frontier, the rest of his road was only the
old emigrant trail traversed by the coaches of the Overland Company.
Excepting a part of "Devil's Canyon," the way was unpicturesque and
flat; and the passage of the Rocky Mountains, far from suggesting the
alleged poetry of that region, was only a reminder of those sterile
distances of a level New England landscape.

The journey was a dreary monotony that was scarcely enlivened by its
discomforts, never amounting to actual accident or incident, but utterly
destructive to all nervous tissue. Insanity often supervened. "On the
third day out," said Hank Monk, driver, speaking casually but charitably
of a "fare,"--"on the third day out, after axing no end of questions and
getting no answers, he took to chewing straws that he picked outer the
cushion, and kussin' to hisself. From that very day I knew it was
all over with him, and I handed him over to his friends at 'Shy Ann,'
strapped to the back seat, and ravin' and cussin' at Ben Holliday, the
gent'manly proprietor." It is presumed that the unfortunate tourist's
indignation was excited at the late Mr. Benjamin Holliday, then the
proprietor of the line,--an evidence of his insanity that no one who
knew that large-hearted, fastidious, and elegantly-cultured Californian,
since allied to foreign nobility, will for a moment doubt.

Mr. Royal Thatcher was too old and experienced a mountaineer to do aught
but accept patiently and cynically his brother Californian's method of
increasing his profits. As it was generally understood that any one
who came from California by that route had some dark design, the victim
received little sympathy. Thatcher's equable temperament and indomitable
will stood him in good stead, and helped him cheerfully in this
emergency. He ate his scant meals, and otherwise took care of the
functions of his weak human nature, when and where he could, without
grumbling, and at times earned even the praise of his driver by his
ability to "rough it." Which "roughing it," by the way, meant the
ability of the passengers to accept the incompetency of the Company.
It is true there were times when he regretted that he had not taken the
steamer; but then he reflected that he was one of a Vigilance Committee,
sworn to hang that admirable man, the late Commodore Cornelius
Vanderbilt, for certain practices and cruelties done upon the bodies of
certain steerage passengers by his line, and for divers irregularities
in their tra