Well, “Gold Hill” sells at $5,000 per foot, cash down; “Wild cat” isn’t worth ten cents.  The country is fabulously rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, coal, iron, quick silver, marble, granite, chalk, plaster of Paris, (gypsum,) thieves, murderers, desperadoes, ladies, children, lawyers, Christians, Indians, Chinamen, Spaniards, gamblers, sharpers, coyotes (pronounced Ki-yo-ties,) poets, preachers, and jackass rabbits.  I overheard a gentleman say, the other day, that it was “the d—–­dest country under the sun.”—­and that comprehensive conception I fully subscribe to.  It never rains here, and the dew never falls.  No flowers grow here, and no green thing gladdens the eye.  The birds that fly over the land carry their provisions with them.  Only the crow and the raven tarry with us.  Our city lies in the midst of a desert of the purest —­most unadulterated, and compromising sand—­in which infernal soil nothing but that fag-end of vegetable creation, “sage-brush,” ventures to grow.  If you will take a Lilliputian cedar tree for a model, and build a dozen imitations of it with the stiffest article of telegraph wire—­set them one foot apart and then try to walk through them, you’ll understand (provided the floor is covered 12 inches deep with sand,) what it is to wander through a sage-brush desert.  When crushed, sage brush emits an odor which isn’t exactly magnolia and equally isn’t exactly polecat but is a sort of compromise between the two.  It looks a good deal like grease-wood, and is the ugliest plant that was ever conceived of.  It is gray in color.  On the plains, sage-brush and grease-wood grow about twice as large as the common geranium—­and in my opinion they are a very good substitute for that useless vegetable.  Grease-wood is a perfect —­most perfect imitation in miniature of a live oak tree-barring the color of it.  As to the other fruits and flowers of the country, there ain’t any, except “Pulu” or “Tuler,” or what ever they call it,—­a species of unpoetical willow that grows on the banks of the Carson—­a river, 20 yards wide, knee deep, and so villainously rapid and crooked, that it looks like it had wandered into the country without intending it, and had run about in a bewildered way and got lost, in its hurry to get out again before some thirsty man came along and drank it up.  I said we are situated in a flat, sandy desert—­true.  And surrounded on all sides by such prodigious mountains, that when you gaze at them awhile,—­and begin to conceive of their grandeur—­and next to feel their vastness expanding your soul—­and ultimately find yourself growing and swelling and spreading into a giant—­I say when this point is reached, you look disdainfully down upon the insignificant village of Carson, and in that instant you are seized with a burning desire to stretch forth your hand, put the city in your pocket, and walk off with it.