Year: 1872

wear 1859. the vehicle which Is by
courtesy called coach. drawn BY four
little mules. with its driver and ex-
pressman and four passengers inside.
started out of Paraia on the southwark Il
journey, which few who have made it
will forget, and which afterward seems
a strange adventure. undertaken bv
night. and for some purpose which was
itself dream.


ParaJa is, As the name indicates, the
very dogsburg of a land OF squalid
towns. IL Is as though il had been
gently shaken in blanket. and indis-
criminately dropped in the midst OF a
few acres Of sand. Sand is there an
element. II blows through every chink
and Granny. and lies ankle deep in the
street. 1t pervades all that is eaten
and drunk and breathed, and lies in
wnrows in heaps. Blu, this is all in
accordance with the Mexican idea. for
n few hundred yards away the ground
40 srano grown and hard. and tLat
which stands in the changing ssnd Ly
chance might easily have been placed
on solid earth on purpose. Morse than
all, il stands at the hither end Of that
ninety miles of trecless. waterless
wilderness. which 10 manv has been in
fact all that the poetic name implies ::
Jondda del mnero-.'the Journey of
death"


OF the four passengers, one was an
acting medical officer in the army one
was a trader one a man who was any
thing and had no characteristics and
the fourth, = large man in middle life,
who sat xftt bis back 10 the front and
his long limbs thrown across the middle
seat. was as evidently 8 genuine son Of
the frontier as though the fact hal been
placarded upon him. His magniGcen,
beard was plentifnlly srrinkled with
gray, and the soles Of his grea, boots,
upright before his audience, seemed as
though they might serve for tomb
stones If he should chance TO follow an
old-time fashion of his kind and be
buried in them. His slouch hat was
pulled low over pair Of gray eyes and
kindly, honest face, and he held the
Winchester gun across his knee with
that careless yet constant grasp which
is one of the small signs betokening a
man used to danger and accustomed
TO the vigilance which in those regions
becomes 3 habit.


The gold and purple and amber
faded, and the far snow grew pink and
gray, then winter than before in the
starlight, land soon there was nothing
Of earth in the scene save the tall
cactuses that took fantastic shapes as
they nodded in the light of the horizon,
and the vague and misty undulations
Of wilderness which, clothed in night
and silence seemed part of some 9TH
er and unreal world.


Four women together, strange to
each other, and without q counterpoise
Of masculinity, would either keep
silence or politely disagree. But men
do not and by this time each one had
given his fellows some idea Of who he
was, where he was born. and what he
liked best of men. horses, climates and
cookery. Not specifically and in order.
| but as men tell such things. Such
revelations come first naturally. Then
cone a little modest Dragging on the
part Of each and he who goes too far
in that is straightway snubbed into
snappishness or docility, either OF
which mental conditions answers the
purpose equally we'll. After this comes
silence, yawning, and finally sleep.
Only part Of this programme could be
carried out here. SOciability was a
necessity, for il four men sleep on the
jornada they may never wake again.
No man listens to his neighbor's story
or becomes absorbed in his own SO in.
tently that his ear is not also alert for
the far-away galloping or the sudden
shout which betokens the Apache.


The intense desire for something
outside ones own thoughts is as uni.
versal as humanity. TO this end is all
the immense literature which is born
of a night and dies in the morning
For the qualification of an appetite
which is Unsuitable, are the remotesi
corners of the earth ransacked, and all
that is done and suffered in all cliDes
and races condensed into paragraph:
and laid even at the day-labOrer's
door. But where this is impossible
and unknown. its place is taken by ar
art the Oldest and most graceful in the
world-the art of story telling. Ta
the borderer, the ability to wander
pleasantly through the past Of bis life
to cause his limited audience to zee hi
situations IS plainly IS be remembers
them, and 70 call out the laugh or TN
curse which is his applause and reward
j ia considered q matter Of course. Tht