The Press., 1896-04-02
WESTERN LETTER.
Madison, Wis, March. 10, 1!


 Dear Friends: On the 21st of January last, left Madison, by way of Milwaukee and Chicago, for Californir. In Chicago, l stopped few hours. At six o'clock in the evening, I left Chicago on the North Western, train, bound for Sioux City Iowa, where I spent two days visiting Capt Chase and family who was my partner in the late eos and early '7O's. Leaving Sioux City on the evening of the 23rd. of January, went to Council Bluffs on the east side of the Missouri, then still on the east side of the Missouri to Kansas City. How suggestive that name, Council Bluffs, is to old men who were once boys and studied Olney's Geography and found the little round spot on the atlas situated back on the bluffs to the east of the Mis- souri and to the east of where now stands the city of Omaha.
 At Kansas City on the morning of the 24th. met c. 0. Tichenor, who read law in my office in Madison in the early eos and who enlisted in the army in '62' and
  lucky. At the end of the war, he settled in Kansas City in the practice of law, and is now one of the leading lawyers of that state. At Kansas City we took the Santa Fe Road leading out into Kansas past the historic towns of Lawrence and Topeka ; and from Topeka bearing more southerly until we reach Emporia thence more west l erIy until we reach La Junta in southeast ern Colorado; thence bearing still more southerly we reach Las Vegas in New Mexico, where, for breakfast on the morn. ing of the 25th, 1 had my first dish of straw berries and cream on the train. Continu. ing, we reached Albuquerque early in the after noon. Here we found town oi good size and truly fine business prospects. Our train, tarrying here for period of one half hour, we went out on the streets in the business part of the town and in a few minutes discovered that it was made up of mixed population. We found the Spaniard of elegant bearing the Mexican somewhat rough and uncouth; the Mexi can Indian tough looking subject the sedate Englishman the laughing, whist ling Yankee the jocose, happy Irishman and the stalwart Scandinavian.
 Leaving Albuquerque, we were soor crossing the Rio Bravo del Norte, also sounding familiar as we learned it in geog raphy in early days. 1 had expected much from the sight of this river, believing ii be regular shorter, rough rapid aud un. manageable. found bed of sand witt very little water.
 Thence westerly, in the early evening, we entered Arizona; half way across we reached the station called Flagstaff from whence tourists are accustomed to divergt and visits the Grand Canon of the Colo radO. Still continuing west we are nearly paralleling the Colorado river until WI reach the western boundry of Arizona, il the early morning of the 26th of January
 The Colorado river here forms tht boundry line between Arizona and Cali fOrnia. We cross it at 8 place known a' the Needles being group of high pointed rocks. Crossing the river, we are il the desert known as the Mojave Desert This is desert in fact as we'll as in name After an hours ride on the desert, I in quired eagerly of the conductor the dis tance OcrOss, and was appalled to finC that we had only made twenty-five of th two-hundred miles across it. Crossing the desert are strips of coarse gravel O rock the size of ones fist, and then finer gravel or coarse sand, and then agaiI lava beds, and these seem to be mixed to gether or to alternate across the entire dis tance. Late in the afternoon we reached Barstow which is said to be across thu Desert; but the country still looks deser like.
 Leaving Barstow we soon began to as cend the eastern slope of the San Der nardino Mountains. The only living thin! growing on the desert seems to belong tc the cacti family; and all the specimens o even that family that 1 saw looked a