Greater Britain

Through a gap in the mountain crest we sighted the West Humboldt Range, across an open country dotted here and there with stunted cedar, and, crossing Smoky Valley, we plunged into a deep pass in the Toi Abbé Range, and reached Austin – a mining town of importance, rising two years old – in the afternoon of the fourth day from Salt Lake City.

After dining at an Italian digger‘s restaurant with an amount of luxury that recalled our feasts at Salt Lake City, I started on a stroll, in which I was stopped at once by a shout from an open bar-room of “Say, mister!” Pulling up sharply, I was surrounded by an eager crowd, asking from all sides the one question: “Might you be Professor Muller?” Although flattered to find that I looked less disreputable and ruffianly than I felt, I nevertheless explained as best I could that I was no professor – only to be assured that if I was any professor at all, Muller or other, I should do just as well: a mule was ready for me to ride to the mine, and “Jess kinder fix us up about this new lode.” If my new-found friends had not carried an overwhelming force of pistols, I might have gone to the mine as Professor Muller, and given my opinion for what it was worth: as it was, I escaped only by “liquoring up” over the error. Cases of mistaken identity are not always so pleasant in Austin. They told me that, a few weeks before, a man riding down the street heard a shot, saw his hat fall into the mud, and, picking it up, found a small round hole on each side. Looking up, he saw a tall miner, revolver smoking in hand, who smiled grimly, and said: “Guess thet‘s my muel.” Having politely explained when and where the mule was bought, the miner professed himself satisfied with a “Guess I was wrong – let‘s liquor.”

In the course of my walk through Austin I came upon a row of neat huts, each with a board on which was painted, “Sam Sing, washing and ironing,” or “Mangling by Ah Low.” A few paces farther on was a shop painted red, but adorned with cabalistic scrawls in black ink; and farther still was a tiny joss house. Yellow men, in spotless clothes of dark-green and blue, were busy at buying and selling, at cooking, at washing. Some, at a short trot, were carrying burdens at the end of a long bamboo pole. All were quiet, quick, orderly, and clean. I had at last come thoroughly among the Chinese people, not to lose sight of them again until I left Geelong, or even Suez.

Returning to the room where I had dined, I parted with Pat Bryant, quitting him, in Western fashion, after a good “trade” or “swop.” He had taken a fancy to the bigger of my two revolvers. He was going to breed cattle in Oregon, he told me, and thought it might be useful for shooting his wildest beasts by riding in the Indian manner, side by side with them, and shooting at the heart. I answered by guessing that I “was on the sell;” and traded the weapon against one of his that matched my smaller tool. When I reached Virginia City, I inquired prices, and was almost disappointed to find that I had not been cheated in the “trade.”

A few minutes after leaving the “hotel” at Austin, and calling at the post-office for the mails, I again found myself in the desert – indeed, Austin itself can hardly be styled an oasis: it may have gold, but it has no green thing within its limits. It is in canyons and on plains like these, with the skeletons of oxen every few yards along the track, that one comes to comprehend the full significance of the terrible entry in the army route-books – “No grass; no water.”

Descending a succession of tremendous “grades,” as inclines upon roads and railroads are called out West, we came on to the lava-covered plain of Reese‘s River Valley, a wall of snowy mountain rising grandly in our front. Close to the stream were a ranch or two, and a double camp, of miners and of a company of Federal troops. The diggers were playing with their glistening knives as diggers only can; the soldiers – their huge sombreros worn loosely on one side – were lounging idly in the sun.

Within an hour, we were again in snow and ice upon the summit of another nameless range.

This evening, after five sleepless nights, I felt most terribly the peculiar form of fatigue that we had experienced after six days and nights upon the plains. Again the brain seemed divided into two parts, thinking independently, and one side putting questions while the other answered them; but this time there was also a sort of half insanity, a not altogether disagreeable wandering of the mind, a replacing of the actual by an imagined ideal scene.