JIMVILLE 



gers, shifting seats to hold down the wind- 

 ward side of the wagging coach. This is 

 a mere trifle. The Jimville stage is built 

 for five passengers, but when you have 

 seven, with four trunks, several parcels, 

 three sacks of grain, the mail and express, 

 you begin to understand that proverb 

 about the road which has been reported 

 to you. In time you learn to engage the 

 high seat beside the driver, where you 

 get good air and the best company. Be- 

 yond the desert rise the lava flats, scoriae 

 strewn ; sharp-cutting walls of narrow ca- 

 nons ; league-wide, frozen puddles of black 

 rock, intolerable and forbidding. Beyond 

 the lava the mouths that spewed it out, 

 ragged-lipped, ruined craters shouldering 

 to the cloud-line, mostly of red earth, as 

 red as a red heifer. These have some 

 comforting of shrubs and grass. You get 

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