to the Diggers by clustering around and examining; the bicycle with great curiosity.  Verdi is less than forty miles from the summit of the Sierras, and from the porch of the hotel I can see the snow-storm still fiercely raging up in the place where I stood a few hours ago; yet one can feel that he is already in a dryer and altogether different climate.  The great masses of clouds, travelling inward from the coast with their burdens of moisture, like messengers of peace with presents to a far country, being unable to surmount the great mountain barrier that towers skyward across their path, unload their precious cargoes on the mountains; and the parched plains of Nevada open their thirsty mouths in vain.  At Verdi I bid good-by to the Golden State and follow the course of the sparkling Truckee toward the Forty-mile Desert.

CHAPTER II.

OVER THE DESERTS OF NEVADA.

Gradually I leave the pine-clad slopes of the Sierras behind, and every revolution of my wheel reveals scenes that constantly remind me that I am in the great “Sage-brush State.”  How appropriate indeed is the name.  Sage-brush is the first thing seen on entering Nevada, almost the only vegetation seen while passing through it, and the last thing seen on leaving it.  Clear down to the edge of the rippling waters of the Truckee, on the otherwise barren plain, covering the elevated table-lands, up the hills, even to the mountain-tops-everywhere, everywhere, nothing but sagebrush.  In plain view to the right, as I roll on toward Reno, are the mountains on which the world-renowned Comstock lode is situated, and Reno was formerly the point from which this celebrated mining-camp was reached.

Before reaching Reno I meet a lone Washoe Indian; he is riding a diminutive, scraggy-looking mustang.  One of his legs is muffled up in a red blanket, and in one hand he carries a rudely-invented crutch.  “How will you trade horses?” I banteringly ask as we meet in the road; and I dismount for an interview, to find out what kind of Indians these Washoes are.  To my friendly chaff he vouchsafes no reply, but simply sits motionless on his pony, and fixes a regular “Injun stare” on the bicycle.  “What’s the matter with your leg?” I persist, pointing at the blanket-be-muffled member.

“Heap sick foot” is the reply, given with the characteristic brevity of the savage; and, now that the ice of his aboriginal reserve is broken, he manages to find words enough to ask me for tobacco.  I have no tobacco, but the ride through the crisp morning air has been productive of a surplus amount of animal spirits, and I feel like doing something funny; so I volunteer to cure his " sick foot” by sundry dark and mysterious manoeuvres, that I unbiushingly intimate are “heap good medicine.”  With owlish solemnity my small monkey-wrench is taken from the tool-bag and waved around the " sick foot” a few times, and the operation is completed by squirting