Chapter III: Part 3

The next morning, to our joy, the wind had shifted and the smoke lifted, so we were safe in starting. The cars leave at nine and reach Old Faithful Inn by noon. Here you stay until the next noon. On this first lap of the tour you pass the wonderful Terraces, filled with boiling springs, which look like cascades of jewels in the sunlight. Passing the Devil’s Kitchen, Lookout Point, and the Hoodoos, massive blocks of travertine, piled up in every conceivable shape, at an altitude of seven thousand feet, and Golden Gate Canyon, you emerge into an open, smiling mountain valley with high ranges on every side, through which runs the Gardiner River. The Frying Pan is a sizzling, boiling pool that comes from the bowels of the earth. The Norris Geyser Basin is filled with small geysers, spouting at intervals, and looking like bursts of steam. Emerald Pool is typical of the name. As you look down into it, the gorgeous color deepens like a real gem. The most beautiful example of these pools is the Mammoth Paint Pot, with myriads of scintillating colors.

We could hardly wait to finish lunch, we were so anxious to see the famous Old Faithful spout, or “play,” more properly speaking. At regular intervals of about seventy minutes, the mass of water is thrown 150 feet into the air with a roar of escaping steam that sounds like the exhaust of an ocean liner. At night an immense searchlight on the roof of the hotel plays upon it, and everyone goes to the farther side to view the water with the light showing through--a glorious sight! I can think of nothing but thousands of gems being tossed up by a waterspout at sea. The rainbow colors dance and radiate, making a fairyland scene. The chorus of “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” resembles a crowd viewing a pyrotechnic display on the 4th of July. We were fortunate in seeing both the Giant and Castle geysers play.

The Old Faithful Inn is unique, it being built entirely of the park timber in the rough, hewed from the twisted trees of the forests. The fossil forests are one of the marvels of the park, not all at a particular level, but occurring at irregular heights; in fact, a section cut down through these two thousand feet of beds, would disclose a succession of fossil forests, covered by volcanic material through the ages.

The great open fireplaces of boulders in the hotel always gave a cheery appearance, and in the evenings the attendants pop corn for the guests. A very good orchestra played until midnight and hundreds of people danced on the polished floors. The table is excellent in all the hotels. Our only criticism was that the guests were kept waiting outside of the dining-room until all tables were cleared and reset, when we could have just as well been sitting comfortably inside. In front of the hotel are the bath-houses, with many small pools and one large one. The prices are moderate. All rates, even for postcards, are regulated by the Government officials in the park.

Toodles had informed us early in our trip that she would not be happy unless she met “a real cowboy, of the William S. Hart type, and a real Indian.” Up to now she had been disappointed. We were sitting out under the trees by the hotel, waiting for Old Faithful to “shoot,” when the real article came by on horseback, leading two saddled horses. He was a tall, fine-looking chap, with all the proverbial trappings of an old-time cowboy, riding as if he were a part of his horse. As he was close to us, Toodles called out, “Were you looking for me?” He took no notice, and she repeated it. He rode on, never even turning his head. “The brute must be deaf,” a rather piqued voice informed us. We had been accustomed to such unusual courtesy from Westerners that this surprised us. In a few moments he returned, rode up in front of us, and, with a merry twinkle in his eyes and looking straight at Toodles, said:

“I heard you the first time. Now come and ride with me.”

We all laughed but Toodles. She lost her tone of bravado, and exclaimed, “If you heard, why didn’t you answer me?”

“Oh, just busy. Had to deliver my horses.” His manner was jolly, and it looked like a little adventure.

She wanted to go, but she had recourse to the time-honored “I have nothing to wear.”

“That doesn’t matter; I will fit you out. Ever ride astride?”

“No.”

“Ever ride at all?”

“Of course, all my life!” (indignantly).

“Then come along. I will give you the finest horse in the park to ride, and show you views that the tourists never see.”

We all urged her to go, one lending a hat, another a coat, until at last she appeared with a khaki divided skirt, white blouse, blue coat, and sailor hat, looking very presentable, very pretty, and rather ill at ease. While Toodles was dressing he told us that he had been in the park for years and had charge of the saddle-horses and riding parties. As it was all a lark, and we thought she might not want her name known to him, we told him that her name was “Toodles.” “All right,” with a grin; “I’m on.” When starting he whistled to his dog and called, “Come on, Toodles,” and she nearly fell off her horse (he made her ride astride).

“What’s the matter? I am just calling my dog.”

“Oh, is _that_ your dog’s name?” Toodles replied faintly. “How funny!”

Off they rode up the mountains, and did not return until six o’clock. That evening “Charlie” appeared at the dance in ordinary citizen’s clothes, but the picturesque cowboy was gone. He had written a book of “all the fool questions people have asked me in twenty years.” He kept us gasping at the tales of Western adventure until nearly midnight. In the morning he was on hand to see us off.

The next day was clear and beautiful. Our road took us east over the Continental Divide and along the shores of Yellowstone Lake, past the mud geysers, to the Grand Canyon Hotel. On the divide is lily-covered Isa Lake, whose waters in springtime hesitate whether to flow out one end, into the Pacific, or out the other, into Atlantic waters, and usually compromise by going in both directions. We passed over very steep grades commanding a superb view of Mt. Washburne (ten thousand feet high) through the knotted woods and dense pine forests, past the upper and lower falls, stopping at Artist’s Point to get our first view of the Grand Canyon. It is twenty miles long--the most glorious kaleidoscope of color you will ever see in nature! You look down a thousand feet or more at the foaming Yellowstone River. A little south of this point a waterfall twice as high as Niagara, seemingly out of the dense pine heights above, roars and tumbles into the depths below. “Rocky needles rise perpendicularly for hundreds of feet, like groups of Gothic spires.” Again, “the rocks, carved and fretted by the frost and the erosion of the ages.” And the coloring--this is almost impossible to describe. From the deepest orange to pale yellow, from Indian red to exquisite shell-pink, in all shades of soft green touched by Autumn’s hand. With the greenish cascade of water foaming beneath us and the blue dome of the heavens above, we stood there awed by its fearful majesty and unequaled beauty. As if to make the picture more perfect, an eagle soared through the canyon, lighting on a pinnacle of jagged rocks, where his nest clung as if by magic. As we watched him in silence, the words of Tennyson, to which McDowell has written his exquisite composition, “The Eagle,” came to us:

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunder-bolt he falls.”

Another wonderful, and, if it were possible, a more beautiful view, is from Inspiration Point, on the other side of the canyon. It is like the most exquisite cameo. Before you a gigantic mass of rocks, with turrets and towers, known as “Castle Ruins,” seems to fill the vista. But, as I said before, it simply beggars description. You stand there in the presence of the marvelous works of God, the evidences of great convulsions of nature through the ages. You feel such an atom in the vastness, the unending space of the Infinite, and you recall the words of Victor Hugo in his “Intellectual Autobiography”:

“Beyond the visible, the invisible; beyond the invisible, the
Unknown. Everywhere, everywhere, in the zenith, at the nadir, in
front, behind, above, below, in the heights, in the depths, looms
the formidable darkness of the Infinite.”

The Grand Canyon Hotel is in every respect a modern, beautifully furnished, palatial establishment, worthy of any city. This is the most popular hotel, and is always crowded. The governors of twenty-one states and their parties were touring the park. They expressed their appreciation of the Government’s activities in behalf of the comforts and conveniences for the people--also, of its shortcomings, in the failure to provide the necessary funds for further improvements.

We found the roads in most places worthy of the name “highways”; but on the steepest grades, where the outside of the road shelves off into space, with a drop of hundreds of feet, there are no walls or fences, not even railings, to prevent accidents. In the main, the roads are sufficiently wide to allow two cars to pass; in some places, however, the smaller car must back down to a siding to allow the Government cars, which have the right of way on the _inside_ of the road, to pass. Many times we hung on by our eyebrows, apparently, and felt as if our “tummies” had sunk into our boots. We found it more comfortable to look up than down into the depths.

Today we met our small boys again. I had forgotten them. After leaving Minneapolis, many times we had overtaken two boys, who were making a hike to the park, a distance of over nine hundred miles. They were about sixteen years of age, as sturdy, polite little chaps as you could meet. Many times we had given them a lift of fifty miles or more into the next town. They told us that they had earned the money for the trip and carried their camping outfits on their backs. They camped near a haystack at night, bought food (or had it given to them) on the road, and were having the time of their lives. When I thought of the Dakota prairies and Bad Lands, and of the hot, dusty Montana plains, I realized more than ever the sturdy stuff that Westerners are made of. I would like to know what the future holds for those two lads.

The last day of our trip was back to the starting-point, Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. That morning Toodles left us, taking the trip out to the eastern entrance at Cody. This charming little lady had been with us six weeks, and we were sorry to see her go.

We were told that the scenery was even finer on the Cody road, but we could not conceive of it.

After going a few miles from the hotel, through a bit of woods, our driver jammed on his brakes, with the news, “Here are the bears!”--two good-sized cubs and the mother bear holding us up! They were in the middle of the road; so we had to stop. Everyone wants to see the bears in the park. Well, _we did_! The old one, a big cinnamon bear, walked around to the side of the car, stood on her hind legs, with her front paws on the door of the car and her muzzle in my lap! I never was so scared in my life! “She wants the candy,” the others exclaimed. I had a box of chocolates in my lap, and, with my hands shaking like aspens, I began to peel off the silver foil from one piece. “Don’t stop for that; give her the candy, or she will be in the car!” yelled the driver. And you better believe I did, in short order! Handing her the box, she gobbled every piece, foil and all. Everyone was standing on the seats with a camera trying to snap the picture. After she sniffed about to see if I had any more, she went to all the cars lined up back of us, where they fed her and the cubs everything they carried. They had to, for she foraged for herself. I assure you that the sensation of having a huge bear eat out of your hand is a thriller! There are black and grizzly (or silver-tip) bears in the park. A few venture out of the woods to the camps and garbage-dumps near the hotels. Of course, the forests are full of large and small game. There are two buffalo herds. The tame herd has increased from twenty animals, in 1902, to 385, in October, 1918. We saw mountain-sheep and many deer.

We went over the Dunraven Pass, one of the most daring drives, getting a fine view of Tower Falls, 132 feet high. In fact, that last day was one long thrill. We reached the hotel for dinner feeling a bit limp and exhausted, we had been at such high tension for three days. We sat by the roaring log fire that evening, living it all over again. “Will you ever forget that view of the canyon?”--“How truly wonderful the trip has been!” It was truly wonderful! I have not given you even an approximate idea of the scenery or the wonders. I can only say, “Go and see it for yourself.” For those who enjoy camping, every comfort and facility are provided. If you wish to camp _de luxe_, the Yellowstone Park Camping Company maintains five permanent camps or “tent cities” in the park. All tents have floors, electric lights, and are heated by wood-burning stoves. The beds are full-sized and comfortable. There are large dining-halls, recreation pavilions, and “campfires.” The campers in the park were legion this season.

The next morning we bade good-by to Mrs. H., who left us for Gardiner, and the “bird-man” and his lady chauffeur proceeded together.

XII

WESTWARD HO!

Everyone had the same disconsolate story to tell of the route through Idaho and Nevada to the Coast. (I often have wondered why the expression “The Coast” means but one place, the Pacific Coast. We have a few thousand miles of sea-coast on the Atlantic, but no one ever speaks of going East “to the Coast.”) All the motor parties we met that came that way to the park advised us to go north from Gardiner, over the Yellowstone Trail to Spokane and Seattle, and then down the coast to San Francisco. One man said, “I wouldn’t take five thousand dollars to go back over those roads!” We had practically decided to go the northern route, but the forest fires were still raging in that section, and many cars were turned back. It was Hobson’s choice; we had no alternative.

Our car had been left in the garage at Mammoth. On leaving we found there was no charge for the four days’ storage. It seemed like home to be back in our own car again. We followed the same route that we took to Old Faithful until we reached Gibbon Falls, then turned west along the Madison River to the western gate at Yellowstone, and so out of the park into Idaho.

If there are worse roads anywhere on earth than in Idaho, I hope we may never see them! It had grown hot, and every mile of the way was hotter. Sand, dust, ruts three feet deep, and chuck-holes at every turn! In contrast to the roads in the park, that state is a nightmare! By the time we had reached Ashton (123 miles), we wished we had never seen Idaho. The Kirkbride Hotel was wretched, with only one bathroom for the establishment, no café, and dirty beyond expression. The town has but one street, a typical cowboy town, as primitive as possible. The hotel manager asked if we carried our own bedding! “Do we look as if we did?” No reply. We probably did--and worse. It seems that the camping parties from the park often brought _things_ beside bedding with them! At ten that night we found some food, in a wretched Chinese restaurant.

The next day was hot and dusty, and there were more bad roads; but we knew that we should find a good hotel at Pocatello, with private bath and decent food. We went through Idaho Falls and the Blackfoot Reservation.

An incident occurred here that would have made Toodles green with envy. We were taking advantage of our first stretch of good road in two days, and going at a lively speed. Away ahead, in the middle of the road, stood a solitary figure. We sounded our horn. The figure did not budge. Then we blew a blast that would have raised Rameses II and came to a stop a few feet from a man. He proved to be a “real honest-to-gosh,” as they say out here, Indian chief. His frame was massive and his face square-jawed, of a copper-bronze hue. A crimson kerchief, earrings, and beads, with ordinary trousers and shirt, completed his costume. He stood there like a dethroned emperor. With a dignified majesty, he waved his arm and said, “Take me home.” I turned to look at him as he sat, with folded arms, alone in the tonneau, with an air that plainly said, “I owned all this once; it is all _mine_.” He told us that he was chief of the Shoshone tribe, and owned 250 acres; that he rented two of his ranches and lived on the one “where the trees were, a mile up the road.” The land was under high cultivation, with fine buildings. When we let him out he just waved us on, saying, “Me good American.” I wondered if at heart he really were, or if he knew that he _had_ to be. We often saw Indian women on the roadside selling garden truck--always with a stolid expression, and seldom a smile. If you spoke to them, their invariable rejoinder was “You bet” (pronounced “U-bit”). This seems to be the prevailing expression in the West.

The Yellowstone Hotel in Pocatello is very good, and crowded, like all of the Western hotels.

The heat was intense, even at nine in the morning, and Ogden, Utah, 165 miles south. “Are the roads good?” we asked the clerk. Smiling, he replied, “I am from New York.” At Dayton, we crossed the border into Utah. Before us lay a cement road as white as snow. We could hardly believe our eyes. “Woman, bow down and worship!” the bird-man exclaimed. Regardless of speed laws, we flew over that road for miles, through beautiful towns and avenues of Lombardy poplars. We remarked that every little bungalow was surrounded by these tall trees. “The Mormons must have planted one for each wife and child.” The farms were fertile and well cultivated, and for miles the peach orchards lined the sides of the road, the trees laden with fruit. At each station wagons were unloading hundreds of crates ready for shipment. Tomatoes and melons, also, are raised in abundance. Brigham is a clean, attractive city, with peach-trees growing in every garden and on the roadside. They celebrate an annual “Peach day” in September. “Every visitor will receive a peach,” the posters read. I bought a basket, of a dozen or more, for ten cents. Here we became acquainted with the red grasshopper. We thought we had left all of these little pests in Fargo; but here they were as lively as ever and as red as strawberries. And that reminds me--we have had delicious strawberries for weeks (in August).

The roads were so wonderful that we forgot our aching backbones and enjoyed every mile of the way into Ogden, to the Reed Hotel. We spent two days here, as there was much of interest to see and do. The hotel is old, but well kept up. We had a room large enough to hold a convention in, with a smaller bedroom and bath adjoining, and eight large windows altogether. Again the hotel was crowded. The railroad strike was on in California, and people were marooned in every city; only local trains were running.

The next day we drove to Salt Lake City, a distance of about thirty-five miles. Of all the Western cities, we were most anxious to see the capital of Utah. And now a joke at my expense! I asked the clerk in the hotel where we could get the steamer for Salt Lake City.

“What steamer?” he asked in surprise.

“Can’t you go there by boat?”

“Say, lady, I guess you come from the East.”

I admitted the truth of that.

“Ever been West before?”

This time a negative.

“Don’t you know that the boat has never been built that will float on Salt Lake?”

I thought of “Cowboy Charlie” and his book of “fool questions.”

Salt Lake is a wonderful city. Whatever you may think of the Mormons, you have to admit that they are a far-sighted, industrious, and executive people. Your chief interest centers about the Temple Block, a ten-acre square surrounded by a stone and adobe wall twelve feet high. The grounds are a beautiful park. The Bureau of Information is a fine large building, where literature is distributed to three hundred thousand visitors yearly. As many as thirty-nine states and seven foreign countries had been represented on the registry in one day. “No fees charged, and no donations received,” was the watchword on these grounds. We wondered how the place was supported, and were told that there were no pew-rentals in any of their churches, and no collections made, nor were there any contribution-boxes found there.

“The Mormons observe the ancient law of tithing, as it was given to the Children of Israel, by which a member pays one-tenth of his income, as a free-will offering, for the support of the Church.”

In the Temple Block is the Assembly Hall, a semi-Gothic structure of gray granite, with a seating capacity of two thousand, often used for public lectures and concerts by any denomination. The Tabernacle is a world-famed auditorium, seating eight thousand people, noted for its remarkable construction and acoustic properties. The wooden roof, self-supporting, rests upon buttresses of red sandstone, twelve feet apart, the whole circumference of the building. These pillars support wooden arches ten feet in thickness and spanning 150 feet. The arches, of a lattice-truss construction, are put together with wooden pins, there being no nails or iron of any kind used in the framework. The building was erected between 1863 and 1870, and was nearly completed before the railroads reached Utah. All the imported material had to be hauled with ox-teams from the Missouri River. The original cost was three hundred thousand dollars, exclusive of the cost of the organ. Our guide, a lady, told us that their pioneer leader, Brigham Young, had planned and supervised the erection of the building. “He was a glazier and cabinet-maker by trade, but had been schooled chiefly by hardship and experience. He not only designed this and the Temple, but he built an equally wonderful commonwealth; one which is unique among the Middle and Western states for law and order, religious devotion and loyalty.” She told us that their church had established headquarters successively in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and, after the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, in 1846, it was obliged to seek refuge in the Rocky Mountains. They have no professional or paid preachers; any member of the congregation may be called upon to address them. We were interested to hear of their women. “They are the freest, most intensely individualistic women on earth, having three organizations of their own. The Relief Society has thirty thousand members, publishes a monthly periodical, has up-to-date offices, owns many ward-houses, and spends thousands of dollars yearly for charity and education. The Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association was organized in 1869 by Brigham Young, chiefly among his own daughters.” (_Some_ family party!) This association now numbers over thirty thousand girls. It also edits and controls a magazine. Besides these activities, there is the Primary Association, with many thousands of children marshaled under its banner. We remembered that the women have full suffrage in Utah, and were not surprised to hear of their ward conferences and public speakers. This did not sound much like the “down-trodden slaves” that many consider the Mormon women to be.

Most prominent among the structures in the “Block” is the Temple, began less than six years after the pioneers found here a desolate sagebrush wilderness. Before railroads were built to the granite quarries, twenty miles southeast of the city, the huge blocks of stone were hauled by ox-teams, requiring at times four yoke of oxen four days to transport a single stone! Forty years were required in its completion, and the structure stands as a monument to the untiring energy of these people. Its cost, in all, was four million dollars. Visitors have never been admitted to the Temple since its dedication in 1893. “It was not designed as a place of public assembly,” our guide informed us; “it is to us a holy place devoted to sacred ordinances, and open only to our own church members in good standing.” I wish that space permitted me to quote all that we heard of their marriages, and even divorces, and of their many quaint customs.

The figure surmounting the Temple is twelve feet in height, of hammered copper covered with gold leaf, and represents the angel Moroni, the son of Mormon, the writer of the Book of Mormon, which “is an inspired historical record of the ancient inhabitants of the American continent, corresponding to the Old Testament.” Mormon, who lived about 400 A. D., was one of the last of their prophets, and into the Book of Mormon compiled the traditions which had come to him through generations. This is not the Mormon Bible, for they use the King James translation that our Christian churches use.

The Sea-Gull Monument is also in the “Block.” It commemorates a historic incident of pioneer days, and was designed by Mahonri M. Young, a grandson of Brigham. A granite base of twenty tons, resting on a concrete foundation, supports a granite column fifteen feet high, surmounted by a granite globe. Two bronze sea-gulls rest upon this ball. The birds weigh five hundred pounds, and the stretch of their wings is eight feet. On three sides of the base, in relief sculpture, the sea-gull story is told, which, briefly, is this: In 1848 this was the earliest settlement in the Rocky Mountains, and less than a year old, consisting of a camp, a log and mud fort enclosing huts, tents and wagons, with about eighteen hundred people. Their handful of crops the first year, mainly potatoes, having failed, they were looking for a good harvest the second year, or they would face starvation. In the spring of 1848 five thousand acres of land were under cultivation in the valley, nine hundred with winter wheat. Then came the plague of crickets (our friends the grasshopper family). “They rolled in legions down the mountain sides, attacking the young grain and destroying the crops.” Men, women and children fought them with brooms, with fire, and even dug ditches and turned water into the trenches. It looked hopeless; their crops seemed doomed, when great flocks of sea-gulls swept down on the crickets and devoured them. The Mormons compare the incident to the saving of Rome by the cackling geese.

We heard an amusing story of how Brigham Young came by his name. Originally his surname was “Brigham.” Once, when his agent returned with some prospective brides, Brigham, looking them over and finding them too old, exclaimed, “Go find others, and bring ’em young.”

The Utah Hotel is one of the finest in the country. It is owned and run by the Mormons, and it does them great credit. We dined in the roof-garden, which compares favorably with that of any hotel in New York. You look off to the Wasatch range of mountains, the beautiful fertile valley, and the great Salt Lake, beyond which lies the desert.

The executive staff of the Mormon Church has one of the finest buildings in the city. The interior is paneled with native marbles and woods and represents a fortune.

Returning to Ogden, we spent the next day visiting Ogden Canyon, a short trip of twenty miles. We drove through groves of walnut trees laden with nuts. Making a sharp turn on a good macadam road, you wind through a deep canyon gorgeous with autumn foliage, a beautiful sight. The river bank is lined with vine-covered bungalows, almost hidden from view. The canyon streams are noted for the brook-trout fishing. A Boston chap told us that he and two other boys caught ninety pounds in three days. We lunched at the Hermitage, the best-known resort near Ogden. It is built of logs, in the wildest part of the canyon. The house was decorated with ferns and mountain wild flowers, as artistically as a private home. We certainly enjoyed the brook-trout dinner ($1.50) of fish caught that day in front of the hotel. Of course, this cannot be compared to Yellowstone Canyon, but it is very beautiful and well worth the trip from Ogden.

That evening we pored over maps. There was no route across the desert that was good--only some were worse than others. Everyone advised us to take the “Pike’s Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway,” which follows the Southern Pacific Railroad (at intervals), and is considered a “safety-first” way.

I never see that word “highway” that I don’t want to laugh! A “cow-path” would more nearly describe any that we traveled in Idaho or Nevada (not to mention a few others).

XIII

NEVADA AND THE DESERT

We did not look forward with an atom of pleasure to this part of the trip. We dreaded it. It simply _had_ to be done. The officials told us that nearly all the tourists shipped their cars to Reno. That was valuable information to give us, when not a train was running west. The clerk pointed out a dried-up little woman of seventy, and said, with a withering glance at me: “See that old lady? She has driven her own car across the desert twice this summer!” Well, you know how such remarks make you feel. Not that you care a--bit what that clerk thought of you, but you don’t like to realize that you are a molly-coddle or a coward. Besides, my husband had laughed at my apprehensions, and that wouldn’t do either. So I thought of our good fortune so far, of our slogan, and of the old party of seventy, and I gave my pride a hitch and said, “Let’s start”--and we did.

Our route lay over the same road back through Brigham, a beautiful drive that far, then it turned northwest, over the northern part of the Great Salt Lake desert, ninety miles to Snowville. The sand was so deep that we crawled most of the way. The sun scorched our skin and eyes until they felt dry as ashes. We had left the railroad and telegraph poles and had but a single-file path through the sand, with chuck-holes every few feet. When the wind blew it felt as if an oven-door had been opened in your face, and the snow-white sand covered everything, including the tracks in the road, which was not pleasant. Nothing was to be seen except the endless sand, dry sagebrush, cactus, and an occasional prairie-dog. We met but two cars that day. I can conceive of nothing more utterly desolate and God-forsaken than the desert. There is a silence of deathlike stillness that gets on the nerves, and the sameness is wearisome.

We were glad to see Snowville, although Snowville was not much to see. It consisted of one street, with possibly twenty houses, a garage, two stores, and a few trees. The people who owned the grocery-store rented rooms. They were kind and hospitable, and made us comfortable as they could. One cannot pick and choose in the desert. You are glad and thankful to find anything that looks like a bed and water. The woman told us that the two stalwart young men were her sons, just returned from service; one was a major. They were running the garage and helping in the store. The whole family were educated, intelligent people, except the old man, whose vocabulary was limited to “You bet!” and “By heck!” What they could find in life in such surroundings, with nothing, absolutely nothing, to commend the place, was hard to conceive. And yet the mother told me that the women in the village had done more Red Cross work during the war than those of any town of its size in the state, and they had oversubscribed their quota in the Liberty Loans! “The war did not seem very real to us ’way out here,” she said. “What we read in the papers seemed like a novel. But when my boys went it brought it nearer home to _me_. We were so far from the busy world our lives were too limited to realize what was going on across the seas.” I could understand that, for one day of the desert made me feel an isolation that I never had felt in the middle of the Atlantic.

They had a bathroom; but if the water was being used in the garage or kitchen, it would not run upstairs. Someone had driven miles away to get some meat for supper; so it was quite late before we had anything to eat. Fried meat, fried eggs, fried potatoes--all soaked in grease; no milk or butter, and the coffee and tea we could not drink.

Across the street was a little patch of green corn. I went to the house and asked the woman if she would sell me a few ears. She told me that they were leaving the next morning--moving away--as her husband could not make a living. He was a professor of languages from Massachusetts, a cultivated gentleman! When he rode up on horseback I went out and shook hands with him, and laughingly said:

“I am your long-lost sister from Massachusetts.”

He was off his horse and bowing in a Chesterfieldian manner. “You are most welcome, madam; but, alas! we have nothing to offer you.”

“Oh, but you have, sir--the pleasure of meeting you both and some of your green corn.”

He picked me a half-dozen ears, and when I offered to pay him, he said, “Please, no!”

He asked where we were from. “The East sounds very far away. I wonder if I shall ever see it again.”

I gave one of the children a dollar, and returned with my precious corn, which the good-natured Irish cook boiled to a rock for our supper.

There was a small piazza in front of our room, the only place to sit except in the street or in the private parlor of the family. The moon was coming up over the distant mountain, red as blood and big as a cart-wheel. While we were getting cool and enjoying the scene, Mary appeared with the remainder of the raw meat, saying:

“We put it out here to keep cool; there ain’t no ice in this hole of a place. I’m going to leave first of September. Gee, but I’ll be glad! They couldn’t hire me to stay here any longer for fifty dollars a month!” (She evidently felt that it was up to her to entertain us.) “Nothing but work and heat--and not even a movie!”

“How early can we get breakfast?”

“Seven o’clock. I wouldn’t get up before that for President Wilson.” (The picture of President and Mrs. Wilson in that place made us smile.)

“Try a little vamping on Mary,” I suggested to friend husband. It worked. She called us at five, and by six we were out again on the desert, with the sun rising behind us, and Montello, the next town, 115 miles to the west.

That day stands out as the worst experience of the trip. We went fifty miles without seeing a living creature except jack-rabbits and one coyote. The coyote ran across the trail and stopped fifty feet away, watching us drive by. The sand was deeper and the chuck-holes, even with the most careful driving, seemed to rack the car to pieces. If we had had an accident, the outlook would have been decidedly vague for us. Not a car or a telegraph pole in sight. By ten o’clock that morning the sun scorched our skin through our clothing. But we had one good laugh. Over a deep chuck-hole there had been built a stone bridge. On one end, in large black letters, was “San Francisco” (the first sign we had seen with that welcome name) and on the other end was “New York”! The incongruity struck us as being so absurd that we roared with laughter. Here in this God-forsaken desert, a “thousand miles from anywhere,” to see that sign! It took _some_ joker to conceive of that.

By noon we were in sight of the railroad, feeling as if we had found a long-lost friend. A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shanties, and a lodging-house for the men, where we got some food--that was all. We filled up with water, and on we went. A wind had come up and the sand blew in eddies, almost blinding us. The Nevada roads were no improvement on Idaho, and the trail was obliterated many times by the swirling sand, making the going almost impossible. Before reaching Montello, a real desert sandstorm so covered us with sand that the car looked white; our clothes and our eyes and ears were full of it. We thought the top was coming off, or the car would turn over, and it was difficult to see the road, much less to keep in the trail. By crawling, we reached the town and stopped in front of the first building and got out. We were blown off our feet. We staggered and waded through the sand, hardly seeing where we were going, until we reached a door; then we were blown in! After we recovered our breath and had shaken off a little of the sand, we watched the storm, which by this time was a howling gale and the sand so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet.

“Just suppose this had happened out there?” pointing back of us.

“Don’t think of it. Come and get some ice cream.”

I had not noticed that we were in a small café, with drinks, ice cream and cakes, etc., for sale. The ice cream washed down the sand and cooled our dry throats. A nice little woman ran the place, and she gave us this information: There was a Southern Pacific railroad hotel in the town, but, owing to hundreds of men being idle on account of the strike, the place was full, and it was the only place to get lodgings. It was a hundred miles and more to Elko, where the next hotel could be reached. We inquired if the way to that town was as bad as the roads we had come over that day. “Worse,” was the reply; “you are foolish to attempt it.”

As soon as the storm let up we went across to the hotel, only to be told that there was not an empty bed or a cot. We canvassed the town with the same result. So there we were, worn out, dirty, hungry, and feeling “all in,” with the cheerful prospect of sleeping on a pile of sand in the car or trying to drive across more than a hundred miles of desert to find a bed that night. Here is where I “struck.”

“I am not going another mile,” I declared, with a finality in my voice that spoke volumes.

“What do you wish to do?” asked a weary husband.

“Ship the car to Reno, and take the train.”

Our watches said five o’clock, and the Overland Limited was due at 6:15 P. M. Husband hunted up the freight agent. “Oh, yes, you can ship the car; but--” The first “but” was that the car was too large to get through the freight-shed door. We must leave it on the platform or in a garage until an “automobile car” came through Montello, and that might not be for several days. Besides, the agent said he could not give us a bill of lading if the car was not in the shed. It was out of the question to leave it on the platform, and to put it in a strange garage, with no one responsible for it, was taking a long chance that we might never see it again, or that it would be used or damaged or detained indefinitely. Here friend husband asserted himself.

“I am not going to leave that car here unless it is locked up in the freight-shed and I have the receipt for it. You take the train and I will drive the car to Reno.”

“What! let you go on alone, as tired as you are? Nothing doing! Mr. T. G. M., the car is going to be shipped, and we are going on that 6:15 train.” I admit that my language was not very elegant; neither was the place nor my feelings.

“If that is the situation, then the car goes into that shed,” he said.

“It can’t be done,” said the agent. “We have tried to get Cadillacs and other large cars in there before. If you get your car in there, I’ll eat it!”

“What about time?” we inquired of the agent. He informed us that we must set our watches back an hour at Montello; so we had over an hour, and the train was marked up “late.” For the next hour my husband worked over that car, backing a few inches, going forward a bit, turning and twisting on the narrow platform; but the car was still diagonally across the doorway. Two men pitched in and helped. An inspiration!--he poured black oil on the floor under the rear wheels and then tried to slide the wheels over. That would have worked if the floor had not been so rough. Another inspiration!--he jacked up the wheels and gave the car another shove. Over it went, with both rear wheels inside the door! Then he backed the car into the shed as neat as a whistle. It all sounds like a perfectly simple job. Try it some time in your leisure hours. The freight agent took off his hat in admiration. “Didn’t believe it could be done,” he said, looking at me with a grin.

It cost $3.85 per hundred pounds and $5.73 war-tax to ship the car to Reno (or to San Francisco--no difference in the rate to either place). It weighed, including four spares and other equipment, 4960 pounds, and the bill was $196.69.

On inquiring about reservations, the agent said: “I doubt if you can get even an upper berth; the Limited is always full. Now that the strike is off, it is sure to be crowded.”

Would he wire?

“No use; the train has left Ogden hours ago.”

I would have gladly sat up all night in the train to be out of the desert.

In another hour we were in a drawing-room, scrubbed and brushed, looking less like two tramps and more like respectable people. Unless you have been through a like experience, you cannot share our feelings, as we sat down to a perfectly good, _clean_, wholesome meal in the diner, and slept in clean linen that night. I am glad that we had the experience and can appreciate that phase of Western life. I am equally glad that we shipped the car, which reached us at the California border a week later, in good order and still white with sand.

The road to Reno, after leaving the desert country, follows the oldest transcontinental route to the Coast--the trail of the early pioneers, the gold-seekers of ’49. For miles it follows the Humboldt River, through Palisade Canyon, past the thriving town of Elko, Battle Mountain, and Lovelock. Reno, the metropolis of Nevada, is the seat of the state university. There is much of interest to see and many side trips to the mining regions, all worth while. It is but a few miles from the state line of California, where the motorists’ troubles are ended, for from here to San Francisco the roads are smooth as marble, with no dust, and the signs read “Smile at Miles”--“Miles of Smiles”--our welcome to California, the beautiful land of sunshine and flowers, of which so much has been said in song and story and the half can never be told.

“Why do all the people have the tops of their cars up?”

“Why? Because the sun always shines.”

And we were soon to enjoy the glad sunshine that makes you feel young and happy, with a joy in living like that experienced in the Riviera.

XIV

THE END OF THE ROAD

Beyond Reno the ascent of the Sierra Nevada begins, and you pass Lake Tahoe, six thousand feet high, the most delightful summer-resort region in America. The Lincoln Highway joins the other routes here, and is really a highway, making a glorious finish in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. One of the finest views is the mighty canyon of the American River, with the timbered gorge and the rushing stream two thousand feet below. You are held spellbound by the scenery, as you descend the western slope to Sacramento, the capital of California, 125 miles from San Francisco.

The city of Sacramento is beautifully situated on the river of the same name, and has the distinction of being the first white settlement in interior California. The old fort built by John A. Sutter for protection against the Indians is kept as a museum of early-day relics. It was an employee of General Sutter who first discovered gold in California, and the first nugget was tested and its value determined inside this old adobe fort.

The capitol building, a classic structure, is situated in a park of thirty-four acres of wonderful trees and shrubs, brought from every portion of the world. The Crocker Art Gallery boasts of the finest collection of art treasures belonging to any municipality west of New York. The ride to San Francisco, of one night, is a popular trip on the fine large steamers through the Sacramento Valley, noted for its vast wealth of agriculture and fruit.

Stockton, also, is an interesting city, with its eleven public parks. Acacia, orange, umbrella, and palm trees line the streets, making the city a veritable park. West of the city are the largest peatlands in the United States, on ground that has been reclaimed by means of levees. The fields of grain and alfalfa are equal to any in the states we had visited. With four hundred miles of navigable waterways, transportation facilities are exceptional, and it is small wonder these valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin are the banner “growing section” of the state. It was like driving through a private estate all the way to Oakland, where our first view of glorious San Francisco harbor greeted us.

Oakland and Berkeley, “the bedrooms” of San Francisco (as a prominent banker explained to us), are on the east shores of the bay. On the front of the City Hall in Oakland (which, by the way, we were told is the tallest building in California) was the sign, typical of these open-hearted people, “Howdy, Boys!” (to the returning soldiers) in place of the proverbial “Welcome.”

Oakland is a large, rapidly growing city, with its fine two-million-dollar Hotel Oakland occupying an entire block. The Municipal Auditorium, seating thirteen thousand people, is near the shores of Lake Merritt, in the City Park. It is a great railway center, the terminus of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Western Pacific lines. From here you take the ferry to San Francisco.

Berkeley is so near that we did not realize that we were not in Oakland. Days can be thoroughly enjoyed spent here at the University of California, the second largest educational institution in the world, commanding a view of the Golden Gate, the bay, and San Francisco. Early in the eighteenth century, Bishop George Berkeley of Cloyne, Ireland, came to America to establish colleges. In recognition of his devotion to the cause of learning, this city was named for him. His prophetic words, “Westward the course of empire takes its way,” have been justified and realized in California. On the university campus, the Sather Campanile towers above all the other buildings at a height of over three hundred feet.

The most distinctive feature of the university is the Greek Theater, in a hollow of the hills, planned on lines similar to those of the ancient theater at Epidaurus. The equable climate makes it possible to hold outdoor performances at any season of the year. We were told that ten thousand people could be seated comfortably. “Every artist who visits the Coast aspires to appear in our Greek Theater,” said our informant, and added with pride, “Sarah Bernhardt, Nordica, Tetrazzini, Gadski, Schumann-Heink, and Josef Hofmann have all been here--yes, and ‘Big Bill’ Taft too.” Since then, President Wilson addressed a capacity audience here.

As we knew that we should visit both of these cities many times, we drove to the wharf and boarded a ferry-boat holding seventy-five cars, which would land us at our destination, San Francisco. While crossing the harbor, which is seventy-five miles long and in places fifteen miles wide, almost surrounded by high peaks, let me try to picture to you the scene that greeted our eager eyes. It was about seven o’clock in the evening. The rays of the setting sun made a glow over the water and the distant city, touching the tops of the hills with an artist hand. To the northwest, crowning the scene like a giant sentinel, was Mt. Tamalpais. What Fujiyama is to the people of Japan, Mt. Tamalpais is, in a less oriental way, to the Californians. Whether you see it at sunrise or sunset, or standing out in bold relief against the noonday sky, or with the moon silvering its summit, or wrapped in a mist of clouds, it is a glorious sight, a never-to-be-forgotten picture. Below this summit is the dense wilderness of the Muir Woods, named in honor of John Muir, the celebrated California naturalist, with 295 acres of towering redwood trees, the famous _Sequoia sempervirens_, many attaining two hundred feet in height.

Back of the city are the Twin Peaks, with a boulevard encircling their heights, looking down on the harbor, alive with ships from every land--from the islands of the South Seas, the Mexican West Coast, China, Japan, Siberia, tropic America, British Columbia, Australasia, and our own dependencies of Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines--dressed with the flags of every country, and above them all, floating in its majesty, the Stars and Stripes, in honor of the arrival of the Pacific fleet, which, under command of Admiral Rodman, had passed through the Golden Gate that day and swung at anchor in the harbor--fifty splendid battleships of all descriptions, ablaze with lights. And small craft, from high-powered motor launches to fishing-boats, “wind-jammers,” or old-time sailing-vessels, ocean liners, great freighters, transports, and tramps, all formed a part of the scene along the Embarcadero, where lie at anchor the ships that bear the merchandise and products of the world to this gateway of the West--over seven million tons of freight yearly. The true heroes of sea fiction man these ships--rugged, venturesome men, with whom Stevenson, Frank Norris, and Jack London have peopled their books and pictured their scenes of the water-front of the city.

We were landed at the ferry slip, and with a sensation never to be forgotten we drove off the wharf into San Francisco--“the city loved around the world,” built upon hills overlooking the expanse of the Pacific, with a cosmopolitan throng of half a million people. We could not have reached here at a more fortunate or auspicious time. San Francisco was _en fete_ in honor of the fleet. Every street and building was festooned with flags, banners, and garlands of flowers; the crowds of people were carrying flowers and waving flags. Market Street, the Broadway of the city, was arched with flowers, and suspended from the largest arch was a huge floral bell of the native golden poppies. All public conveyances and even private cars were decorated. Searchlights illuminated the scene. Bands were playing, auto-horns were tooting, and the air was alive with excitement--joyous, overbubbling pleasure, that had to find a vent or blow up the place.

All of the hotels were packed. The St. Francis looked like the Waldorf on New Year’s Eve. It was some hours before we found refuge in the Bellevue, a fine residential hotel on Geary Street.