YUMA TO BLYTHE 337 



"two-bits" ("do' reales"), a sum so mean that the 

 very term became a reproach, and so remains even in 

 these penurious times. 



I found a number of Ehrenberg's missing citizens 

 up on the mesa, a quarter mile out of town. Here, in 

 the most thoroughly dismal cemetery I ever beheld, 

 were some sixty or seventy graves, mere shapeless 

 piles of gravel and boulders, with one, more ambi- 

 tious, a yellow hump of adobe. There was no sign of 

 its ever having been fenced : it lay open to coyotes, 

 cattle, and burros, whose tracks went in and out 

 everywhere. I suppose shallow graves were dug, but 

 it looks more as if bodies had been dropped uncof- 

 fined on any vacant space and stones and gravel 

 thrown hastily upon them. Each grave was a burrow 

 of ground-squirrels. Few had any pretence of cross 

 or mark of identification, and on still fewer could 

 one make out a date or name. The place seemed to 

 put a stamp on the record of bygone Ehrenberg as a 

 community unlovely In life, brutal in death. Yet, 

 Heaven forgive me for saying so, when many, or 

 most, of these dreary mounds may mark the end of a 

 life which, though cast in harsher setting, may have 

 held more of usefulness, kindliness, and genuine 

 worth than ours who gather easy "impressions," and 

 write books, or sell stocks, or sugar, and are marked 

 In Evergreen Cemetery with tasteful marbles and 

 non-committal texts. 



The Colorado looked poetic enough as I rode 

 down to the ferry. I was not sorry when In answer to 

 my call the ferryman shouted from his cabin door 

 that he was "a-cookin' supper right now" and I 



