August 3 Saturday – 9 th day out – This is the date for the breakfast at Rocky Ridge station with the desperado Joseph Alfred (Jack) Slade, in RI ch. X 80-9 (1996 Oxford facsimile of first ed.) [MTL 4: 196n2]. Orion’s journal:
Saturday, Aug. 3. Breakfast at Rock Ridge Station, 24 miles from “Cold Spring,” and 871 miles from St. Joseph. A mile further on is “South Pass City” consisting of four log cabins, one of which is the post office, and one unfinished. Two miles further on saw for the first time, snow on the mountains, glittering in the sun like settings of silver [Orion RI 1993, 771]. Note: In his Mar. 11, 1871 letter to Sam, Orion confessed that they had seen Slade at Rocky Ridge, but at the time had not known who he was: “There was nothing then in a name to attract us to Slade, and yet I remember something of his appearance while totally forgetting all the others” [778].
Entry Date
Links to Twain's Geography Entries
Day By Day Acknowledgment
Mark Twain Day By Day was originally a print reference, meticulously created by David Fears, who has generously made this work available, via the Center for Mark Twain Studies, as a digital edition.