or said that one of those
streams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey westward
to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds and
even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other was
just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar journey eastward
--and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet
it would still be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, and
canyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by
would join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts
and unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among
snags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch the
wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky
channels, then endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled with
unbroken forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woody
islands, then the chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of
shining sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans
and still other chains of bends--and finally, after two long months of
daily and nightly harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful
peril of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter
into its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its
snow-peaks again or regret them.

I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and
dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for
postage somewhere.

On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired
men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.

In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized
John -----. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Rocky
Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should have
looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years.
But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it had
never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been
accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third
story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave
me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but
chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under it
and an irresistible desire came upon me to d