road. People remained up for them all hours of the night, no matter at
what station they were expected. The warmest and most comfortable of
meals were always ready for them, for which no charge would be taken on
any account. In Utah, a deputation of Mormons galloped alongside them
for forty miles to help them over some points of the road that had been
often found difficult. The season was the finest known for many years.
In short, as an old Californian said as he saw them shooting over the
rickety bridge that crossed the Bear River at Corinne: "they had
everything in their favor--_luck_ as well as _pluck_!"

The rate at which they performed this terrible ride across the
Continent and the progress they made each day, some readers may consider
worthy of a few more items for the sake of future reference. Discarding
the ordinary overland mail stage as altogether too slow for their
purpose, they hired at Julesburg a strong, well built carriage, large
enough to hold them all comfortably; but this they had to replace twice
before they came to their journey's end. Their team always consisted of
the best six horses that could be found, and their driver was the famous
Hank Monk of California, who, happening to be in Julesburg about that
time, volunteered to see them safely landed in Cisco on the summit of
the Sierra Nevada. They were enabled to change horses as near as
possible every hour, by telegraphing ahead in the morning, during the
day, and often far into the hours of night.

Starting from Julesburg early in the morning of the 17th, their first
resting place for a few hours at night was Granite Canyon, twenty miles
west of Cheyenne, and just at the foot of the pass over the Black Hills.
On the 18th, night-fall found them entering St. Mary's, at the further
end of the pass between Rattle Snake Hills and Elk Mountain. It was
after 5 o'clock and already dark on the 19th, when the travellers,
hurrying with all speed through the gloomy gorge of slate formation
leading to the banks of the Green River, found the ford too deep to be
ventured before morning. The 20th was a clear cold day very favorable
for brisk locomotion, and the bright sun had not quite disappeared
behind the Wahsatch Mountains when the Club men, having crossed the
Bear River, began to leave the lofty plateau of the Rocky Mountains by
the great inclined plane marked by the lines of the Echo and the Weber
Rivers on their way to the valley of the Great American De