Mile 1695: Bates’s/ Butte/ Robber’s Roost Station
"While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the "Robber's Roost," which will answer for a study of the Western man's home. It is about as civilized…
Mile 1478: Fish Springs
"At Fish Springs, whose water was filled with small, perch-like fish, two men had charge of the usual number of horses and mules. The water was warm and had a…
Mile 1421: Point Lookout
"Beyond [Faust's, or Rush Valley Station] was Point Lookout, which was the doorway to the worst desert on the North American Continent. Ahead lay a country of bare, rocky mountain…
Mile 1900: Smith Creek Station
"Before 8 A.M. we were under way, bound for Smith's Creek. Our path stretched over the remainder of Reese's River Valley, an expanse of white sage and large rabbit-bush which affords fuel even…
Mile 1870: Reese River
"Below us, 'Reese's River' Valley might have served for a sketch in the African desert: a plain of saleratus, here yellow with sand or hay, there black with fire, there brown where the…
Robber’s Roost
"While the Shoshonee is tracking and driving the old mare, we will glance around the 'Robber's Roost,' which will answer for a study of the Western man's home." [Note: Long disparaging description follows.]
Mile 1312: Big Mountain
"Big Mountain lies eighteen miles from the city. The top is a narrow crest, suddenly forming an acute based upon an obtuse angle. From that eyrie, 8000 feet above sea level, the weary…
Mile 1075: South Pass
"Ten miles beyond Ford No. 9, hilly miles, ending in a long champaign having some of the characteristics of a rolling prairie . . . led us to the South Pass, the great…
Burton on French Canadians
"They are a queer lot, these French Canadians, who have 'located' themselves in the Far West. Travelers who have hunted with them speak highly of them as a patient, submissive, and obedient race, inured…
Scalping
"Scalping is generally, but falsely, supposed to be a peculiarly American practice. The Abbe Em. Domenech ('Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America,' chap, xxxix.) quotes the decalvare of the…
Tracking the Sign of an Indian
" The feet, being more used than the other extremities, and unconfined by boot or shoe, are somewhat splay, spreading out immediately behind the toes, while the heel is remarkably narrow. In consequence of being carried…
Burton on Bloomers and Virginia Slade
"The Bloomer was an uncouth being ; her hair, cut level with her eyes, depended with the graceful curl of a drake's tail around a flat Turanian countenance, whose only expression was sullen…
Burton’s Racism
Sir Richard Burton's City of Saints is often quoted as a primary source for conditions along the emigrant/stagecoach trail in 1860. No one I've read, however, remarks on his casual racism,…
The Mustang
"The mustang is the Spanish mesteño. The animal was introduced by the first colonists, and allowed to run at large. Its great variety of coat proves the mustang's degeneracy from the tame…
American Desert
"We had now [at the forks pf the Platte] entered upon the outskirts of the American wilderness, which has not one feature in common with the deserts of the Old World. In…