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Show UTAH ARGENT1FERA. 173 to skirt along these ranges to the narrowest part of the desert, recruit their stock at the last grass and water on this side, then drive night and day until they reached the first grass and water on the other side. Take it for all in all it is about as worthless a region as ever lay out doors ; and, on the Hoosier's " Coon- dog principle," ought to be rich in mines, for it is of no account for any thing else. The only game in most of that region is jack- rabbits and sage- hens; other animals are the sandy or horned-toad, rattle-snake and ground- mi ce. On many of the hills grows the pinion pine, on the nuts of which, with grass seeds, and roots, and a chance capt-ure of game, the Goshoots ( Gosha- Utes) eke out a miserable exist-ence. The sand- flies live on the greasewood ; the horned toad lives on the flies ; the snakes live on the toads, and the Goshoots eat all three. From September to December, the Indians fatten up consider-ably; the rest of the winter they pass in a half comatose state, crouch-ing over a little fire in brush " wickiups," or lying on the sunny side of a rock, sleeping as much as possible, with a meal or two per week of ground- mice or frozen snake, coming out in the spring as lean and lank as fence- rails. There are no deformed or idiotic among them ; the winter kills all the old or weakly ones ; only the hardy can breed, and the struggle for existence secures the survival of the fittest. Across that region I went in May, 1875, to visit the new mines in Dugway Range. From Ophir City, forty miles westward through the passes of the Onannoquah Range, brought me to the ranche of " Peg-leg " Davis, the last house this side of the Great Desert. All the miners who had visited Dugway told me to take careful directions from Davis, for that a new trail had been located straight from his ranche to the camp, and only thirty- five miles long a little slough of water about the middle of the route. But Mr. Ddris informed me GOSH DOT LOVE- FEAST. |