A majority of these pioneer settlers are plodding Dutchmen, living content in the back lanes and valleys of Nature; but the high price of all kinds of farm products tempted many of even the keen Yankee prospectors, made wise in California, to bind themselves down to this sure kind of mining.  The wildest of wild hay, made chiefly of carices and rushes, was sold at from two to three hundred dollars per ton on ranches.  The same kind of hay is still worth from fifteen to forty dollars per ton, according to the distance from mines and comparative security from competition.  Barley and oats are from forty to one hundred dollars a ton, while all sorts of garden products find ready sale at high prices.

With rich mine markets and salubrious climate, the Nevada farmer can make more money by loose, ragged methods than the same class of farmers in any other State I have yet seen, while the almost savage isolation in which they live seems grateful to them.  Even in those cases where the advent of neighbors brings no disputes concerning water rights and ranges, they seem to prefer solitude, most of them having been elected from adventurers from California—­the pioneers of pioneers.  The passing stranger, however, is always welcomed and supplied with the best the home affords, and around the fireside, while he smokes his pipe, very little encouragement is required to bring forth the story of the farmer’s life—­hunting, mining, fighting, in the early Indian times, etc.  Only the few who are married hope to return to California to educate their children, and the ease with which money is made renders the fulfillment of these hopes comparatively sure.

After dwelling thus long on the farms of this dry wonderland, my readers may be led to fancy them of more importance as compared with the unbroken fields of Nature than they really are.  Making your way along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south, seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation.  The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand.  No singing water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in—­mountain and valley alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare; and though, perhaps, traveling a well-worn road to a gold or silver mine, and supplied with repeated instructions, you can scarce hope to find any human habitation from day to day, so vast and impressive is the hot, dusty, alkaline wildness.

But after riding some thirty or forty miles, and while the sun may be sinking behind the mountains, you come suddenly upon signs of cultivation.  Clumps of willows indicate water, and water indicates a farm.  Approaching more nearly, you discover what may be a patch of barley spread out unevenly along the bottom of a flood bed, broken perhaps, and rendered less distinct by boulder piles and the fringing willows of a stream.  Speedily you can confidently say that the grain patch is surely such; its ragged bounds become clear; a sand-roofed cabin comes to view littered with sun-cracked implements and with an outer girdle of potato, cabbage, and alfalfa patches.