la. After six miles we saw on the left of the path a huge natural pile or burrow of primitive boulders, about 200 feet high, and called "Brigham's Peak," because, according to Jehu's whiskyfied story, the prophet, revelator, and seer of the Latter-Day Saints had there, in 1857 (!), pronounced a 4th of July oration in the presence of 200 or 300 fair devotees.
Presently we emerged from the red region into the normal brown clay, garnished with sage as moors are with heather, over a road which might have suggested the nursery rhyme,
"Here we go up, up, up,
There we go down, down, down."
At last it improved, and once more, as if we never were to leave it, we fell into the Valley of the Platte. About eight miles from our destination we crossed the sandy bed of the La Prêle River, an arroyo of twenty feet wide, which, like its brethren, brims in spring with its freight of melted snow. In the clear shade of evening we traversed the "timber," or well-wooded lands lying upon Box-Elder Creek—a beautiful little stream some eight feet broad, and at 9 P.M. arrived at the station. The master, Mr. Wheeler, was exceptionally civil and communicative; he lent us buffalo robes for the night, and sent us to bed after the best supper the house could afford. We were not, however, to be balked of our proper pleasure, a "good grumble," so we hooked it on to another peg. One of the road-agents had just arrived from Great Salt Lake City in a neat private ambulance after a journey of three days, while we could hardly expect to make it under treble that time. It was agreed on all sides that such conduct was outrageous; that Messrs. Russell and Co. amply deserved to have their contract taken from them, and—on these occasions your citizen looks portentous, and deals darkly in threatenings, as if his single vote could shake the spheres—we came to a mutual understanding that that firm should never enjoy our countenance or support. We were unanimous; all, even the mortal quarrel, was "made up" in the presence of the general foe, the Mail Company. Briefly we retired to rest, a miserable Public, and, soothed by the rough lullaby of the coyote, whose shrieks and screams perfectly reproduced the Indian jackal, we passed into the world of dreams.
At 8 30 A.M. we were once more under way along the valley of Father Platte, whose physiognomy had now notably changed for the better. Instead of the dull, dark, silent stream of the lower course, whose muddy monotonous aspect made it a grievance to behold, we descried with astonishment a bright little river, hardly a hundred yards wide—one's ideas of potamology are enlarged with a witness by American travel! a mirrory surface, and waters clear and limpid as the ether above them. The limestones and marls which destroy the beauty of the Lower Platte do not
