian agents in ---- was asked by a high official what might be
about the cost of purchasing a few hundred acres for a government farm.
After reckoning up the amount of beads, wire, blankets, and gunpowder,
the total was found to be $240. The high official requested his friend
to place the statement on paper, and was somewhat surprised the next
morning to see the $240 swollen to $40,000. The reason given was
characteristic: “What great government would condescend to pay out of
£8,000,000 a paltry £48, or would refuse to give £8000?”