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Show 106 WESTERN WILDS. below the excavated track the waters of the Humboldt foam over the uneven bottom of a narrow channel, obstructed in many places by the immense rocks, which have fallen from the cliff. The lack of colors prevents that singular variety which is the charm of Echo and Weber Canons, but the cold, unchanging gray imparts a wild and gloomy beauty instead. On the south side of the canon the Devil's Peak rises fifteen hundred feet directly above the river. The needs of miners and stock- ranchers in the adjacent mountains have built up a few trading towns along this route; and taking the road by sections, I spent some days at each. First, over Sunday, at Toano, on Terrace Mountain, where the Sabbath was kept as regularly as in New England the men went hunting or rested at the gambling hall ; the girls had - a dance or got drunk. Next at the lively and furiously speculative town of Elko, outfitting point for the rich White Pine region, and consequently a place of importance while the mines held out. Then at Argenta, Winnemucca and Reno, gray dots upon a white desert, and but slight relief to the landscape. Every- where west of Utah we find California work and ideas, pay in coin, and en-counter the Chinese with their chip hats and linen blouses, rice feed, cheap labor, and universal " no sahvey " to any question they don't ward to understand. They then worked for thirty- one dollars per month, boarding themselves, which amounted to an embargo on white labor wherever they came in competition. The Humboldt, which is a good sized stream as long as it keeps within the cool shadow of the mountains, decreases with every mile as soon as it enters the desert ; at last we see it no more, for what little is left has turned southward, and is lost in the " sink." The worst desert we cross in the night, and wake at daylight to glad relief, for we are climbing the Sierras, among the grand pines and along the crystal waters of the foaming Truckee. To one just from the treeless plains, no sight is so grateful as a dense forest, and like a tourist from the State of Maine, who lately passed that way, I felt to exclaim : " Thank the Lord, I smell pitch once more ! " From this region goes most of the lumber used along the road, as far as Salt Lake City; but over all that interior there is an ever-increasing scarcity of good timber. Woods are found only upon the mountains ; the inner plains of the Great Basin are as bare of trees as if blasted by the breath of a volcano. At Verdi Station, 5,000 feet above sea- level, we pass the State line and enter California. Crossing the Truckee, we take an additional locomotive and enter upon the steepest ascent of the Sierras. The first large curve brings us above |