tead, the
committee saw two way-worn individuals climb down from the stage,
unkempt, unshorn--clothed in the roughest of frontier costume, the same
they had put on at St. Jo--dusty, grimy, slouchy, and weather-beaten
with long days of sun and storm and alkali desert dust. It is not likely
there were two more unprepossessing officials on the Pacific coast
at that moment than the newly arrived Territorial secretary and his
brother: Somebody identified them, and the committee melted away; the
half-formed plan of a banquet faded out and was not heard of again. Soap
and water and fresh garments worked a transformation; but that first
impression had been fatal to festivities of welcome.

Carson City, the capital of Nevada, was a "wooden town," with a
population of two thousand souls. Its main street consisted of a few
blocks of small frame stores, some of which are still standing. In
'Roughing It' the author writes:

In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was a "Plaza," which
is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains, a large,
unfenced, level vacancy with a Liberty Pole in it, and very useful
as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass-meetings, and
likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the Plaza
were faced by stores, offices, and stables. The rest of Carson City
was pretty scattering.

One sees the place pretty clearly from this brief picture of his, but it
requires an extract from a letter written to his mother somewhat later
to populate it. The mineral excitement was at its height in those
days of the early sixties, and had brought together such a congress of
nations as only the greed for precious metal can assemble. The sidewalks
and streets of Carson, and the Plaza, thronged all day with a motley
aggregation--a museum of races, which it was an education merely to
gaze upon. Jane Clemens had required him to write everything just as it
was--"no better and no worse."

Well--[he says]--, "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, quicksilver, marble,
granite, chalk, plaster of Paris (gypsum), thieves, murderers,
desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians,
Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpens; coyotes (pronounced ki-yo-
ties), poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits. I overheard a
gentlema