ABOUND THE WOELD ON A BICYCLE
BT
THOMAS STEVENS
FKOM SAN FEANCISCO TO TEHEEAN
WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS
Kontton
SAMPSOX LOW, MAESTOX, SEAELE, AND EIVIXGTOX
CIIOWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET
1887
[All rights reserved]
Co COLONEL ALBEET A. POPE,
OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS,
WHOSE LIBEBAL SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE, AKD GENEBOUS CONFIDENCE IN THE INTEGRITY AND ABILITY OF THE AUTHOB. MADE THE TOUtt
AROUND THE WORLD ON A BICYCLE
POSSIBLE, BY UNSTINTED FINANCIAL PATRONAGE, IS THIS VOLUME DEDICATED.
2011816
PREFACE.
SHAKESPEARE says, in AWs Well that Ends Well, that " a good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner ; " and I never was more struck with the truth of this than when I heard Mr. Thomas Stevens, after the dinner given in his honor by the Massachusetts Bicycle Club, make a brief, off- hand report of his adventures. He seemed like Jules Verne, telling his own \vonderful performances, or like a contemporary Sinbad the Sailor. We found that modern mechanical inven- tion, instead of disenchanting the universe, had really afforded the means of exploring its marvels the more surely. Instead of going round the world with a rifle, for the purpose of kill- ing something, — or with a bundle of tracts, in order to convert somebody, — this bold youth simply went round the globe to see the people who were on it ; and since he always had something to show them as interesting as anything that they could show him, he made his way among all nations.
What he had to show them was not merely a man perched on a lofty wheel, as if riding on a soap-bubble ; but he was also a perpetual object-lesson in what Holmes calls " genuine, solid old Teutonic pluck." When the soldier rides into danger he has comrades by his side, his country's cause to defend, his uniform to vindicate, and the bugle to cheer him on ; but this solitary rider had neither military station, nor an oath of alle- giance, nor comrades, nor bugle ; and he went among men of
viii PREFACE.
unknown languages, alien habits and hostile faith with only his own tact and courage to help him through. They proved sufficient, for he returned alive.
I have only read specimen chapters of this book, but find in them the same simple and manly quality which attracted us all when Mr. Stevens told his story in person. It is pleasant to know that while peace reigns in America, a young man can always find an opportunity to take his life in his hand and orig- inate some exploit as good as those of the rnuch-wandering Ulysses. In the German story " Titan," Jean Paul describes a manly youth who " longed for an adventure for his idle brav- ery ; " and it is pleasant to read the narrative of one who has quietly gone to work, in an honest way, to satisfy this longing.
THOMAS WENTWOKTH HIGGENSON. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., April 10, 1887.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
OVER THE SlEKRAS NEVADAS, 1
CHAPTER II. OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. . , 21
CHAPTER III. THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES, .... 46
CHAPTER IV. FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC, .... 70
CHAPTER V. FROM AMERICA TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER, 91
CHAPTER VI. GERMANY, AUSTRIA, AND HUNGARY, 121
-CHAPTER VII. THROUGH SLAVONIA AND SERVIA, 153
CHAPTER VIII. BULGARIA, ROUMELIA, AND INTO TURKEY, 184
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
PAGE
THROUGH EUROPEAN TURKEY, 215
CHAPTEE X. THE START THROUGH ASIA, 251
CHAPTER XI. ON THROUGH ASIA, 263
CHAPTER XII. THROUGH THE ANGORA GOAT COUNTRY, 279
CHAPTER XIII. BEY BAZAAR, ANGORA, AND EASTWARD, 307
CHAPTER XIV.
ACROSS THE KlZIL IRMAK RlVER TO YUZGAT, 338
CHAPTER XV. FROM THE KOORDISH CAMP TO YUZGAT, ,351
368
CHAPTER XVII. THROUGH ERZINGAN AND ERZEROUM, 397
CHAPTER XVIII. MOUNT ARARAT AND KOORDISTAN, . . . . 426
CONTENTS. Xl
CHAPTER XIX.
PAGE
PERSIA AND THE TABREEZ CARAVAN TRAIL, 455
CHAPTER XX. TABREEZ TO TEHERAN, .....;... 486
CHAPTER XXL
TEHERAN, . ,517
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS STEVENS, . . . . . . Frontispiece.
THE START,
THE BURNING TUILES
CROSSING THE SIERRA NEVABAS,
IN THE CENTRAL PACIFIC SNOW-SHEDS, .
THE " FORTY-MILE DESERT,"
THE PIUTE'S HEADER, ....
UGH ! WHAT Is IT ?
ENCOUNTER WITH A MOUNTAIN LION,
A STAMPEDE OF WILD MUSTANGS,
A FAIR YOUNG MORMON, ....
A TOUGH BIT OF COUNTRY, .
FISHING OUT MY CLOTHES,
THE FIRST HOMESTEAD,
GERMANY TRANSPLANTED,
JUMBO COMES OUT TO MEET ME,
AMENITIES OF THE ERIE TOW-PATH,
THE STARLEY MEMORIAL, COVENTRY, .
RESTING IN AN ENGLISH VILLAGE, .
XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAOE
THE DIEPPE MILKMAN 103
THE CHAMPS ELYSEE AT 10 P.M., . Ill
A GLIMPSE OF MEDIAEVAL FRANCE, 115
BORROWED PLUMAGE, 125
WHITSUNTIDE IN BAVARIA, 132
THE BARBER OF MOLK, 140
CHARMING PRESBURG, 143
THE SLAVONIAN SHEPHERDS, 157
A BELLE OF THE BALKANS, 175
SUNDAY AT BEL A PALANKA, 177
THE ZARIBROD PASSPORT OFFICE, 181
MEETING THE "BULGARIAN EXPRESS," ...... 191
TURKISH AMENITIES, 200
ON THE MINARET WITH THE MUEZZIN, 210
"ARE You AN ENGLISH BARON?" 213
"AND MAKES A GRAB FOR MY REVOLVER," 218
ALMOST PURSUADED TO BE A CHRISTIAN, 220
" PLAY ' YANKEE DOODLE,' " SAID THE PASHA 230
CONSTANTINOPLE FIRE LADDIES, 233
PRINKIPO THE BEAUTIFUL, 245
BICYCLE TENT, 247
A NOTICE OF MY JOURNEY IN THE SULTAN'S OFFICIAL ORGAN, . 249
OSMANLI PILGRIMS, 254
MY BILL OF FARE, 259
GREEKS ENJOYING THEMSELVES, ........ 2G1
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XV
PAGE
A CIRCASSIAN REFUGEE, 264
SABANJANS WORRYING ME TO RIDE, 267
DOWN THE SAKARIA, . 271
LIVELY TIMES, 285
A FAITHFUL GUARDIAN 291
THE BYWAYS OP ASIA MINOR, ....*... 297
EARLY MORNING CALLERS, 299
A QUARRY OP STARTLED DEARS, 303
SERENADED BY TURKISH DANDIES, 813
RACING WITH THE ZAPTIEII, 819
ANGORA WATER-WORKS, S22
GENUINE EKMEK, 332
THE UNSPEAKABLE ORIENTAL, . ... . . . . 334
A SKETCH ON THE KIZIL IRMAK, ....... 339
GRAPES AND GRACE, 343
CAMPING OUT 345
THE CONTEMPLATIVE YOUNG MAN, 354
MY YUZGAT AUDIENCE, , 365
AN ARMENIAN FAMILY REUNION, 369
SLIGHTLY ARMED, 370
A HAREM BEAUTY, 382
THE VALI ON FLOOR WITH MAP, 383
ARMENIAN HOSPITALITY, 387
AT KlRKOR-AGHA VARTARIAN'S, . . 388
APPREHENSIVE OF DANGER, 391
XVI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
THE ARMENIAN EGG-SPOON, 398
THE NATIVE IDEA OP BUTTER, 403
" STAND AND DELIVER ! " 404
THE PASHA WAS PLAYING CHESS, 408
"A RUSSIAN, AM I?" 412
WANTONLY ASSAULTED, . . 422
"UNDISTURBED" REPOSE, 423
A SUSPICIOUS OFFER OF PROTECTION, 425
WELL GUARDED AT LUNCH, . . 438
THE PERSISTENT SON is SHOVED INTO THE WATER, . . . 441
RIDING FOR THE PASHA KHAN'S LADIES 443
AN EVERY-DAY OCCURRENCE, 446
POLITENESS IN A KOORDISH TENT, 447
EXPLAINING ENGLAND'S FRIENDLY OFFICES, 450
KOORDISH HIGHWAYMEN, ......... 452
"LIMP AS A DISH-RAG," 457
DOING THE AGREEABLE, 459
TAKING A DRINK, 463
THE PATRIOTIC MOONSHI-BASHI, 465
A YANKEE ARTIST'S IDEA OF DERVISHES, 467
HASSAN KHAN TAKES A LESSON, 470
THE MAIVAH-JEE SURPRISED, 476
THE KHAN-JEE ESCAPES THROUGH THE WINDOW, .... 477
"TAKE THE HORSE AND LEAVE THE BICYCLE," . . . 479
PERSIAN KATIR-JEES DIFFER, 484
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Xvii
PAGE
THEY S\VOOP DOWN ON ME PROM THE REAR, .... 487
THE VALIAT GIVES ME A RACE, 489
LIKE A CORYPH£E WITH HAND ALOFT, 495
THE BUIDOELESS STREAMS OP ASIA, . . r . . . 498
MIDNIGHT INTRUDERS, 500
FINING OVER THEIR HEADS, 505
PASSING A CAMEL CARAVAN 507
PERSIAN "LuTis,"' OR BUFFOONS, 509
ENTERING THE TEHERAN GATE, 516
THE SHAH'S FOOT-RUNNERS, , .519
SOLDIERS CLEARING MY ROAD, 523
THE SHAH ESCORTS ME TO DOHAN TEPE, 525
THE SHAH snows ME HIS MENAGERIE, 527
THE NAIB-I-SULTAN SMILES APPROVINGLY, 531
THE OLD POMEGRANATE VENDER WANTS ME TO GIVE CHASE, . 537
AYOOB KHAN AND His ATTENDANT, 545
FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
CHAPTER I.
OVER THE SIERRAS NEVADAS.
THE beauties of nature are scattered with a more lavish hand across the country lying between the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the shores where the surf romps and rolls over the auriferous sands of the Pacific, in Golden Gate Park, than in a journey of the same length in any other part of the world.
Such, at least, is the verdict of many whose fortune it has been to traverse that favored stretch of country. Nothing but the lim- ited power of man's eyes prevents him from standing on the top of the mountains and surveying, at a glance, the whole glorious pan- orama that stretches away for more than two hundred miles to the west, terminating in the gleaming waters of the Pacific Ocean. Could he do this, he would behold, for the first seventy-five or eighty miles, a vast, billowy sea of foot-hills, clothed with forests of sombre pine and bright, evergreen oaks ; and, lower down, dense patches of white-blossomed chaparral, looking in the en- chanted distance like irregular banks of snow. Then the world- renowned valley of the Sacramento Kiver, with its level plains of dark, rich soil, its matchless fields of ripening grain, traversed here and there by streams that, emerging from the shadowy depths of the foot-hills, wind their way, like gleaming threads of silver, across the fertile plain and join the Sacramento, which receives them, one and all, in her matronly bosom and hurries with them on to the sea.
Towns and villages, with white church-spires, irregularly sprin- kled over hill and vale, as though sown Jike seeds from the giant
2 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
hand of a mighty husbandman, would be seen nestling snugly amid groves of waving shade and semi-tropical fruit trees. Beyond all this the lower coast-range, where, toward San Francisco, Mount Diablo and Mount Tamalpais — grim sentinels of the Golden Gate — rear their shaggy heads skyward, and seem to look down with a patronizing air upon the less pretentious hills that border the coast and reflect their shadows in the blue water of San Fran- cisco Bay. Upon the sloping sides of these hills sweet, nutritious grasses grow, upon which peacefully graze the cows that supply San Francisco with milk and butter.
Various attempts have been made from time to time, by am- bitious cyclers, to wheel across America from ocean to ocean ; but —"Around the World 1"
" The impracticable scheme of a visionary," was the most chari- table verdict one could reasonably have expected.
The first essential element of success, however, is to have suf- ficient confidence in one's self to brave the criticisms — to say noth- ing of the witticisms — of a sceptical public. So eight o'clock on the morning of April 22, 1884, finds me and my fifty-inch machine on the deck of the Alarneda, one of the splendid ferry-boats plying between San Francisco and Oakland, and a ride of four miles over the sparkling waters of the bay lands us, twenty-eight min- utes later, on the Oakland pier, that juts far enough out to allow the big femes to enter the slip in deep water. On the beauties of San Francisco Biy it is, perhaps, needless to dwell, as every- body has heard or read of this magnificent sheet of water, its sur- face flecked \vith snowy sails, and surrounded by a beautiful framework of evergreen hills ; its only outlet to the ocean the fa- mous Golden Gate — a narrow channel through which come and go the ships of all nations.
With the hearty well-wishing of a small group of Oakland and 'Frisco cyclers who have come, out of curiosity, to see the start, I mount and ride away to the east, down San Pablo Avenue, toward the village of the same Spanish name, some sixteen miles distant. The first seven miles are a sort of half-macadamized road, and I bowl briskly along.
The past winter has been the rainiest since 1857, and the con- tinuous pelting rains had not beaten down upon the last half of this imperfect macadam in vain ; for it has left it a surface of wave-like undulations, from out of which the frequent bowlder
OVER THE S1EUIIAS NEVADAS.
3
protrudes its unwelcome head, as if ambitiously striving to soar above its lowly surroundings. But this one don't mind, and I am perfectly willing to put up with the bowlders for the sake of the undulations. The sensation of riding a small boat over "the gently-heaving waves of the murmuring sea " is, I think, one of the pleasures of life ; and the next thing to it is riding a bicycle over
The Start.
the last tliroo miles of the San Pablo Avenue macadam as I found it on that April morning.
The wave-like macadam abruptly terminates, and I find myself on a common dirt road. It is a fair road, however, and I have plenty of time to look abou,t and admire whatever bits of scenery happen to come in view. There are few spots in the "Golden State " from which views of more or less beauty are not to be ob- tained ; and ere I am a baker's dozen of miles from Oakland pier I
4 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEIIERAX.
find myself within an ace of taking an undesirable header into a ditch of water by the road-side, while looking upon a scene that for the moment completely wins me from my immediate surround- ings. There is nothing particularly grand or imposing in the out- look here ; but the late rains have clothed the whole smiling face of nature with a bright, refreshing green, that fails not to awaken a thrill of pleasure in the breast of one fresh from the verdureless streets of a large sea-port city. Broad fields of pale-green, thrifty- looking young wheat, and darker-hued meads, stretch away on either side of the road ; and away beyond to the left, through an opening in the hills, can be seen, as through a window, the placid waters of the bay, over whose glittering, sunlit surface white - winged, aristocratic yachts and the plebeian smacks of Greek and Italian fishermen swiftly glide, and fairly vie with each other in giving the finishing touches to a picture.
So far, the road continues level and fairly good ; and, notwith- standing the seductive pleasures of the ride over the bounding bil- lows of the gently heaving macadam, the dalliance with the
scenery, and the ah1 too frequent dismounts in deference to the objections of phantom-eyed roadsters, I pulled up at San Pablo at ten o'clock, having covered the sixteen miles in one hour and thirty-two minutes ; though, of course, there is nothing speedy about this — to which desirable qualification, indeed, I lay no claim.
Soon after leaving San Pablo the country gets somewhat " choppy," and the road a succession of short-hills, at the bottom of which modest-looking mud-holes patiently await an opportunity to make one's acquaintance, or scraggy-looking, latitudinous wash- outs are awaiting their chance to commit a murder, or to make the unwary cycler who should venture to "coast," think he had wheeled over the tail of an earthquake. One never mindg a hilly road where one can reach the bottom with an impetus that sends him spinning half-way up the next ; but where mud-holes or wash- outs resolutely " hold the fort " in every depression, it is different, and the progress of the cycler is necessarily slow.
I have set upon reaching Suisuu, a point fifty miles along the Central Pacific Railway, to-night ; but the roads after leaving San Pablo are anything but good, and the day is warm, so six P.M. finds me trudging along an unridable piece of road through the low tuile swamps that border Suisuu Bay. " Tnile " is the name
OVER THE SIEKKAS NEVADAS.
6
given to a species of tall rank grass, or rather rush, that grows to the height of eight or ten feet, and so thick in places that it is cliffi-
The Burning Tuiles
cnlt to pass through, in the low, swampy grounds in this part of California. These tuile swamps are traversed by a net-work of
C FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
small, sluggish streams and sloughs, that fairly swarm with wild ducks and geese, and justly entitle them to their local title of " the duck-hunters' paradise." Ere I am through this swamp, the shades of night gather ominously around and settle down like a pall over the half-flooded flats ; the road is full of mud-holes and pools of water, through which it is difficult to navigate, and I am in some- thing of a quandary. I am sweeping along at the irresistible ve- locity of a mile an hour, and wondering how far it is to the other end of the swampy road, when thrice welcome succor appears from a strange and altogether unexpected source. I had noticed a small fire, twinkling through the darkness away off in the swamp ; and now the wind rises and the flames of the small fire spread to the thick patches of dead tuile. In a short time the whole country, in- cluding my road, is lit up by the fierce glare of the blaze ; so that I am enabled to proceed with little trouble. These tuiles often catch on fire in the fall and early winter, when everything is comparatively dry, and fairly rival the prairie fires of the "Western plains in the fierceness of the flames.
The next morning I start off in a drizzling rain, and, after going sixteen miles, I have to remain for the day at Elmira. Here, among other items of interest, I learn that twenty miles farther ahead the Sacramento Eiver is flooding the country, and the only way I can hope to get through is to take to the Central Pacific track and cross over the six miles of open trestle-work that spans the Sacramento Eiver and its broad bottom-lands, that are subject to the annual spi-ing overflow. From Elmira my way leads through a fruit and farming country that is called second to none in the world. Magnificent farms line the road ; at short intervals appear large well-kept vineyards, in which gangs of Chinese coolies are hoeing and pulling weeds, and otherwise keeping trim. A profu- sion of peach, pear, and almond orchards enlivens the landscape with a wealth of pink and white blossoms, and fills the balmy spring air with a subtle, sensuous perfume that savors of a tropical clime.
Already I realize that there is going to be as much " foot-riding " as anything for the first part of my journey ; so, while halting for dinner at the village of Davisville, I deliver my rather slight shoes over to the tender mercies of an Irish cobbler of the old school, with carte Uanche instructions to fit them out for hard service. While diligently hammering away at the shoes, the old cobbler
OVEU THE SIERRAS NEVADAS. 7
grows communicative, and in almost unintelligible brogue tells u complicated tale of Irish life, out of which I can make neither head, tail, nor tale ; though nodding and assenting to it all, to the great satisfaction of the loquacious manipulator of the last, who in an Lour hands over the shoes with the proud assertion, " They'll last yez, be jabbers, to Omaha."
Reaching the overflowed country, I have to take to the trestle- work and begin the tedious process of trundling along that aggra- vating roadway, where, to the music of rushing waters, I have to step from tie to tie, and bump, bump, bump, my machine along for six weary miles. The Sacramento River is the outlet for the tremendous volumes of water caused every spring by the melting snows on the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and these long stretches of open trestle have been found necessary to allow the water to pass beneath. Nothing but trains are expected to cross this trestle- work, and of course no provision is made for pedestrians. The en- gineer of an approaching train sets his locomotive to tooting for nil she is worth as he sees a " strayed or stolen " cycler, slowly bumping along ahead of his train. But he has no need to slow up, for occasional cross-beams stick out far enough to admit of stand- ing out of reach, and when he comes up alongside, he and the fire- man look out of the window of the cab and see me squatting on the end of one of these handy beams, and letting the bicycle hang over.
That night I stay in Sacramento, the beautiful capital of the Golden State, whose well-shaded streets and blooming, almost tropical gardens combine to form a city of quiet, dignified beauty, of which Calif ornians feel justly proud. Three and a half miles east of Sacramento, the high trestle bridge spanning the main stream of the American River has to be crossed, and from this bridge is obtained a remarkably fine view of the snow-capped Sierras, the great barrier that separates the fertile valleys and glori- ous climate of California, from the bleak and barren sage-brush plains, rugged mountains, and forbidding wastes of sand and alkali, that, from the summit of the Sierras, stretch away to the eastward for over a thousand miles. The view from the American River bridge is grand and imposing, encompassing the whole foot-hill country, which rolls in broken, irregular billows of forest -crowned hill and charming vale, upward and onward to the east, gradually getting more rugged, rocky, and immense, the hills changing to
8 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
mountains, tbe vales to canons, until they terminate in bald, hoary peaks whose white rugged pinnacles seem to penetrate the sky, and stand out in ghostly, shadowy outline against the azure depths of space beyond.
After crossing the American River the character of the country changes, and I enjoy a ten-mile ride over a fair road, through one of those splendid sheep-ranches that are only found in California, and which have long challenged the admiration of the world. Sixty thousand acres, I am informed, is the extent of this pasture, all within one fence. The soft, velvety greensward is half-shaded by the Avide-spreading branches of evergreen oaks that singly and in small groups are scattered at irregular intervals from one end of the pasture to the other, giving it the appearance of one of the old ancestral parks of England. As I bowl pleasantly along I invol- untarily look about me, half expecting to see some grand, stately old mansion peeping from among some one of the splendid oak- groves ; and when a jack-rabbit hops out and halts at twenty paces from my road, I half hesitate to fire at him, lest the noise of the report should bring out the vigilant and lynx-eyed game-keeper, and get me " summoned " for poaching. I remember the pleasant ten-mile ride through this park-like pasture as one of the brightest spots of the whole journey across America, But " every rose con- ceals a thorn, "and pleasant paths of ten lead astray ; when I emerge from the pasture I find myself several miles off the right road and have to make my unhappy way across lots, through numberless gates and small ranches, to the road again.
There seems to be quite a sprinkling of Spanish or Mexican rancheros through here, and after partaking of the welcome noon- tide hospitality of one of the ranches, I find myself, before I realize it, illustrating the bicycle and its uses, to a group of sombrero-decked rancheros and darked-eyed sefioritas, by riding the machine round and round on their own ranch-lawn. It is a novel position, to say the least ; and often afterward, wending my solitary way across some dreary Nevada desert, with no company but my own un- canny shadow, sharply outlined on the white alkali by the glaring rays of the sun, my untrammelled thoughts would wander back to this scene, and I would grow "hot and cold by turns," in my uncertainty as to whether the bewitching smiles of the sefioritas were smiles of admiration, or whether they were simply "grin- ning " at the figure I cut. While not conscious of having cut a
'
OVER THE SIERRAS NEVADAS. 9
sorrier figure than usual on that occasion, somehow I cannot rid myself of an unhappy, harrowing suspicion, that the latter comes nearer the truth than the former.
The ground is gradually getting more broken ; huge rocks in- trude themselves upon the landscape. At the town of Rocklin we are supposed to enter the foot-hill country proper. Much of the road in these lower foot-hilla is excellent, being of a hard, stony character, and proof against the winter rains.
Everybody who writes anything about the Golden State is ex- pected to say something complimentary — or otherwise, as his ex- perience may seem to dictate — about the " glorious climate of Cali- fornia ; " or else render an account of himself for the slight, should he ever return, which he is very liable to do. For, no matter what he may say about it, the " glorious climate " generally manages to make one, ever after, somewhat dissatisfied with the extremes of heat and cold met with in less genial regions.
This fact of having to pay my measure of tribute to the climate forces itself on my notice prominently here at Kocklin, because, in- directly, the "climate " was instrumental in bringing about a slight accident, which, in turn, brought about the — to me — serious ca- lamity of sending me to bed without any supper. Kocklin is cele- brated— and by certain bad people, ridiculed^all over this part of the foot-hills for the superabundance of its juvenile population. If one makes any inquisitive retnarks about this fact, the Rocklinite addressed will either blush or grin, according to his temperament, and say, " It's the glorious climate." A bicycle is a decided novelty up here, and, of course, the multitudinous youth turn out in droves to see it. The bewildering swarms of these small mountaineers distract my attention and cause me to take a header that tempora- rily disables the machine. The result is, that, in order to reach the village Where I wish to stay over night, I have to " foot it " over four miles of the best road I have found since leaving San Pablo, and lose my supper into the bargain, by procrastinating at the village smithy, so as to have my machine in trim, ready for an early start next morning. If the " glorious climate of California " is respon- sible for the exceedingly hopeful prospects of Rocklin 's future census reports, and the said lively outlook, materialized, is responsible for my mishap, then plainly the said " G. C. of C." is the responsible element in the case. I hope this compliment to the climate will strike the Calif oruians as about the correct thing ; but, if it should
10 ' FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
happen to work the other way, I beg of them at once to pour out the vials of their wrath on the heads of the 'Frisco Bicycle Club, iu order that their fury may be spent ere I again set foot on their auriferous soil.
" What'll you do when you hit the snow ? " is now a frequent question asked by the people hereabouts, who seem to be more con- versant with affairs pertaining to the mountains than they are of what is going on in the valleys below. This remark, of course, has reference to the deep snow that, toward the summits of the moun- tains, covers the ground to the depth of ten feet on the level, and from that to almost any depth where it has drifted and accumulated. I have not started out on this greatest of all bicycle tours without looking into these difficulties, and I remind them that the long snow-sheds of the Central Pacific Kailway make it possible for ono to cross over, no matter how deep the snow may lie on the ground outside. Some speak cheerfully of the prospects for getting over, but many shake their heads ominously and say, "You'll never be able to make it through."
Eougher and more hilly become the roads as we gradually pene- trate farther and farther into the foot-hills. We are now in far- famed Placer County, and the evidences of the hardy gold diggers' work in pioneer days are all. nbout us. In every gulch and ravine are to be seen broken and decaying sluice-boxes. Bare, whitish- looking patches of washed-out gravel' show where a " claim " has been worked over and abandoned. In every direction are old water-ditches, heaps of gravel, and abandoned shafts — all telling, in language more eloquent than word or pen, of the palmy days of '49, and ' succeeding years ; when, in these deep gulches, and on these yellow hills, thousands of bronzed, red-shirted miners dug and delved, and "rocked the cradle" for the precious yellow dust and nuggets. But all is now changed, and where were hundreds be- fore, now only a few " old timers " roam the foot-hills, prospecting, and working over the old claims; but "dust," "nuggets," and " pockets " still form the burden of conversation in the village bar- room or the cross-roads saloon. Now and then a " strike " is made by some lucky — or perhaps it turns out, unlucky — prospector. This for a few days kindles anew the slumbering spark of " gold fever " that lingers in the veins of the people here, ever ready to kindle into a flame at every bit of exciting news, in the way of a lucky "find" near home, or new gold-fields in some distant land.
OVER TUB SIERRAS NEVADAS. 11
These occasions never fail to have their legitimate effect upon the business of the bar where the " old-timers " congregate to learn the news ; and, between drinks, yarns of the good old days of '49 and '50, of " streaks of luck," of " big. nuggets," and " wild times," are spun over and over again. Although the palmy days of the "diggin's" are no more, yet the finder of a "pocket" these days seems not a whit wiser than in the days when " pockets " more fre- quently rewarded the patient prospector than they do now ; and at Newcastle— a station near the old-time mining camps of Ophir raid Gold Hill — I hear of a man who lately struck a "pocket," out of which he dug forty thousand dollars ; and forthwith proceeded to imitate his reckless predecessors by going down to 'Frisco and en- tering upon a career of protracted sprees and debauchery that cut short his earthly career in less than six months, and Avafted his riotous spirit to where there are no more forty thousand dollar pockets, and no more Triscos in which to squander it.
In this instance the " find " was clearly an unlucky one. Not quite so bad was the case of two others who, but a few days before my arrival, took out twelve hundred dollars ; they simply, in the language of the goldfields " turned themselves loose," " made things hum," and " whooped 'em up " around the bar-room of their village for exactly three days ; when, " dead broke," they took to tho gulches again, to search for more. "Yer oughter hev happened through hero with that instrumint of yourn about that time, young fellow ; yer might hev kept as full as a tick till they war busted," remarked a slouchy-looking old fellow whose purple-tinted nose plainly indicated that he had devoted a good part of his .existence to the business of getting himself " full as a tick " every 'time he ran across the chance.
Quite a different picture is presented by an industrious old Mexican, whom I happen to see away down in the bottom of a deep ravine, along which swiftly hurries a tiny stream. He is diligently shovelling dirt into a rude sluice-box which he has constructed iu the bed of the stream at a point where the water rushes swiftly down a declivity. Setting my bicycle up against a rock, I clamber down the steep bank to investigate. In tones that savor of anything but satisfaction with the result of his labor, he informs me that he has to work " most infernal hard " to pan out two dollars' worth of " dust " a day. " I have had to work over all that pile of gravel you see yonder to clean up seventeen dollars' worth of dust," further
12 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
volunteered the old " greaser," as I picked up a spare shovel and helped him-remove a couple of bowlders that he was trying to roll out of his way. I condole with him at the low grade of the gravel he is working, hope he may " strike it rich " one of these days, and take my departure.
Up here I find it preferable to keep the rail way track, alongside of which there are occasionally ridable side-paths ; while on the wagon roads little or no riding can be done on account of the hills, and the sticky nature of the red, clayey soil. From the railway track near Newcastle is obtained a magnificent view of the lower country, traversed during the last three days, with the Sacramento liiver winding its way through its broad valley to the sea. Deep cuts and high embankments follow each other in succession, as the road-bed is now broken through a hill, now carried across a deep gulch, and anon winds around the next hill and over another ravine. Before reaching Auburn I pass through " Bloomer Cut," where perpendicular walls of bowlders loom up on both sides of the track looking as if the slightest touch or jar would unloose them and send them bounding and crashing on the top of the passing train as it glides along, or drop down on the stray cycler who might venture through. On the way past Auburn, and on up to Clipper Gap, the dry, yellow dirt under the overhanging rocks, and in the crevices, is so suggestive of " dust," that I take a small prospecting glass, which I have in my tool-bag, and do a little prospecting ; without, however, finding sufficient "color" to induce me to abandon my journey and go to digging.
Before reaching Clipper Gap it begins to rain ; while I am tak- ing dinner at that place it quits raining and begins to come down by buckets full, so that I have to lie over for the remainder of the day. The hills around Clipper Gap are gay and white with chapar- ral blossom, which gives the whole landscape a pleasant, gala-day appearance. It rains all the evening, and at night turns to heavy, damp snow, which clings to the trees and bushes. In the morning the landscape, which a few hours before was white with chaparral bloom, is now even more white with the bloom of the snow.
My hostelry at Clipper Gap is a kind of half ranch, half road- side inn, down in a small valley near the railway ; and mine host, a jovial Irish blade of the good old " Donnybrook Fair " variety, who came here in 1851, during the great rush to the gold fields, and, failing to make his fortune in the " diggings," wisely decided
OVER THE SIERRAS NEVADAS. 13
to send for his family and settle down quietly on a piece of land, in preference to returning to the " ould sod." He turns out to be a "bit av a sphort meself," and, after showing me a number of minor pets and favorites, such as game chickens, Brahma geese, and a litter of young bull pups, he proudly leads the way to the barn to show me "Barney," his greatest pet of all, whom he at present keeps securely tied up for safe-keeping. More than one evil-minded person has a hankering after Barney's gore since his last battle for the championship of Placer County, he explains, in which he inflicted severe punishment on his adversary and reso- lutely refused to give in ; although his opponent on this important occasion was an imported dog, brought into the county by Barney's enemies, who hoped to fill their pockets by betting against the local champion. But Barney, who is a medium-sized, ferocious- looking bull terrier, " scooped " the crowd backing the imported dog, to the extent of their "pile," by " walking all round " his ad- versary ; and thereby stirring up the enmity of said crowd against himself, who — so says Barney's master — have never yet been able to scare up a dog able to " down " Barney. As we stand in the barn-door Barney eyes me suspiciously, and then looks at his master ; but luckily for me his master fails to give the word. Noticing that the dog is scarred and seamed all over, I inquire the reason, and am told that he has been fighting wild boars in the chaparral, of which gentle pastime he is extremely fond. "Yes, and he'll tackle a cougar too, of which there are plenty of them around here, if that cowardly animal would only- keep out of the trees," admiringly continues mine host, as he orders Barney into his empty salt-barrel again.
To day is Sunday, and it rains and snows with little interrup- tion, so that I am compelled to stay over till Monday morning. While it is raining at Clipper Gap, it is snowing higher up in the mountains, and a railway employee volunteers the cheering infor- mation that, during the winter, the snow has drifted and accumu- lated in the sheds, so that a train can barely squeeze through, leaving no room for a person to stand to one side. I have my own ideas of whether this state of affairs is probable or not, however, and determine to pay no heed to any of these rumors, but to push ahead. So I pull out on Monday morning and take to the railway track again, which is the only passable road since the tremendous downpour of the last two days.
11
FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
The first thing I come across is a tunnel burrowing through a hill. This tunnel was originally built the proper size, but, after
Crossing the Sierra Nevadas.
being walled up, there were indications of a general cave-in ; so the company had to go to work and build another thick rock-wall inside the other, which leaves barely room for the trains to pass
OYKIl THE SIEUHAS NEVADAS. 15
through without touching the sides. It is anything but an inviting path around the hill ; but it is far the safer of the two. Once my foot slips, and I unceremoniously sit down and slide around in the soft yellow clay, in my frantic endeavors to keep from slipping down the hill. This hardly enhances my personal appearance ; but it doesn't matter much, as I am where no one can see, and a clay-besmeared individual is worth a dozen dead ones. Soon I am on the track again, briskly trudging up the steep grade toward the snow-line, which I can plainly see, at no great distance ahead, through the windings around the mountains.
All through here the only riding to be done is along occasional short stretches of difficult path beside the track, where it happens to be a hard surface ; and on the plank platforms of the stations, where I generally take a turn or two to satisfy the consuming curi- osity of the miners, who can't imagine how anybody can ride a thing that won't stand alone ; at the same time arguing among themselves as to whether I ride along on one of the rails, or bump along over the protruding ties.
This morning I follow the railway track around the famous "Cape Horn," a place that never fails to photograph itself perma- nently upon the memory of all who once see it. For scenery that is magnificently grand and picturesque, the view from where the railroad track curves around Cape Horn is probably without a, peer on the American continent.
When the Central Pacific Railway company started to grade their road-bed around here, men were first swung over this preci- pice from above with ropes, until they made standing room for themselves ; and then a narrow ledge was cut on the almost per- pendicular side of the rocky mountain, around which the railway now winds.
Standing on this ledge, the rocks tower skyward on one side of the track so close as almost to touch the passing train ; and on the other is a sheer precipice of two thousand five hundred feet, where; one can stand on the edge and sec, far below, the north fork of the American River, which looks like a thread of silver laid along the narrow valley, and sends up a far-away, scarce!}' perceptible roar, as it rushes and rumbles along over its rocky bed. The railroad track is carefully looked after at this point, and I was able, by turning round and taking the down grade, to experience the nov- elty of a short ride, the memory of which will be ever welcome
16 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
should one live to be as old as " the oldest inhabitant." The scenery for the next few miles is glorious ; the grand and impos- ing mountains are partially covered with stately pines down to their bases, around which winds the turbulent American River, receiving on its boisterous march down the mountains tribute from hundreds of smaller streams and rivulets, which come splashing and dashing out of the dark canons and crevasses of the mighty hills.
The weather is capricious, and by the time I reach Dutch Flat, ten miles east of Cape Horn, the floodgates of heaven are thrown open again, and less than an hour succeeds in impressing Dutch Flat upon my memory as a place where there is literally " water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to — ; " no, I cannot finish the quotation ! What is the use of lying ? There is plenty to drink at Dutch Flat ; plenty of everything.
But there is no joke about the water ; it is pouring in torrents from above ; the streets are shallow streams ; and from scores of ditches and gullies comes the merry music of swiftly rush- ing waters, while, to crown all, scores of monster streams are rushing with a hissing sound from the mouths of huge pipes or nozzles, and playing against the surrounding hills ; for Dutch Flat and neighboring camps are the great centre of hydraulic mining operations in California at the present day. Streams of water, higher up the mountains, are taken from their channels and con- ducted hither through miles of wooden flumes and iron piping ; and from the mouths of huge nozzles are thrown with tremen- dous force against the hills, literally mowing them down.
The rain stops as abruptly as it began. The sun shines out clear and warm, and I push ahead once more.
Gradually I have been getting up into the snow, and ever and anon a muffled roar comes booming and echoing over the mountains like the sound of distant artillery. It is the sullen noise of monster snow-slides among the deep, dark canons of the mountains, though a wicked person at Gold Run winked at another man and tried to make me believe it was the grizzlies " going about the mountains like roaring lions, seeking whom they might devour." The giant voices of nature, the imposing scenery, the gloomy pine forests which have now taken the place of the gay chaparral, combine to impress one who, all alone, looks and listens with a realizing sense of his own littleness.
OVER THE SIERRAS IITEVADAS. 17
What a change has come over the "whole face of nature in a few days' travel ! But four clays ago I was in the semi-tropical Sacra- mento Valley ; now gaunt winter reigns supreme, and the only vegetation is the hardy pine.
This afternoon I pass a small camp of Digger Indians, to whom my bicycle is as much a mystery as was the first locomotive ; yet they scarcely turn their uncovered heads to look ; and my cheery greeting of "How," scarce elicits a grunt and a stare in reply. Long years of chronic hunger and wretchedness have well-nigh eradicated what little energy these Diggers ever possessed. The discovery of gold among their native mountains has been their bane ; the only antidote the rude grave beneath the pine and the happy hunting-grounds beyond.
The next morning finds me briskly trundling through the great, gloomy snow-sheds that extend with but few breaks for the next forty miles. When I emerge from them on the other end I shall be over the summit and well down the eastern slope of the moun- tains. These huge sheds have been built at great expense to pro- tect the track from the vast quantities of snow that fall even- winter on these mountains. They wind around the mountain-sides, their roofs built so slanting that the mighty avalanche of rock and snow that comes thundering down from above glides harmlessly over, and down the chasm on the other side, wThile the train glides along unharmed beneath them. The section-houses, the water- tanks, stations, and everything along- here are all under the gloomy but friendly shelter of the great protecting sheds.
Fortunately I find the difficulties of getting through much less than I had been led by rumors to anticipate ; and although no liding can be done in the sheds, I make very good progress, and trudge merrily along, thankful of a chance to get over the mountains without having, to wait a month or six weeks for the snow outside to disappear. At intervals short breaks occur in the sheds, where the track runs over deep gulch or ravine, and at one of these open- ings the sinuous structure can bo traced for quite a long distance, winding its tortuous way around the rugged mountain sides, and through the gloom}- pine forest, all but buried under the snow. It requires no great effort of the mind to imagine it to be some won- derful relic of a past civilization, when a venturesome race of men thus dared to invade these vast wintry solitudes and burrow their way through the deep snow, like moles burrowing through the 2
18
FROM SAW FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
loose earth. Not a living thing is in sight, and the oiily sounds the occasional roar of a distant snow-slide, and the mournful sigh- ing of the breeze as it plays a weird, melancholy dirge through the gently swaying branches of the tall, sombre pines, whose stately trunks are half buried in the omnipresent snow.
In the Central Pacific Snow-sheds.
To-night I stay at the Summit Hotel, seven thousand and seven- teen feet above the level of the sea. The " Summit " is nothing if not snowy, and I am told that thirty feet on the level is no unusual thing up here. Indeed, it looks as if snow-balling on the " Glo- rious Fourth " were no great luxury at the Summit House ; yet not-
OVER THE SIERRAS NEVADAS. 19
withstanding the decidedly wintry aspect of the Sierras, the low temperature of the Rockies farther east is unknown ; and although there is snow to the right, snow to the left, snow all around, and ice under foot, I travel all through the gloomy sheds in my shirt- sleeves, with but a gossamer rubber coat thrown over my shoulders to keep off the snow-water which is constantly melting and drip- ping through the roof, making it almost like going through a shower of rain. Often, when it is warm and balmy outside, it is cold and frosty under the sheds, and the dripping water, falling among the rocks and timbers, freezes into ah1 manner of fantastic shapes. Whole menageries of ice animals, birds and all imaginable objects, are here reproduced in clear crystal ice, while in many places the ground is covered with an irregular coating of the same, that often has to be chipped away from the rails.
East of the summit is a succession of short tunnels, the space between being covered with snow-shed ; and when I came through, the openings and crevices through which the smoke from the en- gines is wont to make its escape, and through which a few rays of light penetrate the gloomy interior, are blocked up with snow, so that it is both dark and smoky ; and groping one's way with a bicycle over the rough surface is anything but pleasant going. But there is nothing so bad, it seems, but that it can get a great deal worse ; and before getting far, I hear an approaching train and forthwith proceed to occupy as small an amount of space as possi- ble against the side, while three laboriously puffing engines, tugging a long, heavy freight train up the steep grade, go past. These three puffing, smoke-emitting monsters fill every nook and corner of the tunnel with dense smoke, which creates a darkness by the side of which the natural darkness of the tunnel is daylight in com- parison. Here is a darkness that can be felt ; I have to grope my way forward, inch by inch ; afraid to set my foot down until I have felt the place, for fear of blundering into a culvert ; at the same time never knowing whether there is room, just where I am, to get out of the way of a train. A cyclometer wouldn't have to exert itself much through here to keep tally of the revolutions ; for, be- sides advancing with extreme caution, I pause every few steps to listen ; as in the oppressive darkness and equally oppressive si- lence the senses are so keenly on the alert that the gentle rattle of the bicycle over the uneven surface seems to make a noise that Avould prevent me hearing an approaching train.
20 FKOM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
This finally comes to an end ; and at the opening in the sheds I climb up into a pine-tree to obtain a view of Donner Lake, called the "Gem of the Sierras." It is a lovely little lake, and amid the pines, and on its shores occurred one of the most pathetically tragic events of the old emigrant days. Briefly related : A small party of emigrants became snowed in while camped at the lake, and when, toward spring, a rescuing party reached the spot, the last survi- vor of the party, crazed with the fearful suffering he had under- gone, was sitting on a log, savagely gnawing away at a human arm, the last remnant of his companions in misery, off whose emaciated carcasses he had for some time been living !
My road now follows the course of the Truckee River down the eastern slope of the Sierras, and across the boundary line into Nevada. The Truckee is a rapid, rollicking stream from one end to the other, and affords dam-sites and mill-sites without limit.
There is little ridable road down the Truckee canon ; but be- fore reaching Verdi, a station a few miles over the Nevada line, I find good road, and ride up and dismount at the door of the little hotel as coolly as if I had rode without a dismount all the way from 'Frisco. Here at Verdi is a camp of Washoe Indians, who at once showed their superiority to the Diggers by clustering around and examining the bicycle with great curiosity. Verdi is less than forty miles from the summit of the Sierras, and from the porch of the hotel I can see the snow-storm still fiercely raging up in the place where I stood a few hours ago ; yet one can feel that he is already in a dryer and altogether different climate. The great masses of clouds, travelling inward from the coast with their bur- dens of moisture, like messengers of peace with presents to a far country, being unable to surmount the great mountain barrier that towers skyward across their path, unload their precious car- goes on the mountains ; and the parched plains of Nevada open their thirsty mouths in vain. At Verdi I bid good-by to the Golden State and follow the course of the sparkling Truckee toward the Forty-mile Desert.
CHAPTER II.
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA.
GRADUALLY I leave the piue-clad slopes of the Sierras behind, and every revolution of my wheel reveals scenes that constantly re- mind me that I am in the great " Sage-brush State." How appro- priate indeed is the name ! Sage-brush is the first thing seen on entering Nevada, almost the only vegetation seen while passing through it, and the last thing seen on leaving it. Clear down to the edge of the rippling waters of the Truckee, on the otherwise barren plain, covering the elevated table-lands, up the hills, even to the mountain-tops — everywhere, everywhere, nothing but sage- brush. In plain view to the right, as I roll on toward Eeno, are the mountains on which the world-renowned Comstock lode is situ- ated, and Reno was formerly the point from which this celebrated mining-camp was reached.
Before reaching Eeno I meet a lone Washoe Indian ; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang. One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely- invented crutch. " How will you trade horses ? " I banteringly ask as we meet in the road ; and I dismount for an interview, to find out what kind of Indians these Washoes are. To my friendly chaff he vouchsafes no reply, but simply sits motionless on his pony, and fixes a regular " Injun stare " on the bicycle. " What's the matter with your leg ? " I persist, pointing at the blanket-be- muffled member.
" Heap sick foot " is the reply, given with the characteristic brevity of the savage ; and, now that the ice of his aboriginal re- serve is broken, he manages to find words enough to ask me for tobacco. I have no tobacco, but the ride through the crisp morn- ing air has been productive of a surplus amount of animal spirits, and I feel like doing something funny ; so I volunteer to cure his " sick foot " by sundry dark and mysterious manoeuvres, that I un- blushingly intimate are "heap good medicine." With owlish so- lemnity my small monkey-wrench is taken from the tool-bag and
22 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
waved around the " sick foot " a few times, and the operation is completed by squirting a few drops from my oil-can through a hole in the blanket. Before going I give him to understand that, in order to have the " good medicine " operate to his advantage, he will have to soak his copper-colored hide in a bath every morning for a week, flattering myself that, while my mystic manoeuvres will do him no harm, the latter prescription will certainly do him good if he acts on it, which, however, is extremely doubtful.
Boiling into Reno at 10.30 A.M. the characteristic whiskey- straight hospitality of the Far West at once asserts itself, and one individual with sporting proclivities invites me to stop over a day or two and assist him to " paint Reno red " at his expense. Leav- ing Reno, my route leads through the famous Truckee meadows — a strip of very good agricultural land, where plenty of money used to be made by raising produce for the Virginia City market.
" But there's nothing in it any more, since the Comstock's played out," glumly remarks a ranchman, at whose place I get din- ner. " I'll take less for my ranch now than I was offered ten years ago," he continues.
The " meadows " gradually contract, and soon after dinner I find myself again following the Truckee down a narrow space be- tween mountains, whose volcanic-looking rocks are destitute of all vegetation save stunted sage-brush. All down here the road is ridable in patches ; but many dismounts have to be made, and the walking to be done aggregates at least one-third of the whole dis- tance travelled during the day. Sneakish coyotes prowl about these mountains, from whence they pay neighborly visits to the chicken- roosts of the ranchers in the Truckee meadows near by. Toward night a pair of these animals are observed following behind at the respectful distance of five hundred yards. One need not be appre- hensive of danger from these contemptible .animals, however ; they are simply following behind in a frame of mind similar to that of a hungry school-boy's when gazing longingly into a confectioner's window. Still, night is gathering around, and it begins to look as though I will have to pillow my head on the soft side of a bowlder, and take lodgings on the footsteps of a bald mountain to-night ; and it will scarcely invite sleep to know that two pairs of sharp, wolfish eyes are peering wistfully through the darkness at one's prostrate form, and two red tongues are licking about in hungry anticipation of one's blood. Moreover, these animals have an uu-
. •j
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 23
pleasant habit of congregating after night to pay their compliments to the pale moon, and to hold concerts that would put to shame a whole regiment of Kilkenny cats ; though thei-e is but little com- parison between the two, save that one howls and the other yowls, and either is equally effective in driving away the drowsy Goddess. I try to draw these two animals within range of my revolver by hiding behind rocks ; but they are too chary of their precious car- casses to take any risks, and the moment I disappear from their sight behind a rock they are on the alert, and looking " forty ways at the same time," to make sure that I am not creeping up on them from some other direction. Fate, however, has decreed that I am not to sleep out to-night — not quite out. A lone shanty looms up through the gathering darkness, and I immediately turn my foot- steps thitherwise. I find it occupied. I am all right now for the night. Hold on, though ! not so fast ! " There is many a slip," etc. The little shanty, with a few acres of rather rocky ground, on the bank of the Truckee, is presided over by a lonely bachelor of German extraction, who eyes me with evident suspicion, as, leaning on my bicycle in front of his rude cabin door I ask to be accom- modated for the night. Were it a man on horseback, or a man with a team, this hermit-like rancher could satisfy himself to some extent as to the character of his visitor, for he sees men on horse- back or men in wagons, on an average, perhaps, once a week during the summer, and can see plenty of them any day by going to Reno. But me and the bicycle he cannot " size up " so readily. He never saw the like of us before, and we are beyond his Teutonic frontier- like comprehension. He gives us up ; he fails to solve the puzzle ; he knows not how to unravel the mystery ; and, with characteristic Teutonic bluntness, he advises us to push on through fifteen miles of rocks, sand, and darkness, to \Vadsworth. The prospect of worrying my way, hungry and weary, through fifteen miles of rough, unknown country, after dark, looms up as rather a formida- ble task. So summoning my reserve stock of persuasive eloquence, backed up by sundry significant movements, such as setting the bicycle up against his cabin-wall, and sitting down on a block of wood under the window, I finally prevail upon him to accom- modate me with a blanket on the floor of the shanty. He has just finished supper, and the remnants of the frugal repast are still on the table ; but he says nothing about any supper for me : he scarcely feels satisfied with himself yet : he feels that I have, in
24 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
some mysterious manner, gained an unfair advantage over him, and obtained a foothold in his shanty against his own wish — jumped his claim, so to speak. Not that I think the man really inhospitable at heart ; but he has been so habitually alone, away from his fellow- men so much, that the presence of a stranger in his cabin makes him feel uneasy ; and when that stranger is accompanied by a queer-looking piece of machinery that cannot stand alone, but which he nevertheless says he rides on, our lonely rancher is per- haps not so much to be wondered at, after all, for his absent-mind- edness in regard to my supper. His mind is occupied with other thoughts. " You couldn't accommodate a fellow with a bite to eat, could you ? " I timidly venture, after devouring what eatables are in sight, over and over again, with my eyes. il I have plenty of money to pay for any accommodation I get," I think it policy to add, by way of cornering him up and giving him as little chance to refuse as possible, for I am decidedly hungry, and if money or diplomacy, or both, will produce supper, I don't propose to go to bed suppeiiess. I am not much surprised to see him bear out my faith in his innate hospitality by apologizing for not thinking of my supper before, and insisting, against my expressed wishes, on lighting the fire and getting me a warm meal of fried ham and cof- fee, for Avhich I beg leave to withdraw any unfavorable impressions in regard to him which my previous remarks may possibly have made on the reader's mind.
After supper he thaws out a little, and I wheedle out of him a part of his history. He settled on this spot of semi-cultivable land during the flush times on the Comstock, and used to prosper very well by raising vegetables, with the aid of Truckee-River water, and hauling them to the mining-camps ; but the palmy days of the Comstock have departed and with them our lonely rancher's prosperity. Mine host has barely blankets enough for his own narrow bunk, and it is really an act of generosity on his part when he takes a blanket off his bed and invites me to extract what corn- fort I can get out of it for the night. Snowy mountains are round about, and curled up on the floor of the shanty, like a kitten under a stove in mid-winter, I shiver the long hours away, and endeavor to feel thankful that it is no worse.
For a short distance, next morning, the road is ridable, but nearing Wadsworth it gets sandy, and "sandy," in Nevada means deep, loose sand, in which one sinks almost to his ankles at every
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 25
step, and where the possession of a bicycle fails to awaken that de- gree of enthusiasm that it does on a smooth, hard road. At Wads- worth I have to bid farewell to the Truckee River, and start across the Forty-mile Desert, which lies between the Truckee and Hum- boldt Rivers. Standing on a sand-hill and looking eastward across the dreary, desolate waste of sand, rocks, and alkali, it is with posi- tive regret that I think of leaving the cool, sparkling stream that has been my almost constant companion for nearly a hundred miles. It has always been at hand to quench my thirst or furnish a refreshing bath. More than once have I beguiled the tedium of some uninteresting part of the journey by racing with some tri- fling object hurried along on its rippling surface. I shall miss the murmuring music of its dancing waters as one would miss the con- versation of a companion.
This Forty-mile Desert is the place that was so much dreaded by the emigrants en route to the gold-fields of California, there being not a blade of grass nor drop of water for the whole forty miles ; nothing but a dreary waste of sand and rocks that reflects the heat of the sun, and renders the desert a veritable furnace in midsummer ; and the stock of the emigrants, worn out by the long journey from the States, would succumb by the score in crossing. Though much of the trail is totally unfit for cycling, there are occasional alkali flats that are smooth and hard enough to play croquet on ; and this afternoon, while riding with careless ease across one of these places, I am struck with the novelty of the situa- tion. I am in the midst of the dreariest, deadest-looking country imaginable. Whirlwinds of sand, looking at a distance like huge columns of smoke, are wandering erratically over the plains in all directions. The blazing sun casts, with startling vividness on the smooth white alkali, that awful scraggy, straggling shadow that, like a vengeful fate, always accompanies the cycler on a sunny day, and which is the bane of a sensitive wheelman's life ! The only representative of animated nature hereabouts is a species of small gray lizard that scuttles over the bare ground with astonishing rapidity. Not even a bird is seen in the air. All living things seem instinctively to avoid this dread spot save the lizard. A desert forty miles wide is not a particularly large one ; but when one is in the middle of it, it might as well be as extensive as Sa- hara itself, for anything he can see to the contrary, and away off to the right I behold as perfect a mirage as one could wish to see.
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 27
A person can scarce help believing his own eyes, and did one not have some knowledge of these strange and wondrous phenomena, one's orbs of vision would indeed open with astonishment ; for seemingly but a few miles away is a beautiful lake, whose shores are fringed with wavy foliage, and whose cool waters seem to lave the burning desert sands at its edge.
A short distance to the right of Hot Springs Station broken clouds of steam are seen rising from the ground, as though huge caldrons of water were being heated there. Going to the spot I find, indeed, " caldrons of boiling water ; " but the caldrons are in the depths. At irregular openings in the rocky ground the bub- bling water wells to the surface, and the fires — ah ! where are the fires ? On another part of this desert are curious springs that look demure and innocuous enough most of the time, but occasionally they emit columns of spray and steam. It is related of these springs that once a party of emigrants passed by, and one of the men knelt down to take a drink of the clear, nice-looking water. At the instant he leaned over, the spring spurted a quantity of steam and spray all over him, scaring him nearly out of his wits. The man sprang up, and ran as if for his life, frantically beckoning the wagons to move on, at the same time shouting, at the top of his voice, "Drive on-! drive on! hell's no great distance from here ! "
From the Forty-mile Desert my road leads up the valley of the Humboldt Eiver. On the shores of Humboldt Lake are camped a dozen Piute lodges, and I make a half-hour halt to pay them a visit. I shall never know whether I am a welcome visitor or not ; they show no signs of pleasure or displeasure as I trundle the bicycle through the sage-brush toward them. Leaning it familiarly up against one of their teepes, I wander among them and pry into their domestic affairs like a health-officer in a New York tenement. I know I have no right to do this without saying, "By your leave," but item-hunters the world over do likewise, so I feel little squeam- ishness about it. Moreover, when I come back I find the Indians are playing " tit-for-tat " against me. Not only are they curiously examining the bicycle as a whole, but they have opened the tool- bag and are examining the tools, handing them around among themselves. I don't think these Piutes are smart or bold enough to steal nowadays ; their intercourse with the whites along the railroad has, in a measure, relieved them of those aboriginal traits
28 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
oj character that would incite them to steal a brass button off their pale-faced brother's coat, or screw a nut off his bicycle ; but they have learned to beg ; the noble Piute of to-day is an incorrigible mendicant. Gathering up my tools from among them, the monkey- wrench seems to have found favor in the eyes of a wrinkled-faced brave, who, it seems, is a chief. He hands the wrench over with a smile that is meant to be captivating, and points at it as I am put- ting it back into the bag, and grunts, " Ugh ! Piute likum ! Piute likum ! " As I hold it up, and ask him if this is what he means, he again points and repeats, " Piute likum ; " and this time two others standing by point at him and also smile and say, " Him big chief ; big Piute chief, him ;" thinking, no doubt, this latter would be a clincher, and that I would at once recognize in " big Piute chief, him " a vastly superior being and hand him over the wrench. In this, however, they are mistaken, for the wrench I cannot spare ; neither can I see any lingering trace of royalty about him, no king- liuess of mien, or extra cleanliness ; nor is there anything winning about his smile — nor any of their smiles for that matter. The Piute smile seems to me to be simply a cold, passionless expansion of the vast horizontal slit that reaches almost from one ear to the other, and separates the upper and lower sections of their expres- sionless faces. Even the smiles of the squaws are of the same un- lovely pattern, though they seem to be perfectly oblivious of any ugliness whatever, and whenever a pale-faced visitor appears near their teepe they straightway present him with one of those repul- sive, unwinning smiles.
Sunday, May 4th, finds me anchored for the day at the village of Lovelocks, on the Humboldt Kiver, where I spend quite a re- markable day. Never before did such a strangely assorted crowd gather to see the first bicycle ride they ever saw, as the crowd that gathers behind the station at Lovelocks to-day to see me. There are perhaps one hundred and fifty people, of whom a hundred are Piute and Shoshone Indians, and the remainder a mingled company of whites and Chinese railroaders ; and among them all it is diffi- cult to say who are the most taken with the novelty of the exhibi- tion— the red, the yellow, or the white. Later in the evening I accept the invitation of a Piute brave to come out to their camp, behind the village, and witness rival teams of Shoshone and Piute squaws play a match-game of " Fi-re-fla," the national game of both the Shoshone and Piute tribes. The principle of the game
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 29
is similar to polo. The squaws are armed with long sticks, with which they endeavor to carry a shorter one to the goal. It is a picturesque and novel sight to see the squaws, dressed in costumes in which the garb of savagery and civilization is strangely mingled and the many colors of the rainbow are promiscuously blended, flitting aboxit the field with the agility of a team of professional polo-players ; while the bucks and old squaws, with their pap- pooses, sit around and watch the game with unmistakable enthu- siasm. The Shoshone team wins and looks pleased.
Here, at Lovelocks, I fall in with one of those strange and seem- ingly incongruous characters that are occasionally met with in the West. He is conversing with a small gathering of Piutes in their own tongue, and I introduce myself by asking him the probable age of one of the Indians, whose wrinkled and leathery countenance would indicate unusual longevity. He tells me the Indian is prob- ably ninety years old ; but the Indians themselves never know their age, as they count everything by the changes of the moon and the seasons, having no knowledge whatever of the calendar year. While talking on this subject, imagine my surprise to hear my in- formant— who looks as if the Scriptures are the last thing in the world for him to speak of — volunteer the information that our ven- erable and venerated ancestors, the antediluvians, used to count time in the same way as the Indians, and that instead of Methuse- lah being nine hundred and sixty-nine years of age, it ought to be revised so as to read " nine hundred and sixty-nine moons," which would bring that ancient and long-lived person — the oldest man that ever lived — down to the venerable but by no means extraor- dinary age of eighty years and nine months. This is the first time I have heard this theory, and my astonishment at hearing it from the lips of a rough-looking habitue of the Nevada plains, seated in the midst of a group of illiterate Indians, can easily be imagined.
On, up the Humboldt valley I continue, now riding over a smooth, alkali flat, and again slavishly trundling through deep sand, a dozen snowy mountain peaks round about, the Humboldt slug- gishly winding its way through the alkali pku'n ; on past Rye Patch, to the right of which are more hot springs, and farther on mines of pure sulphur — all these things, especially the latter, un- pleasantly suggestive of a certain place where the climate is popu- larly supposed to be uncomfortably warm ; on, past Humboldt Station, near which place I wantonly shoot a poor harmless badger,
30 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
who peers inquisitively out of his hole as I ride past. There is something peculiarly pathetic about the actions of a dying bad- ger, and no sooner has the thoughtless shot sped on its mission of death than I am sorry for doing it.
Going out of Mill City next morning I lose the way, and find myself up near a small mining camp among the mountains south of the railroad. Thinking to regain the road quickly by going across country through the sage-brush, I get into a place where that enterprising shrub is so thick and high that I have to hold the bicycle up overhead to get through.
At three o'clock in the afternoon I come to a railroad section- house. At the Chinese bunk-house I find a lone Celestial who, for some reason, is staying at home. Having had nothing to eat or drink since six o'clock this morning, I present the Chinaman with a smile that is intended to win his heathen heart over to any gastro- nomic scheme I may propose ; but smiles are thrown away on John Chinaman.
"John, can you fix me up something to eat ? "
" No ; Chinaman no savvy whi' man eatee ; bossee ow on thlack. Chinaman eatee nothing bu' licee [rice] ; no licee cookee."
This sounds pretty conclusive ; nevertheless I don't intend to be thus put off so easily. There is nothing particularly beautiful about a silver half-dollar, but in the almond-shaped eyes of the Chinaman scenes of paradisiacal loveliness are nothing compared to the dull surface of a twenty-year-old fifty-cent piece ; and the jingle of the silver coins contains more melody for Chin Chin's unromautic ear than a whole musical festival.
"John, I'll give you a couple of two-bit pieces if you'll get me a bite of something," I persist. John's small, black eyes twinkle at the suggestion of two-bit pieces, and his expressive countenance assumes a commerical air as, with a ludicrous change of front, he replies :
" Wha' ! You gib me flore bittee, me gib you bitee eatee ? "
" That's what I said, John ; and please be as lively as possible about it." .
" All li ; you gib me flore bittee me fly you Melican plan-cae."
" Yes, pancakes will do. Go ahead ! "
Visions of pancakes and molasses flit before my hunger- distorted vision as I sit outside until he gets them ready. In ten minutes John calls me in. On a tin plate, that looks as if it has
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 31
just beeii rescued from a barrel of soap-grease, reposes a shapeless mass of substance resembling putty— it is the " Melican plan-cae ; " and the Celestial triumphantly sets an empty box in front of it for me to sit on and extends his greasy palm for the stipulated price. May the reader never be ravenously hungry and have to choose be- tween a " Melican plan-cae " and nothing ! It is simply a chunk of tenacious dough, made of flour and water only, and soaked for a few minutes in warm grease. I call for molasses ; he doesn't know what it is. I inquire for syrup, thinking he may recognize my want by that name. He brings a jar of thin Chinese catsup, that tastes something like Limburger cheese smells. I immediately beg of him to take it where its presumably benign influence will fail to reach me. He produces some excellent cold tea, however, by the aid of which I manage to "bolt "a portion of the "plan-cae." One doesn't look for a very elegant spread for fifty cents in the Sage-brush State; but this "Melican plan-cae " is the worst fifty - cent meal I ever heard of.
To-night I stay in Winnemucca, the county seat of Humboldt County, and quite a lively little town of 1,200 inhabitants. " What'll yer have ? " is the first word on entering the hotel, and " Won't yer take a bottle of whiskey along ? " is the last word on leaving it next morning. There are Piutes and Piutes camped at Winnemucca, and in the morning I meet a young brave on horseback a short distance out of town and let him try his hand with the bicycle. I wheel him along a few yards and let him dismount ; and then I show him how to mount and invite him to try it himself. He gallantly makes the attempt, but springs forward with too much energy, and over he topples, with the bicycle cavorting around on top of him. This satisfies his aboriginal curiosity, and he smiles and shakes his head when I offer to swap the bicycle"for his mustang. The road is heavy with sand all along by Winnemucca, and but little riding is to be done. The river runs through green meadows of rich bottom-land hereabouts ; but the meadows soon disappear as I travel eastward. Twenty miles east of Winnemucca the river and railroad pass through the canon, in a low range of mountains, while my route lies over the summit. It is a steep trundle up the mountains, but from the summit a broad view of the surrounding country is obtained. The HumboldtEiveris not a beautiful stream, and for the greater part of its length it meanders through alter- nate stretches of dreary sage-brush plain and low sand-hills, at long
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 33
intervals passing through a cailon in some barren mountain chain. But " distance lends enchantment to the view," and from the sum- mit of the mountain pass even the Humboldt looks beautiful. The sun shines on its waters, giving it a sheen, and for many a mile its glistening suiiace can be seen winding its serpentine course through the broad, gray-looking sage and grease-wood plains, while at oc- casional intervals narrow patches of green, in striking contrast to the surrounding gray, show where the hardy mountain grasses venturously endeavor to invade the domains of the autocratic sage- brush. What is that queer-looking little reptile, half lizard, half frog, that scuttles about among the rocks ? It is different from anything I have yet seen. Around the back of its neck and along its sides, and, in a less prominent degree, all over its yellowish- gray body, are small, horn-like protuberances that give the little fellow a very peculiar appearance. Ah ! I know who he is. I have heard of him, and have seen his picture in books. I am happy to make his acquaintance. He is "Prickey," the famed horned toad of Nevada. On this mountain spur, between the Golconda mining- camp and Iron Point, is the only place I have seen him on the tour. He is a very interesting little creature, more lizard than frog, perfectly harmless ; and his little bead-like eyes are bright and fascinating as the eyes of a rattlesnake.
Alkali flats abound, and some splendid riding is to be obtained east of Iron Point. Just before darkness closes down over the sur- rounding area of plain and mountain I reach Stone-House section- house.
" Yes, I guess we can get you a bite of something ; but it will be cold," is the answer vouchsafed in reply to my query about sup- per.
Being more concerned these days about the quantity of provis- ions I can command than the quality, the prospect of a cold supper arouses no ungrateful emotions. I would rather have a four-pound loaf and a shoulder of mutton for supper now than a smaller quan- tity of extra choice viands ; and I manage to satisfy the cravings of my inner man before leaving the table. But what about a place to sleep ? For some inexplicable reason these people refuse to grant me even the shelter of their roof for the night. They are not keep- ing hotel, they say, which is quite true ; they have a right to refuse, even if it is twenty miles to the next place ; and they do refuse.
" There's the empty Chinese bunk-house over there. You can 3
34 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
crawl in there, if you arn't afeerd of ghosts," is the parting remark, as the door .closes and leaves me standing, like an outcast, on the dark, barren plain.
A week ago this bunk-house was occupied by a gang of Chinese railroaders, who got to quarrelling among themselves, and the quarrel wound up in quite a tragic poisoning affair, that resulted in the death of two, and nearly killed a third. The Chinese are nothing, if not superstitious, and since this affair no Chinaman would sleep in the bunk -house or work on this section ; conse- quently the building remains empty. The " spooks " of murdered Chinese are everything but agreeable company ; nevertheless they are preferable to inhospitable whites, and I walk over to the house and stretch my weary frame in — for aught I know — the same bunk in which, but a few days ago, reposed the ghastly corpses of the poisoned Celestials. Despite the unsavory memories clinging around the place, and my pillowless and blanketless couch, I am soon in the land of dreams. It is scarcely presumable that one would be blessed with rosy-lmed visions of pleasure under such conditions, however, and near midnight I awake in a cold shiver. The snowy mountains rear their white heads up in the silent night, grim and ghostly all around, and make the midnight air chilly, even in midsummer. I lie there, trying in vain to doze off again, for it grows perceptibly cooler. At two o'clock I can stand it no longer, and so get up and strike out for Battle Mountain, twenty miles ahead.
The moon has risen ; it is two-thirds full, and a more beautiful sight than the one that now greets iny exit from the bunk-house it is scarcely possible to conceive. Only those who have been in this inter-mountain country can have any idea of a glorious moonlight night in the clear atmosphere of this dry, elevated region. It is al- most as light as day, and one can see to ride quite well wherever the road is ridable. The pale moon seems to fill the whole broad valley with a flood of soft, silvery light ; the peaks of many snowy mountains loom up white and spectral ; the stilly air is broken by the excited yelping of a pack of coyotes noisily baying the pale-yel- low author of all this loveliness, and the wild, unearthly scream of an unknown bird or animal coming from some mysterious, undefin- able quarter completes an ideal Western picture, a poem, a dream, that fully compensates for the discomforts of the preceding hour. The inspiration of this beautiful scene awakes the slumbering poesy
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 35
within, and I am inspired to compose a poem — "Moonlight in the Rockies " — that I expect some day to see the world go into raptures over !
A few miles from the Chinese shanty I pass a party of Indians
Ugh ! What is it ?
camped by the side of my road. They are squatting around the smouldering embers of a sage-brush fire, sleeping and dozing. I am riding slowly and carefully along the road that happens to be rida- ble just here, and am fairly past them before being seen. As I gradually vanish in the moonlit air I wonder what they think it
36 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
was — that strange-looking object that so silently and mysteriously glided past. It is safe to warrant they think me anything but flesh and blood, as they rouse each other and peer at my shadowy form disappearing in the dim distance.
From Battle Mountain my route leads across a low alkali bottom, through which dozens of small streams are flowing to the Humboldt. Many of them are narrow enough to be jumped, but not with a bicycle on one's shoulder, for under such conditions there is always a disagreeable uncertainty that one may disastrously alight before he gets ready. But I am getting tired of partially undressing to ford streams that are little more than ditches, every little way, and so I hit upon the novel plan of using the machine for a vaulting-pole. Beaching it out into the centre of the stream, I place one hand on the head and the other on the saddle, and vault over, retaining my hold as I alight on the opposite shore. Pulling the bicycle out after me, the thing is done. There is no telling to what uses this two- wheeled " creature " could be put in case of necessity. Certainly the inventor never expected it to be used for a vaulting-pole in leaping across streams. Twenty-five miles east of Battle Mountain the valley of the Humboldt widens into a plain of some size, through which the river meanders with many a horseshoe curve, and maps out the pot-hooks and hangers of our childhood days in mazy profusion. Amid these innumerable curves and counter-curves, clumps of willows and tall blue-joint reeds grow thickly, and afford shelter to thousands of pelicans, that here make their homes far from the disturbing presence of man. All unconscious of impending difficulties, I follow the wagon trail leading through this valley until I find myself standing on the edge of the river, ruefully looking around for some avenue by which I can proceed on my way. I am in the bend of a horseshoe curve, and the only way to get out is to retrace my footsteps for several miles, which disagreeable performance I naturally feel somewhat opposed to doing. Casting about me I discover a couple of old fence-posts that have floated down from the Be-o-wa-we settlement above and lodged against the bank. I determine to try and uti- lize them in getting the machine across the river, which is not over thirty yards wide at this point. Swimming across with my clothes first, I tie the bicycle to the fence-posts, which barely keep it from sinking, and manage to navigate it successfully across. The village of Be-o-wa-we is full of cowboys, who are preparing for the annual
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 37
spring round-up. Whites, Indians, and Mexicans compose the motley crowd. They look a wild lot, with their bear- skin chaparejos and semi-civilized trappings, galloping to and fro in and about the village. "I can't spare the time, or I would," is my slightly un- truthful answer to an invitation to stop over for the day and have some fun. Briefly told, this latter, with the cowboy, consists in getting hilariously drunk, and then turning his "pop "loose at anything that happens to strike his whiskey-bedevilled fancy as pre- senting a fitting target. Now a bicycle, above all things, would intrude itself upon the notice of a cowboy on a " tear" as a peculiar and conspicuous object, especially if it had a man on it ; so after taking a " smile "with them for good-fellowship, and showing them the modus operandi of riding the wheel, I consider it wise to push on up the valley.
Three miles from Be-o-wa-we is seen the celebrated "Maiden's Grave," on a low hill or bluff by the road-side ; and "thereby hangs a tale." In early days, a party of emigrants were camped near by at Gravelly Ford, waiting for the waters to subside, so that they could cross the river, when a young woman of the party sickened and died. A rudely carved head board was set up to mark the spot where she was buried. Years afterward, when the railroad was being built through here, the men discovered this rude head-board all alone on the bleak hill-top, and were moved by worthy sentiment to build a rough stone wall around it to keep off the ghoulish coy- otes ; and, later on, the superintendent of the division erected a large white cross, which now stands in plain view of the railroad. On one side of the cross is written the simple inscription, " Maid- en's Grave ;" on the other, her name, "Lucinda Duncan." Leav- ing the bicycle by the road-side, I climb the steep bluff and examine the spot with some curiosity. There are now twelve other graves beside the original " Maiden's Grave," for the people of Be-o-wa-we and the surrounding country have selected this romantic spot oil which to inter the remains of their departed friends. This after- noon I follow the river through Humboldt Canon in preference to taking a long circuitous route over the mountains. The first no- ticeable things about this canon are the peculiar water-marks plainly visible on the walls, high up above where the water could possibly rise while its present channels of escape exist unobstructed. It is thought that the country east of the spur of the Red Range, which stretches clear across the valley at Be-o-wa-we, and through which
38 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
the Humboldt seems to have cut its way, was formerly a lake, and that the water gradually wore a passage-way for itself through the massive barrier, leaving only the high-water marks on the moun- tain sides to tell of the mighty change. In this canon the rocky walls tower like gigantic battlements, grim and gloomy on either side, and the seething, boiling waters of the Humboldt — that for once awakens from its characteristic lethargy, and madly plunges and splutters over a bed of jagged rocks which seem to have been tossed into its channel by some Herculean hand — fill this mighty " rift " in the mountains with a never-ending roar. It has been threatening rain for the last two hours, and now the first peal of thunder I have heard on the whole journey awakens the echoing voices of the canon and rolls and rumbles along the great jagged fissure like an angry monster muttering his mighty wrath. Peal after peal follow each other in quick succession, the vigorous, new- born echoes of one peal seeming angrily to chase the receding voices of its predecessor from cliff to cliff, and from recess to pro- jection, along its rocky, erratic course up the canon. Vivid flashes of forked lightning shoot athwart the heavy black cloud that seems to rest on either wall, roofing the canon with a ceiling of awful grandeur. Sheets of electric flame light up the dark, shadowy re- cesses of the towering rocks as they play along the ridges and hover on the mountain-tops ; while large drops of rain begin to patter down, gradually increasing with the growing fury of their battling allies above, until a heavy, drenching downpour of rain and hail compels me to take shelter under an overhanging rock.
At 4 P.M. I reach Palisade, a railroad village situated in the most romantic spot imaginable, under the shadows of the towering pali- sades that hover above with a sheltering care, as if their special mission were to protect it from all harm. Evidently these moun- tains have been rent in twain by an earthquake, and this great gloomy chasm left open, for one can plainly see that the two walls represent two halves of what was once a solid mountain. Curious caves are observed in the face of the cliffs, and one, more conspicu- ous than the rest, has been christened " Maggie's Bower," in honor of a beautiful Scottish maiden who with her parents once lingered in a neighboring creek-bottom for some time, recruiting their stock. But all is not romance and beauty even in the glorious palisades of the Humboldt ; for great, glaring, patent-medicine advertisements are painted on the most conspicuously beautiful spots of the pali-
OVEU THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 39
sades. Business enterprise is of course to be commended and en- couraged ; but it is really annoying that one cannot let his aesthetic soul — that is constantly yearning for the sublime and beautiful — rest in gladsome reflection on some beautiful object without at the same time being reminded of " corns," and " biliousness," and all the multifarious evils that flesh is heir to.
It grows pitchy dark ere I leave the canon on my way to Carlin. Farther on, the gorge widens, and thick underbrush intervenes be- tween the road and the river. From out the brush I see peering two little round phosphorescent balls, like two miniature moons, turned in my direction. I wonder what kind of an animal it is, as I trun- dle along through the darkness, revolver in hand, ready to defend myself, should it make an attack. I think it is a mountain-lion, as they seem to be plentiful in this part of Nevada. Late as it is when I reach Carlin, the " boys" must see how a bicycle is ridden, and, as there is no other place suitable, I manage to circle around the pool- table in the hotel bar-room a few times, nearly scalping myself against the bronze chandelier in the operation. I hasten, however, to explain that these proceedings took place immediately after my arrival, lest some worldly wise, over-sagacious person should be led to suspect them to be the riotous undertakings of one who had " smiled with the boys once too often." Little riding is possible all through this section of Nevada, and, in order to complete the forty miles a day that I have rigorously imposed upon myself, I sometimes get up and pull out at daylight. It is scarce more than sunrise when, following the railroad through Five-mile Canon — another rift through one of the many mountain chains that cross this part of Nevada in all directions under the general name of the Humboldt Mountains — I meet with a startling adventure. I am trundling through the canon alongside the river, when, rounding the sharp curve of a projecting mountain, a tawny mountain lion is perceived trotting leisurely along ahead of me, not over a hundred yards in advance. He hasn't seen me yet ; he is perfectly oblivious of the fact that he is in " the presence." A person of ordinary dis- cretion would simply have revealed his presence by a gentlemanly sneeze, or a slight noise of any kind, when the lion would have immediately bolted back into the underbrush. Unable to resist the temptation, I fired at him, and of course missed him, as a person naturally would at a hundred yards with a bull-dog revolver. The bullet must have singed him a little though, for, instead of wildly
40 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
scooting for the brush, as I anticipated, he turns savagely round and conies bounding rapidly toward me, and at twenty paces crouches for a spring. Laying his cat-like head almost on the ground, his round eyes flashing fire, and his tail angrily waving to and fro, he looks savage and dangerous. Crouching behind the bicycle, I fire at him again. Nine times out of ten a person will overshoot the mark with a revolver under such circumstances, and, being anxious to avoid this, I do the reverse, and fire too low. The ball strikes the ground just in front of his head, and throws the sand and gravel in his face, and perhaps in his wicked round eyes ; for he shakes his head, springs up, and makes off into the brush. I shall shed blood of some sort yet before I leave Nevada ! There isn't a day that I don't shoot at something or other ; and all I ask of any animal is to come within two hundred yards and I will squander a cartridge on him, and I never fail to hit — the ground.
At Elko, where I take dinner, I make the acquaintance of an individual, rejoicing in the sobriquet of " Alkali Bill," who has the largest and most comprehensive views of any person I ever met. He has seen a paragraph, something about me riding round the world, and he considerately takes upon himself the task of sum- ming up the few trifling obstacles that I shall encounter on the way round :
"There is only a small rise at Sherman," he rises to explain, " and another still smaller at the Alleghanies ; all the balance is downhill to the Atlantic. Of course you'll have to ' boat it ' across the Frogpond ; then there's Europe — mostly level ; so is Asia, ex- cept the Himalayas — and you can soon cross them ; then you're all ' hunky,' for there's no mountains to speak of in China."
Evidently Alkali Bill is a person who points the finger of scorn at small ideas, and leaves the bothersome details of life to other and smaller-minded folks. In his vast and glorious imagery he sees a centaur-like 'cycler- skimming like a frigate-bird across states and continents, scornfully ignoring sandy deserts and bridgeless streams, halting for nothing but oceans, and only slowing up a little when he runs up against a peak that bobs up its twenty thousand feet of snowy grandeur serenely in his path. What a Csesar is lost to this benighted world, because in its blindness, it will not search out such men as Alkali and ask them to lead it on- ward to deeds of inconceivable greatness ! Alk<ali Bill can whittle more chips in an hour than some men could in a week.
'///
u .
Encounter with a Mountain Lion.
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 43
Much of the Humboldt Valley, through which my road now runs, is at present flooded from the vast quantities of water that are pouring into it from the Ruby Range of mountains now visible to the southeast, and which have the appearance of being the snowiest of any since leaving the Sierras. Only yesterday I threatened to shed blood before I left Nevada, and sure enough my prophecy is destined to speedy fulfilment. Just east of the Osino Canon, and where the North Fork of the Humboldt comes down from the north and joins the main stream, is a stretch of swampy ground on which swarms of wild ducks and geese are paddling about. I blaze away at them, and a poor inoffensive gosling is no more !
While writing my notes this evening, in a room adjoining the " bar " at*Halleck, near the United States fort of the same name, I overhear a boozy soldier modestly informing his comrades that forty-five miles an hour is no unusual speed to travel with a bi- cycle.
Gradually I am nearing the source of the Humboldt, and at the town of Wells I bid it farewell for good. Wells is named from a group of curious springs near the town. They are supposed to be extinct volcanoes, now filled with water ; and report says that no sounding-line has yet been found long enough to fathom the bottom. Some day when some poor, unsuspecting tenderfoot is peering in- quisitively down one of these well-like springs, the volcano may suddenly come into play again and convert the water into steam that will shoot him clear up into the moon ! These volcanoes may have been soaking in water for millions of years ; but they are not to be trusted on that account ; they can be depended upon to fill some citizen full of lively surprise one of these days. Everything here is surprising ! You look across the desert and see flowing water and waving trees ; but when you get there, with your tongue hanging out and your fate wellnigh sealed, you are surprised to find nothing but sand and rocks. You climb a mountain expecting to find trees and birds' eggs, and you are surprised to find high- water marks and sea-shells. Finally, you look in the looking-glass and are surprised to find that the wind and exposure have trans- formed your nice blonde complexion to a semi-sable hue that would prevent your own mother from recognizing you.
The next day, when nearing the entrance to Moutella Pass, over the Goose Creek Range, I happen to look across the mingled sage- brush and juniper-spruce brush to the right, and a sight greets my
44 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
eyes that causes me to instinctively look around for a tall tree, though well knowing that there is nothing of the kind for miles ; neither is there any ridable road near, or I might try my hand at breaking the record for a few miles. Standing bolt upright on their hind legs, by the side of a clump of juniper-spruce bushes and in- tently watching my movements, are a pair of full-grown cinnamon bears. When a bear sees a man before the man happens to descry him, and fails to betake himself off immediately, it signifies that he is either spoiling for a fight or doesn't care a continental password whether war is declared or not. Moreover, animals recognize the peculiar advantages of two to one in a fight equally with their human infer! — superiors ; and those two over there are apparently in no par- ticular hurry to move on. They don't seem awed at my presence. On the contrary, they look suspiciously like being undecided and hesi- tative about whether to let me proceed peacefully on my way or not. Their behavior is outrageous ; they stare and stare and stare, and look quite ready for a fight. I don't intend one to come off, though, if I can avoid it. I pi-ef er to have it settled by arbitration. I haven't lost these bears ; they aren't mine, and I don't want anything that doesn't belong to me. I am not covetous ; so, lest I should be tempted to shoot at them if I come within the regulation two hun- dred yards, I " edge off" a few hundred yards in the other direction, and soon have the intense satisfaction of seeing them stroll off toward the mountains. I wonder if I don't owe my escape on this occasion to my bicycle ? Do the bright spokes glistening in the sunlight as they revolve make an impression on their bearish intellects that influences their decision in favor of a retreat. It is perhaps need- less to add that, all through this mountain-pass, I keep a loose eye busily employed looking out for bears.
But nothing more of a bearish nature occurs, and the early gloaming finds me at Tacoina, a village near the Utah boundary line. There is an awful calamity of some sort hovering over this viUage. One can feel it in the air. The habitues of the hotel bar- room sit around, listless and glum. When they speak at all it is to predict all sorts of difficulties for me in my progress through Utah and Wyoming Territories. " The black gnats of the Salt Lake mud flat'll eat you clean up," snarls one. " Bear River's flooding the hull kintry up Weber Canon way," growls another. " The slickest thing you kin do, stranger, is to board the keers and git out of this," says a third, in a tone of voice and with an emphasis that plainly in-
OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA. 45
dicates his great disgust at " this." By " this " he means the village of Tacoma ; and he is disgusted with it. They are all disgusted with it, and with the whole world this evening, because Tacoma is " out of whiskey." Yes, the village is destitute of whiskey ; it should have arrived yesterday, and hasn't shown up yet ; and the effect on the society of the bar-room is so depressing that I soon retire to my couch, to dream of Utah's strange intermingling of forbidding de- serts and beautiful orchards through which my route now leads me.
CHAPTER III.
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES.
A CREAKY-LOOKING country is the " Great American Desert," in Utah, the northern boundary line of which I traverse next morning. To the left of the road is a low chain of barren hills ; to the right, the uninviting plain, over which one's eye wanders in vain for some green object that might raise hopes of a less desolate region be- yond ; and over all hangs an oppressive silence — the silence of a dead country — a country destitute of both animal and vegetable life. Over the great desert hangs a smoky haze, out of which Pilot Peak, thirty-eight miles away, rears its conical head 2,500 feet above the level plain at its base.
Some riding is obtained at intervals along this unattractive stretch of country, but there are no continuously ridable stretches, and the principal incentive to mount at all is a feeling of disgust at so much compulsory walking. A noticeable feature through the desert is the almost unquenchable thirst that the dry saline air in- flicts upon one. Reaching a railway section-house, I find no one at home ; but there is a small underground cistern of imported water, in which "wrigglers" innumerable wriggle, but which is otherwise good and cool. There is nothing to drink out of, and the water is three feet from the surface ; while leaning down to try and drink, the wooden framework at the top gives way and precipitates me head first into the water. Luckily, the tank is large enough to enable me to turn round and reappear at the surface, head first, and with considerable difficulty I scramble out again, with, of course, not a dry thread on me.
At three in the afternoon I roll into Terrace, a small Mormon town. Here a rather tough-looking citizen, noticing that my gar- ments are damp, suggests that 'cycling must be hard work to make a person perspire like that in this dry climate. At the Matlin sec- tion-house I find accommodation for the night with a whole-souled section-house foreman, who is keeping bachelor's hall temporarily, as his wife is away on a visit at Ogden. From this house, which is
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 47
situated on the table-land of the Red Dome Mountains, can be ob- tained a more comprehensive view of the Great American Desert than when we last beheld it. It has all the appearance of being the dry bed of an ancient salt lake or inland sea. A broad, level plain of white alkali, which is easily mistaken in the dim distance for smooth, still water, stretches away like a dead, motionless sea as far as human vision can penetrate, until lost in the haze ; while, here and there, isolated rocks lift their rugged heads above the dreary level, like islets out of the sea. It is said there are many evidences that go to prove this desert to have once been covered by the waters of the great inland sea that still, in places, laves its eastern borders with its briny flood. I am informed there are many miles of smooth, hard, salt-flats, over which a 'cycler could skim like a bird ; but I scarcely think enough of bird-like skimming to go searching for it on the American Desert. A few miles east of Matlin the road leads over a spur of the Eed Dome Range, from whence I obtain my first view of the Great Salt Lake, and soon I am enjoying a long-antici- pated bath in its briny waters. It is disagreeably cold, but other- wise an enjoyable bath. One can scarce sink beneath the surface, so strongly is the water impregnated with salt.
For dinner, I reach Kelton, a town that formerly prospered as the point from which vast quantities of freight were shipped to Idaho. Scores of huge freight- wagons are now bunched up in the corrals, having outlived their usefulness since the innovation from mules and " overland ships " to locomotives on the Utah Northern Railway. Empty stores and a general air of vanished prosperity are the main features of Kelton to-day ; and the inhabitants seem to reflect in their persons the aspect of the town ; most of them being freighters, who, finding their occupation gone, hang listlessly around, as though conscious of being fit for nothing else. From Kelton I follow the lake shore, and at six in the afternoon arrive at the salt-works, near Monument Station, and apply for accommoda- tion, which is readily given. Here is erected a wind-mill, which pumps the water from the lake into shallow reservoirs, where it evaporates and leaves a layer of coarse salt on the bottom. These people drink water that is disagreeably brackish and unsatisfactory to one unaccustomed to it, but which they say has become more acceptable to them, from habitual use, than purely fresh water. This spot is the healthiest and most favorable for the prolific pro- duction of certain forms of insect life I ever was in, and I spend
48 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
the liveliest night here I ever spent anywhere. These people pro- fessed to give me a bed to myself, but no sooner have I laid my head on the pillow than I recognize the ghastly joke they are playing on me. The bed is already densely populated with guests, who naturally object to being ousted or overcrowded. They seem quite a kittenish and playful lot, rather inclined to accomplish their ends by playing wild pranks than by resorting to more austere measures. Watching till I have closed my eyes in an attempt to doze off, they slip up and playfully tickle me under the chin, or scramble around in my ear, and anon they wildly chase each other up and down my back, and play leap-frog and hide-and-go-seek all over my sensitive form, so that I arise in the morning anything but refreshed from my experience.
Still following the shores of the lake, for several miles, my road now leads over the northern spur of the Promontory Mountains. On these hills I find a few miles of hard gravel that affords the best riding I have experienced in Utah, and I speed along as rapidly as possible, for dark, threatening clouds are gathering overhead. But ere I reach the summit of the ridge a violent thunder-storm breaks over the hills, and I seem to be verily hobnobbing with the thunder and lightning, that appears to be round about me, rather than overhead. A troop of wild bronchos, startled and stampeded by the vivid lightning and sharp peals of thunder, come wildly charging down the mountain trail, threatening to run quite over me in their mad career. PuUing my six-shooter, I fire a couple of shots in the air to attract their attention, when they rapidly swerve to the left, and go tearing frantically over the rolling hills on their wild flight to the plains below.
Most of the rain falls on the plain and in the lake, and when I arrive at the summit I pause to take a view at the lake and sur- rounding country. A more auspicious occasion could scarcely have been presented. The storm has subsided, and far beneath my feet a magnificent rainbow spans the plain, and dips one end of its variegated beauty in the sky-blue waters of the lake. From this point the view to the west and south is truly grand — rugged, irregular mountain-chains traverse the country at every conceivable angle, and around among them winds the lake, filling with its bluo waters the intervening spaces, and reflecting, impartially alike, their grand majestic beauty and their faults. What dreams of empire and white-winged commerce on this inland sea must fill the mind
A Stampede of Wild Mustangs.
50 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
and fire the imagery of the newly arrived Mormon convert who, standing on the commanding summit of these mountains, feasts his eyes on the glorious panorama of blue water and rugged moun- tains that is spread like a wondrous picture before him ! Surely, if he be devotionally inclined, it fails not to recall to his mind an- other inland sea in far-off Asia Minor, on whose pebbly shores and by whose rippling waves the cradle of an older religion than Mor- monism was rocked — but not rocked to sleep.
Ten miles farther on, from the vantage-ground of a pass over another spur of the same range, is obtained a widely extended view of the country to the east. For nearly thirty miles from the base of the mountains, low, level mud-flats extend eastward, bor- dered on the south by the marshy, sinuous shores of the lake, and on the north by the Blue Creek Mountains. Thirty miles to the east — looking from this distance strangely like flocks of sheep grazing at the base of the mountains — can be seen the white- painted houses of the Mormon settlements, that thickly dot the narrow but fertile strip of agricultural land between Bear River and the mighty Wahsatch Mountains, that, rearing their snowy crest skyward, shut out all view of what lies beyond. From this height the level mud-flats appear as if one could mount his wheel and bowl across at a ten-mile pace ; but I shall be agreeably sur- prised if I am able to aggregate ten miles of riding out of the thirty. Immediately after getting down into the bottom I make the acquaintance of the tiny black gnats that one of our whiskey- bereaved friends at Tacoma had warned me against. One's head is constantly enveloped in a black cloud of these little wretches. They are of infinitesimal proportions, and get into a person's ears, eyes, and nostrils, and if one so far forgets himself as to open his mouth, they swarm in as though they think it the " pearly gates ajar," and this their last chance of effecting an entrance. Mingled with them, and apparently on the best of terms, are swarms of mosquitoes, which appear perfect Jumbos in comparison with their disreputable associates.
As if partially to recompense me for the torments of the after- noon, Dame Fortune considerately provides me with two separate and distinct suppers this evening. I had intended, when I left Promontory Station, to reach Corinne for the night ; consequently I bi'ing a lunch with me, knowing it will take me till late to reach there. These days, I am troubled with an appetite that makes me
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. f)l
blush to speak of it, and about five o'clock I sit down — on the bleached skeleton of a defunct mosquito ! — and proceed to eat my lunch of bread and meat — and gnats ; for I am quite certain of eating hundreds of these omnipresent creatures at every bite I take. Two hours afterward I . am passing Quarry section-house, when the foreman beckons me over and generously invites me to remain over night. He brings out canned oysters and bottles of Milwaukee beer, and insists on my helping him discuss these ac- ceptable viands ; to which invitation it is needless to say I yield without extraordinary pressure, the fact of having eaten two hours before being no obstacle whatever. So much for 'cycling as an aid to digestion. Arriving at Corinne, on Bear River, at ten o'clock next morning, I am accosted by a bearded, patriarchal Mormon, who requests me to constitute myself a parade of one, and ride the bicycle around the town for the edification of the people's minds.
" In course they knows what a ' perlocef ede ' is, from seein' 'em in picturs ; but they never seed a real machine, and it'd be a ' hefty ' treat fer 'em," is the eloquent appeal made by this person in behalf of the Corinnethians, over whose destinies and happiness he appears to preside with fatherly solicitude. As the streets of Coi'inne this morning consist entirely of black mud of uncertain depth, I am reluctantly compelled to say the elder nay, at the same time promising him that if he would have them in better condition next time I happened around, I would willingly second his brilliant idea of making the people happy by permitting them a glimpse of my " perlocefede " in action.
After crossing Bear River I find myself on a somewhat superior road leading through the Mormon settlements to Ogden. No greater contrast can well be imagined than that presented by this strip of country lying between the lake and the Wahsatch Moun- tains, and the desert country to the westward. One can almost fancy himself suddenly transported by some good genii to a quiet farming community in an Eastern State. Instead of untamed bronchos and wild-eyed cattle, roaming at their own free will over unlimited territory, are seen staid work-horses ploughing in the field, and the sleek milch-cow peacefully cropping tame grass in en- closed meadows. Birds are singing merrily in the willow hedges and the shade-trees ; gi*een fields of alfalfa and ripening grain line the road and spread themselves over the surrounding country in
52 FROM SAN FRAXCISCO TO TEHERAN.
alternate squares, like those of a vast checker-board. Farms, on the average, are small, and, consequently, houses are thick ; and not a farm-house among them all but is embowered in an orchard of fruit and shade-trees that mingle their green leaves and white blossoms harmoniously. At noon I roll into a forest of fruit-trees, among which, I am informed, "Willard City is situated ; but one can see nothing of any city. Nothing but thickets of peach, plum, and apple trees, all in full bloom, surround the spot where I alight and begin to look around for some indications of the city. " Where is Willard City ? " I inquire of a boy who comes out from one of the orchards carrying a can of kerosene in his hand, suggestive of having just come from a grocery, and so he has. " This is Wil- lard City, right here," replies the boy ; and then, in response to my inquiry for the hotel, he points to a small gate leading into an orchard, and tells me the hotel is in there.
The hotel — like every other house and store here — is embow- ered amid an orchard of blooming fruit-trees, and looks like any- thing but a public eating-house. No sign up, nothing to distin- guish it from a private dwelling ; and I am ushered into a nicely furnished parlor, on the neatly papered walls of which hang en- larged portraits of Brighain Young and other Mormon celebrities, while a large- sized Mormon bible, expensively bound in morocco, reposes on the centre-table. A charming Miss of — teen summers presides over a private table, on which is spread for my material benefit the finest meal I have eaten since leaving California. Such snow-white bread ! Such delicious butter ! And the exquisite flavor of " spiced peach-butter " lingers in my fancy even now ; and as if this were not enough for " two bits " (a fifty per cent, corne-down from usual rates in the mountains), a splendid bouquet of flowers is set on the table to round off the repast with their grateful perfume. As I enjoy the wholesome, substantial food, I fall to musing on the mighty chasm that intervenes between the elegant meal now be- fore me and the "Melican plan-cae" of two. weeks ago.
" You have a remarkably pleasant country here, Miss," I venture to remark to the young lady who has presided over my table, and whom I judge to be the daughter of the house, as she comes to the door to see the bicycle.
" Yes ; we have made it pleasant by planting so many orchards," she answers, demurely.
" I should think the Mormons ought to be contented, for they
54 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
possess the only good piece of farming country between California and 'the States/" I blunderingly continued.
"I never heard anyone say they are not contented, but their enemies," replies this fair and valiant champion of Mornionism in a voice that shows she quite misunderstands my meaning.
" What I intended to say was, that the Mormon people are to be highly congratulated on their good sense in settling here," I has- ten to explain ; for were I to leave at this house, where my treat- ment has been so gratifying, a shadow of prejudice against the Mor- mons, I should feel like kicking myself all over the Territory. The women of the Mormon religion are instructed by the wiseacres of the church to Avin over strangers by kind treatment and by tho charm of their conversation and graces ; and this young lady has learned the lesson well; she lias graduated with high honors. Coming from the barren deserts of Nevada and Western Utah — from the land where the irreverent and irrepressible " Old Timer " fills the air with a sulphurous odor from his profanity and where nat- ure is seen in its sternest aspect, and then suddenly finding one's self literally surrounded by flowers and conversing with Beauty about Religion, is enough to charm the heart of a marble statue.
Ogden is reached for supper, where I quite expect to find a 'cycler or two (Ogden being a city of eight thousand inhabitants) ; but the nearest approach to a bicycler in Ogden is a gentleman who used to belong to a Chicago club, but who has failed to bring his " wagon " West with him. Twelve miles of alternate riding and walking eastwardly from Ogden bring me to the entrance of Weber Canon, through which the Weber River, the Union Pacific Rail- road, and an uncertain wagon-trail make their way through the Wahsatch Mountains on to the elevated table-lands of Wyoming- Territory. Objects of interest follow each other in quick succes- sion along this part of the journey, and I have ample time to ex- amine them, for Weber River is flooding the canon, and in many places has washed away the narrow space along which wagons arc wont to make their way, so that I have to trundle slowly along the railway track. Now the road turns to the left, and in a few min- utes the rugged and picturesque walls of the canon are towering in imposing heights toward the clouds. The Weber River comes rushing — a resistless torrent — from under the dusky shadows of the mountains through which it runs for over fifty miles, and on- ward to the plain below, where it assumes a more moderate pace,
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 55
as if conscious that it lias at last escaped from tlie Lurrying tur- moil of its boisterous march, clown the mountain.
Advancing into the yawning jaws of the range, a continuously resounding roar is heard in advance, which gradually becomes louder as I proceed eastward ; in a short time the source of the noise is discovered, and a weird scene greets my enraptured vision. At a place where the fall is tremendous, the waters are opposed in their mad march by a rough-and-tumble collection of huge, jagged rocks, that have at some time detached themselves from the walls above, and come crashing down into the bed of the stream. The rushing waters, coming with haste from above, appear to pounce with insane fury on the rocks that dare thus to obstruct their path ; and then for the next few moments all is a hissing, seething, roar- ing caldron of strife, the mad waters seeming to pounce with ever- increasing fury from one imperturbable antagonist to another, now leaping clear over the head of one, only to dash itself into a cloud of spray against another, or pour like a cataract against its base in a persistent, endless struggle to undermine it ; while over all tower the dark, shadowy rocks, grim witnesses of the battle. This spot is known by the appropriate name of " The Devil's Gate."
Wherever the walls of the canon recede from the river's brink, and leave a space of cultivable land, there the industrious Mormons have built log or adobe cabins, and converted the circumscribed domain into farms, gardens, and orchards. In one of these isolated settle- ments I seek shelter from a passing shower at the house of a " three- ply Mormon " (a Mormon with three wives), and am introduced to his three separate and distinct better-halves ; or, rather, one should say, " better-quarters," for how can anything have three halves? A noticeable feature at all these farms is the universal plurality of wom- en around the house, and sometimes in the field. A familiar scene in any farming community is a woman out in the field, visiting her husband, or, perchance, assisting him in his labors. The same thing is observable at the Mormon settlements along the Weber River — only, instead of one woman, there are generally two or three, and perhaps yet another standing in the door of the house.
Passing through two tunnels that burrow through rocky spurs stretching across the canon, as though to obstruct farther progress, across the river, to the right, is the " Devil's Slide " — two perpen- dicular walls of rock, looking strangely like man's handiwork, stretching in parallel lines almost from base to summit of a slop-
06 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
ing, grass-covered mountain. The walls are but a dozen feet apart. It is a curious phenomenon, but only one among many that are scattered at intervals all through here. A short distance farther, and I pass the famous " Thousand-mile Tree " — a rugged pine, that stands between the railroad and the river, and which has won re- nown by springing up just one thousand miles from Omaha. This tree is having a tough struggle for its life these days ; one side of its honored trunk is smitten as with the leprosy. The fate of the Thou- sand-mile Tree is plainly sealed. It is unfortunate in being the most conspicuous target on the line for the fe-ro-ci-ous youth who comes West with a revolver in his pocket and shoots at things from the car-window. Judging from the amount of cold lead contained in that side of its venerable trunk next the railway few of these thoughtless marksmen go past without honoring it with a shot. Emerging from " the Narrows " of Weber Canon, the route follows across a less contracted space to Echo City, a place of two hundred and twenty-five inhabitants, mostly Mormons, where I remain over- night. The hotel where I put up at Echo is all that can be desired, so far as " provender " is concerned ; but the handsome and pictu- resque proprietor seems afflicted with sundry eccentric habits, his leading eccentricity being a haughty contempt for fractional cur- rency. Not having had the opportunity to test him, it is difficult to say whether this peculiarity works both ways, or only when the change is due his transient guests. However, we willingly give him the benefit of the doubt.
Heavily freighted rain-clouds are hovering over the mountains next morning and adding to the gloominess of the gorge, which, just east of Echo City, contracts again and proceeds eastward under the name of Echo Gorge. Turning around a bold rocky projection to the left, the far-famed " Pulpit Rock " towers above, on which Brigham Young is reported to have stood and preached to the Mor- mon host while halting over Sunday at this point, during their pil- grimage to their new home in the Salt Lake Valley below. Had the redoubtable prophet turned " dizzy " while haranguing his fol- lowers from the elevated pinnacle of his novel pulpit, he would at least have died a more romantic death than he is accredited with — from eating too much green corn.
Fourteen miles farther brings me to " Castle Rocks," a name given to the high sandstone bluffs that compose the left-hand side of the canon at this point, and which have been worn by the ele-
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 57
inents into all manner of fantastic shapes, many of them calling to mind the towers and turrets of some old-world castle so vividly, that one needs but the pomp and circumstance of old knight-errant days to complete the illusion. But, as one gazes with admiration on these towering buttresses of nature, it is easy to realize that the most massive and imposing feudal castle, or ramparts built with human hands, would look like children's toys beside them.
The weather is cool and bracing, and when, in the middle of the afternoon, I reach Evanston, Wyo. Terr., too late to get din- ner at the hotel, I proceed to devour the contents of a bakery, filling the proprietor with boundless astonishment by consuming about two-thirds of his stock. When I get through eating, lie bluntly refuses to charge anything, considering himself well repaid by having witnessed the most extraordinary gastronomic feat 011 record — the swallowing of two-thirds of a bakery ! Following the trail down Yellow Creek, I arrive at Hilliard after dark. The Hil- liardites are " somewhat seldom," but they are made of the right material. The boarding-house landlady sets about preparing me supper, late though it be ; and the " boys " extend me a hearty in- vitation to turn in with them for the night. Here at Hilliard is a long V-shaped flume, thirty miles long, in which telegraph poles, ties, and cordwood are floated down to the railroad from the piner- ies of the Uintah Mountains, now plainly visible to the south. The " boys " above referred to are men engaged in handling ties thus floated down ; and sitting around the red-hot stove, they make the evening jolly with songs and yarns of tie-drives, and of wild rides down the long " V " flume. A happy, light-hearted set of fellows are these " tie-men," and not an evening but their rude shanty re- sounds with merriment galore. Fun is in the air to-night, and " Beaver " (so dubbed on account of an unfortunate tendency to fall into every hole of water he goes anywhere near) is the unlucky wight upon whom the rude witticisms concentrate ; for he has fallen into the water again to-day, and is busily engaged in drying his clothes by the stove. They accuse him of keeping up an un- comfortably hot fire, detrimental to everybody's comfort but his own, and threaten him with dire penalties if he doesn't let the room cool off ; also broadly hinting their disapproval of his over-fondness for " Adam's ale," and threaten to make him " set 'em up " every time he tumbles in hereafter. In revenge for these remarks, "Beaver" piles more wood into the stove, and, with many a west-
58 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
eruism — not permitted in print — threatens to keep up a fire that will drive them all out of the shanty if they persist in their perse- cutions.
Crossing next day the low, broad pass over the Uintah Moun- tains, some stretches of ridable surface are passed over, and at this point I see the first band of antelope on the tour ; but as they fail to come within the regulation two hundred yards they are graciously permitted to live.
At Piedmont Station I decide to go around by way of Fort Bridger and strike the direct trail again at Carter Station, twenty- four miles farther east.
A tough bit of Country,
The next day at noon finds me " tucked in my little bed " at Carter, decidedly the worse for wear, having experienced the tough- est twenty-four hours of the entire journey. I have to ford no less than nine streams of ice-cold water ; get benighted on a rain-soaked adobe plain, where I have to sleep out all night in an abandoned freight-wagon ; and, after carrying the bicycle across seven miles of deep, sticky clay, I finally arrive at Carter, looking like the last sad remnant of a dire calamity — having had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours. From Carter my route leads through the Bad- Lands, amid buttes of mingled clay and rock, which the elements have worn into all conceivable shapes, and conspicuous among them
TIIIiOUGII MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 59
can be seen, to the south, " Church Buttes," so called from having been chiselled by the dexterous hand of nature into a group of domes and pinnacles, that, from a distance, strikingly resembles some magnificent cathedral. High-water marks are observable on these buttes, showing that Noah's flood, or some other aqueous calamity once happened around here ; and one can easily imagine droves of miserable, half-clad Indians, perched on top, looking with doleful, melancholy expression on the surrounding wilderness of waters. Arriving at Granger, for dinner, I find at the hotel a crest-fallen state of affairs somewhat similar to the glumness of Tacoma. Ta- coma had plenty of customers, but no whiskey ; Granger on the contrary has plenty of whiskey, but no customers. The effect on that marvellous, intangible something, the saloon proprietor's intel- lect, is the same at both places. Here is plainly a new field of re- search for some ambitious student of psychology. Whiskey without customers ! Customers without whiskey ! Truly all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
Next day I pass the world-renowned castellated rocks of Green River, and stop for the night at Rock Springs, where the Union Pacific Railway Company has extensive coal mines. On calling for my bill at the hotel here, next morning, the proprietor — a corpu- lent Teuton, whose thoughts, words, and actions, run entirely to beer — replies, "Twenty-five cents a quart." Thinking my hearing apparatus is at fault, I inquire again. " Twenty-five cents a quart and vurnish yer own gan." The bill is abnormally large, but, as I hand over the amount, a " loaded schooner " is shoved under my nose, as though a glass of beer were a tranquillizing antidote for all the ills of life. Splendid level alkali flats abound east of Rock Springs, and I bowl across them at a lively pace until they termi- nate, and my route follows up Bitter Creek, where the surface is just the reverse ; being seamed and furrowed as if it had just emerged from a devastating flood. It is said that the teamster who successfully navigated the route up Bitter Creek, considered himself entitled to be called " a tough cuss from Bitter Creek, on wheels, with a perfect education." A justifiable regard for individ- ual rights would seem to favor my own assumption of this distin- guished title after traversing the route with a bicycle.
Ten o'clock next morning finds me leaning on my wheel, sur- veying the scenery from the " Continental Divide " — the backbone of the continent. Facing the north, all waters at my right hand
60 FROM SA1ST FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
flow to the east, and all on my left flow to the west — the one event- ually finding their way to the Atlantic, the other to the Pacific. This spot is a broad low pass through the Rockies, more plain than mountain, but from which a most commanding view of nu- merous mountain chains are obtained. To the north and north- west are the Semmole, Wind River, and Sweet- water ranges — bold, rugged mountain-chains, filling the landscape of the distant north with a mass of great, jagged, rocky piles, grand beyond conception ; their many snowy peaks peopling the blue ethery space above with ghostly, spectral forms well calculated to inspire with feel- ings of awe and admiration a lone cycler, who, standing in silence and solitude profound on the great Continental Divide, looks and meditates on what he sees. Other hoary monarchs are visible to the east, which, however, we shall get acquainted with later on. Down grade is the rule now, and were there a good road, what an enjoyable coast it would be, down from the Continen- tal Divide ! but half of it has to be walked. About eighteen miles from the divide I am greatly amused, and not a little astonished, at the strange actions of a coyote that comes trotting in a leisurely, confidential way toward me ; and when he reaches a spot com- manding a good view of my road he stops and watches my move- ments with an air of the greatest inquisitiveness and assurance. He stands and gazes as I trundle along, not over fifty yards away, and he looks so much like a well-fed collie, that I actually feel like patting my knee for him to come and make friends. Shoot at him ? Certainly not. One never abuses a confidence like that. He can come and rub his sleek coat up against the bicycle if he likes, and — blood-thirsty rascal though he no doubt is — I will never fire at him. He has as much right to gaze in astonishment at a bicycle as anybody else who never saw one before.
Staying over night and the next day at Rawlins, I make the sixteen miles to Fort Fred Steele next morning before breakfast, there being a very good road between the two places. This fort stands on the west bank of North Platte River, and a few miles west of the river I ride through the first prairie dog town encoun- tered in crossing the continent from the west, though I shall see plenty of these interesting little fellows during the next three hun- dred miles. These animals sit near their holes and excitedly bark at whatever goes past. Never before have they had an opportunity to bark at a bicycle, and they seem to be making the most of their
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 61
opportunity. I see at this village none of the small speckled owls, which, with the rattlesnake, make themselves so much at home in the prairie-dogs' comfortable quarters, but I see them farther east. These three strangely assorted companions may have warm affec- tions toward each other ; but one is inclined to think the great bond of sympathy that binds them together is the tender regard entertained by the owl and the rattlesnake for the nice, tender young prairie-pups that appear at intervals to increase the joys and cares of the elder animals.
I am now getting on to the famous Laramie Plains, and Elk Mountain looms up not over ten miles to the south — a solid, towery mass of black rocks and dark pine forests, that stands out bold and distinct from surrounding mountain chains as though some animate thing conscious of its own strength and superiority. A snow-storm is raging on its upper slopes, obscuring that portion of the moun- tain ; but the dark forest-clad slopes near the base are in plain view, and also the rugged peak which elevates its white-crowned head above the storm, and reposes peacefully in the bright sunlight in striking contrast to the warring elements lower down. I have heard old hunters assert that this famous " landmark of the Rockies " is hollow, and that they have heard wolves howling inside the moun- tain ; but some of these old western hunters see and hear strange tilings !
As I penetrate the Laramie Plains the persistent sage-brush, that has constantly hovered around my path for the last thousand miles, grows beautifully less, and the short, nutritious buffalo-grass is creeping everywhere. In Carbon, where I arrive after dark, I mention among other things in reply to the usual volley of ques- tions, the fact of having to foot it so great a proportion of the way through the mountain country ; and shortly afterward, from among a group of men, I hear a voice, thick and husky with " val- ley tan," remark : " Faith, Oi cud roide a bicycle meself across the counthry av yeez ud lit me walluk it afut ! " and straightway a luminous bunch of shamrocks dangled for a brief moment in the air, and then vanished. After passing Medicine Bow Valley and Como Lake I find some good ridable road, the surface being hard gravel and the plains high and dry. Reaching the brow of one of those rocky ridges that hereabouts divide the plains into so many shallow basins, I find myself suddenly within a few paces of a small herd of antelope peacefully grazing on the other side of the narrow
62 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
ridge, all unconscious of the presence of one of creation's alleged proud lords. My ever handy revolver rings out clear and sharp on the mountain air, and the startled antelope go bounding across the plain in a succession of quick, jerky jumps peculiar to that nimble animal ; but ere they have travelled a hundred yards one of them lags behind and finally staggers and lays down on the grass. As I approach him he makes a gallant struggle to rise and make off after his companions, but the effort is too much for him, and com- ing up to him, I quickly put him out of pain by a shot behind the ear. This makes a proud addition to my hitherto rather small list of game, which now comprises jack-rabbits, a badger, a fierce gos- ling, an antelope, and a thin, attenuated coyote, that I bowled over in Utah.
From this ridge an extensive view of the broad, billowy plains and surrounding mountains is obtained. Elk Mountain still seems close at hand, its towering form marking the western limits of the Medicine Bow Range whose dark pine-clad slopes form the western border of the plains. Back of them to the west is the Snowy Eange, towering in ghostly grandeur as far above the timber-clad summits of the Medicine Bow Eange as these Blatter are above the grassy plains at their base. To the south m<3re snowy mountains stand out against the sky like white tracery on a blue ground, with Long's Peak and Fremont's Peak towering head and shoulders above them all The Eattlesnake Eange, with Laramie Peak rear- ing its ten thousand feet of rugged grandeur to the clouds, are visible to the north. On the east is the Black Hills Eange, the last chain of the Eockies, and now the only barrier intervening be- tween me and the broad prairies that roll away eastward to the Missouri Eiver and " the States."
A genuine Laramie Plains rain-storm is hovering overhead as I pull out of Eock Creek, after dinner, and in a little while the per- formance begins. There is nothing of the gentle pattering shower about a rain and wind storm on these elevated plains ; it comes on with a blow and a bluster that threatens to take one off his feet. The rain is dashed about in the air by the wild, blustering wind, and comes from all directions at the same time. While you are frantically hanging on to your hat, the wind playfully unbuttons your rubber coat and lifts it up over your head and flaps the wet, muddy corners about in your face and eyes ; and, ere you can dis- entangle your features from the cold uncomfortable embrace of
THROUGH MORMOX-LAXD AND OVER THE ROCKIES. G3
the wet mackintosh, the rain — which " falls " upward as well as down, and sidewise, and every other way — has wet you through up as high as the armpits ; and then the gentle zephyrs complete your discomfiture by purloining your hat and making off across the sod- den plain with it, at a pace that defies pursuit. The storm winds up in a pelting shower of hailstones — round chunks of ice that cause me to wince whenever one makes a square hit, and they strike the steel spokes of the bicycle and make them produce harmonious sounds. Trundling through Cooper Lake Basin, after dark, I get occasional glimpses of mysterious shadowy objects flitting hither and thither through the dusky pall around me. The basin is full of antelope, and my presence here in the darkness fills them with consternation ; their keen scent and instinctive knowledge of a strange presence warn them of my proximity ; and as they cannot see me in the darkness they are flitting about in wild alarm.
Stopping for the night at Lookout, I make an early start, in order to reach Laramie City for dinner. These Laramie Plains "can smile and look pretty "when they choose, and, as I bowl along over a fairly good road this sunny Sunday morning, they certainly choose. ' The Laramie River on my left, the Medicine Bow and Snowy ranges — black and white respectively — towering aloft to the right, and the intervening plains dotted with herds of antelope, complete a picture that can be seen nowhere save on the Laramie Plains. Reaching a swell of the plains, that almost rises to the dignity of a hill, I can see the nickel-plated wheels of the Laramie wheelmen glistening in the sunlight ou the opposite side of the river several miles from where I stand. They have come out a few miles to meet me, but have taken the wrong side of the river, thinking I had crossed below Rock Creek. The members of the Laramie Bicycle Club are the first wheelmen I have seen since leav- ing California ; and, as I am personally acquainted at Laramie, it is needless to dwell on my reception at their hands. The rambles of the Laramie Club are well known to the cycling world from the many interesting letters from the graphic pen of their captain, Mr. Owen, who, with two other members, once took a tour on their wheels to the Yellowstone National Park. They have some veiy good natural roads around Laramie, but in their rambles over the mountains these "rough riders of the Rockies" necessarily take risks that are unknown to their fraternal brethren farther east
G4 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
Tuesday morning I pull out to scale the last range that separates me from " the plains " — popularly known as such — and, upon arriving at the summit, I pause to take a farewell view of the great and wonderful inter-mountain country, across whose mountains, plains, and deserts I have been travelling in so novel a manner for the last month. The view from where I stand is mag- nificent— ay, sublime beyond human power to describe — and well calculated to make an indelible impression on the mind of one gaz- ing upon it, perhaps for the last time. The Laramie Plains extend northward and westward, like a billowy green sea. Emerging from a black canon behind Jelm Mountain, the Laramie River winds its serpentine course in a northeast direction until lost to view behind the abutting mountains of the range, on which I now stand, receiving tribute in its course from the Little Laramie and numbers of smaller streams that emerge from the mountainous bulwarks forming the western border of the marvellous picture now before me. The unusual rains have filled the numberless depres- sions of the plains with ponds and lakelets that in their green set- ting glisten and glimmer in the bright morning sunshine like gems. A train is coming from the west, winding around among them as if searching out the most beautiful, and finally halts at Laramie City, which nestles in their midst — the fairest gem of them all — the "Gem of the Rockies." Sheep Mountain, the embodiment of all that is massive and indestructible, juts boldly and defiantly for- ward as though its mission were to stand guard over all that lies to the west. The Medicine Bow Range is now seen to greater advan- tage, and a bald mountain-top here and there protrudes above the dark forests, timidly, as if ashamed of its nakedness. Our old friend, Elk Mountain, is still in view, a stately and magnificent pile, serving as a land-mark for a hundred miles around. Beyond all this, to the west and south — a good hundred miles away — are the snowy ranges ; their hoai-y peaks of glistening purity penetrat- ing the vast blue dome above, like monarchs in royal vestments robed. Still others are seen, white and shadowy, stretching away down into Colorado, peak beyond peak, ridge beyond ridge, until lost in the impenetrable distance.
As I lean on my bicycle on this mountain-top, drinking in the glorious scene, and inhaling the ozone-laden air, looking through the loop-holes of recent experiences in crossing the great wonder- land to the west : its strange intermingling of forest-clad hills and
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 65
grassy valleys ; its barren, rocky mountains and dreary, desolate plains ; its vast, snowy solitudes and its sunny, sylvan nooks ; the no less strange intermingling of people ; the wandering red-skin with his pathetic history ; the feverishly hopeful prospector, toiling and searching for precious metals locked in the eternal hills ; and the wild and free cow-boy who, mounted on his wiry bronco, roams these plains and mountains, free as the Arab of the desert — I heave a sigh as I realize that no tongue or pen of mine can hope to do the subject justice.
My road is now over Cheyenne Pass, and from this point is mostly down-grade to Cheyenne. Soon I come to a naturally smooth granite surface which extends for twelve miles, where I have to keep the brake set most of the distance, and the constant friction heats the brake-spoon and scorches the rubber tire black. To-night I reach Cheyenne, where I find a bicycle club of twenty members, and where the fame of my journey from San Francisco draws such a crowd on the corner where I alight, that a blue-coated guardian of the city's sidewalks requests me to saunter on over to the hotel. Do I? Yes, I saunter over. The Cheyenne "cops" are bold, bad men to trifle with. They have to be " bold, bad men to trifle with," or the wild, wicked cow-boys would come in and "paint the city red " altogether too frequently.
It is the morning of June 4th as I bid farewell to the " Magic City," and, turning my back to the mountains, ride away over very fair roads toward the rising sun. I am not long out before meet- ing with that characteristic feature of a scene on the Western plains, a "prairie schooner;" and meeting prairie schooners will now be a daily incident of my eastward journey. Many of these " pilgrims " come from the backwoods of Missouri and Arkansas, or the rural districts of some other Western State, where the perse- vering, but at present circumscribed, cycler has not yet had time to penetrate, and the bicycle is therefore to them a wonder to be gazed at and commented on, generally — it must be admitted — in language more fluent as to words than in knowledge of the subject discussed. Not far from where the trail leads out of Crow Creek bottom on to the higher table-laud, I find the grassy plain smoother than the wagon-trail, and bowl along for a short distance as easily as one could wish. But not for long is this permitted ; the ground becomes covered with a carpeting of small, loose cacti that stick to the rubber tire with the clinging tenacity of a cuckle-burr to a
66 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
mule's tail. Of course they scrape off again as they come round to the bridge of the fork, but it isn't the tire picking them up that fills me with lynx-eyed vigilance and alarm ; it is the dreaded pos- sibility of taking a header among these awful vegetables that un- nerves one, starts the cold chills chasing each other up and down my spinal column, and causes staring big beads of perspiration to ooze out of my forehead. No more appalling physical calamity on a small scale could befall a person than to take a header on to a cactus-covered greensward ; millions of miniature needles would fill his tender hide with prickly sensations, and his vision with floating stars. It would perchance cast clouds of gloom over his whole life. Henceforth he would be a solemn-visaged, bilious-eyed needle-cushion among men, and would never smile again. I once knew a young man named Whipple, who sat down on a bunch of these cacti at a picnic in Virginia Dale, Wyo., and he never smiled again. Two meek-eyed maidens of the Rockies invited him to come and take a seat between them on a thin, innocuous-looking layer of hay. Smilingly poor, unsuspecting Whipple accepted the invitation ; jokingly he suggested that it would be a rose between two thorns. But immediately he sat down he became convinced that it was the liveliest thorn — or rather millions of thorns — be- tween two roses. Of course the two meek-eyed maidens didn't know it was there, how should they ? But, all the same, he never smiled again — not on them.
At the section-house, where I call for dinner, I make the mis- take of leaving the bicycle behind the house, and the woman takes me for an uncommercial traveller — yes, a tramp. She snaps out, "We can't feed everybody that comes along," and shu,ts the door in my face. Yesterday I was the centre of admiring crowds in the richest city of its size in America ; to-day I am mistaken for a hun- gry-eyed tramp, and spurned from the door by a woman with a faded calico dress and a wrathy what-are-you-doing-here ? look in her eye. Such is life in the Far West.
Gradually the Rockies have receded from my range of vision, and I am alone on the boundless prairie. There is a feeling of utter isolation at finding one's self alone on the plains that is not experienced in the mountain country. There is something tangi- ble and companionable about a mountain ; but here, where there is no object in view anywhere — nothing but the boundless, level plains, stretching away on every hand as far as the eye can reach,
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 07
and all around, whichever way one looks, nothing but the green carpet below and the cerulean arch above — one feels that he is the sole occupant of a vast region of otherwise unoccupied space. This evening, while fording Pole Creek with the bicycle, my clothes,
Fishing out my Clothes.
and shoes — all at the same time — the latter fall in the river ; and in my wild scramble after the shoes I drop some of the clothes ; then I drop the machine in my effort to save the clothes, and wind up by falling down in the water with everything. Everything is
68 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
fished out again all right, but a sad change has come over the clothes and shoes. This morning I was mistaken for a homeless, friendless wanderer ; this evening as I stand on the bank of Pole Creek with nothing over me but a thin mantle of native modesty, and ruefully wring the water out of my clothes, I feel considerably like one ! Pine Bluffs provides me with shelter for the night, and a few miles' travel next morning takes me across the boundary-line into Nebraska. My route leads down Pole Creek, with ridable roads probably half the distance, and low, rocky bluffs lining both sides of the narrow valley, and leading up to high, rolling prairie beyond. Over these rocky bluffs the Indians were wont to stampede herds of buffalo, which falling over the precipitous bluffs, would be killed by hundreds, thus procuring an abundance of beef for the long winter. There are no buffalo here now— Tthey have departed with the Indians — and I shall never have a chance to add a bison to my game-list on this tour. But they have left plenty of tangible evidence behind, in the shape of numerous deeply worn trails lead- ing from the bluffs to the creek.
The prairie hereabouts is spangled with a wealth of divers-col- ored flowers that fill the morning air with gratifying perfume. The air is soft and balmy, in striking contrast to the chilly atmos- phere of early morning in the mountain country, where the accu- mulated snows of a thousand winters exert their chilling influence in opposition to the benign rays of old Sol. This evening I pass through "Prairie-dog City," the largest congregation of prairie- dog dwellings met with on the tour. The " city " covers hundreds of acres of ground, and the dogs come out in such multitudes to present their noisy and excitable protests against my intrusion, that I consider myself quite justified in shooting at them. I hit one old fellow fair and square, but he disappears like a flash down his hole, which now becomes his grave. The lightning-like movements of the prairie-dog, and his instinctive inclination toward his home, combine to perform the last sad rites of burial for his body at death. As, toward dark, I near Potter Station, where I expect ac- commodation for the night, a storm comes howling from the west, and it soon resolves into a race between me and the storm. With a good ridable road I could win the race ; but, being handicapped with an unridable trail, nearly obscured beneath tall, rank grass, the storm overtakes me, and conies in at Potter Station a winner by about three hundred lengths.
THROUGH MORMON-LAND AND OVER THE ROCKIES. 69
In the morning I start out in good season, and, nearing Sidney, the road becomes better, and I sweep into that enterprising town at a becoming pace. I conclude to remain at Sidney for dinner, and pass the remainder of the forenoon visiting the neighboring fort.
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC.
THROUGH the courtesy of the commanding officer at Fort Sidney I am enabled to resume my journey eastward under the grateful shade of a military summer helmet in lieu of the semi-sombrero slouch that has lasted me through from San Francisco. Certainly it is not without feelings of compunction that one discards an old friend, that has gallantly stood by me through thick and thin throughout the eventful journey across the inter-mountain country ; but the white helmet gives such a delightfully imposing air to my otherwise forlorn and woebegone figure that I ride out of Sidney feeling quite vain. The first thing done is to fill a poor yellow- spotted snake — whose head is boring in the sand — with lively sur- prise, by riding over his mottled carcass ; and only the fact of the tire being rubber, and not steel, enables him to escape unscathed. This same evening, while halting for the night at Lodge Pole Sta- tion, the opportunity of observing the awe-inspiring aspect of a great thunder-storm on the plains presents itself. With absolutely nothing to obstruct the vision the Alpha and Omega of the whole spectacle are plainly observable. The gradual mustering of the forces is near the Rockies to the westward, then the skirmish-line of fleecy cloudlets comes rolling and tumbling in advance, bringing a current of air that causes the ponderous wind-mill at the railway tank to "about face" sharply, and sets its giant arms to whirling vigorously around. Behind comes the compact, inky veil that spreads itself over the whole blue canopy above, seemingly banish- ing all hope of the future ; and athwart its Cimmerian surface shoot zigzag streaks of lightning, accompanied by heavy, muttering thunder that rolls and reverberates over the boundless plains seemingly conscious of the spaciousness of its play-ground. Broad sheets of electric flame play along the ground, filling the air with a strange, unnatural light ; heavy, pattering raindrops begin to fall, and, ten minutes after, a pelting, pitiless down-pour is drench-
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC.
71
ing the sod-cabin of the lonely rancher, and, for the time being, converting the level plain into a shallow lake.
A fleet of prairie schooners is anchored in the South Platte bottom, waiting for it to dry up, as I trundle down that stream- — every mile made interesting by reminiscences of Indian fights and massacres — next day, toward Ogallala ; and one of the " Pilgrims " looks wise as I approach, and propounds the query, " Does it hev ter git very muddy afore yer kin ride yer verlocify, mister ? " " Ya-as, purty dog-goned muddy," I drawl out in reply ; for, although comprehending his meaning, I don't care to venture into
The First Homestead.
an explanatory lecture of uncertain length. Seven weeks' travel through bicycleless territory would undoubtedly convert an angel into a hardened prevaricator, so far as answering questions is con- cerned.
This afternoon is passed the first homestead, as distinguished from a ranch — consisting of a small tent pitched near a few acres of newly upturned prairie — in the picket-line of the great agricult- ural empire that is gradually creeping westward over the plains, crowding the autocratic cattle-kings and their herds farther west, even as the Indians and their still greater herds— buffaloes — have
72 FKOM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
been crowded out by the latter. At Ogallala — which but a few years ago was par excellence the cow-boys' rallying point — "home- steads," "timber claims," and "pre-emption" now form the all- absorbing topic.
" The Platte's ' petered ' since the hoosiers have begun to settle it up," deprecatingly reflects a bronzed cow-boy at the hotel supper- table ; and, from his standpoint, he is correct.
Passing the next night in the dug-out of a homesteader, in the forks of the North and South Platte, I pass in the morning Buffalo Bill's home ranch (the place where a ranch proprietor himself re- sides is denominated the "home ranch" as distinctive from a ranch presided over by employes only), the house and improvements of which are said to be the finest in Western Nebraska. Taking din- ner at North Platte City, I cross over a substantial wagon-bridge, spanning the turgid yellow stream just below where the north and south branches fork, and proceed eastward as "the Platte " simply, reaching Brady Island for the night. Here I encounter extraordi- nary difficulties in getting supper. Four families, representing the Union Pacific force at this place, all living in separate houses, con- stitute the population of Brady Island. " All our folks are just recovering from the scarlet fever," is the reply to my first applica- tion ; " Muwer's down to ve clarden on ve island, and we ain't dot no bread baked," says a barefooted youth at house No. 2 ; " Me ould ooman's across ter the naybur's, 'n' there ain't a boite av grub cooked in the shanty," answers the proprietor of No. 3, seated on the threshold, puffing vigorously at the traditional short clay ; " We all to Nord Blatte been to veesit, und shust back ter home got mit notings gooked," winds up the gloomy programme at No. 4. I am hesitating about whether to crawl in somewhere, supperless, for the night, or push on farther through the darkness, when, "I don't care, pa ! it's a shame for a stranger to come here where there are four families and have to go without supper," greet my ears in a musical, tremulous voice. It is the convalescent daughter of house No. 1, valiantly championing my cause ; and so well does she suc- ceed that her "pa" comes out, and notwithstanding my protests, insists on setting out the best they have cooked.
Homesteads now become more frequent, groves of young cot- tonwoods, representing timber claims, are occasionally encoun- tered, and section-house accommodation becomes a thing of the past. Near Willow Island I come within a trifle of stepping on a
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 73
belligerent rattlesnake, and in a moment his deadly fangs are hooked to one of the thick canvas gaiters I am wearing. Were my exquisitely outlined calves encased in cycling stockings only, I should have had a " heap sick foot " to amuse myself with for the next three weeks, though there is little danger of being " snuffed out " entirely by a rattlesnake favor these days ; an all-potent rem- edy is to drink plenty of whiskey as quickly as possible after being bitten, and whiskey is one of the easiest things to obtain in the West. Giving his snakeship to understand that I don't appreciate his " good intentions " by vigorously shaking him off, I turn my "barker" loose on him, and quickly convert him into a "goody- good snake ; " for if "the only good Indian is a dead one," surely the same terse remark applies with much greater force to the vi- cious and deadly rattler. As I progress eastward, sod-houses and dug-outs become less frequent, and at long intervals frame school- houses appear to remind me that I am passing through a civilized country. Stretches of sand alternate with ridable roads all down the Platte. Often I have to ticklishly wobble along a narrow space between two yawning ruts, over ground that is anything but smooth. I consider it a lucky day that passes without adding one or more to my long and eventful list of headers, and to-day I am fairly " un- horsed " by a squall of wind that — taking me unawares — blows me and the bicycle fairly over.
East of Plum Creek a greater proportion of ridable road is encountered, but they still continue to be nothing more than well-worn wagon-trails across the prairie, and when teams are met en route westward one has to give and the other take, in order to pass. It is doubtless owing to misunderstanding, a cycler's capacities, rather than ill-nature, that makes these Western team- sters oblivious to the precept, " It is better to give than to re- ceive ; " and if ignorance is bliss, an outfit I meet to-day ought to comprise the happiest mortals in existence. Near Elm Creek I meet a train of " schooners," whose drivers fail to recognize my right to one of the two wheel-tracks ; and in my endeavor to ride past them on the uneven greensward, I am rewarded by an inglori- ous header. A dozen freckled Arkansawish faces are watching my movements with undisguised astonishment ; and when my crest- fallen self is spread out on the prairie, these faces — one and all— resolve into expansive grins, and a squeaking female voice from out the nearest wagon, pipes : " La me ! that's a right smart chance of
74 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
a travelling machine, but, if that's the way they stop 'em, I wonder they don't break every blessed bone in their body ! " But all sorts of people are mingled promiscuously here, for, soon after this inci- dent, two young men come running across the prairie from a semi- dug-out, who prove to be college graduates from " the Hub," who are rooting prairie here in Nebraska, preferring the free, indepen- dent life of a Western farmer to the restraints of a position at an Eastern desk. They are more conversant with cycling affairs than myself, and, having heard of my tour, have been on the lookout, expecting I would pass this way.
At Kearney Junction the roads are excellent, and everything is satisfactory ; but an hour's ride east of that city I am shocked at the gross misconduct of a vigorous and vociferous young mule who is confined alone in a pasture, presumably to be weaned. He evi- dently mistakes the picturesque combination of man and machine for his mother, as, on seeing us approach, he assumes a thirsty, anxious expression, raises his unmusical, undignified voice, and en- deavors to jump the fence. He follows along the whole length of the pasture, and when he gets to the end, and realizes that I am drawing away from him, perhaps forever, he bawls out in an agony of grief and anxiety, and, recklessly bursting through the fence, comes tearing down the road, filling the air with the unmelodious notes of his soul-harrowing music. The road is excellent for a piece, and I lead him a lively chase, but he finally overtakes me, and, when I slow up, he jogs along behind quite contentedly.
East of Kearney the sod-houses disappear entirely, and the im- provements are of a more substantial character. At Wood River I " make my bow " to the first growth of natural timber since leav- ing the mountains, which indicates my gradual advance off the vast timberless plains. Passing through Grand Island, Central City, and other towns, I find myself anchored Saturday evening, June 14th, at Duncan — a settlement of Polackers — an honest-hearted set of folks, who seem to thoroughly understand a cycler's digestive ca- pacity, though understanding nothing whatever about the uses of the machine. Resuming my journey next morning, I find the roads fair. After crossing the Loup River, and passing through Colum- bus, I reach — about 11 A.M. — a country school-house, with a gather- ing of farmers hanging around outside, awaiting the arrival of the parson to open the meeting. Alighting, I am engaged in answer- ing forty questions or thereabouts to the minute when that pious
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 75
individual canters up, and, dismounting from his nag, conies for- ward and joins in the conversation. He invites me to stop over and hear the sermon ; and when I beg to be excused because desirous of pushing ahead while the weather is favorable His Reverence sol- emnly warns me against desecrating the Sabbath by going farther than the prescribed " Sabbath-day's journey."
At Fremont I bid farewell to the Platte — which turns south and joins the Missouri River at Plattsmouth — and follow the old military road through the Elkhorn Valley to Omaha. "Military road " sounds like music in a cycler's ear — suggestive of a well- kept and well-graded highway ; but this particular military road between Fremont and Omaha fails to awaken any blithesome sen- sations to-day, for it is almost one continuous mud-hole. It is called a military road simply from foeing the route formerly tra- versed by troops and supply trains bound for the Western forts. Resting a day in Omaha, I obtain a permit to trundle my wheel across the Union Pacific Bridge that spans the Missouri River — the "Big Muddy," toward which I have been travelling so long — between Omaha and Council Bluffs ; I bid farewell to Nebraska, and cross over to Iowa.
Heretofore I have omitted mentioning the tremendously hot weather I have encountered lately, because of my inability to pro- duce legally tangible evidence ; but to-day, while eating dinner at a farm-house, I leave the bicycle standing against the fence, and old Sol ruthlessly unsticks the tire, so that, when I mount, it comes off, and gives me a gymnastic lesson all unnecessary. My first day's experience in the great " Hawkeye State " speaks volumes for the hospitality of the people, there being quite a rivalry between two neighboring farmers about which should take me in to dinner. A compromise is finally made, by which I am to eat dinner at one place, and be "turned loose" in a cherry orchard afterward at the other, to which happy arrangement I, of course, enter no objections. In strik- ing contrast to these friendly advances is my own unpardonable con- duct the same evening in conversation with an honest old farnier.
"I see you are taking notes. I suppose you keep track of the crops as you travel along ? " says the H. O. F.
" Certainly, I take more notice of the crops than anything ; I'm a natural born agriculturist myself."
"Well," continues the farmer, " right here where we stand is Carson Township."
70 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
" Ah I indeed ! Is it possible that I Lave at last arrived at Car- son Township ? "
" You have heard of the township before, then, eh ? "
" Heard of it ! why, man alive, Carson Township is all the talk out in the Rockies ; in fact, it is known all over the world as the finest Township for corn in Iowa ! "
This sort of conduct is, I admit, unwarrantable in the extreme ; but cycling is responsible for it all. If continuous cycling is pro- ductive of a superfluity of exhilaration, and said exhilaration bub- bles over occasionally, plainly the bicycle is to blame. So forcibly does this latter fact intrude upon me as I shake hands with the farmer, and congratulate him on his rare good fortune in belong- ing to Carson Township that I mount, and with a view7 of taking a little of the shine out of it, ride down the long, steep hill leading to the bridge across the Nishnebotene River at a tremendous pace. The machine "kicks" against this treatment, however, and, when about half way down, it strikes a hole and sends me spinning and gyrating through space ; and when I finally strike terra firma, it thumps me unmercifully in the ribs ere it lets me up.
" Variable " is the word descriptive of the Iowa roads ; for seventy-five miles due east of Omaha the prairie rolls like a heavy Atlantic swell, and during a day's journey I pass through a dozen alternate stretches of muddy and dusky road ; for like ft huge watering-pot do the rain-clouds pass to and fro over this great garden of the West, that is practically one continuous fertile farm from the Missouri to the Mississippi.
Passing through Des Moines on the 23d, muddy roads and hot, thunder-showery weather characterize my journey through Cen- tral Iowa, aggravated by the inevitable question, " Why don't you ride? "one Solomon- visaged individual asking me if the railway company wouldn't permit me to ride along one of the rails. No base, unworthy suspicions of a cycler's inability to ride on a two- inch . rail finds lodgement in the mind of this wiseacre ; but his compassionate heart is moved with tender solicitude as to whether the soulless "company" will, or will not, permit it. Hurrying timorously through Grinnell — the city that was badly demolished and scattered all over the surrounding country by a cyclone in 1882 — I pause at Victor, where I find the inhabitants highly elated over the prospect of building a new jail with the fines nightly in-
78 FROiAI SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
flicted on graders employed on a new railroad near by, who come to town and " hilare "^every evening.
" What kind of a place do you call this ? " I inquire, on arriv- ing at a queer-looking town twenty-five miles west of Iowa City.
" This is South Amana, one of the towns of the Amana Society," is the civil reply.
The Amana Society is found upon inquiry to be a commu- nism of Germans, numbering 15,000 souls, and owning 50,000 acres of choice land in a body, with woollen factories, four small towns, and the best of credit everywhere. Everything is common property, and upon withdrawal or expulsion, a member takes with him only the value of what he brought in. The domestic relations are as usual ; and while no person of ambition would be content with the conditions of life here, the slow, ease-loving, methodical people composing the society seem well satisfied with their lot, and are, perhaps, happier, on the whole, than the average outsider. I re- main here for dinner, and take a look around. The people, the buildings, the language, the food, everything, is precisely as if it had been picked up bodily in some rural district in Germany, and set down unaltered here in Iowa. " Wie gehts," I venture, as I wheel past a couple of plump, rosy-cheeked maidens, in the quaint, old-fashioned garb of the German peasantry. " Wie gehts," is the demure reply from them, both at once ; but not the shadow of a dimple responds to my unhappy attempt to win from them a smile. Pretty but not coquettish are these communistic maidens of Amana.
At Tiffin the stilly air of night is made joyous with the mel- lifluous voices of whip-poor-wills — the first I have heard on the tour — and their tuneful concert is impressed on my memory in happy contrast to certain other concerts, both vocal and instru- mental, endured en route. Passing through Iowa City, crossing Cedar River at Moscow, nine days after crossing the Missouri, I hear the distant whistle of a Mississippi steamboat. Its hoarse voice is sweetest music to me, heralding the fact that two-thirds of my long tour, across the continent is completed. Crossing the " Father of Waters " over the splendid government bridge between Davenport and Rock Island, I pass over into Illinois. For several miles my route leads up the Mississippi River bottom, over sandy roads ; but nearing Rock River, the sand disappears, and, for some distance, an excellent road winds through the oak-groves lining
FROM THE GREAT PLAIN'S TO THE ATLANTIC. 79
this beautiful stream. The green woods are free from under- brush, and a cool undercurrent of air plays amid the leafy shades, which, if not ambrosial, are none the lesa grateful, as it registers over 100° in the sun ; without, the silvery sheen of the river glim- mers through the interspaces ; the dulcet notes of church-bells come floating on the breeze from over the river, seeming to pro- claim, with their melodious tongues, peace and good-will to all. Rock River, with its 300 yards in width of uubridged waters, now obstructs rny path, and the ferryboat is tied up on the other shore. ""\Yhoop-ee," I yell at the ferryman's hut opposite, but without receiving any response. " Wh-o-o-p-e-ee," I repeat in a gentle, civilized voice — learned, by the by, two years ago on the Crow res- ervation in Montana, and which sets the surrounding atmosphere in a whirl and drowns out the music of the church-bells—but it has no effect whatever on the case-hardened ferryman in the hut ; he pays no heed whatever until my persuasive voice is augmented by the voices of two new arrivals in a buggy, when he sallies serenely forth and slowly ferries us across. Riding along rather indifferent roads, between farms worth $100 an acre, through the handsome town of Geneseo, stopping over night at Atkinson, I resume my jour- ney next morning through a country abounding in all that goes to make people prosperous, if not happy. Pretty names are given to places hereabouts, for on my left I pass " Pink Prairie, bordered with Green River." Crossing over into Bureau County, I find splendid gravelled roads, and spend a most agreeable hour with the jolly Bicycle Club, of Princeton, the handsome county seat of Bureau County. Pushing on to Lamoille for the night, the en- terprising village barber there hustles me into his cosey shop, and shaves, shampoos, shingles, bay-rums, and otherwise manipu- lates me, to the great enhancement of my personal appearance, all, so he says, for the honor of having lathered the chin of the " great
and only " In fact, the Ulinoisians seem to be most excellent
folks.
After three days' journey through the great Prairie State my head is fairly turned with kindness and flattery ; but the third night, as if to rebuke my vanity, I am bluntly refused shelter at three different farm-houses. I am benighted, and conclude to make the best of it by "turning in "under a hay-cock; but the Fox River mosquitoes ovist me in short order, and compel me to "mosey " along through the gloomy night to Yorkville. At Yorkville a stout
80 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
German, on being informed that I am going to ride to Chicago, replies, " What ! Ghigago mit dot ? Why, mine dear vellow, Ghi- gago's more as vorty miles ; you gan't ride mit dot to Ghigago ; " and the old fellow's eyes fairly bulge with astonishment at the bare idea of riding forty miles " mit dot." I considerately refrain from telling him of my already 2,500-mile jaunt "mit dot," lest an apo- plectic fit should waft his Teutonic soul to realms of sauer-kraut bliss and Limburger happiness forever. On the morning of July 4th I roll into Chicago, where, having persuaded myself that I deserve a few days' rest, I remain till the Democratic Convention winds up on the 13th.
Fifteen miles of good riding and three of tough trundling, through deep sand, brings me into Indiana, which for the first thirty-five miles around the southern shore of Lake Michigan is simply and solely sand. Finding it next to impossible to traverse the wagon-roads, I trundle around the water's edge, where the sand is firmer because wet. After twenty miles of this I have to shoulder the bicycle and scale the huge sand-dunes that border the lake here, and after wandering for an hour through a bewildering wil- derness of swamps, sand-hills, and hickory thickets, I finally reach Miller Station for the night. This place is enough to give one the yellow-edged blues : nothing but swamps, sand, sad-eyed turtles, and ruthless, relentless mosquitoes. At Chesterton the roads im- prove, but still enough sand remains to break the force of headers, which, notwithstanding my long experience on the road, I still manage to execute with undesirable frequency. To-day I take one, and while unravelling myself and congratulating my lucky stars at being in a lonely spot where none can witness my discom- fiture, a gruff, sarcastic " haw-haw " falls like a funeral knell on my ear,' and a lanky "Hoosier" rides up on a diminutive pumpkin- colored inule that looks a veritable pygmy between his hoop-pole legs. It is but justice to explain that this latter incident did not occur in "Posey County."
At La Porte the roads improve for some distance, but once again I am benighted, and sleep under a wheat-shock. Traversing several miles of corduroy road, through huckleberry swamps, next morning, I reach Crum's Point for breakfast. A remnant of some Indian tribe still lingers around here and gathers huckleberries for the market, two squaws being in the village purchasing supplies for their camp in the swamps. "What's the name of these Indians here ? " I ask.
FKOM THE GEEAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 81
"One of em's Blinkie, and t'other's Seven-up," is the reply, in a voice that implies such profound knowledge of the subject that I
Jumbo comes out to meet me.
forbear to investigate further. Splendid gravel roads lead from Crum's Point to South Bend, and on through Mishawaka, alternat- ing with sandy stretches to Goshen, which town is said — by the 6
82 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
Goshenites — to be the prettiest in Indiana ; but there seems to be considerable pride of locality in the great Hoosier State, and I vent- ure there are scores of "prettiest towns in Indiana." Nevertheless, Goshen is certainly a very handsome place, with unusually broad, well-shaded streets ; the centre of a magnificent farming country, it is romantically situated on the banks of the beautiful Elkhart River. At Wawaka I find a corpulent 300-pound cycler, who, being afraid to trust his jumbolean proportions on an ordinary machine, has had an extra stout bone-shaker made to order, and goes out on short runs with a couple of neighbor wheelmen, who, being about fifty per cent, less bulky, ride regulation wheels. "Jumbo "goes all right when mounted, but, being unable to mount without aid, he seldom ventures abroad by himself for fear of having to foot it back. Ninety-five degrees in the shade characterizes the weather these days, and I generally make a few miles in the gloaming — not, of course, because it is .cooler, but because the " gloaming " is so delightfully romantic.
At ten o'clock in the morning, July 17th, I bowl across the boundary line into Ohio. Following the Merchants' and Bankers' Telegraph road to Napoleon, I pass through a district where the rain has overlooked them for two months ; the rear wheel of the bicycle is half buried in hot dust ; the blackberries are dead on the bushes, and the long-suffering corn looks as though afflicted with the yellow jaundice. I sup this same evening with a family of Germans, who have been settled here forty years, and scarcely know a word of English yet. A fat, phlegmatic-looking baby is peacefully reposing in a cradle, which is simply half a monster pumpkin scooped out and dried ; it is the most intensely rustic cradle in the world. Surely, this youngster's head ought to be level on agricultural af- fairs, when he grows up, if anybody's ought !
From Napoleon my route leads up the Maumee River and canal, first trying the tow-path of the latter, and then relinquishing it for the very fair wagon-road. The Maumee Kiver, winding through its splendid rich valley, seems to possess a peculiar beauty all its own, and my mind, unbidden, mentally compares it with our old friend, the Humboldt. The latter stream traverses dreary plains, where almost nothing but sage-brush grows ; the Maumee waters a smiling valley, where orchards, fields, and meadows alternate with sugar-maple groves, and in its fair bosom reflects beautiful landscape views, that are changed and rebeautified by the master-
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 83
hand of the sun every hour of the day, and doubly embellished at night by the moon. It is whispered that during " the late un- pleasantness " the Ohio regiments could out-yell the Louisiana tigers, or any other Confederate troops, two to one. Who has not heard the " Ohio yell ? " Most people are magnanimously inclined to regard this rumor as simply a "gag" on the Buckeye boys ; but it isn't. The Ohioans are to the manner born ; the " Buckeye yell " is a tangible fact. All along the Maumee it resounds in my ears ; nearly every man or boy, who from the fields, far or near, sees me bowling along the road, straightway delivers himself of a yell, pure and simple. At Perrysburg I strike the famous " Mau- mee pike " — forty miles of stone road, almost a dead level. The western half is kept in rather poor repair these days ; but from Fremont eastward it is splendid wheeling. The atmosphere of Bellevue is blue with politics, and myself and another innocent, unsuspecting individual, hailing from New York, are enticed into a political meeting by a wily politician, and dexterously made to pose before the assembled company as two gentlemen who have come — one from the Atlantic, the other from the Pacific — to wit- ness the overwhelming success of the only honest, horny-handed, double-breasted patriots — the . . . party. The roads are found rather sandy east of the pike, and the roadful of wagons go- ing to the circus, which exhibits to-day at Norwalk, causes consid- erable annoyance.
Erie County, through which I am now passing, is one of the finest fruit countries in the world, and many of the farmers keep open orchard. Staying at Ridgeville overnight, I roll into Cleveland, and into the out-stretched arms of a policeman, at 10 o'clock, next morning. " He was violating the city ordinance by riding on the sidewalk," the arresting policeman informs the captain. " Ah ! he was, hey ! " thunders the captain, in a hoarse, bass voice that causes my knees to knock together with fear and trembling ; and the captain's eye seems to look clear through my trembling form. " P-1-e-a-s-e, s-i-r, I d-i-d-n't t-r-y t-o d-o i-t," I falter, in a weak, gasping voice that brings tears to the eyes of the assembled officers and melts the captain's heart, so that he is already wavering be- tween justice and mercy when a local wheelman comes gallantly to the rescue, and explains my natural ignorance of Cleveland's city laws, and I breathe the joyous air of freedom once again.
Three members of the Cleveland Bicycle Club and a visiting
84 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
wheelman accompany me ten miles out, riding down far-famed Eu- clid Avenue, and calling at Lake View Cemetery to pay a visit to Garfield's tomb. I bid them farewell at Euclid village. Following the ridge road leading along the shore of Lake Erie to Buffalo, I ride through a most beautiful farming country, passing through Willoughby and Mentor — Garfield's old home. Splendidly kept roads pass between avenues of stately maples, that cast a grateful shade athwart the highway, both sides of which are lined with magnificent farms, whose fields and meadows fairly groan beneath their wealth of produce, whose fructiferous orchards are marvels of productiveness, and whose barns and stables would be veritable palaces to the sod-housed homesteaders on Nebraska's frontier prairies. Prominent among them stands the old Garfield home- stead— a fine farm of one hundred and sixty-five acres, at present managed by Mrs. Garfield's brother. Smiling villages nestling amid stately groves, rearing white church-spires from out their green, bowery surroundings, dot the low, broad, fertile shore-land to the left ; the gleaming waters of Lake Erie here and there glisten like burnished steel through the distant interspaces, and away be- yond stretches northward, like a vast mirror, to kiss the blue Cana- dian skies.
Near Conneaut I whirl the dust of the Buckeye State from my tire and cross over into Pennsylvania, where, from the little hamlet of Springfield, the roads become good, then better, and finally best at Girard— the home of the veteran showman, Dan Rice, the beau- tifying works of whose generous hand are everywhere visible in his native town. Splendid is the road and delightful the country com- ing east from Girard ; even the red brick school-houses are embow- ered amid leafy groves ; and so it continues with ever-varying, ever- pleasing beauty to Erie, after which the highway becomes hardly so good.
Twenty-four hours after entering Pennsylvania I make my exit across the boundary into the Empire State. The roads continue good, and after dinner I reach Westfield, six miles from the famous Lake Chautauqua, which beautiful hill and forest embowered sheet of water is popularly believed by many of its numerous local admirers to be the highest navigable lake in the world. If so, however, Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada Mountains comes next, as it is about six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and has three steamers ply- ing on its waters ! At Fredonia I am shown through the celebrated
FROM THE GREAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 85
watch-movement factory here, by the captain of the Fredonia Club, who accompanies me to Silver Creek, where we call on another en- thusiastic wheelman — a physician who uses the wheel in preference to a horse, in making professional calls throughout the surround- ing country. Taking supper with the genial "Doc.," they both accompany me to the summit of a steep hill leading up out of the creek bottom. No wheelman has ever yet rode up this hill, save the muscular and gritty captain of the Fredonia Club, though sev- eral have attempted the feat. From the top niy road ahead is plainly visible for miles, leading through the broad and smiling Cattaraugus Valley that is spread out like a vast garden below, through which Cattaraugus Creek slowly winds its tortuous way. Stopping over night at Angola I proceed to Buffalo next morning, catching the first glimpse of that important "seaport of the lakes," where, fifteen miles across the bay, the wagon-road is almost licked by the swashing waves ; and entering the city over a " misfit" plank- road, off which I am almost upset by the most audaciously indiffer- ent woman in the world. A market woman homeward bound with her empty truck-wagon, recognizes my road-rights to the extent of barely room to squeeze past between her wagon and the ditch ; and holds her long, stiff buggy-whip so that it " swipes " me viciously across the face, knocks my helmet off into the mud ditch, and well- nigh upsets me into the same. The woman — a crimson-crested blonde — jogg serenely along without even deigning to turn her head.
Leaving the bicycle at "Isham's " — who volunteers some slight re- pairs— I take a flying visit by rail to see Niagara Falls, returning the same evening to enjoy the proffered hospitality of a genial member of the Buffalo Bicycle Club. Seated on the piazza of his residence, on Delaware Avenue, this evening, the symphonious voice of the club-- whistle is cast adrift whenever the glowing orb of a cycle-lamp heaves in sight through the darkness, and several members of the club are thus rounded up and their hearts captured by the witchery of a smile— a " smile " in Buffalo, I hasten to explain, is no kin what- ever to a Rocky Mountain "smile" — far be it from it! This club- whistle of the Buffalo Bicycle Club happens to sing the same melo- dious song as the police-whistle at Washington, D.C.; and the Buffalo cyclers who graced the national league-meet at the Capital with their presence took a folio of club music along. A small but frolic- some party of them on top of the Washington monument, "heaved a sigh " from their whistles, at a comrade passing along the street
86 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
below, when a corpulent policeman, naturally mistaking it ion a signal from a brother "cop," hastened to climb the five hundred feet or thereabouts of ascent up the monument. When he arrived, puffing and perspiring, to the summit, and discovered his mistake, the wheelmen say he made such awful use of the Queen's English that the atmosphere had a blue, sulphurous tinge about it for some time after.
Leaving Buffalo next morning I pass through Batavia, where the wheelmen have a most aesthetic little club-room. Besides be- ing jovial and whole-souled fellows, they are awfully aesthetic ; and the sweetest little Japanese curios and bric-d-brac decorate the walls and tables.
Stopping over night at LeRoy, in company with the president and captain of the LeRoy Club, I visit the State fish-hatchery at Mumford next morning, and ride on through the Genesee Valley, finding fair roads through the valley, though somewhat hilly and stony toward Canandaigua. Inquiring the best road to Geneva I am advised of the superiority of the one leading past the poor- house. Finding them somewhat intricate, and being too super- sensitive to stop people and ask them the road to the poor-house, I deservedly get lost, and am wandering erratically eastward through the darkness, when I fortunately meet a wheelman in a buggy, who directs me to his mother's farm-house near by, with instructions to that most excellent lady to accommodate me for the night. Nine o'clock next morning I reach fair Geneva, so beautifully situated on Seneca's silvery lake, passing the State agri- cultural farm en route ; continuing on up the Seneca River, passing through Waterloo and Seneca Falls to Cayuga, and from thence to Auburn and Skaneateles, where I heave a sigh at the thoughts of leavingHhe last — I cannot say the loveliest, for all are equally lovely — of that beautiful chain of lakes that transforms this part of New York State into a vast and delightful summer resort.
" Down a romantic Swiss glen, where scores of sylvan nooks and rippling rills invite one to cast about for fairies and sprites," is the word descriptive of my route from Marcellus next morning. Once again, on nearing the Camillus outlet from the narrow vale, I hear the sound of Sunday bells, and after the church-bell-lcss Western wilds, it seems to me that their notes have visited me amid beautiful scenes, strangely often of late. Arriving at Camil- lus, I ask the name of the sparkling little stream that dances along
88 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
this fairy glen like a child at play, absorbing the sun- rays and coquettishly reflecting them in the faces of the venerable oaks that bend over it like loving guardians protecting it from evil. My ears are prepared to hear a musical Indian name — " Laughing-Waters " at least ; but, like a week's washing ruthlessly intruding upon love's young dream, falls on my waiting ears the unpoetic misnomer, " Nine-Mile Creek."
Over good roads to Syracuse, and from thence my route leads down the Erie Canal, alternately riding down the canal tow-path, the wagon-roads, and between the tracks of the New York Central Railway. On the former, the greatest drawback to peaceful cycling is the towing-mule and his unwarrantable animosity toward the bicycle, and the awful, unmentionable profanity engendered there- by in the utterances of the boatmen. Sometimes the burden of this sulphurous profanity is aimed at me, sometimes at the inoffen- sive bicycle, or both of us collectively, but oftener is it directed at the unspeakable mule, who is really the only party to blame. A mule scares, not because he is really afraid, but because he feels skittishly inclined to turn back, or to make trouble between his enemies — the boatmen, his task-master, and the cycler, an intruder on his exclusive domain, the Erie tow-path. A span of mules will pretend to scare, whirl around, and jerk loose from the driver, and go "scooting" back down the tow-path in a manner indicating that nothing less than a stone wall would stop them ; but, exactly in the nick of time to prevent the tow-line jerking them sidewise into the canal, they stop. Trust a mule for never losing his head when he runs away, as does his hot-headed relative, the horse ; he never once allows surrounding circumstances to occupy his thoughts to an extent detrimental to his own self-preservative interests. The Erie Canal mule's first mission in life is to engender profanity and strife between boatmen and cyclists, and the second is to work and chew hay, which brings him out about even with the world all round.
At Rome I enter the famous and beautiful Mohawk Valley, a place long looked forward to with much pleasurable anticipation, from having heard so often of its natural beauties and its interest- ing historical associations. '•' It's the garden spot of the world ; and travellers who have been all over Europe and everywhere, say there's nothing in the world to equal the quiet landscape beauty of the Mohawk Valley," enthusiastically remarks an old gentelman
FROM THE GKEAT PLAINS TO THE ATLANTIC. 89
in spectacles, whom I chance to encounter on the heights east of Herkimer. Of the first assertion I have nothing to say, having passed through a dozen " garden spots of the world " on this tour across America ; but there is no gainsaying the fact that the Mohawk Valley, as viewed from this vantage spot, is wonderfully beautiful. I think it must have been on this spot that the poet received in- spiration to compose the beautiful song that is sung alike in the quiet homes of the valley itself and in the trapper's and hunter's tent on the far off Yellowstone —
" Fair is the vale where the Mohawk gently glides, On its clear, shining way to the sea."
The valley is one of the natural gateways of commerce, for, at Lit- tle Falls — where it contracts to a mere pass between the hills — one can almost throw a stone across six railway tracks, the Erie Canal and the Mohawk River. Spending an hour looking over the mag- nificent Capitol building at Albany, I cross the Hudson, and proceed to ride eastward between the two tracks of the Boston & Albany Railroad, finding the riding very fair. From the elevated road-bed I cast a longing, lingering look down the Hudson Valley, that stretches away southward like a heaven-born dream, and sigh at the impossibility of going two ways at once. "There's $50 fine for riding a bicycle along the B. & A. Railroad," I am informed at Albany, but risk it to Schodack, where I make inquiries of a section foreman. " No ; there's no foine ; but av yeez are run over an' git killed, it'll be useless for yeez to inther suit agin the company for damages," is the reassuring reply ; and the unpleasant visions of bankrupting fines dissolve in a smile at this characteristic Milesian explanation.
Crossing the Massachusetts boundary at the village of State Line, I find the roads excellent ; and, thinking that the highways of the "Old Bay State " will be good enough anywhere, I grow careless about the minute directions given me by Albany wheel- men, and, ere long, am laboriously toiling over the heavy roads and steep grades of the Berkshire Hills, endeavoring to get what consolation lean, in return for unridable roads, out of the charming scenery, and the many interesting features of the Berkshire-Hill country. It is at Otis, in the midst of these hills, that I first be- come acquainted with the peculiar New England dialect in'its na- tive home.
90 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
The widely heralded intellectual superiority of the Massachusetts fair ones asserts itself even in the wildest parts of these wild hills ; for at small farms — that, in most States, would be characterized by bare-footed, brown-faced housewives — I encounter spectacled ladies whose fair faces reflect the encyclopsedia of knowledge within, and whose wise looks naturally fill me with awe. At Westfield I learn that Karl Kron, the author and publisher of the American road- book, " Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle" — not to be outdone by my exploit of floating the bicycle across the Humboldt — undertook the perilous feat of swimming the Potomac with his bicycle sus- pended at his waist, and had to be fished up from the bottom with a boat-hook. Since then, however, I have seen the gentleman himself, who assures me that the whole story is a canard. Over good roads to Springfield — and on through to Palmer ; from thence riding the whole distance to Worcester between the tracks of the railway, in preference to the variable country roads.
On to Boston next morning, now only forty miles away, I pass venerable weather-worn mile-stones, set up in old colonial days, when the Great West, now trailed across with the rubber hoof- marks of "the popular steed of to-day," was a pathless wilderness, and on the maps a blank. Striking the famous " sand-papered roads " at Framingham — which, by the by, ought to be pumice- stoned a little to make them as good for cycling as stretches of gravelled road near Springfield, Sandwich, and Piano, 111. ; La Porte, and South Bend, Ind. ; Mentor, and Willoughby, O. ; Gir- ard, Penn. ; several places on the ridge road between Erie and Buffalo, and the alkali flats of the Rocky Mountain territories. Soon the blue intellectual haze hovering over " the Hub " heaves in sight, and, at two o'clock in the afternoon of August 4th, I roll into Boston, and whisper .to the wild waves of the sounding At- lantic what the sad sea-waves of the Pacific were saying when I left there, just one hundred and three and a half days ago, having wheeled about 3,700 miles to deliver the message.
Passing the winter of 1884-85 in New York, I became acquainted with the Outing Magazine, contributed to it sketches of my tour across America, and in the Spring of 1885 continued around the world as its special correspondent ; embarking April 9th from New York, for Liverpool, aboard the City of Chicago.
CHAPTER V.
FROM AMERICA TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER.
AT one P.M., on that clay, the ponderous but shapely hull of the City of Chicago, with its living and lively freight, moves from the dock as though it, too, were endowed with mind as well as matter ; the crowds that a minute ago disappeared down the gang- plank are now congregated on the outer end of the pier, a compact mass of waving handkerchiefs, and anxious-faced people shouting out signs of recognition to friends aboard the departing steamer.
From beginning to end of the voyage across the Atlantic the weather is delightful ; and the passengers — well, half the cabin- passengers are members of Henry Irving's Lyceum Company en route home after their second successful tour in America ; and old voyagers abroad who have crossed the Atlantic scores of times pro- nounce it altogether the most enjoyable trip they ever experienced. The third day out we encountered a lonesome-looking iceberg — an object that the captain seemed to think would be better appreci- ated, and possibly more affectionately remembered, if viewed at the respectful distance of about four miles. It proves a cold, un- sympathetic berg, yet extremely entertaining in its own way, since it accommodates us by neutralizing pretty much all the surplus caloric in the atmosphere around for hours after it has disappeared below the horizon of our vision.
I am particularly fortunate in finding among my fellow-passen- gers Mr. Harry B. French, the traveller and author, from whom I obtain much valuable information, particularly of China. Mr. French has travelled some distance through the Flowery Kingdom himself, and thoughtfully forewarns me to anticipate a particularly lively and interesting time in'invading that country with a vehicle so strange and incomprehensible to the Celestial mind as a bicycle. This experienced gentleman informs me, among other interesting things, that if five hundred chattering Celestials batter down the door and swarm unannounced at midnight into the apartment where
92 FHOM SAN FKANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
I am endeavoring to get the first wink of sleep obtained for a whole week, instead of following the natural inclinations of an Anglo- Saxon to energetically defend his rights with a stuffed club, I shall display Solomon-like wisdom by quietly submitting to the invasion, and deferentially bowing to Chinese inquisitiveness. If, on an oc- casion of this nature, one stationed himself behind the door, and, as a sort of preliminary warning to the others, greeted the first interloper with the business end of a boot-jack, he would be morally certain of a lively one-sided misunderstanding that might end dis- astrously to himself ; whereas, by meekly submitting to a critical and exhaustive examination by the assembled company, he might even become the recipient of an apology for having had to batter down the door in order to satisfy their curiosity. One needs more discretion than valor in dealing with the Chinese.
At noon on the 19th we reach Liverpool, where I find a letter awaiting me from A. J. Wilson (Faed), inviting me to call on him at Powerscroft House, London, and offering to tandem rne through the intricate mazes of the West End ; likewise asking whether it would be agreeable to have him, with others, accompany me from London down to the South coast — a programme to which, it is need- less to say, I entertain no objections. As the custom-house officer wrenches a board off the broad, flat box containing my American bicycle, several fellow-passengers, prompted by their curiosity to obtain a peep at the machine which they have learned is to carry me around the world, gather about ; and one sympathetic lady, as she catches a glimpse of the bright nickeled forks, exclaims, " Oh, what a shame that they should be allowed to wrench the planks off ! They might injure it ; " but a small tip thoroughly convinces the individual prying off the board that, by removing one section and taking a conscientious squint in the direction of the closed end, his duty to the British government would be performed as faithfully as though everything were laid bare ; and the kind-hearted lady's ap- prehensions of possible injury are thus happily allayed. In two hours after lauding, the bicycl&ris safely stowed away in the un- derground store-rooms of the ftfoerpoal &JNorth we stern Eailway Company, and in two hours more 1 am wheeling rapidly toward London, through neatly cultivated fields, and meadows and parks of that intense greenness met with nowhere save in the British Isles, and which causes a couple of native Americans, riding in the same compartment, and who are visiting England for the first
FROM AMERICA TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER. 93
time, to express their admiration of it all in tbe unmeasured lan- guage of the genuine Yankee when truly astonished and delighted.
Arriving in London I lose no time in seeking out Mr. Bolton, n well-known wheelman, who has toured on the continent probably as extensively as any other English cycler, and to whom I bear a letter of introduction. Together, on Monday afternoon, we ruth- lessly invade the sanctums of the leading cycling papers in London. Mr. Bolton is also able to give me several useful hints concerning wheeling through France and Germany. Then comes the applica- tion for a passport, and the inevitable unpleasantness of being sus- pected by every policeman and detective about the government buildings of being a wild-eyed dynamiter recently arrived from America with the fell purpose of blowing up the place.
On Tuesday I make a formal descent on the Chinese Embassy, to seek information regarding the possibility of making a serpen- tine trail through the Flowery Kingdom via Upper Burmah to Hong-Kong or Shanghai. Here I learn from Dr. McCarty, the in- terpreter at the Embassy, as from Mr. French, that, putting it as mildly as possible, I must expect a wild time generally in getting through the interior of China with a bicycle. The Doctor feels certain that I may reasonably anticipate the pleasure of making my way through a howling wilderness of hooting Celestials from one end of the country to the other. The great danger, he thinks, will be not so much the well-known aversion of the Chinese to having an " outer barbarian " penetrate the sacred interior of their coun- try, as the enormous crowds that would almost constantly surround me out of curiosity at both rider and wheel, and the moral cer- tainty of a foreigner unwittingly doing something to offend the Chinamen's peculiar and deep-rooted notions of propriety. This, it is easily seen, would be a peculiarly ticklish thing to do when surrounded by surging masses of dangling pig-tails and cerulean blouses, the wearers of which are from the start predisposed to make things as unpleasant as possible. My own experience alone, however, will prove the kind of reception I am likely to meet with among them ; and if they will only considerately refrain from im- paling me on a bamboo, after a barbarous and highly ingenious custom of theirs, I little reck what other unpleasantries they have in store. After one remains in the world long enough to find it out, he usually becomes less fastidious about the future of things in general, than when in the hopeful days of boyhood every pros-
94 FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO TEHERAN.
pect ahead was fringed with the golden expectations of a budding and inexperienced imagery ; nevertheless, a thoughtful, meditative person, who realizes the necessity of drawing the line somewhere, would naturally draw it at impalation. Not being conscious of any presentiment savoring of impalation, however, the only request I make of the Chinese, at present, is to place no insurmountable obstacle against my pursuing the even — or uneven, as the case may be — tenor of my way through their country. China, though, is sev- eral revolutions of my fifty-inch wheel away to the eastward, at this present time of writing, and speculations in regard to it are rather premature.
Soon after reaching London I have the pleasure of meeting " Faed," a gentleman who carries his cycling enthusiasm almost where some people are said to carry their hearts — on his sleeve ; so that a very short acquaintance only is necessary to convince one of being in the company of a person whose interest in whirling wheels is of no ordinary nature. When I present myself at Powers- croft House, Faed is busily wandering around among the curves and angles of no less than three tricycles, apparently endeavoring to encompass the complicated mechanism of all three in one grand com- prehensive effort of the mind,- and the addition of as many tricycle crates standing around makes the premises so suggestive of a flour- ishing tricycle agency that an old gentleman, happening to pass by at the moment, is really quite excusable in stopping and inquiring the prices, with a view to purchasing one for himself. Our tandem ride through the West End has to be indefinitely postponed, on account of my time being limited, and our inability to procure readily a suitable machine ; and Mr. Wilson's bump of discretion would not permit him to think of allowing me to attempt the feat of manoeuvring a tricycle myself among the bewildering traffic of the metropolis, and risk bringing my " wheel around the world" to an inglorious conclusion before being fairly begun. While walking down Parliament Street my attention is called to a venerable-look- ing gentleman wheeling briskly along among the throngs of vehicles of every description, and I am informed that the bold tri- cycler is none other than Major Knox Holmes, a vigorous youth of some seventy-eight summers, who has recently accomplished the feat of riding one hundred and fourteen miles in ten hours ; for a person nearly eighty years of age this is really quite a promising performance, and there is small doubt but that when the gallant
FROM AMERICA TO THE GERMAN FRONTIER. 95
Major gets a little older — say when he becomes a centenarian — he will develop into a veritable prodigy on the cinder-path !
Having obtained my passport, and got it vised for the Sultan's dominions at the Turkish consulate, and placed in Faed's possess- ion a bundle of maps, which he generously volunteers to forward to me, as I require them in the various countries it is proposed to traverse, I return on April 30th to Liverpool, from which point the formal start on the wheel across England is to be made. Four o'clock in the afternoon of May 2d is the time announced, and Edge Hill Church is the appointed place, where Mr. Lawrence Fletcher, of the Anfield Bicycle Club, and a number of other Liver- pool wheelmen, have volunteered to meet and accompany me some distance out of the city. Several of the Liverpool daily papers have made mention of the affair. Accordingly, upon arriving at the ap- pointed place and time, I find a crowd of several hundred people gathered to satisfy their curiosity as to what sort of a looking indi- vidual it is who has crossed- America awheel, and furthermore pro- poses to accomplish the greater feat of the circumlocution of the globe. A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft ; a ripple of applause escapes from five hundred English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle ; and, with the assistance of a few policemen, the twenty-five Liverpool cyclers who have assembled to accompany me out, extricate themselves from the crowd, mount and fall into line two abreast ; and merrily we wheel away down Edge Lane and out of Liverpool.
English weather at this season is notoriously capricious, and the present year it is unusually so, and ere the start is fairly made we are pedaling along through quite a pelting shower, which, however, fails to make much impression on the roads beyond causing the flinging of more or less mud. The majority of my escort are mem- bers of the Anfield Club, who have the enviable reputation of being among the hardest road-riders in England, several members having accomplished over two hundred miles within the twenty-four hours ; and I am informed that Mr. Fletcher is soon to undertake the task of beating the tricycle record over that already well-contested route, from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Sixteen miles out I become the happy recipient of hearty well-wishes innumerable, with the accom- panying hand-shaking, and rny escort turn back toward home and Liverpool — all save four, who wheel on to Wellington and remain