famous, but the season of the year was
unpropitious to form a favorable opinion of that thriving place, even if
my opinions of Arizona, with its parched-up soil and insufferable heat,
had not been formed already.

We crossed the Gila somewhere below there, and stopped at our old
camping places, but the entire valley was seething hot, and the
remembrance of the December journey seemed but an aggravating dream.

We joined Captain Corliss and the company at Antelope Station, and in
two more days were at Yuma City. By this time, the Southern Pacific
Railroad had been built as far as Yuma, and a bridge thrown across the
Colorado at this point. It seemed an incongruity. And how burning hot
the cars looked, standing there in the Arizona sun!

After four years in that Territory, and remembering the days, weeks, and
even months spent in travelling on the river, or marching through the
deserts, I could not make the Pullman cars seem a reality.

We brushed the dust of the Gila Valley from our clothes, I unearthed
a hat from somewhere, and some wraps which had not seen the light for
nearly two years, and prepared to board the train.

I cried out in my mind, the prayer of the woman in one of Fisher's
Ehrenberg stories, to which I used to listen with unmitigated delight,
when I lived there. The story was this: "Mrs. Blank used to live here
in Ehrenberg; she hated the place just as you do, but she was obliged to
stay. Finally, after a period of two years, she and her sister, who had
lived with her, were able to get away. I crossed over the river with
them to Lower California, on the old rope ferry-boat which they used
to have near Ehrenberg, and as soon as the boat touched the bank, they
jumped ashore, and down they both went upon their knees, clasped their
hands, raised their eyes to Heaven, and Mrs. Blank said: 'I thank Thee,
oh Lord! Thou hast at last delivered us from the wilderness, and brought
us back to God's country. Receive my thanks, oh Lord!'"

And then Fisher used to add: "And the tears rolled down their faces, and
I knew they felt every word they spoke; and I guess you'll feel about
the same way when you get out of Arizona, even if you don't quite drop
on your knees," he said.

The soldiers did not look half so picturesque, climbing into the cars,
as they did when loading onto a barge; and when the train went across
the bridge, and we looked down upon the swirling red waters of the Great
Colorado from the windows