On more than one occasion the road company sent and had these fences removed and opened the original road afresh. But travelers did not aid them; for here came in a trait of American character I have often noticed, namely, unwillingness to insist on strict right against their neighbors, and a readiness to make any shift, or agree to and use any _détour_, when to keep the old, straight road would involve a question. So the valley road got disused in places, and travel went round by the hills. Next, the squatters bethought them that they might in time upset the road grant, and get good title to their neighbors' vineyard. So they sent on a petition to Washington, alleging that the road had never been made; that there was no road at all; that there had been a colossal fraud. But the matter was investigated, and discovery made that the United States authorities had ceased to have any jurisdiction so long ago as 1866. Still, those who were agitating thought something might be made of it. So, somehow or other, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Carl Schurz, was induced to interfere, not deterred by the knowledge that the land department had declined to act twelve months before; and so, a year after the squatters' complaint had been refused, an agent was sent out to report; he was well armed with the assailants' stories in advance, and he need be a man of superexcellent straightforwardness and hardihood unless he too could "see something in it." In this case the phoenix was not discovered, and the eyes, ears, and common-sense of hundreds of men who knew the road well were outraged by a report that no road existed or had been made except for about sixty miles at the western end; and that the road, if road it could be called, was a mere wagon-track, capable of use only for a short time and under exceptionally favorable circumstances! It was of course assumed that, at so great a distance from headquarters, a hostile report would end matters, and that all the advantages hoped for by the squatters, and by any and all who had espoused their cause, would be forthwith enjoyed. We have yet to learn that the American Congress will consent to be made parties to such an outrageous conspiracy; to cast an infamous slur on the characters of American citizens who ventured much in an undertaking for the public good; in violation of plain and acknowledged principles of law, to hamper and delay an enterprise relying on the title gained in 1871, and quietly enjoyed for ten years. [Sidenote: _HARNEY LAKE VALLEY._] The largest of the valleys through which this road passes is Harney Lake Valley, only about eighty miles from the eastern boundary of the State, which will receive fuller description farther on. CHAPTER IX.