We found an emigrant trail just outside Terrace. It: wound over the low hills and curved over the desert like a thin snake lying among the sage-bush. Many years had gone since the lumbering emigrant waggons dragged their dreary way towards California, But. the track la well marked, and.the sage-bush, then trodden and killed, has.never grown ai The ground was hard, changing from crisp, candy shingle to chalky flats of alkali. It was the hest ince reaching the Land of the Doll-r.
We: stopped at Kelton. Kelton, has nothing remarkable about it except its-uninterestingness. Ooly mad people would like. Kelton. There is the railway avd a pla P inted shed called the depot. A disjointed hovel of rough stones, with mud as mortar, and mud roof, is the local store. There one could buy everything except what'was wanted. Patent medicines were the stock. The walls were hung with twin-pictures of a gentler before taking the renowned Dr. Slocu: cure for all ailments, a decrepit wretch, and the same gentleman, after only one bottle, a bright, laughing, gay fellow. For the Americans have an enormous appetite for patent medicines. Why they should need them, considering they are always telling you their land is the healthiest, in the world and their death.rate something below nit, is a problem that must: solved by the learned.
Lying higgleely-piggleely, on each side the railway, are a dozen. rough-and-tumble residences, sometimes of board, sometimes of rough stone; and sometimes of tree trunks, inhabited by people whose purpose in life you have only the faintest-notion of. "I do anything that-comes along, I guess," was the way one person sumauarised his occupation; and at one end of Kelto:
couple of huts where the. Chinese who work on the line, earning a-dollar a day and living on a dollar a month, dreg oot a congenial existence.
The best house in the town, painted an eye-aching yellow, does duty as a hotel. It is fearfully droughty, the doors leak, the windows are broken and plugged with dough, old newspapers, and old, petticoats the meat for staleness. and toughness is worthy of Western China; dust lies in little fluffy rolls in all the corners.
There is no saloon, and, therefore, no drinking in Kelton, "The only liquid purchasable was a bottle of patent-cough mixture—s consequence of one of those broken windows—but not a very inspiriting' be-sorage. The only. excitem passing of the mail-trains. Kelton is a typical Western Anierican® desert town.
Peels think it the nicest little spot in tab.
The reason for this lengthy recognition the hole is that we were obliged, through stress of weather, to say in it for six long, stale days. It was early May. Butinstead of buds and roses, and singing birds and smiling Nature; we°ladb'eak and dismal winter. It rained in torrents, and a cold, soughing wind- moaned. across the prairie. Then followed.snow.and sleet, and a screeching' blizzard that threatened to blow the town into the next State. "The country around was a swamp. Waggons that set out for mining camps in the hills were. abandoned, "xle-deep in the-miro. The mail trains could not fight the blizzard. They were divided into -sections, Each section had two ines, and even then the trains passed through Kelton hours late. Nobody could -recall.such a rainfall and such a storm.
We sat round the little stove, with-legs cocked up, avd gossipped the days: away with the wayfarers, unshaven, burly.men with sodden clothes. There was one old man, his clothes in tatters and the crevices of his -leathern neck—filled - with - grime, whom we took for a' tramp, and inquired whether he was walking or getting lifts on freight trains. "We sheard he was one of the biggest-sheep-rearers in the district, and reputed to be worth: a million of dollars.. Over the hills was a ranch 200 miles square, and all fenced in.
"Yes, sir," said our informant, ' this is a big country, and big fortunes.are made, But we don't walk about with: no ha-ha like you English. A.rich man's no better'n a poor man here, There's no scraping here. wouldn't take off my hat te-the President of the United States no morn I would to you; guess not There. were the real tramps, rough devil-may-care ruffians, who cadged tobacco and couldn't spit straight—only newspaper man can. hit ".spittoon: they told how they obtained rides on the railway for nothing, travelling at. night on the carriage roof, crawling into. freight van, sitting astride a buffer, creeping into a water-tank, a gang of twenty of them at a time, dodging the brakeman, swinging on toa train in motion, begging and. thieving by the way—a succession of tales of villainy narrated with picturesque oaths, A motley crowd we were, surely: millionaire sheep-rearcra, mines, cowboys, storekeepers,: tramps, London cyclists, that each of those. six days perched wet boots on the stove top, and smoked and salivated, and talked and lied Well,.on: the seventh dsy—and that was seventh day that we really did welcome—we again got astride our Rovers and pushed eastwards. A mile out we met a man with waggon and team. He said snow was lying deep onthe hills. Certainly,.horses and.catt looked as though they had come through a sea:.of mud,. The. outlook for much.wheeling that morning was bad. But we kept in the: centre of the railway track. Eviging round a sweep of the line there lay revealed.the Great Salt Lake, as smooth as a mirror and glistening. "And the desert edging mwas wearing a silver fringe of salt. Green islands dotted the sea. Sixty feet' up the.aides of the guardian hills was a line showing where the water had once reached. Salt Lake is x.great dead sea,'and no fish are now in it. To-day it covers an area.of. twenty-five hundred square miles, And it. is subsiding. The average rainfall is. only six.inches year, but the: evaporation.is equal to seventy: two inches. Were. it-not thet mountain torrents flow into the basin, the: end of the Grest Salt Lake would be a matter of a few years. As it is, it. will take 25,000 Before that time, sccueding to the' Mor. care-before the waters are dried up. But
smons,.the last trump will have been sounded... Therefore,, ahateholders in. the. éanitariums and bathing establishimedta and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.