Having accomplished these things, every one, I am proud of the record; and I shall not fail to acknowledge my full indebtedness to those faithful men and women of the Service who made my efforts possible of success—employees, traders, missioners, not forgetting those few from among the heathen who gave their loyalty and confidence. They too have felt the sneers and insults of the multitude; and the grudging appreciation of an equally insensible Bureau nearly three thousand miles away is small reward. Many valued employees have grown old in this Service without a syllable of commendation from Washington. And I have prompted at least one Commissioner of Indian Affairs to acknowledge his feeble debt to a dying physician—dying on his feet, still nobly making the rounds. When I left Washington, in 1910, I had no idea that such a future work would extend my little vacation into the years. Six months out o’ doors, and either I should be reëstablished at the old stand, pounding the old typewriter, or I should have attended a ceremony that is final but not interesting to the subject thereof. A simple calendar; not the first, however, to stand revision. Morning brought Chicago, to me a grim and sinister city, and a day spent in its galleries and clubs; then the train again, and its long crawl across level, heated Kansas. Excellent living on a diner, and came the thought that wherever this railroad wended would follow good food, which I required, and service of the best. Vain and soon-to-be-exploded vision! The railroad carries food and service; the West sees it go by. In the Desert one has desert fare. The contrast was outside the windows; on the third morning this contrast became acute. Instead of hamlets, farms, and country lanes, there was now the grayish-green of the sage, broken by stunted cedars on the slopes, with an overtone of brown as the soil reflected light. There was no indication of complete aridity, so one could not think of this as a desert. Scant vegetation lived from the brush of the foreground to the timbered blue of the distant ranges. They did not appear as lofty mountains, although many peaks lifted against a calm blue sky. Beyond the little telegraph points, the occasional adobes of section crews, and water tanks, the landscape held not a sign of habitation. In the middle distance were strange formations of crumbling shale, banded with the spectral white of gypsum: queer piles such as might have been designed by some sardonic humorist. Now straying cattle, gaunt as the hills, blanket Indians idling at a station, or a ranger on a shabby mount, were the only things of life. Over all the golden haze of New Mexico, moistened by the mists of the Rio Grande.