with good bread and beef; then mountmg their horses,
they may wade them through tracts of wild oats that
top both horse and rider, and they may tread down
the yellow bloom of countless autumnal flowers. They
may see herds of antelopes passing along the plain
like wind-waves over the grass, and droves of wild
horses tossing their heads in the air as their broad
nostrils catch the taint of the intruders, and great,
antlered elk, some as big as Mexican mules, grazing
about the groves and under the scattered trees. Now
they may rest, and now the more fortunate may hope
to enjoy the luxury of house, and bed with clean
sheets and soft pillows. Yet at first, to him who has
long slept in the open air, these are no luxuries. Often
those accustomed to every comfort at home, neat and
fastidious in all their tastes, on resuming their former
mode of living after sleeping a few months in the open
air, have been obliged to leave a comfortable bed and
spread their blankets under the trees if they would
have sleep. The house and its trappings stifle them.
So hates the savage civilization.
The relative dangers of the overland and ocean journe^^s have sometimes been discussed. I should say that in danger, and in the romance which danger brings, the journey across the plains eclipsed the steamer voyage, in which there was more vexation of spirit than actual peril. Even the long and stormy passage of Cape Horn had fewer terrors than the be- lated passage of the snowy Sierra. The traveller who takes ship for a far-off" land incurs risk, it is true ; but if he reaches his destination at all, it is without effort on his part. He throws himself upon the mercy of the elements, and once having done this he can do no more. But there i's much that is strength- enino;, ennoblintx, in the battlin2;s and uncertainties of overland travel. I have, indeed, often thought that man is never more ingloriously placed, that his petti- ness and feebleness are never more ignobly patent,
