We were very near the Antelope Valley by this time, and I asked him if he knew it. "Of course I do," he replied, "you are not going there are you?" I told him all I have told the reader. "Well, it might be worse," he added, "there are quite a few there now, sent out by the same man (I know him well) from the mother country, who would go away to-morrow if they could, but they have spent their all to come, and are now in a tarnation fix. You take my advice, don't you stop there. Take your sons with you, and be off while you can." I asked him if doing anything there was hopeless? "Not at all," he replied "_if_ you've got lots of money, and can import labour, which does not exist there, _if_ you sink a lot of artesian wells (they run expensive), and _if_ when sunk they prove a success (the last two have been failures), _if_ you care to live in such a barren spot, and like a hot climate and the fiery glare from the sand. I might add a few more 'ifs,' but I've said enough. Given water (the rain I guess would not wet your pocket-handkerchief through six times in a twelvemonth), the soil will grow most things, but then you see there _is_ no water, and as for the artesian wells, when successful, they can each only irrigate a small area; but here we are in the valley." We had been passing through some deep cuttings lately, and had now entered a vast plain bounded by distant hills. No trees of any kind were in sight, the soil sand, but browner than most I had seen. Every few feet was a little shrub, some two feet high, what I know not, but a miserable specimen of vegetation, and besides this not a stalk or leaf anywhere. A more miserable site I have never set eyes on. We passed miles and miles, all the same, till we came to where I had been told to have my letters sent, "Lancaster City"! The last two miles before arrival, an attempt had certainly been made at cultivation. A few acres of alfalfa (a productive American grassy crop), some rye, Indian corn, vegetables, and what not. But the whole area was not fifty acres, the cultivators inhabiting plank huts alongside. The train stopped at the station, and lo! Lancaster City lay around. It consisted of one decent-sized, two-storied building, viz. the hotel, two stores, a saloon, and half a dozen huts. Not another edifice, and the dreary plain described for miles and miles around. This was the haven, the Eden, I had come some six thousand miles to attain!