st is in itself great good fortune, but to
see them in company with these two students of nature, and to study
the students while the students were studying the wonders, was an
incalculable privilege.

It frightens me now when I think on what a slight chance hung our
opportunity for this unique Journey; for Mr. Burroughs, though at first
deciding to go, had later given it up, declaring himself to be too much
of a tenderfoot to go so far from home alone at his age.

"Why should I go gadding about to see the strange and the
extraordinary?" he wrote me, when trying to argue himself into
abandoning the trip. "The whole gospel of my books (if they have any
gospel) is 'Stay at home; see the wonderful and the beautiful in the
simple things all about you; make the most of the common and the near at
hand.' When I have gone abroad, I have carried this spirit with me,
and have tested what I have seen by the nature revealed to me at my own
doorstep. Well, I am glad I have triumphed at last; I feel much better
and like writing again, now that this incubus is off my shoulders." But
the incubus soon rested on him again, for the next mail carried a letter
begging him to reconsider and let two of his women friends accompany
him. So it all came about in a few days, and we were off.

We wondered how Mr. Muir would relish two women being in the party, but
assured Mr. Burroughs we should not hamper them, and should be ready to
do whatever they were.

"Have no fears on that score," he said; "Muir will be friendly if
you are good listeners; and he is well worth listening to. He is very
entertaining, but he sometimes talks when I want to be let alone; at
least he did up in Alaska."

"But you won't be crusty to him, will you?"

"Oh, no, I shan't dare to be--he is too likely to get the best of one;
he is a born tease."

The long journey across the Western States (by the Santa Fe route) was
full of interest at every point. Even the monotony of the Middle West
was not wearisome, while the scenery and scenes in New Mexico and
Arizona were fascinating in the extreme.

Mr. Burroughs had been to the Far West by a northern route, but this was
all fresh territory to him, and he brought to it his usual keen appetite
for new phases of nature, made still keener by a recently awakened
interest in geological subjects. It enhanced the pleasure and profit
of the trip a hundredfold to get his first impressions of the moving
panorama, as I did when h