that which cost us three dollars in San Francisco was sold here for twenty-five dollars, and kerosene oil is only five dollars a gallon. Mrs. King tells a good joke on the chaplain. She went with him to town one day to assist him in making some purchases. After buying some things and paying for them he spied some quart cans for filling lamps, empty, of course. He wanted one, so asked the price. He was told "seven dollars." The chaplain put down his bundles and money, raised his hands, heaved a deep groan and uttered his favorite ejaculation, "tre-men-jious." There is only one lady here besides myself, and fortunately she is a very pleasant one, Mrs. King. Tell Gussie Porter I met her friend Mrs. King at Camp Halleck, not the Mrs. King who is here, but another one. She met Gussie at Lancaster, and is now in our regiment. She was very pleasant. * * * * * Nannie describes this journey so completely I can add little to it. Mr. Lummis, librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, asked me, in 1908, as one having something to do with the development of the country, to write something descriptive of its wonderful growth, to be placed in an album for strangers visiting the library. I contributed the following: In 1871, as Captain 3d Cavalry, with the headquarters and band, my wife in an ambulance, I traveled from San Pedro to Whipple Barracks, Prescott, Arizona. The route lay through Los Angeles, then a small adobe village, where we stopped March 9th at the Little Pico House, then by the now beautiful City of Redlands, at that time a waterless cactus desert, and through the Salton Sink. In all the tide of time I think there has not been a more instructive example of the efforts of man to "replenish the earth" than shown by the brave men of Southern California in the intervening thirty-seven years. To those who may look over this volume of autographs in the future, I think this simple statement of facts will be more interesting than any literary effort I could possibly render. The desert over which we traveled, purchasing water at twenty-five cents a bucket, is now productive and beautiful. The Salton Sink, through which we passed, is a depression in the earth one hundred and fifty miles long by seventy-five wide, with its lowest point two hundred and fifty-six feet below sea level. It was formerly the northern end of the Gulf of California, but ages past was cut off by the sand and silt deposited by floods of the Colorado River, the water evaporating in the arid atmosphere and extreme heat. Immense deposits of salt from evaporated sea water were visible, and we saw on the foot of the adjacent mountains the water-mark of the sea level. We arrived at Fort Whipple on April 14th, only to be ordered to Fort McDowell on the Verde River, one hundred and twenty-five miles distant, over an almost impassable road. Nannie tells the story of that journey: