live on Lake Bigler until she can knock a bull down with her fist--say,
about three months.

"Tell everything as it is--no better, and no worse."

Well, "Gold Hill" sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; "Wild cat" isn't
worth ten cents. The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper,
lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris,
(gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers,
Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes
(pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.
I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was "the d---dest
country under the sun."--and that comprehensive conception I fully
subscribe to. It never rains here, and the dew never falls. No flowers
grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye. The birds that fly over
the land carry their provisions with them. Only the crow and the raven
tarry with us. Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest
--most unadulterated, and compromising sand--in which infernal soil
nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, "sage-brush," ventures to
grow. If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a
dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire--set
them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you'll understand
(provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to
wander through a sage-brush desert. When crushed, sage brush emits an
odor which isn't exactly magnolia and equally isn't exactly polecat but
is a sort of compromise between the two. It looks a good deal like
grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of. It is
gray in color. On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about
twice as large as the common geranium--and in my opinion they are a very
good substitute for that useless vegetable. Grease-wood is a perfect