could show me
things. He himself was devoting all his time to conserving the terraces,
and surreptitiously running hot water into dried-up basins that fresh
pools might form. "I get very interested in that sort of thing. It's not
duty, but it's what I'm put here for." And then he began to talk of his
troop as I have heard his brethren in India talk. Such a troop! Built up
carefully, and watched lovingly; "not a man that I'd wish to exchange,
and, what's more, I believe not a man that would wish to leave on his
own account. We're different, I believe, from the English. Your officers
value the horses; we set store on the men. We train them more than we do
the horses."

Of the American trooper I will tell you more hereafter. He is not a
gentleman to be trifled with.

Next dawning, entering a buggy of fragile construction, with the old
people from Chicago, I embarked on my perilous career. We ran straight
up a mountain till we could see, sixty miles away, the white houses of
Cook City on another mountain, and the whiplash-like trail leading
thereto. The live air made me drunk. If Tom, the driver, had proposed to
send the mares in a bee-line to the city, I should have assented, and so
would the old lady, who chewed gum and talked about her symptoms. The
tub-ended rock-dog, which is but the translated prairie-dog, broke
across the road under our horses' feet, the rabbit and the chipmunk
danced with fright; we heard the roar of the river, and the road went
round a corner. On one side piled rock and shale, that enjoined silence
for fear of a general slide-down; on the other a sheer drop, and a fool
of a noisy river below. Then, apparently in the middle of the road, lest
any should find driving too easy, a post of rock. Nothing beyond that
save the flank of a cliff. Then my stomach departed from me, as it does
when you swing, for we left the dirt, which was at least some guarantee
of safety, and sailed out round the curve, and up a steep incline, on a
plank-road built out from the cliff. The planks were nailed at the outer
edge, and did not shift or creak very much--but enough, quite enough.
That was the Golden Gate. I got my stomach back again when we trotted
out on to a vast upland adorned with a lake and hills. Have you ever
seen an untouched land--the face of virgin Nature? It is rather a
curious sight, because the hills are choked with timber that has never
known an axe, and the storm has rent a way through this timber, s