At one of the stations were some horned toads for sale, the first I had seen, and as I asked a passenger standing near what kind of animals they were, "I think," said he, honestly enough, "they are what they call prairie dogs." All day Sunday it was sand, sage-bush, and a sun so hot that it would almost blister, and the same kind of a country we had already seen so much of east of Ogden. So I occupied myself most of the time writing. During the day at the different stations situated along the sandy desert the thermometer registered 102° and 104°, and yet I was not uncomfortably warm. The air would blow in at the windows as if it came direct from some furnace, and yet it was so very dry that it would not start the perspiration. Until I reached California there were only three days that were oppressively hot since the commencement of the trip, and those were in the fore part of July while crossing Iowa. In Colorado and over the plains the atmosphere was so very dry that even with the thermometer up to ninety, as it was in Iowa, one could exercise without feeling the heat nearly as much. At Truckee we left the train at 12 o'clock at night, and as we wanted to be off early the next morning for Lake Tahoe, fifteen miles up the Truckee River, we decided not to go to bed. There were several bales of hay on the freight house platform, and one had burst open. Into that hay we crawled and slept till daylight, keeping comfortably warm till nearly morning, but I had to go behind the freight house and remove my clothes in order to shake out the innumerable spires of hay that pricked me from head to foot. We got started soon after four, and the road was decidedly better than I had reason to think it would be, and the grade was easy, but the dust rather uncomfortable. But that is to be expected in a country that has so little rain in so many months, and where the roads are used as much as this one is the fine dust gets very deep. Going up, a couple of young deer remained in the road till I was nearly upon them, and even when I dismounted they didn't run, but stayed within six or eight feet of where I stood. They appeared so tame I wanted to get my hands upon them and stroke their hair, but Hasley, coming up, drew his revolver, and I hallooed "Don't shoot; they're tame." The sound of a human voice sent them up the hillside like a streak, and I saw it was the glistening nickel that fascinated them.