the amount of tearing and patching that is for ever going on;
could either a friend or stranger see us in our present garb, our
appearance would scarcely be thought even picturesque; for a more
patched and ragged set of tatterdemalions it would be difficult to
find upon the face of the earth. We are not, indeed, actually
destitute of clothes, but, saving our best for future emergencies, we
keep continually patching our worst garments, hence our peculiar
appearance, as our hats, shirts, and trousers, are here and there, so
quilted with bits of old cloth, canvas, calico, basil, greenhide, and
old blanket, that the original garment is scarcely anywhere visible.
In the matter of boots the traveller must be able to shoe himself as
well as his horses in these wild regions of the west. The explorer
indeed should be possessed of a good few accomplishments--amongst
these I may enumerate that he should be able to make a pie, shoe
himself or his horse, jerk a doggerel verse or two, not for himself,
but simply for the benefit or annoyance of others, and not necessarily
for publication, nor as a guarantee of good faith; he must be able to
take, and make, an observation now and again, mend a watch, kill or
cure a horse as the times may require, make a pack-saddle, and
understand something of astronomy, surveying, geography, geology, and
mineralogy, et hoc, simile huic.

With regard to shoeing oneself, I will give my reader some idea of
what strength is required for boots in this country. I repaired mine
at Fort Mueller with a double sole of thick leather, with sixty
horseshoe nails to each boot, all beautifully clenched within, giving
them a soft and Turkish carpet-like feeling to the feet inside; then,
with an elegant corona of nail-heads round the heel and plates at the
toes, they are perfect dreadnoughts, and with such understandings I
can tread upon a mountain with something like firmness, but they were
nearly the death of me afterwards for all that.

In the shade of our caves here the thermometer does not rise very
high, but in the external glen, where we sleep in the open air, it is
no cooler.

On the 29th we left this cool and shady spot--cool and shady, however,
only amongst the caves--and continued our march still westward, along
the slopes of the range.

In eight miles we crossed ten creeks issuing from glens or gorges in
the range; all that I inspected had rocky basins, with more or less
water in them. Other creeks we