monuments and fortifications - how drearily, how tamely, none can
tell who has not seen them; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not
one shapely or commanding mountain form; sage-brush, eternal sage-
brush; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring, grays
warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole
sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and
there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon.
The plains have a grandeur of their own; but here there is nothing
but a contorted smallness. Except for the air, which was light and
stimulating, there was not one good circumstance in that God-
forsaken land.

I had been suffering in my health a good deal all the way; and at
last, whether I was exhausted by my complaint or poisoned in some
wayside eating-house, the evening we left Laramie, I fell sick
outright. That was a night which I shall not readily forget. The
lamps did not go out; each made a faint shining in its own
neighbourhood, and the shadows were confounded together in the
long, hollow box of the car. The sleepers lay in uneasy attitudes;
here two chums alongside, flat upon their backs like dead folk;
there a man sprawling on the floor, with his face upon his arm;
there another half seated with his head and shoulders on the bench.
The most passive were continually and roughly shaken by the
movement of the train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out
their arms like children; it was surprising how many groaned and
murmured in their sleep; and as I passed to and fro, stepping
across the prostrate, and caught now a snore, now a gasp, now a
half-formed word, it gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest
in that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill, I was obliged to
open my window, for the degradation of the air soon became