A Winter Among the Piutes [pp. 293-298]

A Wi,iter among the Piutes.
any return. Besides, my friend, I am old
enough to be your grandmother."
"Not quite-" he laughed, somewhat disconcerted by the shrewd way in which she
had anticipated what would have been an
awkward scene. "Not quite, Miss Lurida;
any man might be proud to ask you to be
his help-meet."
"Sh!" she entreated. "I am enough
your senior to be permitted to make of you
a protege without any impropriety. We will
be friends, comrades, instead."
"Comrades,'" he repeated, still holding her
hand. "That sounds very sweet to a lonely
man. Well, good night, and God bless you,
comrade "-giving her hand another hearty
grasp, and taking his leave.
"Yes," he said, as he went across the
street, "she is the best little woman on
earth; and if she were only ten or fifteen years
younger-"
And Mrs. Stillwell said to her pug:
"Humph! I do b'lieve she's given him the
mitten. Served him right!"
Emelie Tracy Y. Swell.
A WINTER AMONG THE PIUTES.
r HAVE been asked to write something of
an old-time experience of travel and sojourn
in a certain wild mountain region, which not
very long ago was set down on the maps as
unexplored a region which, owing to its
distance from any railway, may be considered, even at this late day, a somewhat secluded corner of what is generally known as
the Far West. Though the scenes and events
herein narrated are of the past, and are seen
through the mist of twenty-one years, yet the
recollection of those wild days still goes with
me, on the whole a pleasant and never-fading remembrance. And if this narrative
is a very simple one, yet it at least offers to
him who would know his country through
and through, some account of a very peculiar
portion of it, which tourists generally seem
to have made but little acquaintance with.
It lies in the extreme south-eastern part of
the state of Nevada, with Arizona and Utah
on the south and east, and the Mojave desert in the extreme south-west a wild country, where what few valleys there are that are
blessed with the rare luxury of abundant
water, were in by-gone times the real home
of the various bands of Piute and Shoshone
Indians. It is a region of mountain ranges,
extending north and south with singular regularity. Many of the ranges are pine-clad
up to their very summits, while others are
bare and desolate. The intervening valleys
are many of them waterless deserts. It is a
stretch of country of some tragic interest,
since it embraces the locality just beyond
the line of Nevada, in Utah, known as Moun tain Meadows, the scene of that never-to-be
forgotten, tragical Mountain Meadow mas sacre. From this as a starting point, about
two hundred miles due west takes us to
Death Valley, crossing on the way many valleys, among which are those spots of fertility
known as Clover and Pah-ranagat Valleys,
the latter at about forty miles east of Death
Valley. Excepting these oases in the desert,
it is a land where the wild cactus flourishes
with no end of fantastic shapes; a land, in
summer, of drought, of blazing skies overhead, where occasional streams of tawny colored, alkaline, and seemingly worse than
useless waters, mysteriously sink in the sandy
desert, to reappear again in other and far
distant localities. Yet, in spite of the alkaline and verdureless valleys, there is to the
lover of nature a sort of wild pathos and a
grandeur in many of its mountaifi ranges
that is scarcely found elsewhere.
Among the furrows that nature's ploughshare has seemingly drawn broad and deep
through the western part of that mountain
land, is, I have said, the one known as Death
Valley-a broad and waterless sink, which
will always remain without living occupant
save an occasional traveler-unless, indeed,
1886.]
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