A MOUNTAINEER'S OPINION. 257 



and that too with sufficient clearness to recognise and point 

 out, by name, to accompanying strangers the well-known 

 peaks ; and I am certain of the distance, having myself 

 measured it. And now I have brought you from fair 

 California to the Colorado. We have travelled together a 

 rough and rugged road, but not beset with danger, for an 

 old hand has led the party, and a gallant escort protected 

 it. Had it been otherwise, we might have left our bones 

 to bleach, as many an honest miner, many a venturesome 

 "tenderfoot," good man and true, has done. There are 

 more graves and more charred ruins on the route than 

 attention has been drawn to. Why should we have made 

 ourselves sad ? 



We have been broiled, grilled, and bedevilled for two 

 hundred and fifty miles, over which we have toiled at a 

 tediously slow pace. You cannot trot mules on that trip. 

 Alkali dust, hot sand, prickly cacti, poisonous water, hard 

 marching, have done their worst to us. The jorndda from 

 Soda Lake to Marl Springs we shall not soon forget : we 

 were very tired. We have seen a queer country. I heard 

 onco a quaint description of it from an old mountaineer 

 as I sat at breakfast at Marl Springs. It bordered on the 

 irreverent, but not intentionally. He said : " I guess wen 

 this hear old foot-stool was abeout finished, thar weare some 

 cartloads uv brickbats uv mountings, end shavings uv vegita- 

 tion, end en all-fired-sight uv waste sand, end mortar, on 

 hend ; end the Great ArcA-e-tect didend kneow zakly what 

 tew dew with it, so he jest dumped it, all of a heap, pro- 

 miscus ; end this hears the place." 



Certes we have had a hard trip ; but at its end, I have 



