Reno is a pleasant town, nobly situated on a high plateau with lofty
mountains towering near. The Truckee River flows straight down from the
heart of the snows through the center of the town and is spanned by a
handsome bridge. The substantial Riverside Hotel stands on the bank of
the river near the bridge. Somehow my impressions of Reno all seem to
cluster around the swift river and the bridge. The library, the hotel,
the Y. M. C. A., and other public buildings are close to the river. If
you walk up the river you come to a little island in the center of the
rushing stream which is a tiny Coney Island for the Reno residents
during the summer. Bridges are flung from bank to island on both sides
of the river. High above the river rise the houses of the well-to-do
people of the town, some of them handsome structures. At the little
hairdresser's where I had a shampoo in the delicious soft snow water of
the river they pointed out to me the home of "our millionaire." So I
crossed the river and went over and up to the higher side of the town,
where was a very beautiful stucco mansion surrounded by wide lawns,
with a view over the river on one side and off to the mountains on the
other. It was a charming situation, and its charm was enhanced for me by
the fact that just a short distance away, outside the town, began the
grey-green desert with its sage brush whose pungent, aromatic odor was
to be in my nostrils for so many days to come. I asked my hairdresser
whether Reno had many people in residence waiting for their divorces.
She said that the new law, by virtue of which they must have a year's
residence in Nevada, instead of the old period of six months, had cut
down, so to speak, the business of divorces. She assured me that the
Reno people deplored this as formerly the town was full of boarders and
lodgers "doing time." I confess I was somewhat shocked by such a sordid
point of view. I found myself looking quietly around the Riverside
dining room to see whether I could pick out in the well filled room any
candidates for divorce, and then I reflected that they were probably
looking at me with the same query in their minds.

[Illustration: 1. Crossing Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa. 2. Bridge near
Reno.]

At Reno we followed our rule of visiting university buildings. We had
seen the famous State University and the equally famous Stanford
University in California, and wished to continue our study of college
buildings and of the general atmosphere of Western institutions.
Unfortunately it was holiday time, but we were shown about most
courteously by a young instructor. The Nevada State University buildings
are modest and comparatively few in number, but in good taste. They have
a fine situation on a high plateau, wind-swept and mountain-surrounded,
at the edge of the town. Westerners call these lofty terraces, which
drop down one below another in step fashion at the foot of the great
mountains, benches.

We had seen the very noble School of Mines at the University of
California, erected by Mrs. Hearst to her husband's memory. We were
equally interested in the smaller but very pretty building erected by
Mr. Clarence Mackay for the University of Nevada School of Mines. A
striking statue of Mr. Mackay in his miner's dress and with his miner's
pick, stands in front of the building and looks down the green lengths
of the open campus.

Our guide told us that the attendance at the School of Mines varies
annually with the fluctuations of mining fortunes. In good years when
the mines are doing well, the University has between fifty and sixty
students of mining engineering. In poor mining years the attendance
drops off. He told us some interesting tales of the "good old days" when
miners wore two shirts sewed together at the bottom, thus making a sort
of bag, and helped themselves liberally to gold while in the diggings.
He said that a miner had been known to pay a mine foreman a thousand
dollars for the privilege of working in a rich corner of the mine, with
the result that he would be able to make up the price of his privilege
within two or three days. He explained that there was a general rule to
the effect that a miner should not be stripped for examination except to
his shirt; with possible exceptions if he were under very strong
suspicion.

I was sorry to come away from Reno. I liked the little town, with the
sound of the rushing river coming in at my hotel window, and the feeling
of space and freedom that the high situation gave. Reno is 4500 feet
above sea level.

From Reno we drove on to Fallon, a little town where we spent the night.
I took my last look at the high Sierras as we drove across the grassy
plains in leaving Reno. There they were, still snowy, towering above the
town. We came along by the river, but left it later for a more or less
hilly road across rather barren country. We stopped at a little roadside
place where there was a small grocery next to a tiny dwelling, to ask
for some luncheon. The groceryman was very dubious and non-committal and
referred us to his wife. I had noticed that at our approach she fled to
some improvised chicken coops back of the little dwelling. So I tracked
her to her lair and found the poor little thing really standing at bay.
She was a small woman, overshadowed by an immense Mexican straw hat. She
said to me somewhat defiantly and almost tearfully that she couldn't
possibly do another drop of work. She explained that she had the
railroad men to care for when they came in from the road, and that she
had two hundred chickens to look after. "I carry all the water for them
myself," she said tearfully. I looked around at the hot, dusty little
settlement, with no spear of grass, and felt sorry for her. I told her
that we wouldn't for the world inconvenience her, whereat she softened
and told me that if we would drive on to the next settlement we could
get some luncheon. Which we did, and a very indifferent luncheon it was.
However, it was spiced by an ardent conversation between T. and a
railroad man on the foreign policy of the present Administration. A
woman looks on at these encounters, into which men plunge without a
moment's introduction or hesitation, and into which they throw
themselves so earnestly, with admiration tinged with awe.

[Illustration: 1. Smelter near Ely, Nevada. 2. Lahontan Dam, Nevada.]

As we drove along the dusty road a short, rather thick snake, its back
marked by shining black diamonds, wriggled hurriedly across the road in
front of us, escaping to the sage brush. I asked later what this snake
was, for I felt certain that it was poisonous. Sure enough, it was a
diamond-backed rattle snake. We came soon to another little town where
there was a good hotel. Hanging on the wall of the hotel was a painting
of the proposed Lahontan Dam and the country which its life-giving
streams would touch. We decided, instead of going direct to Fallon, to
drive across country to the Dam, making a slight detour. We were very
glad that we did so, for we found the young superintendent of the Dam
construction, a Brown University man, very courteous indeed. We went to
look at the enormous pile of sand and clay which has been banked up day
after day and week after week until the Lahontan Dam is the largest
earth dam in the world. We saw cement spillways, one on each side of the
earth dam proper, their tall steps planned to break the fall of the
water at any time of great flood and pressure. We saw the lake itself
with its measuring tower and gate already sixty feet under the rising
water. Mr. Tillinghast told us that the lake stretches back into the
hills and the canyon for twenty miles. We heard of the millions of
fertile acres which this water, already beginning to be released in a
rushing stream, was to make possible. Some miles back we had seen
irrigated country, green and fertile, cut, so to speak, right out of the
desert. Alfalfa was growing luxuriantly and was being cured in high
green stacks under the sun. Settlers' little cottages were a visible
promise of the future, just as they had been in California. We
congratulated Mr. Tillinghast on his work, and told him that in days to
come he should bring his grandchildren to see the Lahontan Dam, a
splendid monument to his work and the work of the men with him.

We saw where he and his assistant engineer lived with their families.
They had small but comfortable quarters made of houses built of tar
paper. Some chicken yards were near, and an improvised tennis court was
in front of the little row of houses. Near by was a little schoolhouse
for the children of the settlement. Here New England women, city born
and bred, were living happily with their children while their husbands
built the great Dam. One lady told us that her relatives in Providence
commiserated her lot. "But," said she, "the boys are so well and live
such a free and happy life in this glorious air that we really dread
being moved to another piece of work when the Dam is finished." From
Lahontan we picked our way across the desert with its sage brush and its
spaces, to Fallon.

When we left Fallon we had before us a very trying drive. The country
east of Fallon, past Salt Wells Ranch and as far as Sand Springs, was in
bad condition because of recent heavy rains. We met heavy wagons drawn
by ten, twelve, fourteen, and sometimes sixteen horses and mules,
struggling madly and almost hopelessly through the sticky mud. The
drivers were cracking their whips, yelling and swearing, and the poor
animals' flanks and bellies were thick with mud. The heavy wagons were
piled high with bales and boxes. In some instances the horses of one
team were being unharnessed to be added to another team where the wagon
stuck hopelessly in the mud. A country woman told me later that she had
seen the horses of these trucking teams come in at night, their flanks
covered with the dried blood which had streamed down from the wounds
made by a pitchfork in the hands of a desperate and angry teamster
determined to get his team started out of a mud hole.

We had an advantage because of the broad tires of our machine, and got
on very well by picking our way across the plain and keeping well to the
left of a long stretch filled with salt water holes and with a fairly
large salt lake. A new road had been made by travelers, far away from
the regular road, which ran close to this small inland sea and which was
a hopeless quagmire. The land about us was dreary and desolate and yet
had its own charm. Off to the left were immense sand hills blown up by
the wind, and barren, rocky hills, the Wind Mountains. We came at last
to the little station known as Sand Springs, which is simply a lodging
place for the teamsters and their horses for the night. We could look
down from the plateau on which the little house and the barns stood,
upon the white and clay-colored, desolate spaces of the salty valley
below. The landlady welcomed us cordially and gave us a plain but
hearty lunch. She was a Californian and told me that she and her husband
missed the green hills and fields of their own State. She said that they
had wonderful salt for curing and packing their winter meats from the
lake down in the valley. She said that the salt could be raked up in
great heaps, white and coarse but with great strength and savor. She was
mourning the loss of her cows, which had disappeared. They had been gone
a month and she feared that in wandering away on the mountain ranges
they had been driven off by "cattle rustlers."

From Sand Springs we drove on through a more hilly country, the road
winding along through an open canyon. We passed Frenchman's Flat, where
there was a little restaurant and where a Frenchman came out to pass the
time of day. He greeted us very pleasantly and would doubtless have
given us a good meal if we had not already had one. We then crossed
another great level and passed three ranches known as West Gate, Little
Gate, and East Gate. We were coming into a much more fertile country, a
high valley with mountains rising on either side. Ahead of us, marked by
its tall cottonwood trees, was Alpine Ranch, a part of the big Williams
estate and our destination for the night. It was very cheering to drive
through the paddock, cross a bubbling little stream, and come up
alongside the long, low, pleasant ranch house.

[Illustration: 1. On the Lincoln Highway. 2. Ranch House at East Gate,
Nov. 3. Road Scene near Rawlins, Wyoming.]

We had had as traveling companion from Fallon, across the Salt Flats and
through the hills, a young commercial man from San Francisco driving his
Ford car through to Utah. We were both glad to make the journey across
the desert in company, hoping to be of mutual assistance in case of any
accident to our cars. Mr. N. now proposed to take supper at Alpine Ranch
and to travel by night in order to gain time. We warned him that he
might get into trouble, but he assured us that he often traveled at
night and enjoyed the stillness and the freedom to speed along. We found
Mr. and Mrs. Dudley of the ranch hospitable and willing to give us bed
and board. It is very pleasant for those who are willing to forego
luxuries to stop at farm houses and ranch houses, to take the fare and
sleep upon the beds given them, and to enjoy the talk of the people and
the contact with real ranch life.

We had a delightful evening with the Dudleys. We ate our supper at a
long table filled with ranchmen, and took part in an animated
conversation on the merits of the present Administration. We ate from a
red tablecloth, but that did not trouble us. After supper, in the soft
evening air, we had a talk with the family as to the advantages of the
government ownership of railways. A woman from a nearby town took an
earnest share in the conversation and showed herself well acquainted
with the arguments for and against such ownership. The master of the
ranch told us something of his difficulty in keeping men steadily at
work on the ranch. He said that they came and went constantly in spite
of good pay, steady work, and kindly treatment. He said that it was very
difficult to get a man to stay more than two years. He would bring his
roll of bedding, as is Western custom, take his place in the bunk house
and at the table and in the fields for a time, but he could not be
persuaded to stay long. The wandering habit had too strong a grip upon
him.

We went out into the ample paddock to see the mules and horses roving
comfortably about. Two of the wild horses of the plains had recently
been captured and brought in. Both were going through a course of
discipline which the ranchman assured us would have to be made more
severe later on. One was a beautiful young mare with her colt following
her closely. She had a heavy yoke bar hanging by a sort of collar from
her neck, and so arranged as to clog and trip her if she attempted to
run. She was peacefully wandering about, but snorted with fear as we
came near her. Her master assured us that she could easily be tamed, and
that she was not to be driven or saddled, but was to be used as a bell
mare. That is, she was to be the leader of the herd let out on the
plains. The ranchman explained that a company of horses will not leave a
mare with a young colt, consequently she is used to keep them from
straying away long distances. The other horse was a fine animal but much
less docile of spirit. "I feel sorry for him," said his master; "he has
got a lot to go through with, but he must learn; there is no other way
for him." The animal had both his fore legs and hind legs "hand" cuffed,
only a short chain being used on the shackles. He was in this way so
hobbled that he had to move by little leaps forward, first his fore
feet, then his hind feet. By this clumsy hopping he managed to get
about. "He must first learn to accept this and then we will go on with
his education," said his master. He looked very wild and untamed of
spirit, poor fellow, and made frantic efforts to rush away as we came
near him. But he had already found out that his cruel chains were
inexorable.

We walked out into the lovely valley and toward the purple hills that
rose above it. One can never tire of the evenings and the mornings of
the great Western plains and table lands. Nowhere else have I seen such
wonderful sunsets; glorious in crimsons, purples, violets, rose
lavenders, ashes of roses, and finally soft greys. Nowhere have I seen
lovelier dawns, the air so crystal clear, the morning light so full of
rose and lavender mysteries, the whole day so full of wide and happy
promise.

Mr. N. had insisted on going on after supper at the ranch. We had seen
him disappear down the valley, his machine finally hidden in acres of
grey-green sage brush.

The next morning we drove on, passing at the end of the valley through a
short but rough canyon, with rocky walls to the left and right. There we
saw a board sign marking "Water 100 feet down." Doubtless this was a
boon to travelers in the old days. Once through the canyon, we came out
into another wide valley, lonely and spacious. As we drove along, we
saw ahead of us what seemed to be a small motor car by the roadside.

"I believe that's N's car!" said T. As we came up to it we saw that the
two left wheels were hopelessly down in a deep rut. Mr. N. had stuck his
card in the windshield of the car, and had written on it, "Gone for some
boards; wait until I come back." Soon we saw him coming across the
desert with some loose boards in his arms. We found that the poor fellow
had been there from ten o'clock the night before until ten o'clock in
the morning, the hour of our passing. He had been bowling along
comfortably and somewhat sleepily the previous night, when suddenly his
car bumped into a muddy rut from which he found it impossible to
extricate the machine. He told us that he had worked frantically and
futilely until about midnight. Then he put out his lights, wrapped
himself up as best he could, and slept until seven. He said that utter
stillness and darkness were about him. "Not even a jack rabbit passed."
At seven he again began to struggle with his car. He had the sure hope
that we would come along sooner or later. He had calculated that we
would arrive about eleven. When we found him he had just gone to a
deserted, falling ranch house to find a few boards to be used as
levers. He and T., taking our machine, now drove to the ranch house and
brought back a goodly supply of boards and some heavier pieces of timber
which they had torn from the dropping fences. The boards they put in the
rut in front of the wheels in order that they might get a grip when once
they started. The heavier timbers they used as levers. And so by dint of
hard work and by the help of two young men who passed in their motor
half an hour after our arrival, the front wheel was pried out of the
sticky mud, and the car was once more gotten on firm ground. It was past
one o'clock when we climbed up the bare road to the high town of Austin
and went to the International Hotel for our luncheon. What with lack of
sleep and his long fast Mr. N. was quite worn out. A good luncheon
prepared by a Japanese cook and served by a natty and very debonair
Japanese waiter put us all in better trim.

[Illustration: 1. Cattle on Nevada Desert. 2. Deserted Mining Town in
Nevada. 3. Mining town Cemetery in Nevada. 4. In the Nevada Desert.]

Two miles beyond Austin we were 9000 feet above sea level. As we reached
this height we could, looking back, see Austin below us. We also had a
fine view of the desert mountains. Here I began to understand the
conformation of the Nevada country. We were passing from one great
valley into another, hour after hour. When I looked on the map of
Nevada, I found a series of short mountain ranges. I could see what we
were doing in our travel. We were descending into a valley, crossing its
immense width, coming up on to a more or less lofty pass, usually bare,
and descending into another valley. It was very fascinating, this rising
and falling with always the new vista of a new valley just opening
before us.

But now came tribulations. Mr. N. had evidently wrenched his machine in
his struggle to free it the night before. He began to have trouble, and
traveled more and more haltingly a little way behind us. T. felt a
personal responsibility for him and we were continually stopping to wait
for him. Finally we halted at the head of a pass before plunging down
what turned out to be a long descent. We had just climbed up from a wide
valley and could see nothing of our fellow traveler on the slope behind
us. T. left the car and went back; and while I waited, looking off at
the mountains, two women reached my hilltop, the older one driving the
Ford car in which they were traveling. They looked like women of the
plains, perfectly able to take care of themselves and to meet
emergencies. They had food supplies with them, and two dogs as fellow
passengers. The one, a fox terrier, was tied in a box in the tonneau and
looked very unhappy. The other, a spaniel, was running back and forth on
the rear seat and whining with anxiety to get out. His mistress told me
that he was one of the greatest hunters in Nevada, and that he was
anxious to go off in the sage brush on a grand chase. Just here the two
men came up the hill with Mr. N.'s Ford car, weary and exhausted from
going over its machinery and struggling to get it moving. The women
warned us that in the valley at the foot of the hill was a very bad mud
hole which we must inevitably negotiate. They said that a stream from
the mountains had in a recent freshet overflowed the plain and reduced
both the road and the adjoining country to the state of a swamp. They
assured us that we simply must go through the mud hole and that we were
bound to get stuck in it. They cheered us, however, by telling us that a
nearby settler had a sturdy draught horse and that he would in all
probability pull us out for the sum of $2.00 a motor car. We thanked
them for their warning and drove down the long hill into the next
valley.

I had been interested while waiting for Mr. N.'s machine to come up, to
see the beautiful cactus blossoms growing close to the ground on both
sides of the road. They were of a rich yellow and a rich magenta color,
single petaled and really beautiful. I saw them growing all along
through the desert. In some places they made broad patches of color.

Coming on to another wide valley stretching away for eighty miles and
more, we saw the mud hole before us and carefully examined the sides of
the road to see if we could not make a detour. The spongy, muddy soil
assured us that it was hopeless, and that what the women had told us was
only too true. In the meantime the settler, working with his wife and
baby near at hand in his newly cleared field, kept an eye on us. But he
did not come to our rescue until we called him. The Ford, being the
machine of lighter weight, started first through the mud hole. Its
wheels sank immediately and no turning on of power could push it
forward. We then shouted to the settler. He came across the field with
his big horse, and as he drew near we saw that he was a tall, good
looking man with an open and kindly face. I was secretly glad that the
poor fellow who had so recently cast his lot in this lonely and immense
valley had a chance to earn some ready money. After a little pleasant
dickering he agreed to pull the machines out for $1.00 apiece. The
splendid big horse was harnessed to the machine and at the word he threw
his weight against his traces and philosophically pulled away, while Mr.
N. at the same instant turned on his power. The machine easily came out
of the mud and was soon on dry ground. T. drove our machine forward, was
instantly imbedded in the mud and was pulled out in the same way. It was
interesting to see how the big horse threw his weight into the pulling
at just the proper moment and relaxed as he felt the machine settle on
the firm ground. His master told us that the animal had come with their
little caravan from Colorado, seven hundred and twenty miles, without
turning a hair, while the other horse sickened and died.

This man had only his few supplies and the little tent in which they
were living, together with a bit of the rich land already cleared and
planted to a crop. He said that he had never seen richer land than this
from which the sage brush had been pulled up and burned off. A thin
muddy stream trickled across the road from the hills and was used both
for irrigation and for drinking purposes. "But when you come back next
year, I shall have a well down," said the brave homesteader. "And, by
George, if the County Commissioners won't put in a bridge across this
mud hole, I'll put one across myself! Just come back and see a year from
now!" We waved him goodbye and went on our way across the lone valley
and up another divide. The valley was Monitor Valley, he told us. I can
see him standing there in the lovely light of the late afternoon sun, he
and his wife and their baby boy waving us farewell. I should like to
pass that way again and to see whether he has replaced his tent by a
little house and whether his virgin fields are green with a crop.

Some day, I suppose, those wide, far-stretching acres will be dotted
with houses and barns and stacks of alfalfa. It is difficult to convey
the impression that these vast valleys with the hills in the distance,
and with the rich coloring of the sunrise and the sunset, make upon one.
They are lonely and yet they are not lonely. They are full of life. We
saw hundreds of prairie dogs. Day after day they scuttled across our
pathway, often narrowly escaping. Sometimes they sat on their hind legs
by their burrows, waiting as long as they dared until the noise of the
machine frightened them into their holes. Sometimes a whole village of
them would watch us until we drew near, and then frantically disappear.
Sometimes we saw a coyote, usually in the early morning or the late
afternoon. We once saw one whose curiosity was so great that he halted
perhaps fifty yards away, and looked at us from this safe distance as we
passed. Once we saw a rabbit breathing his last near the roadside, his
soft eyes filled with a look of far away consciousness and pain. And
once we saw a beautiful antelope leaping and bounding over the sage
brush so lightly that he looked in the distance like a phantom animal
made of thistle down.

I can completely understand how the desert casts its spell over
cattlemen and sheepmen so that they love it and its freedom and are
continually drawn back to it. The mystery and glory of the desert plains
have their devotees just as really as the mystery and glory of the great
city have their worshippers who never wish to be far from its lights.

The many stops of the day had made us very late and it was in darkness
that we came through the canyon which makes a long gateway to the town
of Eureka. There was something fearsome about those dark rocks, whose
mysteries we had never seen by daylight, rising on each side of us, and
about the deep chasm that lay in shadow down at the left of the road. We
were glad indeed when the lights of our lamps flashed on the stakes with
their familiar red, white, and blue markings, the friendly signs of our
beloved Lincoln Highway. It was nearly nine o'clock when we came into
Eureka, and drew up at the dim lights of Brown's Hotel. Brown's Hotel
seemed to be mostly a bar room and lounging place; at least that was the
impression made upon me by the glimpse I caught of the lighted room
downstairs as I stood on the wooden porch. But we were shown upstairs to
a very comfortable, old fashioned, high ceilinged room with heavy walnut
furniture of the style of forty years ago. An aged ingrain carpet was on
the floor, and a wreath of wax flowers such as our grandmothers rejoiced
in, hung, set in a deep frame, on the wall. I thought to myself that
these were relics of departed glories and of a day when there was money
to furnish the old hostel in the taste then in vogue. A dim oil lamp
assisted our toilet and we went downstairs and out into the town to a
restaurant kept by an Italian and his wife. It was the only place where
we could get food at that time of night. Eureka is a most forlorn little
town, perched high and dry, just as if the waves of traffic and of
commercial life had ebbed away and left it far up on the beach forever.
They told us that it was once a big and prosperous town. But like
Mariposa in California, the mining interests have been transferred to
other localities and the town is left lonely. As we walked along its
silent and dimly lighted main street, we saw the quaint wooden porches
in front of the shops and houses, some high, some low, making an uneven
sidewalk. Practically all of the shops were closed, only the saloons
being open.

The Italian had named his restaurant The Venezia in honor of his native
city. It was a bright, comfortable little room, the kitchen at the back
of it lightly screened from the dining room. It adjoined his hotel,
quite a large building, where he proudly told us he had twenty-two beds.
His wife, a stout, bright-eyed woman, cheerfully took our order. "I am
poor," she said smilingly, "so I cook when other people ask me. If I
rich I cook when I feel like it." A savory smell arose from her frying
pan, and we were soon eating excellent and generous slices of ham,
drinking very respectable tea, and enjoying some good bread and butter.
It was a most refreshing supper after a long and somewhat trying day. We
expressed our appreciation to our Italian friends and paid the very
modest reckoning.

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning we had breakfast at Brown's Hotel. The landlord called
my attention to a robin who was building her nest in a tree in front of
the hotel; the only tree that I recall seeing on the bare, bald, yellow
village street.

In our long ride of the day before, we had come through Edwards Creek
Valley, the Smith Creek Valley, the Reese River Valley, the Antelope
Valley, the Monitor Valley, and other great valleys of whose names I was
not sure. We had seen the Clan Alpine Mountains from Alpine ranch, the
Toyabee National Range, and other ranges whose names were too many and
too local for me to be sure of them. And I had read of 275,000 acres
that had been placed on the market in Elko County alone. I had read in
the Elko paper that "For years, there was a popular prejudice in the
East that Nevada was one grand glorious desert, the land worthless, and
that nothing could be grown out here. But in later years the public back
East has been shown that such is not the case, but on the contrary, we
have the richest land in Elko County to be found anywhere in the United
States, and that the crops here are the best and almost anything can be
grown in Elko County."

Having seen the rich land of our brave homesteader in Monitor Valley, I
was ready to believe this outburst of local pride.

It was the 23rd of June when the landlord of Brown's Hotel waved his
farewell to us and we drove on. All day we were among the hills, not
seeing them on far distant horizons, but continually climbing and
descending among them. Twenty-three miles from Eureka we saw a wooded
mountain, quite different from the bald grey hills we had seen the day
before. Short, scrubby green trees, somewhat like our New Jersey
junipers, grew on the mountain sides and gave this appearance of foliage
and greenness. We saw many of them in our day's ride. When we reached
Six Mile House, having passed Fourteen Mile House, we asked the
ranchman's wife to give us some luncheon. She said that she could not
accommodate us, having but few supplies on hand. She advised us to go on
to Hamilton and said that she would telephone to the Hamilton House that
we were coming. In accordance with her directions we took a turn to the
right shortly after leaving Six Mile House and climbed up through a
narrow, rocky canyon road. Finally, within a mile or so of Hamilton,
when we had one more hill to climb, we came upon a morass made by the
bursting of a water pipe. We could not go around it and we dared not
attempt to go through it, no friendly settler with a powerful horse
being in sight. So we turned carefully about, went down the rocky road
to the fork where we had turned off, and took the other branch of the
fork. Then we climbed up another mountain road until we reached the
summit of the pass, 8115 feet. From here we had a grand view of the
mountains and we also met the high ridge road from Hamilton. We pressed
on down the hill past a deserted ranch house to Moorman's Ranch, a
hospitable looking house by the roadside. At Moorman's Ranch we found an
unforgettable hospitality. Our host and hostess were Missourians, and
to our question as to whether they could give us any luncheon at 2
o'clock, they gave us a most satisfactory answer. Mrs. Moorman soon had
a laden table ready for us, and we sat down to fried bacon and eggs,
potatoes, lettuce, radishes, preserved cherries, stewed prunes, milk,
tea, and pie. How refreshing it all was! And how pleasant was the soft
Southern accent of our hostess which she had not lost in the years on
the plains.

Moorman's Ranch is a large ranch with grazing rights in the hills near
by. The adjoining ranch with its recently deserted ranch house is now a
part of Moorman's Ranch, and there is a large acreage for the cattle. We
learned that the wretched coyotes come down from the hills and steal the
young calves at every opportunity. Only a few days before, a cow had
gone to drink leaving her new born calf for a few minutes. When she came
back, the little animal had been struck down by a waiting coyote. We
learned too that the mountain lions come down from the hills and
sometimes attack the young colts and kill them.

It was with sincere regret that we bade goodbye to Captain and Mrs.
Moorman. May their ranch flourish from year to year!

Shortly after leaving the ranch and in crossing another wide valley, we
saw a herd of several hundred wild horses feeding on the great plain--a
beautiful sight. They were grazing in a rich part of the plain where the
grass looked thick and lush.

I must own to having an impression that the trail across Nevada could be
marked by whiskey bottles if by no other signs. All along our road
across the great State we saw the bottles where they had been thrown in
the sand and dust by passers-by.

Many times I thought of the "Forty-niners," as we saw the sign,
"Overland Trail." In coming along the Lincoln Highway, we are simply
traversing the old overland road along which the prairie schooners of
the pioneers passed. How much heart-ache, heart-break, and hope deferred
this old trail has seen! I think of it as we bowl along so comfortably
over the somewhat rough but yet very passable road. I can appreciate now
the touching story in a San Francisco paper of an old lady who came to
the rear platform of a fine overland train after passing a certain
village station, and threw out some flowers upon the plain. Near here,
she told her friends, her little baby had been buried in the desert
forty years before, as she and her husband toiled with their little
caravan along the trail. The years had passed and they were prosperous
and old in California. And now as she went East on the swift and
beautiful train she threw out her tribute to the little grave somewhere
in the great desert.

As we drew near Ely, the famous copper city, we passed the huge mountain
of earth which forms the wealth of the Ely mines. The Lincoln Highway
signs take one to the right on a short detour in order that one may see
this mountain of ore, which is being cut away by immense steam shovels,
tier above tier. Returning to the main road, we drove on through a
canyon and so came into the bright little town of Ely which has many
evidences of prosperity. We found the Northern Hotel, European in plan,
most comfortable. Next door was an excellent café where we had a supper
of which a New York restaurant need not have been ashamed. Leaving Ely
on the morning of June 24th, we drove through Steptoe Valley for some
forty miles. Where we turned off from the valley it still stretched on
for another forty miles. It looked as if it might go on to the world's
end. Just out of Ely we passed through McGill and visited the immense
smelting works. There we saw the "concentrators," interesting machines
to shake down the heavy grains of copper from the lighter grains of sand
and earth. These big, slanting boards keep up a continual shake, shake,
shake while a thin stream of water pours over them. They are a little
less slanting than the board of a woman's washtub would be, and yet they
lie somewhat like a washboard. The shaking of the board and the action
of the water combine to roll down the heavy grains of copper. It seems a
simple process, and yet the regulation of the board's motion and the
angle of its slant are calculated to a nicety. There were hundreds of
these "concentrators" at work separating the copper from its native
earth. We saw also the great smelting furnaces and realized how it must
have been possible for the men who prepared the furnace for the burning
of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be burned to death themselves.
What a fearful heat rolled out as one of the furnace doors was opened
and a molten stream of white-hot slag was raked into the gutter below!
And how the copper glowed as we saw it in its enormous melting caldron!
For the first time I saw a traveling crane at work. A characteristic
sign was near it in both English and Greek. It read, "Keep away from
crane. Keep clear and stand from under."

[Illustration: 1. Ely, Nevada. 2. Homesteader's Ranch near Lahontan Dam.
3. Copper Mine at Ely. 4. Ely, Nev.]

As we left Steptoe Valley and came down a long slope into Spring Valley,
we crossed Shellbourne Pass under the shadow of the Shellbourne range.
We passed some young people from Detroit, the gentleman driving his car.
We also passed some men with their laden burros taking supplies to the
sheepmen in the mountain ranges. These sheepmen live their lives apart
from the world for months at a time, seeing only the man who brings
their supplies at intervals.

[Illustration: 1. American Baptist Home Mission Touring Wagon. 2.
Fish Springs Ranch, Utah.]

We had luncheon at Anderson's ranch, where they treated us very
hospitably. I judged that this was a Mormon's household, as Mormon
marriage certificates hung upon the wall and as the Deseret Weekly was
evidently its newspaper connection with the outside world. Here our
friend Mr. N. took on board a young man from the ranch who wished to get
back to Salt Lake City. This young fellow was delighted to have such a
ride and Mr. N. was glad to have a traveling companion. Later in the day
we passed Tippett's ranch and learned that its owner travels thirty-six
miles for his mail and supplies. Toward evening we crossed the Utah
border and immediately came upon bad roads. We had a rough stretch until
we reached our station for the night, Ibapah. Ibapah consists of a very
pleasant ranch house and of a general supply grocery, both house and
grocery owned by Mr. Sheridan. We had a comfortable night at the ranch
house and purchased some beautiful baskets made by the Indians and
brought by them to Mr. Sheridan for sale. The air was so fine and the
evening so delightful that we reluctantly retired. Never can I forget
the crystal silences of those still nights on the high plains of the
West. The next day, June 25th, we had a drive of one hundred and twenty
miles across rough and lonely country. From Ibapah we went on through
the valley in which the ranch lay, coming to an extremely rough canyon
road, practically nothing but the bed of a stream. Then came Kearney's
Ranch, where they warned us of some mud holes in the road ahead. We
drove around a rocky point, picking our way carefully, some hot springs
and a sulphur lake smoking off in the distance on our left. The
mountains rose to the right above our route, bare and bald. We came to
Fish Springs Ranch in the midst of this lonely country and stopped for
luncheon. Our host was a tall and powerfully built elderly ranchman in a
blue jumper. A younger man lived with him and the two did their cooking
and eating in a little log and stone house, near the main ranch house.
He explained to us that he kept the little house because it was once a
station on the Wells Fargo stage route. "Horace Greeley ate at this
table when he came on his historic Western trip, and so I keep the place
standing," he said. His young helper cooked our meal in the back room
and our host served it in the front one. We had fried eggs, potatoes,
pickles, cheese, bread, butter, and tea, and an appetizing cup cake cut
in square pieces. I noticed a White House Cook Book lying on a little
table near by. Our host was very hospitable. "Have some of them sweet
pickles, folks." "Do we raise cattle here? You bet we do. I have had
this ranch over thirty years." As we left him he warned us that we were
now entering the "Great American Desert" and that we would have sixty
miles of dry plain with very little undergrowth and with no water. He
told us that if we got into trouble we should start a fire and "make a
smoke." "I'll see you with my glasses" he said, "and drive to your
rescue with gasoline and water." I had seen near the ranch house a
clear, bubbling spring which doubtless gave its name to the ranch.

We assured him that we were well stocked with gasoline and that we had
on our running board a standard oil can filled with water. When we were
twenty miles away I could still see the ranch house, a tiny speck upon
the horizon. At last we came to a well by the roadside which was marked
"County well." The road, though somewhat bumpy, was in many places
smooth and excellent, a sort of clay highway. Midway across the desert
we met another car and exchanged greetings.

Late in the afternoon as we were climbing up a slight pass, a dust storm
overtook us. The sky was overcast, the mountains and plain were blotted
out, and we could only drive along slowly and endure the choking clouds
of dust until the storm had swept by. It was blessed to come again into
clear sunshine and to see the outlines of the mountains appearing once
more. Once over the pass, we came into a great ranch valley and saw that
we had left the bare plains behind us. We reached the Kanaka Ranch in
time for supper and were assured that we could have lodging for the
night. The Kanaka Ranch of eight thousand acres is the property of the
Mormon church. It is under the charge of a young manager who looks after
the Hawaiians (Kanaka meaning a South Sea Islander) who have been
converted to the Mormon faith, and who have been brought to the ranch to
work upon its acres and to make their homes there under the friendly
shadow of the church's authority. The manager was a dignified young man
with a pleasant wife and four dear little children. They gave us a most
appetizing supper and breakfast. "The difference between your belief and
ours," said our host to T., "is that you believe in a completed
revelation. We believe in a continuous revelation."

I heard him talking very fluently in the Hawaiian tongue to some of his
disciples who had come in for farm directions.

The next morning was wonderfully fresh and clear, a rain having fallen
during the night. We had just a taste of what a rainy trip would be
across country, as we slipped about on the greasy mud of the highway.
One reason why our long journey was so ideal was because of the dry
season. Day after day we came on over perfectly dry roads and under
perfectly clear skies. Another advantage of our journey was that we
were traveling East. Every afternoon the sun was behind us, to our great
comfort; and the beautiful light fell on the plains and mountains ahead
of us. No wonder that we loved to travel late in the afternoon and that
we had to make a stern rule for ourselves to follow, to the effect that
no matter how tempted we were, we would not travel after sunset.

By dint of creeping slowly along we passed the slippery stretches of
road and enjoyed the fine open country with the mountains to the right
and the farms to the left. After passing Grantsville we came by some
large concentrators and smelters in the shadow of the mountain. Turning
left we came around the shoulder of the mountain, and there to our left
was Great Salt Lake, sparkling and blue-green in the morning light, a
mountainous island in the middle of it. We could see the Casino at the
end of the long pier at Saltair, a favorite resort for Salt Lake City
people. We passed the miners' homes at Magna and Garfield, someone
having written facetiously the sign "Mosquito Park" over the entrance to
a swampy district with its little settlement of cottages. Now we came
into a beautiful upland country with fine farms and every appearance of
prosperity. Cottonwoods and tall poplars were seen everywhere on the
landscape. They are very characteristic of this part of the country.
They grow rapidly and the cottonwood sends its roots long distances in
search of water. As we approached Salt Lake City, it appeared to us to
be a green, wooded city extending down a long slope on the mountain
side. The new State House towered high at the upper end of the slope
against the background of lofty mountains, still snowy, which guard the
city.

I was charmed with Salt Lake City. It has a beautiful situation, high
and picturesque. Its streets are very wide and this gives a certain
stateliness and air of hospitality to the town. It is laid out on a
generous scale. Many of the residence streets have green stretches of
flower-adorned park running through the center. The open lawns of the
homelike homes, the broad streets, the residences of stone and brick,
the masses of pink rambler roses climbing over them, all make a charming
impression upon one. Then there are delightful excursions into the
canyons of the great mountains near the city. We took such an excursion
by electric car line, fourteen miles up into Immigration Canyon. This
is the old trail along which the Mormons came in 1847. At the end of the
line is a delightful hotel, the Pinecrest Inn. Had there been time we
could have taken many more canyon trips.

"The Utah" is a beautiful hotel with every modern equipment. A great bee
hive, the Mormon emblem, glows with light at night on top of the
building. Of course we saw the Mormon tabernacle and walked about its
splendid grounds. I was particularly interested in the "sea gull
monument," designed by Brigham Young's grandson, and erected in memory
of the sea gulls that saved the crops the first year of Mormon
settlement by coming in flocks and eating the locusts that threatened to
destroy everything green. We enjoyed the fine view from the State
University buildings on the "bench" high above the town.

In Salt Lake City I purchased some "canyon shoes" of a famous
manufacture, and later I found them admirable for heavy walking trips.

We left Salt Lake City by driving through Parley's Canyon, a deep gash
in the mountains parallel to Immigration Canyon. It is a favorite local
drive to go out through Parley's Canyon and return to Salt Lake City
through Immigration Canyon. The roadway is very narrow, as it shares the
canyon floor with a railroad track and with a rushing stream, so one
must drive carefully and keep a sharp lookout for trains. We met an
itinerant Baptist missionary driving in his big caravan wagon into the
country for a preaching trip. After leaving Parley's Canyon we came into
open rolling country, and passed the substantial stone buildings of
Stevens Ranch and Kimball Ranch. Then came Silver Creek Canyon, more
open than Parley's Canyon and with a fair road. We had luncheon at the
Coalville Hotel. I was attracted to the little town of Coalville because
there were so many yards where old fashioned yellow rosebushes were
laden with bloom. We drove on through Echo Canyon, whose red sandstone
rocks, chiseled in many forms by wind and weather, have very fine
coloring. At Castle Rock the whole formation is like that of a massive
fortification. Six miles before we reached the town of Evanston, we
crossed the State line and were in Wyoming. It is a pity that these
State boundaries are indicated in many places by such shabby,
indifferent wooden signs, looking as if they had been put up over night.
Doubtless as the Lincoln Highway is improved there will be dignified
boundary stones erected to mark the State lines.

Evanston is a pleasant little town 6300 feet high. Near Evanston is the
Chapman Ranch, where many thousands of sheep are handled. We stopped in
Evanston only a few minutes and then drove on through delightful desert
country, open and rolling, grey-green and blue in its coloring. The
Wyoming desert has a sharper and more vivid coloring than that of
Nevada. The tableland is more rolling and the mountains are farther
away. It is a wonderful sheep country, but the flocks are at present in
the mountain ranges. Later, as the autumn comes on and cold falls upon
their mountain pastures, the herders will bring them down to these
plains over which we are passing.

Mr. Dudley of Alpine Ranch told us that should we visit the ranch in
autumn we would find the whole valley covered with sheep. We heard much
"sheep talk" in Nevada and Wyoming. We learned about the "shad scale"
which the sheep eat, and about certain kinds of sage brush that are very
nutritious. Mr. Dudley had pointed out to us a low-growing white plant,
somewhat like the "dusty miller" of our childhood, that is extremely
nutritious for cattle.

[Illustration: 1. Prairie Schooners, Westward Bound. 2. Lincoln Highway
Sign in the Desert. 3. Sheep in the Wyoming Desert.]

Here and there on the desert we see fine bunches of beef cattle, feeding
in little oases; green, damp stretches of country in the midst of an
ocean of sage brush.

Now and then we pass a cattleman or a sheepman riding with that easy
give of the body which is so graceful and so characteristic of Western
horsemen. I know nothing like it, save the easy posture of those
immortal youths who ride forever in the procession of the Elgin marbles
in the British Museum. They have the same graceful easing of the body to
the motion of the horse, and give the same impression of the harmony of
horse and rider. Often we pass white, closely plastered log houses, just
such as we saw in Nevada. We see white canopied wagons in the barnyards
of almost every ranch house, just as in eastern Nevada. These people
think nothing of traveling long distances in their prairie schooners
with their supplies for roadside camping at night. They travel in their
wagons to pay visits, to transact business and to buy supplies, and make
long journeys in the summer months.

The smell of the sage brush, pungent and aromatic, is in my nostrils
from day to day. I love it in its cleanness and spiciness, and shall be
sorry when we have left the desert behind us. We have to be watchful for
chuck holes made by the indefatigable gophers or prairie dogs. They
often burrow in the ruts of the road. Our local guide leaflets,
furnished us by garages along the route, are full of warnings about
"chucks." Once we come upon a badger, beautifully marked, who has thrown
up a large mound of dirt in burrowing his tunnel just in the middle of
the road. He sees us coming and scuttles into his hole. We stop the car
as we get near the hole and sit motionless. We wait patiently until
finally his beautifully marked brown and white head is thrust cautiously
out of his shelter. He is very curious to see what this huge black thing
is, standing silent near his dwelling. Twice his head appears and his
bright eyes peer out curiously. Then the click of the camera frightens
him and he disappears to be seen no more.

Occasionally we pass motionless bodies of gophers and rabbits that have
been struck by the flying wheel of some passing motor as they madly
scrambled for safety.

Late in the day we passed Fort Bridger with its few old stone houses,
probably barracks in the old days. Shortly before coming into Fort
Bridger we came upon two draught horses feeding peacefully by the
roadside. As they saw us, they immediately came into the road and began
to trot just ahead of our machine. First we drove gently, hoping that
after their first fright they would turn aside into the great plain
which stretched for miles, unbroken by fences, on each side of the road.
But no, they trotted steadily on. Then we drove faster, hoping to wear
them down and by the rush of our approach to force them off the road.
Once they were at the side of the road we could quickly pass them and
their fright would be over. To our disappointment they broke into a wild
gallop and showed no sign of leaving the road. They were heavy horses,
and we were sorry to have them thundering so distressfully ahead of us.
Then we dropped into a slow walk and so did they. But as soon as we
traveled faster, they broke into a gallop. For ten miles they kept this
up. We were quite in despair of ever dropping them, when suddenly we
came to a fork in the road. To our joy they ran along the left fork. Our
route was along the right fork and we went on to Fort Bridger glad to
be rid of the poor frightened beasts.

A breeze sprang up toward sunset and we came in the twilight to the
little town of Lyman where the only hostel was The Marshal, half home
and half hotel, kept by Mrs. Marshall. As we came into the town the
high, snowy Wahsatch range was on our right. We had first seen its
distant peaks about twenty-four miles out of Evanston.

Mrs. Marshall gave us an abundant supper and we slept dreamlessly in a
little upper room with one window. Upon what a glory of sunrise did that
little upper window look out that morning of the first of July! The vast
landscape was bathed in lavender light, the Wahsatch range and the
mountains of our Eastern pathway catching the first glory of the coming
sun, while the plains were in deeper lavender.

The village street looked like a pathway of lavender. The little wooden,
painted houses, the barns, some red, some grey and unpainted, all glowed
with transforming light and color. Robins and meadow larks were singing.
Far, far to the northeast was a purple horizon line. The air was like
wine. I stayed at the window until I was half frozen in the cool morning
air, entranced by it all.

[Illustration: 1. Wyoming Cattle. 2. The Marshall Hotel, Lyman, Wyoming.
3. Before Shearing, Medicine Bow, Wyoming. 4. After Shearing, Medicine
Bow, Wyoming.]

It was at Lyman that we heard talk of the ever smouldering feud between
cattlemen and sheepmen. Not far from Lyman is the "dead line" over which
sheepmen are not allowed to take their sheep. On the other side of this
stern boundary are the cattlemen, and they have issued a warning to the
sheepmen which they have more than once carried out. A few years ago a
sheepman either purposely or carelessly got over the dead line with his
sheep. He was mysteriously shot and two hundred of his sheep were killed
in one night. No one knows who the murderer was. Back in the shadows
looms the threat of the cattlemen, grim and real.

We had been told in Wyoming of the buying of a big ranch by adjacent
ranch people in order that no sheepman might come in to share the water
and the ranges with the cattleman.

Cattle will not feed, they tell us, where sheep have fed, as the sheep
tear up the earth and also graze very closely. It is impossible for
sheep and cattle to graze comfortably on the same ranges.

We left Lyman in high spirits after a good breakfast, driving along with
the Wahsatch mountains on our right and with detached mountains
continually appearing on the horizon as we moved eastward. We were now
in the region of what they call in the West "buttes," a "butte" being,
so far as I know, a detached, isolated mass of mountain. The Wyoming
buttes are wonderfully carved by wind and sand and weather and many of
them present a mysterious and imposing appearance. Often they are table
lands, rising square and massive against the horizon like immense
fortresses. On the way to Granger these massive table lands with their
square outlines loom up against the grander background of the snowy
Wahsatch range.

The first thirty miles out of Evanston we had an excellent road. There
was a charming desert flower growing in the dusty road and alongside,
white and somewhat like a single petaled water-lily. Its buds were pink,
and it sprang from a whorl of leaves like those of a dandelion. Its
fragrance was most delicate. There was also the lovely blue larkspur,
and there were clusters of a brick-red flower which grew rather tall.
Then there were clumps of something very like a dark scarlet clover. The
fine mountain scenery, the fantastically carved buttes, sometimes like
miniature canyons, the glorious air, all put us in delightful humour
with ourselves and the world. At the little town of Granger on the
railroad line we met two young pedestrians who were walking on a wager
from Kearney, Nebraska, to Seattle. They were to have $500. apiece if
they reached Seattle by the first of August. Their yellow outing shirts
bore the inscription, "Walking from Kearney, Nebraska, to Seattle." They
told us they were able to make forty miles a day. When they reached Salt
Lake City they were to have substantial new walking boots from the
merchants at Kearney, the bargain being that at that point they were to
return their worn boots to be exhibited in the shop windows of Kearney.
They had been halted at Granger because of lack of money, having
miscalculated their needs. They had just had a telegram from home,
sending them money and assuring them of more help if they needed it.
They looked strong and fit and were perfectly confident that they would
win the wager. We also met two young motor-cyclists from Akron, Ohio, en
route for the coast.

There were several eating places at Granger, but it was too early for
luncheon, so we pressed on to Green River, a Union Pacific Railway town.
From Granger to Green River the road was poorer and more bumpy. Fine
masses of rock and carved tableland rose on the horizon as we drove
along. As we approached Green River a splendid red, yellow, and
clay-colored mountain loomed on the horizon, which as we neared the town
resolved itself into long lines of buttes back of the town. Teakettle
Rock, an immense, isolated butte, rose to the left, and Castle Rock was
just back of the town. The butte scenery both approaching and leaving
Green River was very fine. The coloring was extremely rich; soft reds,
yellows, browns, and clay colors. There were long lines of round
buttresses and great concavities of rock, more like the famous Causses
of southern France than anything I have ever seen.

We had luncheon at Green River in the spacious dining room of the Union
Pacific Station, and felt ourselves quite in touch with the East to be
eating in the same dining room with passengers of the long overland
train.

Our drive from Green River to Rock Springs and from Rock Springs to
Point of Rocks was through lonely, desert country. It was nearly six
o'clock when we reached Point of Rocks, but the sun was still high.
Point of Rocks is simply a watering station for the trains and is marked
only by a station house, a grocery, and a few little cottages. The young
groceryman has fitted up the rooms over his grocery for passing
travelers. We established ourselves in the front one, lighted by one
little window. It was very clean, though very simply furnished. The
floor was bare and our furniture consisted of a bed, a chair without a
back, a tin wash basin resting upon the chair, a lamp, a pail of fresh
water with a dipper, and a pail for waste water. We had two fresh towels
and felt ourselves rich in comfort. Next door to the grocery was a
little cottage where a woman cooked for the few railway operatives and
for travelers. Our bacon was somewhat salty and our coffee a little
weak, but our supper and breakfast tasted good for we had the sauce of
hunger. We met there a young railway operative who had come from the
East to this high, dry situation for the climate. He told us that when
he first came, the change to the stillness and space of the plain from
the busy city and from his life as a journalist was so great that he
could not keep still. He said that he walked fifteen miles a day,
driven by some inner restlessness; but that he gradually became used to
the quiet and now he loved it.

We had an evening talk in the grocery with a young commercial man, who
said laughingly that these accommodations were somewhat different from
the gorgeous Hotel St. Francis of San Francisco. We assured him that we
did not mind simplicity and were deeply interested in seeing our country
under all sorts of conditions. He was spending some hours of his time
before the solitary train came through in persuading the groceryman to
commit himself for a large bill of goods. The commercial man said sadly
that never before in his ten years of travel had he seen business so
uncertain.

The water at Point of Rocks comes from a thousand feet below the surface
and has a slight sulphur taste.

CHAPTER IX

We drove from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter, where we had luncheon. The
road from Point of Rocks to Wamsutter is very rough and we were
tormented by the plague of these roads of the plains; namely, gutters
made across the roadway by running water in time of freshets. One has to
be continually on guard for these runnels. Sometimes they are very deep.
They give the machine a frightful jar and if one comes upon them
suddenly they are likely to break an axle. One must possess one's self
in patience and drive at a pace that will enable him to slow down
quickly in coming on them. Chuck holes and these gutters across the road
are the two chief difficulties of travel across the plains. However,
many a backcountry road of the Eastern States is just as uncomfortable
for motor travelers.

On our way to Wamsutter we passed a fellow traveler, a gentleman from
New York with his family. His son drove their car, a Pope Hartford, and
they were seventeen days out from New York. They had ten days more in
which to reach San Francisco if they were to help their friends win the
wagers which had been made on the time of their trip across country. We
assured them that they would be able to reach San Francisco in ten days,
barring serious accidents, if only they would rise early and drive late,
making ten hours a day.

Just outside of Point of Rocks we had come upon another and a humbler
caravan. A man and his wife were encamped in a canvas-covered
moving-wagon by the roadside, having found a patch of grass that
promised forage for the horses. We stopped to talk with them and learned
that they lived near Pueblo, Colorado. Having planted their crop they
had come away on a prospecting tour into northern Wyoming to look up
better farming country. They were now returning, traveling by day and
camping by the roadside at night. They had had what is called mountain
fever, due they thought to the bites of mosquitoes.

They liked the Wyoming country they had seen, but deplored the heavy
drinking. They told us of one man who had said that he did not mean to
go into town on the Fourth of July. Everybody got drunk, said he, and he
did not want to put himself in the way of temptation. They spoke of a
lovely farming country in the midst of which was a little town where
saloons were open all night and all day Sunday. They told us of one
saloon keeper who had been hauling barrels of whiskey for days in
preparation for his business of July 4th. He openly boasted that he
meant to take in $3,000. on that day.

As we drive along, we constantly see the remains of former camps by the
roadside. Old tin teakettles, pieces of worn-out campstools, piles of
tin cans; these are mute and inglorious monuments to the bivouacs of
other days. These immense Plateau States are very dependent upon canned
foods, and all along tin cans mark the trail. We have many evidences,
too, that we are in a sheep and cattle country. We pass the dried up
carcasses of sheep and the bones of cattle and of horses as they lie
upon the desert near the road. Often the fleece of the sheep, dried and
shrunken by wind and weather, sticks to the bones of the animal. It lies
where it fell, only one of a vast herd, sick and dying, perhaps freezing
in a blizzard. We asked one countryman what the sheep did in case of the
fierce storms that sometimes sweep over the winter plains. "They just
hump up and die," he replied. We saw many a shriveled carcass of some
poor animal that had succumbed and fallen never to rise again. But so
high are these plains and so dry is the atmosphere, that nature quickly
shrivels these carcasses and they are not offensive as they would be in
damp climates.

Out on the desert we waited for a long freight train to pass as it stood
blocking the roadway. The train conductor came along and he and T.
exchanged greetings. "It's good to see you," said the conductor; "you
motor people are about the only signs of life we fellows see out here on
the desert."

Coming into Wamsutter, and later coming toward Rawlins, we flushed
numbers of grey-brown prairie chickens, almost as large as hens. They
would fly up from the sage brush as the noise of our machine came near.
There were some large flocks of young birds. Between Rawlins and Laramie
we met late in the afternoon a large caravan of movers. They looked
foreign and were evidently in search of new farms and homes. They were
drinking, and watering their tired horses at a small station on the
railway. There were plenty of little children in the caravan. One woman
dandled a tiny baby. A little farther on we came to a second and smaller
camp. These people were traveling from Kansas to Washington. "There is
good land there still that can be taken up by homesteaders, fine fruit
lands," said they. One man had seen the land and was acting as guide for
the others. Their wagons were drawn by horses and burros. The children
were sweet, cheerful little people, but the whole party looked somewhat
underfed. I would have liked to give them all the luxury of a hot bath
in a big tub to be followed by a substantial supper. They had their
water with them, having hauled it from the last point where water was to
be had. They deplored the fact that they had camped before knowing of
the Union Pacific Station a little farther on. Water is a precious thing
in the desert. We have passed two places where signs read that water
could be had at the rate of five cents per beast and twenty-five cents a
barrel. At the watering stations on the Union Pacific Railroad, the
wells are the property of the Road. Before we came into Medicine Bow, we
passed through a little mining town, high and bare on the summit of a
ridge. Just outside the town was a bare little cemetery, the brown
graves decorated with paper crosses and wreaths. An iron fence protected
the cemetery, and outside its boundaries was an untidy litter of old
wreaths and crosses which had been discarded and had been blown by the
wind in tight heaps against the fence.

[Illustration: 1. Road in Wyoming costing $50,000 per mile. 2.
Characteristic Sign on Lincoln Highway.]

Ten miles beyond Medicine Bow the character of the country suddenly
changed. We came from the grey and brown desert into fine rolling
uplands dotted with the new homes of homesteaders and green with the
precious water of irrigation. This was a country newly settled and
bearing every mark of prosperity. At one point on the road we had great
difficulty in getting through. A careless settler had allowed the water
of his irrigating ditch to run out upon the road. It was with the
greatest difficulty that we succeeded in getting through the mud. Only
the help of some fellow motorists from San Francisco, who stopped to
push the car while T. turned on its power, enabled us to get through. A
few miles on we met the road commissioner who proudly called our
attention to the work that was being done on the roads of his county. He
told us that he was on his way to arrest and fine the careless
homesteader who had flooded the road. After this fine stretch of fertile
country we plunged once more into a long stretch of desert. It was here
that I saw and welcomed the beautiful yucca that I had seen growing in
California. I saw too in Wyoming quantities of cactus blooming in broad
patches of color, usually buff.

All day we mounted one ridge after another, buttes to the left and to
the right of us; driving through a vast country with practically no
ranch houses and only isolated stations on the railroad for watering
purposes.

As we approached Wamsutter a wonderful great tableland lay to the right
of us, very high and with an immense level top. It was like a fortress
with its buttresses and ramparts carved by nature. To the left was a
butte that was like a side view of the Sphinx, an immense pyramid rising
beside it. As we came into Wamsutter, we drove along a ridge where the
road had been laid to avoid a low marshy tract of land.

Red Desert Station, just before reaching Wamsutter, is well named, the
buttes having wonderful color.

The day was hot, and it was a relief when the afternoon sun began to
decline. We felt that we were dropping with it. But we were dropping
toward the East while it was falling toward the West. In the afternoon,
out on the great plain, we had crossed the Continental Divide. It had
not been marked by any visible elevation of land above the surrounding
country. All was open country, rolling and vast, and yet we had ascended
the Western slope and were now going down to the Mississippi Valley.

We must soon begin to say farewell to the Plateau States. The long
upward climb is practically over. We look forward with the streams to
the Atlantic, leaving behind the water courses to the Pacific.

Shortly after crossing the Divide we came to a low head stone and a
wooden cross at the left of the road, marking the grave of a man of
thirty-five who died in 1900. It is a lone grave on this rolling ridge,
yet it is destined to be passed by many travelers in future years.

Some day the Divide will be marked upon the Lincoln Highway by a
monument, and the traveler will have a satisfactory outward expression
of the thoughts that fill his heart.

Rawlins was our halting place for the night. It is a pleasant town with
wide streets and plenty of sunshine. The post office is a beautiful
little building. We fraternized in Rawlins with fellow travelers, a lady
and her son who were going on from Colorado Springs to Pasadena in a
beautiful Stutz roadster.

In Rawlins as in most Western towns, we stayed at a hotel managed on the
European plan and ate our meals in a nearby restaurant. It is always a
surprise to me to see the number of people in the restaurants and
cafeterias of the West. Even in small towns these places are crowded.

As we came into Rawlins we saw Elk Mountain rising nobly on the horizon
beyond us. When we left Rawlins and traveled toward it, it grew more
imposing.

Instead of going on to Arlington, directly under the shadow of Elk
Mountain, we elected to turn off to Medicine Bow, made famous by Owen
Wister's book, "The Virginian." Elk Mountain rises 12000 feet, and
Medicine Bow is 6500 feet, above sea level. It is only a railroad
station, a tiny cluster of saloons, a still smaller cluster of shops, a
big shearing shed, and a substantial stone hotel called The Virginian.

The landlady of The Virginian told us that their hotel is always full of
guests.

It is a busy place. Here the woolmen come to trade and to export their
wool, here the sheepmen bring their sheep for the annual shearing.
Nearly sixty thousand sheep are shorn annually in the shearing shed, a
few minutes' walk from the hotel. Here the plainsmen come from time to
time to throw away in a few hours of drinking and gambling the money
earned in months spent in the open.

We had an excellent substantial lunch at the hotel and then went over to
see the shearing. How hot and uncomfortable the poor sheep looked in the
waiting pen, with their heavy fleeces weighing them down! They stood
panting in the sun, their broad backs making a thick rug, so tightly
were they wedged in together. And how half ashamed they looked when they
came out from the shearing, thin and bare!

In this establishment the shearing is all done by machinery. It takes a
skillful man to run these rapidly clicking shears over the animal's body
and make no serious wound. The overseer told us that in the case of an
inexperienced man the sheep would "fight him all over the pen." The
shearer reaches out his right hand and grasps one of the three or four
sheep that have been pushed into a little compartment from the main
pens. The beasts stand stupidly huddled together. The shearer takes one
by its left hind leg, and by a skillful twist he throws it on its back
and pulls it toward him. Then he yanks it into a sitting position with
its back against his knees. Bending over it he takes off first the thick
coat of wool on its under-body from throat to tail. It looks very easy,
but only skill can guide the shears through that thick mass of wool,
taking it off so cleanly and thoroughly, and yet leaving the pink skin
unbroken.

Next come the fore legs, then the hind legs, then the wool is trimmed
from around the eyes and from the top of the head. The workman moves
very carefully here. Then the sheep is righted and the wool is cut from
its back and sides. It is interesting to see how quietly the animal
submits to it all. Quickly it is all over and an attendant pushes the
sheep through another aperture back into an outer pen. The men work very
rapidly and a good shearer can easily handle one hundred sheep a day.
Some expert shearers can handle nearly two hundred. These men are paid
nine cents a head for their work.

It was a picturesque sight in the long, airy shed. Six men were handling
their sheep, the clicking shears moving rapidly over the big animals. A
boy gathered up the wool as fast as it dropped from the sheep. Later it
would be sorted into its different grades. An important, happy sheep dog
ran wildly about, eyes shining, tail wagging, his sharp nose lifted to
his master's face. He seemed to be saying, "This is fine, master, but
isn't there something that I could do at this moment?" The overseer
stood at the end of the shed looking down the row of busy workers.

From Medicine Bow we came to Laramie, reaching there on the eve of the
Fourth of July. Laramie boasts a good hotel which was crowded with
people. Ranchmen had brought their families for the festivities of the
Fourth. Tall cowboys lounged about, wearing their most ornamental tall
boots, their best silk shirts, and brightest neckties. The streets in
the evening were full of people, some on horseback, some walking.
Confetti, those noise-makers known as "cluckers," and the miniature
feather dusters called "ticklers," were all in evidence. Everybody was
in good humour and in a mood of expectation.

[Illustration: 1. Lincoln Highway Sign. 2. Lincoln Highway Sign in
Western Village. 3. Cowboys and Cowgirls in Laramie. 4. Sage Brush in
the Desert. 5. Last View of the Rockies leaving Colorado. 6. Movers'
Camp in Colorado.]

The morning of the Fourth we drove out to the edge of the town to see
the State University, a modest cluster of good buildings. Then we drove
about the town to see the cowboys on their handsome horses, and the
young women who accompanied them, riding easily astride. There was to be
a morning exhibition of lassoing, racing, and other feats of skill and
strength. We met many people riding and driving into town, all in
holiday dress. But we pressed on Eastward.

We passed Red Buttes, having a grand view of the wonderfully colored
Buttes off to the left. Masses of blue larkspur grew in the fields and
alongside the Highway. We had left our beloved desert behind us and were
in rolling grass and grain country. Near the Colorado line we turned
toward the south to go to Denver, thereby missing the Ames Monument on
the direct route to Cheyenne. The mountains of Colorado now rose in the
near distance; rocky peaks, pine clad and snowy. At this point we met
some parties of travelers; a motor party from Lincoln, Nebraska, and
another from Lexington, Kentucky. Both motor cars were going into
Laramie for the celebration of the Fourth. The gentleman from Lexington,
who was driving his wife and himself, had a beautiful Locomobile
roadster, newly purchased in Chicago. His car had every modern equipment
and convenience, and he was mightily proud of it. We all halted to enjoy
the grand view of the country toward which they were moving and which we
were leaving behind us. Miles of rolling, grassy country, clean and
wind-swept, lay to the west. It was an inspiring prospect, and filled us
all with a sense of exaltation. Said the Kentucky lady to me, "I felt as
if everything bad in me was swept clear out of me when I first looked at
this wonderful view." A third party of travelers came along from
Cheyenne as we stood gazing. They had a unique outfit, a prairie
schooner drawn by four burros abreast. The father and mother, several
children, and a friend lived cheerfully in this moving house, making,
they told us, about fifteen miles a day. When they were short of funds,
they encamped in some town and the men worked to replenish the treasury.
They had their household food supplies neatly packed on shelves running
along the sides of their canvas canopy.

"This is our home," said the husband and father. The children were
gentle little creatures, but looked thin and underfed. All were bound
for some unknown haven on the Pacific coast or in the Northwest. They
felt sure that they would find rich farming country there still open to
homesteaders.

What a contrast between the elegant Locomobile car and the humble
prairie wagon, drawn by four shaggy burros, chosen because they could
endure hardships! Our friends of the wagon allowed us to take their
picture, and we parted with mutual good wishes.

We passed the Colorado State boundary marked by a very simple board
sign, and came into a new country of rocks and hills. We came through a
canyon where we found some movers encamped in a pleasant hollow by a
mountain stream. Southward we moved, passing some fine rugged buttes to
our left. We took luncheon at a pleasant farm house hotel, known as the
Little Forks Hotel. Our farmer host and hostess were very agreeable and
gave us a refreshing meal. We left them to drive on through Fort
Collins, a very pleasant town in the midst of alfalfa fields.

Just south of Fort Collins we turned to the right, drove across the
plains and entered the mouth of the Big Thompson Canyon. We were en
route for the famous tract of mountain meadow, of forest and canyon,
known as Estes Park.

A long procession of motor cars was entering the park and another line
of cars kept passing us. Many people were driving up the Canyon and many
were leaving after a day spent in picnicking. For the most part the
Canyon road ran very low and close to the bed of the brawling river. It
was a most lovely road, winding and picturesque. Finally we came to the
end of the Canyon and entered the green meadows which are at the
beginning of the Park itself.

We were told that the hotels and camps were crowded, it being holiday
time, and that we would do well to stop at the simple but comfortable
ranch house located near by. We found ourselves comfortable indeed and
were content to make the ranch house a base for our driving
expeditions.

We were on the beautiful Lord Dunraven Ranch, with its rich meadows
admirably adapted for cattle grazing. Our host was the manager of the
ranch, now largely owned by Mr. Stanley, the manufacturer of the Stanley
Steamer. Farther up the valley was the beautiful Stanley Hotel.

I had thought that Estes Park was a smooth and shaven park region, not
realizing that it was a vast mountain territory, with high mountain
meadows overlooked by lofty peaks and diversified by tracts of mountain
forest. There are scores of miles of driving and horseback riding in the
Park, plenty of hotels and camps in wonderfully beautiful situations,
and glorious fishing and mountain climbing. One may gaze at the
mountains from great open meadows and camping sites from 8000 to 9000
feet above sea level. We lamented the fact that we had only a day in
which to see Estes Park. We could have spent a week there in driving and
walking about.

Colorado is rich in mountain scenery and in beautiful camping places for
the lover of hills and streams, the pedestrian and the fisherman.

We came down from the high plateau of the Park by the canyon of the
Little Thompson; a still more precipitous road than that of the Big
Thompson Canyon. Reaching Lyons, we turned toward Boulder, driving along
with alfalfa meadows to the left and the foot hills of the Rockies to
the right. Our undulating road was an excellent one.

We enjoyed the wide sky, the rich grassy plains stretching away to our
left, with ranch houses marked here and there by clumps of cottonwood
trees. We knew that this was irrigated country, reclaimed from what was
once a wide desert. After a time we passed a wagon, canvas covered,
drawn by two plodding horses. I thought the driver must be foreign, as
he turned out to the left when we came up behind him, but he quickly
recovered himself and turned right. We soon left him far behind us.

But suddenly there was a grinding sound. The machine halted and refused
to move. We were stalled on the road and no amount of effort availed to
move us. Something had gone seriously wrong. There was nothing for it
but to push the machine to the side of the road, and wait patiently for
the travelers in the covered wagon. We were six miles from Boulder, and
evidently had a serious break in the machine. Later it transpired that
our gears were broken.

After a time the wagon came toiling along and its occupants most
hospitably invited me to drive into Boulder with them. Two men, one
elderly, the other young, were on the driver's seat. In the wagon were
their two wives and a troop of little children, the family of the
younger pair, and the grandchildren of the older pair. A happy collie
dog climbed wildly about over the children. "He's the biggest kid in the
wagon," said his master.

The party had been camping in a mountain canyon for their holiday and
were now on their way home. The men and women were English, the older
couple having been thirty-three years in this country. "I've dug coal
for forty-five years," said the older man.

"Tell them you rode with one of the striking miners, one of the sixteen
who was put in jail. Put that in your book," he said with a grim
twinkle. (How did he know I was writing a book?)

"We're poor but we're gentlemen still. We wouldn't be slaves to
Rockyfeller," said the younger man.

A little later he asked for the jug of spring water, and for "the
bottle." The women looked at me dubiously, and tried to quiet him. "Come
now," he said laughing, "there's no use delayin' matters. Where's the
bottle?" So with some embarrassment on the part of the women and much
laughing on the part of the men a full whiskey bottle was produced. Each
man had a nip of whiskey and a nip of cold water.

The children were merry little creatures, climbing over one another and
playing with the dog. The youngest little girl slept peacefully, being
tenderly watched by her mother and grandmother.

When we came into the wide streets of the university town of Boulder, I
offered as delicately as possible to pay for my six mile lift. But they
would have none of it. "No, no," said the younger man cordially, "we're
glad to help anybody in trouble." So I hastened over to the candy shop
and bought a box of the best chocolate candy for the children. My last
sight of them as they drove out of town was of the little faces crowding
happily around the box.

In Boulder we found The Boulderado a delightful place in which to lodge,
and the Quality Cafeteria a place for admirably cooked food.

We had several days to wait for our machine to be repaired, so we were
free to enjoy Boulder and to take the interurban electric car for
Denver. Boulder has a most picturesque situation, and is a town of
delightful homes and of fine State University buildings. I saw at
Boulder the same soft sunset colors, the same delicate blues, pinks, and
greys that one sees in an Australian sunset.

Later we drove to Denver in our own car and were free to enjoy the
drives about the city. "The Shirley" is a very well kept European hotel,
and if one wishes to take one's food elsewhere there is "Sell's" with
its delicious rolls and excellent coffee, tea, and chocolate; and there
is the Hoff-Stauffer Cafeteria, presided over by a woman and offering
excellently cooked food to hosts of people.

Every traveler should view the sunset from Cheesman Park in Denver. One
can drive there easily over the fine streets of the city. Beside the
pavilion, modeled on classic lines, one may sit in one's car and look
off at one hundred and fifty miles of mountains, stretching from Pike's
Peak on the south to Long's Peak on the north. It is a grand view and
should be seen more than once to be fully appreciated. One may sit on
the steps of the fine Capitol building just a mile above sea level, and
enjoy the same view.

Or one may take a famous mountain drive, winding up and up a stiff
mountain road until one has reached the summit and can look down on
miles of plains and on the city of Denver in the distance.

CHAPTER X

Leaving Denver in the afternoon, we drove to Boulder; from Boulder to
Plattville and from Plattville due north to Greeley. All along to the
left, between Plattville and Greeley, we had fine views of the whole
line of mountains, and particularly of Long's Peak. Again we were
impressed by the fertility of the Colorado alfalfa fields and by the
rich green of its meadows. Greeley is a very attractive town with wide
streets and with pretty homes set in green lawns. It is well shaded,
stands high, and looks off to the noble line of mountains to the south.
Early on July 15th we left Greeley, taking a last look at the glorious
mountains to the south. We passed through fields upon fields of alfalfa
and of grain. Great stacks of alfalfa everywhere dotted the country. The
greenness of the land was refreshing. Then we came into more rolling
country, less cultivated. We were plainly in a new part of the country,
in this northwest corner of the State. The houses were new, and often
small. In some places new houses stood alongside the old ones, the
earlier ones being made of tar paper and looking like little cigar
boxes. Some houses had tents erected near them for use as barns. Some
houses were made of sod. There were very few trees, most ranch houses
looking bare and bald. We passed quantities of a beautiful blue flower,
growing sometimes in great patches. Its bell-shaped flowers, sometimes
rose, sometimes lavender, grew on tall green stalks. We also saw a
beautiful starry white flower growing along the roadside. At Sterling we
had a particularly good luncheon at the Southern Hotel on the main
street. We exhorted our host and hostess to put out a Lincoln Highway
sign, so that none should miss their excellent table.

We saw our old friends, the Matilija poppies, growing along the roadside
as we went along in the hot afternoon. This was one of the hottest days
of driving that we had in all our tour, and in it we made our longest
run, two hundred and eight miles. We took early supper at the
Commercial Hotel at Julesburg. Not long after leaving Julesburg we came
upon a flamboyant sign which announced that we were nineteen miles from
Ogallala, Nebraska. The sign also informed us with particular emphasis
that Ogallala was "a wet town." We had crossed the State line and had
left behind us Colorado with its mountains, its green meadows, its wild
yuccas, its Matilija poppies, and its dark masses of pine trees.

As we drove along in the dusky twilight, little owls kept flying low in
front of our car, attracted by its lights. Sometimes a rabbit sat in the
middle of the road, blinking and bewildered. We always gave him time to
recover himself and leap into the shadows of the roadside. We had had
another exquisite sunset with the same soft pastel shades that I had
seen at Boulder. During the day we had seen many meadow larks,
red-winged blackbirds, and doves. We had seen, too, many sparrow hawks,
sitting silent on the fence posts, waiting for the approach of evening.
In one place we saw a poor young meadow lark, hanging dead from a barbed
wire fence. He had evidently in flying struck his throat full against
one of the barbs and had hung there, impaled to death. At Ogallala we
found a very comfortable lodging house, The Hollingsworth, built over a
garage. We had a good room there, although it was impossible to find a
cool spot on that broiling night.

The next morning, as we took breakfast at a nearby restaurant, we
learned that Ogallala had had a grand contest and had "gone dry" two
weeks before. An enthusiastic gentleman who had taken part in the
conflict told us that already the town was wonderfully changed. We
congratulated him and urged him to see to it that the sign nineteen
miles to the west heralded Ogallala as a dry town rather than a wet one.

The next day was cooler. The mountains had disappeared, and only wide
rolling fields, sometimes as level as a floor, lay before us. We were
crossing Nebraska. We came by a rather poor road, really a grassy trail,
to North Platte, where we had luncheon at the Vienna Café. As we were
driving along between Ogallala and North Platte, the grass growing high
in the road tracks, we came suddenly upon a bevy of fat quail walking in
the road. As they flew somewhat heavily, I felt sure that our wheel had
struck some of them. So I went back to see. Three of them lay dead in
the road, having been unable to fly in time to avoid the wheels. The
noise of our machine had been muffled by the fact that that we were
driving over a grassy road and they had not heard us until we were on
them. We were sorry indeed to have killed the beautiful little brown
creatures. All through California and Colorado we had seen them, as they
were constantly flying up in front of the machine and running off to
cover. All along, the killdeer were darting about, calling loudly and
piercingly.

Beyond North Platte we came upon a country house which had been
pre-empted by a jolly house party of girls from town. They had put out
some facetious signs: "Fried Chicken Wanted" and "Votes for Women." We
stopped to call upon them and told them of our trip across the country,
while they insisted upon serving us with cake and lemonade.

Late in the day we passed some groups of movers, their horses and cattle
with them. We saw glorious fields of corn and of alfalfa, and we saw
fields dotted with little mounds or cocks of wheat and of millet. Four
miles before coming into Kearney, we passed the famous sign which marks
the distance half-way between San Francisco and Boston. We had seen a
print of this sign, pointing 1,733 miles West to Frisco and East 1,733
miles to Boston, on the cover of our Lincoln Highway guide, issued by
the Packard Motor Car Company. We stopped now to take a photograph of
it. A woman living in a farmhouse across the road was much interested in
our halt. She said that almost every motor party passing stopped to
photograph the sign.

We heard from her of two young women who were walking from coast to
coast, enjoying the country and its adventures. Somehow we missed them
in making the detour from Laramie to Denver. We had seen their
photographs on postcards which they were selling to help meet their
expenses. They were sisters, and looked very striking and romantic in
their walking dress. They wore broad-brimmed hats, loose blouses with
rolling collars, and wide trousers, tucked into high laced boots such as
engineers wear. Each carried a small revolver at her belt. We were sorry
to have missed seeing them against the picturesque background of the
Wyoming plains.

At Kearney we had supper at "Jack's Place," and went on in the twilight
to Minden, where we proposed stopping at "The Humphrey." We passed
through long fields of corn and over lonely rolling prairies. The
cornfields with their rows of tasseled stalks were like the dark, silent
ranks of a waiting army, caped and hooded, standing motionless until
marching orders came. The air was clear and fine, and the electric
lights of Minden shone from afar with the brilliance of stars.

From Minden, we came by way of Campbell to Red Cloud, where we had
luncheon at the Royal Hotel.

We had made this detour to Minden and Red Cloud in order to call upon a
friend who is enthusiastic over his fine ranch near Red Cloud. Galloway
cattle are his specialty, and he finds the rolling plains of southern
Nebraska a fine place to breed them. From Red Cloud we came on in the
afternoon through Blue Hill to Hastings, and through Hastings to
Fremont. We were en route for Lincoln, where we hoped to spend the
night. Between Minden and Red Cloud the country is very rolling, and
sweeps away from the eye in great undulations. High on some of these
ridges were fine silhouettes outlined against the sky: loaded wagons
bringing in the sheaves of grain; men standing high, feeding these
sheaves to the insatiable maw of the threshing machine; a boy standing
in the grain wagon as the thick yellow stream poured into it, leveling
the grain with a spade; all these and many other pictures of the Idyl of
Harvest. For two hundred miles of our run the smoke of the threshing
machines rose in the clear sky.

Sometimes the fields were covered with stacks of wheat looking like
great yellow bee-hives. Sometimes the wheat was in rounded mounds or
cocks. Surely we were seeing the bread of a nation on these vast
Nebraska plains.

Along the roadsides were quantities of "snow on the mountain," its
delicate grey-green leaves edged with a pure white border. Across the
fields the killdeer were flying, and calling in their shrill, clear
notes, which always seem to breathe of the sea. They were not out of
place, flying above these long billows of brown earth. The farmhouses
were marked by clumps of cottonwood trees, and as we moved Eastward a
few low evergreens began to appear.

Around Blue Hill the country is very fine, being a great plateau
stretching off into illimitable distances. As we climbed the hill to
the little town we met a farmer in his wagon who had just despatched a
bull snake, a thick, ugly-looking creature. We stopped to pass the time
of day, and he told us that he came to Nebraska from Illinois in '79 in
a covered wagon. He was enthusiastic over Nebraska.

We made another stop to watch at close range the operations of a
threshing machine. It was a fine sight. Two yellow streams came from the
spouts of the machine; a great stream of chaff which rapidly piled up in
a yellow mountain, and another stream of the heavy grain, pouring thick
and fast into a wagon. One of the men told us that they had threshed
fourteen hundred bushels the day before, working fourteen hours in fine,
clear weather.

Everywhere the lovely grey doves were flying. There were hundreds of
young meadow larks, too, and great numbers of red-winged blackbirds. It
was on the 17th of July that I saw brown thrushes for the first time. It
is interesting to watch the movements of the birds as the machine
approaches. The doves in the road fly promptly. They do not take chances
on being struck by the car. The sparrows wait until the last moment and
then neatly save themselves. I often wondered how they could escape
with so narrow a margin. We thought that the redheaded woodpeckers must
be rather clumsy, as we saw a number of them that had been struck by
other cars, and thrown just off the road.

It was impossible to reach Lincoln that night, so we stopped at a
country inn some miles away. Rising early, we drove into Lincoln for
breakfast. After a run about the city and a look at the buildings of the
State University, we drove on toward Omaha. Unfortunately we attempted
to take a cross-cut and found ourselves in an odd situation. We were
driving down an unfrequented hill road, in an attempt to cut across to
the main road, marked by white bands on the telephone poles. We suddenly
found ourselves hanging high and dry above the ruts of the road. The
rain had worn them so deep and the middle of the road had remained so
hard and dry, that on the hillside we were literally astride the ridge
in the middle of the road. This meant a long journey on foot to a
farmhouse to borrow a spade and a pick. It also meant much hacking and
digging away at the hard earth under the body of the machine to release
the axles and drop the wheels to the road. Finally it was accomplished.
We picked up the farmer's children who had come out to see the rescue
and drove down the long hill to the farmhouse. There we left our
implements and our hearty thanks. How hopeless it seems when one is hung
up on the road! And how blissful it is to bowl along freely once more!
Still the doves flew about us by the hundred and the brown thrushes
increased in number. We had more level country now, and it was only as
we approached Omaha that it became hilly.

We left Omaha, after looking about the city, late in the afternoon and
drove one hundred and eight miles to Carroll in Iowa. The first twenty
miles out of Omaha the road was extremely poor and very dusty. The trees
were much more numerous, black walnut, maple, ash, and catalpa being
among them.

Just as we felt that one could find his way across Nevada by a trail of
whiskey bottles so we began to feel that one could cross Iowa on a trail
marked by dead fowls. I had never before seen so many chickens killed by
motor cars. Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that all along our
one hundred and eight miles from Omaha to Carroll we passed numbers of
farmers driving Ford cars. As we approached Carroll, we came to a hill
top from which we looked down on a valley of tasseled corn fields. It
was exactly like looking down on an immense, shining green rug, with
yellow tufts thrown up over its green surface. We saw but few orchards.
This was a corn country.

Carroll is a pleasant little town, with fine street lamps, and with a
green park around its Courthouse. We were surprised to find so good a
hotel as Burke's Hotel in a small town. Its landlady and proprietor has
recently made extensive improvements in it, and it is a place of vantage
on the Highway. The country around Carroll is very fine, being rolling
and beautifully cultivated.

We reached Carroll very late in the day and were obliged to take our
supper at a restaurant near the hotel. We were interested in a party of
four young people who were evidently out for a good time. The two young
gentlemen, by a liberal use of twenty-five cent pieces, kept the
mechanical piano pounding out music all through their meal. They were
both guiltless of coats and waist-coats. We had seen all through the
West men in all sorts of public assemblies, more or less formal, wearing
only their shirts and trousers. So we had become somewhat accustomed to
what we called the shirt-waist habit.

Many customs of the West strike the eye of the Easterner with
astonishment. This custom which permits men to be at ease in public
places and in the presence of ladies without coat or waist-coat in hot
weather; the custom which permits ladies to sit in church without their
hats; these and others which belong to the free West, the Easterner has
to become accustomed to and to take kindly. Several times in California,
and in Nevada, when we asked a question we received the cheerful, if
unconventional response, "You bet!" "Will you please bring me a glass of
water?" "You bet!" "We're on the Lincoln Highway, are we not?" "You
bet!" These somewhat startling responses simply indicated a most
cheerful spirit and a hearty readiness to do you any favor possible.

Leaving Carroll, we come on through Ames, Jefferson, Marshalltown, and
Belle Plain, into Cedar Rapids. Out from Carroll we have rather bumpy
roads for some time. Then the road improves and is excellent from Ames
on until we near Cedar Rapids. But all along work is being done on the
roads and their improvement is a matter of great local interest. We
pass a point in Marshall County where they are working with a new
machine for cutting down the road. I call it a dirt-eating machine. The
commissioner is extremely proud of it, and calls our attention to the
immense amount of work it can do, and to the huge mouthfuls of earth
which it bites out from the bank, through which the wider road is to
run. We are charmed with the lovely country around Marshalltown, and
with the very beautiful country between Belle Plain and Cedar Rapids. We
drive through the campus and past the buildings of the State
Agricultural College at Ames as we come into the town.

We are passing beautiful farms. Here we see a group of splendid dappled
grey Percheron draught horses, the pride of a stock-farm. There we pass
reddish-yellow shocks of oats. The country is more wooded now. We see
maples, oaks, ash, willows, and black walnuts. Here and there are yellow
wild flowers, somewhat like black-eyed Susans. One thing we remark in
all these Middle Western farms. There seem to be almost no flowers
around the farm houses. An English farmhouse or a French farmhouse would
have a riot of flowers growing all about and making a mass of color. We
miss this in our Western farms and wonder why it is that we see so
little color. We see practically no orchards, and very few grape-vines.
This is the country of wheat and oats. We have left the orchards and the
vineyards far behind us in lovely California.

Cedar Rapids is a busy city with several hotels. Leaving the city on the
morning of July 21st, we drive first through quite heavily wooded
country. Then the view opens out and we are once more driving over
beautiful, undulating country with rich crops of oats and corn. The
perfume of the corn, standing tall and green, is delicious. When we pass
through Mt. Vernon, we take a look at the buildings of Wesleyan College,
which stands on a high ridge commanding a fine view. All the way to
Clinton the country is attractive. After luncheon at the pleasant town
of Clinton, we cross the broad Mississippi, looking up and down its
green shores with delight. We are in Illinois now, and find Sterling and
Dixon attractive towns on the Rock River, a stream dotted with green
islands. The country is very open, with long stretches of prairie, green
with standing corn or red-yellow with shocks of oats. We spend the night
in De Kalb at a funny old hotel, built, they tell us, by Mr. Glidden,
the "barbed-wire king." The hotel is called "The Glidden." Its ceilings
are twenty feet high and we feel ourselves to be in "a banquet hall
deserted." From De Kalb we make a short detour into Chicago, returning
to the Highway at Joliet.

Joliet is a smoky city, full of factories and busy with the world's
work. It is late afternoon when we reach Joliet, and we drive on to
Elkhart, where we put up at a beautiful hotel with every modern
convenience. The Indiana roads are in excellent condition and take us
through a lovely rolling country of oaks and beech forests, and of
fields of grain breathing pastoral peace and prosperity.

All along through the Middle West we have been pleased to see the
immense interest taken in the Lincoln Highway. Everywhere one sees the
Lincoln Highway signs used in abundance on the streets through which the
Highway passes. The telephone poles, the garages, and sometimes the
shops, all are marked with the familiar red, white, and blue. They tell
us of a Western town whose citizens were so anxious to have their town
on the Highway that they of their own responsibility painted red, white,
and blue signs on the telephone poles leading into and through the
town. Later they were reluctantly obliged to paint out these signs, as
the Highway was not taken through their town.

The names of the farms in the Middle West are many of them very
interesting; as "Rolling Prairie Farm," "Round Prairie Farm," "Burr Oak
Valley Farm," "Hickory Grove Farm," and "Hill Brook Farm."

At the entrance to a farm in Illinois a farmer has nailed a shelf to a
telephone pole near his gate, and on this shelf he has placed a small
bust of Lincoln. I fancy this is a prophecy of many monuments that we
shall see along the Lincoln Highway in days to come.

We come into Ohio through the pleasant town of Van Wert, and drive on
through fields of corn and wheat to Lima; and here we leave the Lincoln
Highway for the present. We are to make a detour into Logan County, and
from there we plan to travel southeast into the Old Dominion.

We spend a number of days in Logan County, driving about over the hills
and through the valleys. This, too, is rolling country. I know it well,
for here I spent my childhood. I know these forests of oak and hickory,
and these rich fields of corn and wheat. I know the delicious scent of
clover fields in the warm summer twilights. I recall the names that my
girlhood friend and I used to give to the farmhouses as we drove about;
"The Potato House," "The Dinner Bell House," "The Little Red House," and
others. They are all there, and but little changed, although the people
who live in them have probably changed.

We are told by a friend, who is a motor enthusiast, that she recently
killed a turkey on the road. In all my motoring experience I have never
seen a turkey, a guinea fowl or a duck, killed by a motor. But my friend
tells me that they found it impossible to escape this particular turkey,
as he refused to get out of the way.

We passed three little girls one day, all astride the same horse,
driving the cows home from pasture. We asked them to stand while we took
their picture. They were greatly distressed. "We have on our dirty
clothes," said they. "Never mind," we said. "But our hair isn't combed!"
they exclaimed. "Never mind," we said again. "You will look all right in
the picture." And so they do.

The devices and pennants with which motorists advertise themselves and
express their enjoyment are very interesting. Some carry pennants with
the names of the towns or the States from which they come. Others carry
pennants with the names of all the principal towns which they have
visited. Whole clusters of pennants are fastened about the car, and
float gaily in the wind. Some carry a pennant across the rear of the
tonneau, which reads, "Excuse my dust." Others carry a pennant in the
same place which reads, "Thank you."

We infer that this must be by way of courtesy to those cars which turn
out for them to pass and fly on ahead. We meet many tourists in the
Middle West who have been for more or less extended tours in the States
near their own.

CHAPTER XI

We were sorry to leave the wooded hills and the green valleys of Logan
County and press on to the southeast. Driving through Delaware, Ohio, we
stopped to see the campus and fine buildings of Ohio Wesleyan
University, and then came on by way of Columbus to Granville. Leaving
Columbus we found the road very wet and heavy from the recent rains,
which had fallen after a drought of many weeks. We lost our way in
coming into Granville, and had to inquire directions at the house of a
farmer. He was so kindly that we were moved to express to him a hope
that he might some day have a motor. "Well, I don't begrudge 'em to
nobody even if I can't have one myself," said he cheerfully.

We came into the broad main street of Granville, the lights shining,
the leaves of the maple trees glistening with the rain which had fallen
earlier in the day. If ever there was a New England town in a Western
State, Granville is that town. It was founded more than a hundred years
ago by Connecticut people, and it bears the impress of its founders
to-day. Its wide street, its old churches, its white houses with green
shutters, its look of comfort and cleanliness, all are typically New
England. We had a most comfortable night at the old fashioned Hotel
Buxton, and drove up on the hill in the beautiful clear morning to see
the buildings of Denison University. The University is very finely
situated on a high ridge overlooking the wooded town, and commanding a
fine view of the green valley beyond. There is a brick terrace on the
hillside, with an ornamental sundial, where one may enjoy the rich
champaign below. Back of the college buildings, which look out over the
valley, the hill plunges down into a fine forest of beeches. The student
at Granville has beautiful surroundings for his years of study. Emerson
said that the mountains around an institution should be put in the
college curriculum. Granville students certainly should include in their
curriculum the beauty of beech forests and the richness of the Ohio
farming country.

From Granville on to Zanesville the country increases in charm. It is
rich and fertile, gently rolling, diversified by fine beeches and elms.
Here and there are plenteous corn fields. But Ohio farmhouses do not
seem to cultivate more flowers than do the farmhouses of Iowa and
Illinois. Reaching Zanesville we are greeted by a great sign suspended
across the road above our heads. It reads, "Hello! Glad you came. Just
drive carefully. Zanesville Motorcycle Club." In leaving we pass under a
similar sign and find that it reads on its reverse side, "Thank you!
Come again. Zanesville Motorcycle Club." We are on the old National Road
now, and find it rather poor. It is uneven, and is rendered bumpy by the
constant road bars. The country grows more hilly, and the towns are
beginning to change character. Newark is an attractive little city,
standing rather high. "Old Washington" has very old red brick houses,
and St. Clairsville is an attractive old town. The towns remind one of
the old Pennsylvania towns. The houses are built flush with the sidewalk
just as one sees them in Pennsylvania. Many of the farmhouses are built
of substantial red brick, with white porches.

About nine miles from Wheeling, West Virginia, we come along a fine road
to a most beautiful hilltop view. Prosperous farms and farmhouses are
all about, the farmhouses standing high on the green, rounded tops of
the hills. The National Road being under repair, we take a detour in
order to reach Wheeling. A hospitable sign at the entrance to our
roundabout road to the right reads, "This road open. Bellaire bids you
welcome." We learn later that there are in this region what are called
Ridge Roads and Valley Roads. We are entering Bellaire by a Ridge Road,
and have fine views of hilltop farmhouses and barns, and of hilltop
cornfields, all the way. We drop down a steep hill into Bellaire, turn
north to Bridgeport, and from there turn east across the Ohio River into
the city of Wheeling.

From Wheeling we drive on into Pennsylvania, through Washington, a hill
city, to Uniontown. The whole country is hilly and we are constantly
enjoying fine views. Around Uniontown many noble trees are dying. They
tell us that this is the locust year, and that these trees are victims
of the voracious insects. Beyond Uniontown we sweep up a long hill,
over a splendid road, to the Summit House. The hotel is closed, so we go
on over the hills to a simpler hotel which is open all the year. This is
the Chalk Hill House, and here we have true country comfort. For supper
we have fried chicken, fried ham, fried hasty pudding, huckleberries,
strawberry preserves, real maple syrup, water melon rind pickles,
cookies, cake, apple sauce, flannel cakes, and coffee. This is
Pennsylvania hospitality. Chalk Hill is 2100 feet above sea level, and
we have fine mountain air. We learn that Braddock's troops in their
famous march to the West passed only 500 yards back of where the Chalk
Hill House now stands. We ask our fellow travelers at the inn about a
very tall monument which we passed, between Washington and Uniontown, on
a hilltop. It is eighty-five feet high, and bears the name of
McCutcheon. We are told that Mr. McCutcheon's will directed that all his
money should be spent in the erection of this monument to his memory. So
there it stands.

Our route lies through Cumberland to Hagerstown, and from Hagerstown
through Martinsburg to Winchester, Virginia. We are crossing the
southwest corner of Pennsylvania, and coming into Maryland on the
northwest corner; passing through a small triangle of West Virginia, and
entering Virginia by the northwest.

Not long after leaving Chalk Hill House we pass on the left the
comparatively new monument which marks Braddock's grave. A beautiful
bronze tablet on one side of the granite shaft reads: "This bronze
tablet was erected and dedicated to the memory of Major-General Edward
Braddock by the officers of his old regiment, the Coldstream Guards of
England, October 15th, 1913." Another bronze tablet has been placed by
the Braddock Memorial Park Association of Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
There is also in bas relief a bust of Braddock in military dress. The
great seals of the United States and of Great Britain adorn the shaft.
The main inscription on the shaft reads:

     Here lieth the remains of Major-General Edward Braddock who,
     in command of the 44th and 48th regiments of English
     regulars was mortally wounded in an engagement with the
     French and Indians under the command of Captain M. de
     Beaujeu at the battle of the Monongahela, within ten miles
     of Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburg, July 9, 1755.

     He was borne back with the retreating army to the old
     orchard camp, about one-fourth of a mile west of this park,
     where he died July 13, 1755. Lieutenant Colonel George
     Washington read the burial service at the grave.

We are on historic ground all along here. A little farther down the road
we pass a tablet on a roadside boulder, erected in 1913 by the Great
Crossing Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, to mark
the old "Nemacolin's trail," so named from the Delaware Indian guide for
the Ohio Company. The tablet records that Washington passed this way in
1753, 1754, and 1755.

On the right of the road we pass a very old farmhouse of red brick, back
of which in a swampy meadow is the site of the camp of Braddock's
forces. We go down the cow lane to see the old camp, whose outlines are
marked.

[Illustration: 1. Braddock's Monument near Uniontown, Pa. 2. Old
Farmhouse near Braddock's Camp. 3. Historic Inn at Hancock, Md.]

We are in a region of fine old stone bridges, and of beautiful orchard
country, alternating with rolling hills covered with heavy forest. At
Grantsville we pass the old Dorsey House, now called the Hotel
Castleman. This used to be a hostel much frequented by the farmers. A
small boy who is playing in the street and who is sojourning here for
the summer gives us this information, and adds that at the Hotel
Castleman you have "lots to eat, and plenty of it." We are sorry that it
is not luncheon time so that we could put his statement to the test.
Passing through Grantsville we cross the old Castleman Bridge, an
immense single span of stone. Another fine old bridge with very solid
buttresses spans Conococheague Creek.

After luncheon in Cumberland, we press east to Hagerstown. We are
advised that we will find the road far better if we drive east to
Hagerstown and then southwest to Winchester, instead of taking the
direct southeast route to Winchester from Cumberland. We have an
excellent road from Cumberland to Hagerstown, and find the rich orchard
country very beautiful. Ten miles from Cumberland, we come upon a point
of vantage from which we have a most lovely view. As we near the town of
Hancock with its famous old inn the country is still more interesting.
We look down on the gleaming Potomac, winding through green fields and
beautifully cultivated orchards. This is famous apple and peach country.
Every year more of the virgin forest on the mountainside is cleared and
planted to young apple and peach trees. The soil and the climate are
most admirably adapted to the growing of fruit, and there are immense
investments in these beautiful orchards. What a fair, fair country!
After we pass Hancock we look down on the canal near which our road
runs. A canal boat passes, the mules walking leisurely along the
towpath. A boy stands at the helm looking out on the beautiful landscape
of forest, orchard, and field. Clothes flap from the clothes-line on the
boat. It is a fine life, we think, this gliding along so securely
between green fields and orchards and clumps of forest.

Hagerstown is a pleasant town in which to spend the night. We enjoy
walking about the streets and seeing some of the old houses. Even the
main street of Hagerstown still has one fine old stone house, low and
solid, painted yellow. It is the only residence left on the business
street, its owner not yet having been tempted by its increased value to
sell it.

[Illustration: 1. "Moore House" at Yorktown, Va., where terms were drawn
up after the Surrender of Cornwallis. 2. Castleman Bridge, Md. 3. Old
Church Tower on Jamestown Island.]

From Hagerstown there are fine shale roads in our drive south to
Winchester. After passing through old Williamsport we cross the Potomac
on a long bridge. All along these roads the motorist is annoyed by many
toll gates at which he is halted to pay toll. These are the landmarks of
other times and of old customs. These roads were originally built and
maintained by private companies. They are fast being bought up by the
State, and in a few years the toll gates will disappear. As we approach
Winchester the country becomes more prosperous in appearance than it is
around Martinsburg, West Virginia. Five miles from Winchester we pass
two fine old red brick farm houses with white porches. We are at last in
the Old Dominion, and look forward with high spirits to a tour among the
Virginia towns and cities.

Winchester is a very old town, with a fascination that grows upon one.
It is a simple little place, with a certain placidity and quiet that are
very soothing. Here is the Winchester Inn with its wide porches and high
ceilings. And here is Mrs. Nancy Cobles's private boarding-house, whose
very appearance breathes of homelike comfort and Southern hospitality.
The Winchester Inn announces that it is "refurnished, refitted,
reland-lorded."

In Winchester is the little old building used as a surveyor's office by
young Washington when he was working for Lord Fairfax. Here is fine old
Christ Church, endowed by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, whose ashes rest
underneath the church.

In Winchester I begin to see very interesting and perfectly clear traces
of old Colonial days. There are quaint old names on the grave stones;
"Judith," "Mary Ann," "Parthenia." Here is the old English name of
Fauntleroy. And here are old houses with fan-lights over the doors.

It is in Winchester, too, that I begin to sense the tragedy and
awfulness of the Civil War, as traced by many a sad inscription on many
a gravestone. Hundreds of Southern dead are sleeping in the Winchester
cemeteries. There are monuments to many unknown dead. "Unknown dead from
Winchester battlefield," "Unknown dead from Cedar Creek battlefield,"
and so on. There are monuments to "the brothers Ashby," and to "the
Patton brothers." How young are the ages given on many of these stones!
Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine.

Our most interesting call in Winchester is upon a lady who is the owner
and manager of a farm of 8000 apple trees, 7000 of which she has set out
herself within the past five years, "every tree in a dynamited hole,
every tree pruned by a government expert." She tells us that all she
knows of apple culture she has learned by a careful study of government
pamphlets. Her orchard is about five miles from town, and she drives out
daily from her pleasant home. She tells us that her apples are sent to
Jersey City and there kept in cold storage. Late in the season she sells
them, getting sometimes as high as $7.50 a barrel toward the end of the
winter. As we talk with her we wonder why it is that more women do not
go in for apple culture. Surely it is a delightful vocation, clean,
healthful, invigorating, and profitable.

Our friend tells us laughingly that so far as her experience goes, negro
servants are "still proving to their former owners that they are free."
She relates an experience with a young negro maid, who after eight
months of happy service with her, during which time she had the best of
training, suddenly left her. She took a new position just across the
street and for exactly the same wages as her old situation had given
her. When her former mistress asked her why it was that she was leaving,
she giggled and said demurely, "I mus' do de bes' I kin fo' myse'f."

From Winchester we drive to Staunton over a fine road. From the fine
country about Winchester, dotted with beautiful orchards, down through
Harrisonburg in the midst of great grain and hay farms, we are passing
through the famous Shenandoah Valley. We see it at a disadvantage, for
the months of dry weather have burned the fields brown and dry and
increased the dust of the roads. But it is beautiful still, a fair and
prosperous farming country. We pass through Harrisonburg on court day,
and the town is filled with farmers who make of this day a general
market day.

As we approach Staunton we come again into orchard country. We have been
passing through many miles of farms devoted to grain. On the left, as
one enters Staunton, is Chilton Hall, standing high above the town.
Chilton Hall, kept by a woman, is a fine new private house, transformed
into a tourist hostel. It looks most attractive. We go on into Staunton
as we wish to be in the heart of the town. We establish ourselves very
comfortably for a few days at "The Shenandoah," also kept by a woman.
Here we have for a very moderate price a room with a private bath. We
enjoy fresh milk and cream, home-made butter, jams, and jellies, and all
the good things of a hospitable Virginia table. We visit the famous Mary
Baldwin Seminary, an exquisitely kept institution. We also see the
Episcopal Church school in its fine old building, Stuart Hall, and we
walk past the Presbyterian manse where President Wilson was born. We
visit the fine cemetery and read the sad inscriptions on the head
stones. One, erected to a young officer of thirty years, reads, "Here
lies a gallant soldier," and adds that he fell fighting "in the great
battle of Manassas." In this cemetery there are 870 Southern dead whose
names are given. There are also about 700 soldiers lying here, "not
recorded by name." The inscription speaks of them as "unknown yet well
known." There are quaint names of women on the old stones here, as in
Winchester; "Johanah," and "Edmonia." And there are old English names;
as Barclay, Warwick, Peyton, Prettyman, Eskridge, and Darrow.

During our stay in Staunton we take a day for a drive to the Natural
Bridge. It is charming country through which we drive, growing more
broken and wooded as we go farther south. We find the road bumpy and
dusty, but not at all impracticable. We have our luncheon with us, and
after paying a somewhat exorbitant fee of one dollar apiece for entrance
to the natural park which includes the Bridge scenery, we walk along the
ravine beside the little river, to the mighty arch of the Bridge itself.
It is a noble span of rock, of an enormous thickness, on so grand a
scale that it is difficult to realize its height and width. We have our
luncheon beside the stream in the forest, and drive back to Staunton.
The wooded Virginia hills and the fields are beautiful in the afternoon
sunlight.

In returning to Staunton we stop in Lexington to see the old cemetery
where Stonewall Jackson lies buried, and where his statue looks out from
a terrace over the open country. We also visit the very beautiful campus
of the Washington and Lee University, and the hilltop situation of the
famous Virginia Military Institute, where another statue of Jackson
stands in commanding position. Were there time, one could linger for
hours on the University campus and in the old Lexington cemetery. I
find a very interesting inscription on a simple stone, which reads thus:

     Samuel Hays. In loving remembrance for faithful service;
     this stone is erected by the desire of his master. He was
     loved, honoured, and trusted, by three generations.

The buildings of Washington and Lee University are of classic type, and
the whole campus with its fine trees and its many white porticoes
gleaming through them, makes an impression that is best expressed by the
old phrase, "classic shades." Some of our more modern universities
impress one by their very architecture and atmosphere as being
magnificently equipped institutions of business. Washington and Lee
University has the old atmosphere of study and of the quiet, ordered
life of the scholar. The Virginia Military Institute is particularly
interesting to the traveler, because of the vault in its chapel crypt
where rest the ashes of the Lee family. Here are buried Lighthorse Harry
Lee, and his distinguished son General Robert E. Lee. And here there is
a beautiful recumbent statue of General Lee by Valentine; so realistic
that the dead man seems to lie before one wrapped in marble sleep.

CHAPTER XII

We are sorry to leave the hospitable "Shenandoah" when the time comes to
go on to Charlottesville. We drive from Staunton out past the National
Cemetery which stands on a hill overlooking the valley. We are soon to
cross the ridge between the Shenandoah Valley and the other great valley
known as Piedmont, the crossing point being at Rock Fish Gap. This is
the historic point where the early settlers first saw and laid claim to
the Shenandoah Valley in the name of the King of England.

The view from the top of the Gap, which is reached by a very easy climb,
is strikingly beautiful. On one side is the Shenandoah Valley from which
we have just come up, stretching far into the distance. On the other are
the fertile rolling hills, and the miles of green orchards, of the
Piedmont section. Here is a view which shows us the smiling, fruitful
Virginia of which we have dreamed. We descend from the Gap by a very
fine new road, and shortly after we cross a bridge which is in the last
stages, so far as traffic is concerned, of tottering decay. At each end
of the old wooden structure there is a card posted by the county
commissioners to the effect that they will not be responsible for the
safety of travelers crossing the bridge. It strikes one as rather
incongruous that they should warn people against using the bridge, save
on their own responsibility, and yet offer no alternative. Just beyond
Yancey Mills we pass an old, old farmhouse at whose gate there hangs an
attractive sign,

    "THE SIGN OF THE GREEN TEA-POT."

We decide to go in for a cup of tea. It is a charming little place, kept
by a woman of taste and arranged for parties to sup in passing by, or
for a few people to make a short stay. We admire the simple, dainty
furniture, the homelike little parlor, and the attractive dining-room.
Everything is beautifully clean and we sigh that we cannot make a longer
stay. They give us one of the best cups of tea that we have had in all
our long journey. The views about the place are charmingly pastoral,
and we feel that with books and walks we could spend an idyllic
fortnight here. Coming into Charlottesville we pass the fine campus of
the University of Virginia.