Excepting a part of "Devil's Canyon," the way was unpicturesque and
flat; and the passage of the Rocky Mountains, far from suggesting the
alleged poetry of that region, was only a reminder of those sterile
distances of a level New England landscape.
The journey was a dreary monotony that was scarcely enlivened by its
discomforts, never amounting to actual accident or incident, but utterly
destructive to all nervous tissue. Insanity often supervened. "On the
third day out," said Hank Monk, driver, speaking casually but charitably
of a "fare,"--"on the third day out, after axing no end of questions and
getting no answers, he took to chewing straws that he picked outer the
cushion, and kussin' to hisself. From that very day I knew it was
all over with him, and I handed him over to his friends at 'Shy Ann,'
strapped to the back seat, and ravin' and cussin' at Ben Holliday, the
gent'manly proprietor." It is presumed that the unfortunate tourist's
indignation was excited at the late Mr. Benjamin Holliday, then the
proprietor of the line,--an evidence of his insanity that no one who
knew that large-hearted, fastidious, and elegantly-cultured Californian,
since allied to foreign nobility, will for a moment doubt.
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