started to the new silver-mines in the Humboldt
Mountains--he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt
County, and we to mine. The distance was two
hundred miles. It was dead of winter. We bought
a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds
of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks, and
shovels in it; we bought two sorry-looking Mexican
"plugs," with the hair turned the wrong way and
more corners on their bodies than there are on the
mosque of Omar; we hitched up and started. It
was a dreadful trip. But Oliver did not complain.
The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town
and then gave out. Then we three pushed the
wagon seven miles, and Oliver moved ahead and
pulled the horses after him by the bits. We com-
plained, but Oliver did not. The ground was frozen,
and it froze our backs while we slept; the wind
swept across our faces and froze our noses. Oliver
did not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon
by day and freezing by night brought us to the bad
part of the journey--the Forty Mile Desert, or the
Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this
mildest-mannered man that ever was had not com-
plained. We started across at eight in the morning,
pushing through sand that had no bottom; toiling
all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons,
the skeletons of ten thousand oxen; by wagon-tires
enough to hoop the Washington Monument to the
top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by
human graves; with our throats parched always with
thirst; lips bleeding from the alkali dust; hungry,
perspiring, and very, very weary--so weary that

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