y--a thirsty, sweltering, longing,
hateful reality!

Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what we
accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a
snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles
an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert,
we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because
we never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort
of dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could
not have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language
sufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three
mile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were,
would be to "gild refined gold or paint the lily."

Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit--but no
matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive
thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where
it would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind
distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and
disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to
leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary
respite from the wear and tear of trying to "lead up" to this really apt
and beautiful quotation.

CHAPTER XIX.

On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the
entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake.
It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitation
of white men, except the stage stations, that we came across the
wretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I
refer to the Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could
learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger
Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent;
inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and
actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa. Indeed, I
have been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood's "Uncivilized Races
of Men" clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded enough to
take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that
shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Such
of the Goshoots as we saw, alo