396 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Across the Continent in “The Sixties” 
Besides the important sinks there were many 
smaller alkali flats and salt marshes along the 
line of our route. From one of these latter, 
salt used to be brought to Silver City, Gold Hill 
and Virginia City for use in the stamp mills, 
used in the old reduction process for extracting 
precious metal from the ore. Some of my read¬ 
ers may remember the experiment of the United 
States government in 1858, when Jefferson Davis 
was Secretary of War, with camels as a means 
of transport in connection with the army in the 
arid regions of the west. Seventy or eighty of 
these animals were imported, and it was not un¬ 
reasonably assumed that they would be found 
very useful in regions where water was found 
only at long intervals on the march. When one 
reflects how very important they are in Asia and 
Africa, under similar conditions, and how civil¬ 
ized nations prosecuting warlike operations in 
those regions, have found it advantageous to use 
these ships of the desert, the experiment seemed 
promising. 
There was one thing overlooked, however, 
and that was the reluctance of the men accus¬ 
tomed to handling horses and mules to have 
anything to do with these ungainly beasts. There 
was continual complaint about them. The horse 
wranglers and packers who were quite accustom- 
By “Lexden.” 
(Continued from last week.) 
ed to dodging the determined kicks of a vicious 
mule objected to being spit upon or bitten by a 
camel. Probably the animals did not like their 
new environment or their new masters either. 
Be that as it may, after a year or two, there does 
not seem to have been much effort made to use 
them, and they were allowed to roam where 
they pleased about the military posts. Then 
came the Civil War in 1861, and from that time 
no further attention was paid to them, and they 
were absolutely masterless. Their number in¬ 
creased by births and in 1866 there were several 
herds ranging the desert. About this time it 
occurred to some enterprising men who made a 
business of gathering salt for the reduction 
works, that if they could capture a few of these 
camels, it would be possible to use them profit¬ 
ably in carrying salt, as the load would be too or 
three times that of a pack horse. The experi¬ 
ment was made, and no doubt the details would 
be very interesting if we had them. 
The first time a string of them came into camp 
with their loads they stampeded all the horses 
and mules they met, and henceforth were forbid¬ 
den to enter until after midnight. It was a 
rather startling sight for a belated traveler clat¬ 
tering up the stony approach to the mines to 
overtake a procession of these strange looking 
beasts, moving along as silently as phantoms in 
single file behind the leading animal who was in 
charge of a man on foot. 
They were used for a year or so and then 
turned adrift again. What finally became of 
them I do not know; perhaps the Indians killed 
them. I can think of no other explanation of 
their disappearance. 
Our progress all day and night was slow and 
tiresome. The road followed where possible the 
bases of the hills on account of the firmer 
ground, but cutting across the valleys at some 
point could not be avoided, and the coach wheels 
cut deeply into the soft ashy soil wherever we 
left the higher land. The breakfast station on 
April 13th was not more than thirty miles in a 
direct line from Virginia City but a good deal 
more by the windings of the road. At Fort 
Churchill six extra good horses were harnessed 
and we began shortly the ascent which led finally 
to Virginia City high up on the side of Mount 
Davidson. In an hour or two the road ended in a 
narrow canyon through which, by the side of the 
track, flowed a turbid stream of very muddy 
grey colored water, the slime and toilings from 
the quartz milis further up on either side. There 
was a draught of cold air through this cleft in 
Getting the Hounds Ready for the Hunt. 
