Ill 



FROM BEND TO BURNS 



HE clutch snapped in with a jump; 

 forward, backward shot the lever 

 — we were rounding a corner in a 

 whirl of dust, Bend behind us, and 

 the auto-stage like some giant jack 

 rabbit bounding through the sagebrush for Burns, 

 one hundred and fifty miles across the desert. 



Think of starting from New York for Wilming- 

 ton, Delaware, or from Boston for New Haven, 

 Connecticut, with nothing, absolutely nothing but 

 sagebrush and greasewood and stony lava ridges 

 and a barely discernible trail in between ! with a 

 homesteader's shack for Providence, another shack 

 for Norwich, and sage, sage, sage ! 



It was the size of the West and the spirit of 

 the West — this combination of sage and auto- 

 mobile — that struck me as most unlike things 

 back East, size and spirit commensurate. The 

 difference was not one of race or blood. The 

 new Northwest has very largely come out of the 



