Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things
about the Overland drivers, now. The disgust
which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper and
a worshipper of the Red Man—even of the
scholarly savages in the “Last of the Mohicans”
who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen who
divide each sentence into two equal parts: one
part critically grammatical, refined and choice of
language, and the other part just such an attempt
to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway
clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson
Bennett’s works and studying frontier life at
the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks—I say
that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian
worshipper, set me to examining authorities, to see
if perchance I had been over-estimating the Red Man
while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance.
The revelations that came were disenchanting.
It was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel
fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy
and repulsive—and how quickly the evidences
accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe
he has only found Goshoots more or less modified by
circumstances and surroundings—but Goshoots,
after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures;
and they can have mine—at this distance.
Nearer by, they never get anybody’s.
There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and
Washington Railroad Company and many of its employees
are Goshoots; but it is an error. There is only
a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough
to mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who
have contemplated both tribes. But seriously,
it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start
the report referred to above; for however innocent
the motive may have been, the necessary effect was
to injure the reputation of a class who have a hard
enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky
Mountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it
in our hearts to give those poor naked creatures our
Christian sympathy and compassion, in God’s
name let us at least not throw mud at them.
CHAPTER XX.
On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain
peaks we had yet seen, and although the day was very
warm the night that followed upon its heels was wintry
cold and blankets were next to useless.
On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound
telegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent
a message to his Excellency Gov. Nye at Carson
City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles).
On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American
Desert—forty memorable miles of bottomless
sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from six inches
to a foot. We worked our passage most of the
way across. That is to say, we got out and walked.
It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one,
for we had no water. From one extremity of this
desert to the other, the road was white with the bones
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
