ouls."

Part of a letter to Mrs. Jane Clemens, in St. Louis:

(Date not given, but Sept, or Oct., 1861.)

MY DEAR MOTHER,--I hope you will all come out here someday. But I shan't
consent to invite you, until we can receive you in style. But I guess we
shall be able to do that, one of these days. I intend that Pamela shall
live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist--say,
about three months.

"Tell everything as it is--no better, and no worse."

Well, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild cat" isn't
worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper,
lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of
Paris, (gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children,
lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers,
coyotes (pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.
I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest
country under the sun."--and that comprehensive conception I fully
subscribe to. It never rains here, and the dew never falls. No flowers
grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over
the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the
raven tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the
purest--most unadulterated, and compromising sand--in which infernal
soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush,"
ventures to grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a
model, and build a dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of
telegraph wire--set them one foot apart and then try to walk through
them, you'll understand (provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep
with sand,) what it is to wander through a sage-brush desert. When
crushed, sage brush emits an odor which isn't exactly magnolia and
equally isn't exactly polecat but is a sort of compromise between the
two. It looks a good deal like grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant
that was ever conceived of. It is gray in color. On the plains,
sage-brush and grease-wood grow about twice as large as the common
geranium--and in my opinion they are a very good substitute for that
useless vegetable. Grease-wood is a perfect--most perfect imitation in
miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color of it. As to the other
fruits and flowers of the country, there ain't any, except "Pulu" or
"Tuler," or what ever t