It is 20 miles northward by railroad from Walker River agency to Wabuska, and 12 miles more in a southwesterly direction from there to the Mason valley settlement. There we met a young white man named Dyer, who was well acquainted with Jack Wilson, and who also spoke the Paiute language, and learned from him that the messiah was about 12 miles farther up the valley, near a place called Pine Grove. Enlisting his services, with a team and driver, making four in all, we started up toward the mountain. It was New Year’s day of 1892, and there was deep snow on the ground, a very unusual thing in this part of the country, and due in this instance, as Charley assured us, to the direct agency of Jack Wilson. It is hard to imagine anything more monotonously unattractive than a sage prairie under ordinary circumstances unless it be the same prairie when covered by a heavy fall of snow, under which the smaller clumps of sagebrush look like prairie-dog mounds, while the larger ones can hardly be distinguished at a short distance from wikiups. However, the mountains were bright in front of us, the sky was blue overhead, and the road was good under foot. Soon after leaving the settlement we passed the dance ground with the brush shelters still standing. We met but few Indians on the way. After several miles we noticed a man at some distance from the road with a gun across his shoulder. Dyer looked a moment and then exclaimed, “I believe that’s Jack now!” The Indian thought so, too, and pulling up our horses he shouted some words in the Paiute language. The man replied, and sure enough it was the messiah, hunting jack rabbits. At his uncle’s call he soon came over. As he approached I saw that he was a young man, a dark full-blood, compactly built, and taller than the Paiute generally, being nearly 6 feet in height. He was well dressed in white man’s clothes, with the broad-brimmed white felt hat common in the west, secured on his head by means of a beaded ribbon under the chin. This, with a blanket or a robe of rabbit skins, is now the ordinary Paiute dress. He wore a good pair of boots. His hair was cut off square on a line below the base of the ears, after the manner of his tribe. His countenance was open and expressive of firmness and decision, but with no marked intellectuality. The features were broad and heavy, very different from the thin, clear-cut features of the prairie tribes. [Illustration: PL. XCII WINTER VIEW IN MASON VALLEY, SHOWING SNOW-COVERED SAGEBRUSH]