very unpalatable. We passed three stations, one after the other, one day, where Mr. Halsey knew the water to be bad, without essaying to drink, and finally became so thirsty that when we reached the next station, all hands sung out to the station-keepers: "I say, men, what kind of water have you here?" "Wall, strangers," was the reply, "Honor bright, it is not much to brag of! It is a heap alkali, and right smart warm; but we manage to drink it, when it cools a little. It's altogether, you see, in gitten used to it; you bet!" But as we hadn't got "used to it" yet, and hadn't time to wait, we concluded to pass on to the next station. At most of the stations, the only persons were two stock-tenders or stable-hands, and sometimes only one. At Maláde, however, as we halted there one cold and blustering night, we were agreeably surprised to find a blazing fire and an excellent meal, that gained all the more by contrast with the forlorn and cheerless stations, that greeted us elsewhere. A neat and tidy woman, with an instinct of true refinement about her, was the simple explanation. But how she came to drop down into that desolate station, with a husband and two or three children, will always remain one of the inexplicable mysteries of the Universe to me. We were now on the old and well-travelled Emigrant Trail from the Missouri to Oregon. But emigration that way had mostly ceased, and the general unattractiveness of the country was shown, by its leaving no settlements behind. Much of the route had always been a natural road across the plateaus; but in crossing the "divides" and descending into the abrupt valleys, considerable digging and blasting had been done here and there. We neither saw nor heard of any Indians, and I judge the country as a whole was always too barren and desolate to support any thing but wolves. Night after night we heard these howling around us, and sometimes by day a single cayote would skulk across the road; but they took good care to give our Remingtons and Spencers a wide berth. How the cayotes or wolves of these plateaus, and of the Plains, manage to live, it is hard to say. There seems little for them to subsist on ordinarily. And yet camp where you will at night, an hour afterwards the whole surrounding landscape becomes vocal with them. First, it is a solitary yelp, and then a constantly widening chorus, until thousands of the cowards seem to be on the bark. One night we got out to walk, over a piece of extra bad road, and as we rounded a rocky point toward the coming station, suddenly a score or more of them opened on us at once. It was pitchy dark, and the suddenness of their onset certainly startled us; but we sent them our compliments in the direction of the sound, from a Spencer carbine and two revolvers, and that was the last we heard of them. The Indians sometimes counterfeit their howling, in order to take travellers unawares; but otherwise, however startling,