Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland drivers, now.  The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man—­even of the scholarly savages in the “Last of the Mohicans” who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two equal parts:  one part critically grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett’s works and studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks—­I say that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance.  The revelations that came were disenchanting.  It was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, filthy and repulsive—­and how quickly the evidences accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or less modified by circumstances and surroundings—­but Goshoots, after all.  They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine—­at this distance.  Nearer by, they never get anybody’s.

There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error.  There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both tribes.  But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who have a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky Mountains, Heaven knows!  If we cannot find it in our hearts to give those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in God’s name let us at least not throw mud at them.

CHAPTER XX.

On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.

On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his Excellency Gov.  Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles).

On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert—­forty memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from six inches to a foot.  We worked our passage most of the way across.  That is to say, we got out and walked.  It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water.  From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones