To Willow Creek. 30th September.

On this line there are two kinds of stations—the mail station, where there is an agent in charge of five or six “boys,” and the express station—every second—where there is only a master and an express rider. ‘The boss receives $50—$75 per mensem, the boy $35. It 1s a hard life, setting aside the chance of death—no less than three murders have been committed by the Indians during this year—the work is severe; the diet is sometimes reduced to wolf-mutton, or a little boiled wheat and rye, and the drink to brackish water; a pound of tea comes occasionally, but the droughty souls are always “out” of whisky and tobacco. At “Fish Springs,” where there is little danger of savages, two men had charge of the ten horses and mules; one of these was a German Swiss from near Schaffhausen, who had been digging for gold to little purpose in California.

A clear cool morning succeeding the cold night aroused us betimes. Nature had provided an ample supply of warm water, though slightly sulphury, in the neighboring pot-holes, and at a little distance from the station was one conveniently cool. The fish from which the formation derives its name is a perch-like species, easily caught on a cloudy day. The men, like the citizens of Suez, accustom themselves to the “rotten water,” as strangers call it, and hardly relish the purer supplies of Simpson’s Springs or Willow Springs: they might have built the station about one mile north, near a natural well of good cool water, but apparently they prefer the warm bad.

The saleratus valley looked more curious in daylight than in moonlight. The vegetation was in regular scale; ‘smallest, the rich bunch-grass on the benches; then the greasewood and the artemisia, where the latter can grow; and largest of all, the dwarf cedar. All was of lively hue, the herbage bright red, yellow, and sometimes green, the shrubs:were gray and glaucous, the cedars almost black, and the rim of hills blue-brown and blue. We had ample time to contemplate these curiosities, for Kennedy, whose wits, like those of Hiranyaka, the mouse, were mightily sharpened by the possession of wealth, had sat up all night, and wanted a longer sleep in the morning. After a breakfast which the water rendered truly detestable, we hitched up about 10 A.M., and set out en route for Willow Springs.

About an hour after our departure we met the party commanded by Lieutenant Weed, two subaltern officers, ninety dragoons, and ten wagons; they had been in the field since May, and had done good service against the Gosh Yutas. We halted and “liquored up,” and, after American fashion, talked politics in the wilderness. Half an hour then led us to what we christened “Kennedy’s Hole,” another circular bowl, girt with grass and rush, in the plain under a dark brown rock, with black bands and scatters of stone. A short distance beyond, and also on the right of the road, lay the “Poison Springs,” in a rushy bed: the water was temptingly clear, but the bleached bones of many a quadruped skeleton bade us beware of it. After turning a point we saw in front a swamp, the counterpart of what met our eyes last night; it renewed also the necessity of rounding it by a long southerly sweep. The scenery was that of the Takhashshua near Zayla, or the delicious land behind Aden, the Arabian sea-board. Sandheaps—the only dry spots after rain—fixed by tufts of metallic green salsole, and guarded from the desert wind by rusty canegrass, emerged from the wet and oozy plain, in which the mules often sank to the fetlock. The unique and snowy floor of thin nitre, bluish where deliquescent, was here solid as a sheet of ice; there a net-work of little ridges, as if the salt had expanded by crystallization, with regular furrows worked by rain. After heavy showers it becomes a soft, slippery, tenacious, and slushy mud, that renders traveling exceeding laborious; the glare is blinding by day, and at night the refrigerating properties of the salt render the wind bitterly cold, even when the mercury stands at 50° F.

We halted to bait at the half-way house, the fork of the road leading to Pleasant Valley, an unpleasant place, so called because discovered on a pleasant evening. As we advanced the land improved, the salt disappeared, the grass was splendidly green, and, approaching the station, we passed Willow Creek, where gopharholes and snipes, willows and wild roses, told of life and gladdened the eye. The station lay on a bench beyond the slope. The express rider was a handsome young Mormon, who wore in his felt hat the effigy of a sword; his wife was an Englishwoman, who, as usual under the circumstances, had completely thrown off the Englishwoman. The station-keeper was an Irishman, one of the few met among the Saints. Nothing could be fouler than the log hut; the flies soon drove us out of doors; hospitality, however, was not wanting, and we sat down to salt beef and bacon, for which we were not allowed to pay. The evening was spent in setting a wolf-trap, which consisted of a springy pole and a noose: we strolled about after sunset with a gun, but failed to bag snipe, wild-fowl, or hare, and sighted only a few cunning old crows, and black swamp-birds with yellow throats. As the hut contained but one room, we slept outside. The Gosh Yuta are apparently not a venturesome people; still, it is considered advisable at times to shift one’s sleeping quarters, and to acquire the habit of easily awaking.