f life as it seemed--upon
this boundless ocean of snow, whose winters had been unbroken solitude
through all the centuries.

Over this divide we pass among a low range of hills seamed with veins of
silver, having already a more than local reputation. The hills embosom a
clear little creek called after the yellow rattlesnake, which is almost
as plentiful a luxury in these wilds as the grasshopper. It is, however,
less venomous than its Eastern brethren, for not even the oldest
inhabitant can instance a death from its bite. Nervous people avoid it
studiously, but it has many friends among the other animals. The
prairie-dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live a happy family in one
burrow, and the serpent has another fast friend in the turtle-dove.
These doves are called the rattlesnake's brothers-in-law, and there runs
a pretty legend, that when an Indian kills one of them, or mocks their
plaintive cry, they tell the rattlesnake, who lies in wait and avenges
the wrong by a deadly sting. And when one of the snakes is killed, the
turtle-doves watch long over his dead body and chant mournful dirges at
his funeral.

The road to Virginia passes through the basin in which lie the
tributaries of Jefferson Fork. It is a barren waste. Being in the rich
mineral section of the country, its agricultural resources are
proportionally deficient. Providence does not sprinkle the gold among
the grain lands, but, by the wise law of compensation, apportions it to
remote and volcanic regions which boast of little else. Along the
water-courses is a narrow belt of cottonwood, and then rise the low
table-lands, too high for irrigation, and with a parched, alkaline soil
which produces only the wild sage and cactus. Miners curse this
sprawling cactus most heartily, and their horses avoid its poisonous
porcupine thorns with great care. All through these brown wastes one
sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders
not a little how animal life--as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and
deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros--is
preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter. But even when
the mountains are impassable, there is seldom snow in the valleys; and
along the sides of the hills grow stunted tufts of bunch-grass, full of
sweetness and nutriment. Horses always hunt for it in preference to the
greener growth at the water's edge. And it is not an annual, but a
perennial, preserving i