The succession of scenes along the road afforded us constant entertainment. In every gulch and ravine a tavern was in process of erection. Scarcely a foot of ground upon which man or beast could find a foothold was exempt from a claim. There were even bars with liquors, offering a tempting place of refreshment to the weary traveler where no vestige of a house was yet perceptible. Board and lodging signs over tents not more than ten feet square were as common as blackberries in June; and on no part of the road was there the least chance of suffering from the want of whisky, dry-goods, or cigars.
BOARD AND LODGING.
An almost continuous string of Washoeites stretched "like a great snake dragging its slow length along" as far as the eye could reach. In the course of this day's tramp we passed parties of every description and color: Irishmen, wheeling their blankets, provisions, and mining implements on wheel-barrows; American, French, and German foot-passengers, leading heavily-laden horses, or carrying their packs on their backs, and their picks and shovels slung across their shoulders; Mexicans, driving long trains of pack-mules, and swearing fearfully, as usual, to keep them in order; dapper-looking gentlemen, apparently from San Francisco, mounted on fancy horses; women, in men's clothes, mounted on mules or "burros;" Pike County specimens, seated on piles of furniture and goods in great lumbering wagons; whisky-peddlers, with their bar-fixtures and whisky on mule-back, stopping now and then to quench the thirst of the toiling multitude; organ-grinders, carrying their organs; drovers, riding, raving, and tearing away frantically through the brush after droves of self-willed cattle designed for the shambles; in short, every imaginable class, and every possible species of industry, was represented in this moving pageant. It was a striking and impressive spectacle to see, in full competition with youth and strength, the most pitiable specimens of age and decay—white-haired old men, gasping for breath as they dragged their palsied limbs after them in the exciting race of avarice; cripples and hunchbacks; even sick men from their beds—all stark mad for silver.
But the tide was not setting entirely in the direction of Carson Valley. A counter-current opposed our progress in the shape of saddle-trains without riders, long lines of pack-mules laden with silver ore, scattering parties of weather-beaten and foot-sore pedestrians, bearing their hard experience in their faces, and solitary stragglers, of all ages and degrees, mounted on skeleton horses, or toiling wearily homeward on foot—some merry, some sad, some eagerly intent on farther speculation, but all bearing the unmistakable impress of Washoe.
Among the latter, a lank, leathery-looking fellow, doubtless from the land of wooden nutmegs, was shambling along through the mud, talking to himself apparently for want of more congenial fellowship. I was about to pass him, when he arrested my attention:
"Look here, stranger!"
I looked.
"You're bound for Washoe, I reckon?"