Terrace, State of Utah.
What a dreary waste In the great basin between the Sierra Nevada range and the Rocky Mountains, nothing but a thousand miles of salt and sand, a tract of the world, parched, and blistered, and dreary, wholly Day after day we wheeled on. It was hard and hot riding. And at night when one sat, diary in hand, trying to recall incidents, there only floitel before the mind visions of sun-baked wilderness, endless, countlrss miles of withere s"ge-brush, great flats reeking with alkali fumes, gaunt, ochrod hills that stare! desolate over the prairie—the same every day with no variety. Te was a forbidding world and bare.
Only in the wvenings—wken the breeze was soft and delicious, aul we pulled up at alittle group of shanties, called a town, and stroied int" the store and sat ona cracker box dangling legs, run ing meanwhiles at the hopelessness of the woald one hear a good word for Nevada.
"Hopeless, sir!" the Nevadian would chime in, "why Nevada is one of the finest States in the Union. You've come across the worst part on thow bicycles of yours, the desert, but go over those hills in the valleys and beyond. There you'll se grazing fand, the finest in the world, and there are gold mines and silver mines and ines, and the Lord knows what in Look at this quartz—see the nuggets of gold? That's worth four hundred dollars to the ton. I've sen nuggets as big as your fist—yes, as biz as your head. And we raise sheep, millions uf'em, Don't yet the idea into your head Nevada is all desert. Itain't! It's the richest of the States for its size, and no other compares with then w long-limbed Californian would wirt a bloch of tobacco juice between his teeth upon the floor, twi-t his chewing quid into his cheek, and let loose a run of blasphemous epigrammatic scorn. There was only one place on earth, according to this long Westerner, that wasn't deser and that's. California, And California's paradise Then a Colorado man, with arms stuck up to the elbows in his breeches pockets—he were no coat nor vest, and his short was grey—aimed his spiro at the stove and missed it, and sneered contempt. He told a wonderful yon about the richness of Denver.
You toon seo that no American will admit the superiority. of his State. The only p Americans agree is that the cun belonging to Uncle Sain is ti fioest world; its people are the finest, its manu-+s, agriculture, resources, are the and' that there 18 nothing in the world that cannot be outdone by America, Its dollars could buy all the rest up, and there still be enough left to put a mortgage onthe moon. The average American hi no weariness in talking "bout his country. He is mentally enwrapped i+ Stars and Stripes. Never for " moment does he let you forget he is a citizen of the United States—"*and I'm proud of it—the grandest country in the world, sir.
Breathes there Yank, so mean, so small, 'Who never says, Well, now by Gaul, reckon since old Adam's fall, 'There never breathed on this ere ball A nation so almighty tall As we gor-domin' Yankees."
Nevada has a peculiarity of its own. While the population of other States has jumped up phenomenally, and great cities been burn between the rising and the setting of.the sun, the population of Neva: la, with its seventy-one millions of acres, is dwindling away. There are not more than 60,000 people i" the entire State, and that isabont third less than there were twenty-five years ago. Within the memory ofoldmen Nevada hus been as unknown to the white man as Central Africa is to-day. J when the Queen came to the throne silver was discovered in its hills. Then came the mighty rush, the mining camps, the hel's on earth, the great romance.
On our way we saw rude graves, chunks of sandstone pillars on the desert, with names now almost obliterated. ' Wheeler, 1839"—that was all. hold of " sturdy old argonaut and invited him toa saloon. And there, with a bottle vf rye whisky before him—the westerner drinks- his whisky neat, with a gulp of water afterwards, called 'a follow"—he would ree! off yarns about the-e early days, conflicts with Indians, s¢nd-st-rms, stary tion, most of all thirs!; and the wild, blood-hor-eyed feverish search f-r silver, the great finds, the camp murders, she gambling—terrible yarns of terrible times.
We got hold of a little hook published a year or lwo ago, compiled under the direction of the State Bureau of Immigration, called, " Nevada und her resources; a brief skef hi of the adeantayes and po-sibilities of the State, and the opportunities and inducements offered to capitalls's and homeseekers." It was an interesting book, evidently written by an auctioneer, and demonstrating clearly that roses grow on sage-bruch, and that there is nothing like alkali for the cultivation of wheat. You would imagin" you have only to walk into the hills and fill sacks of nuggets.
Were not over half-a-billion of dollars in gold and silver extracted from one fissure in the earth's erns'—the Comstock lode Didn't the Reese River excitement duce thirty-six million dollars? Didn't the Eureka mines produce one hundred and twenty-five million dollars? A wonderful land, truly Tu 1861 the witty James W. Nye became Governor of Nevada, and ' Mark Twain" was Assistant Secretary After that Nevada became a sort of sucked orange.
But here is a gem from this auctinneer's pamphlet abou Nevada: "The discovery of gol in. California, followed by that of seer in Nevada, was the most important provision for human, happiness made since the days of Palesti When we have time we will look up what was that important provision in the days of Palestine," The paragraph continues: The production wf such enormous stores of imperishable riches lifted a loyd from the back of our race, and there was: an upward bound in all that is desirable among men." Therefore let none say that the craze to obtain gold fosters malice, envy, hatred, vice, murder, In the eyes'of the Nevada yration the gold miner boce: ly, angelic person. We rather like the gold miner. But ay far our experience goes he is nut a saint, and ywe are ready to aweer there is little of the angel about him.
But one more quotation: The ently days are full of rich tradit Tne bar was one £ the best in the Union, brought there by the enormous fees consequent upon disputes-about ground known, oe supposed to be, boiling over wich gold and silver. Society was made up +f bright men and women from all parts of the world, and money was held to be entirely a matter of course. as everyone had it in plenty. The social life of the State has always been one of i's chiefest charms for good people." How bestiful! How vice E'plice Nevada must be for good peo-
Pitlas that we three are not " good people"! Crossing Nevada we met many sterling, straight, sturdy fellows, the best men. But we met others. We met men—the proportion was bout equal—who were offensive, who were always cramming down one's throne they were "fee-born Americans, and bowed to no son of a——." They were always prating of their independence, and they showed their independence by being rude. Our track across the desert was always near the line of the Cen'ral Pacific Railroa?. And we came in contact with the employes of this company. On them we were often dependent for water and But we were refused water, or it was Sometimes we got I discoucteously, and though at times we
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.