But, as one gazes with admiration on these towering buttresses of nature, it is easy to realize that the most massive and imposing feudal castle, or ramparts built with human hands, would look like children’s toys beside them.  The weather is cool and bracing, and when, in the middle of the afternoon, I reach Evanston, Wyo.  Terr., too late to get dinner at the hotel, I proceed to devour the contents of a bakery, filling the proprietor with boundless astonishment by consuming about two-thirds of his stock.  When I get through eating, he bluntly refuses to charge anything, considering himself well repaid by having witnessed the most extraordinary gastronomic feat on record — the swallowing of two-thirds of a bakery.  Following the trail down Yellow Creek, I arrive at Hilliard after dark.  The Hilliardites are “somewhat seldom,” but they are made of the right material.  The boarding-house landlady sets about preparing me supper, late though it be; and the “boys” extend me a hearty invitation to turn in with them for the night.  Here at Hilliard is a long V-shaped flume, thirty miles long, in which telegraph poles, ties, and cord wood are floated down to the railroad from the pineries of the Uintah Mountains, now plainly visible to the south.  The “boys” above referred to are men engaged in handling ties thus floated down; and sitting around the red-hot stove, they make the evening jolly with songs and yarns of tie-drives, and of wild rides down the long “V” flume.  A happy, light-hearted set of fellows are these “tie-men,” and not an evening but their rude shanty resounds with merriment galore.  Fun is in the air to-night, and “Beaver” (so dubbed on account of an unfortunate tendency to fall into every hole of water he goes anywhere near) is the unlucky wight upon whom the rude witticisms concentrate; for he has fallen into the water again to-day, and is busily engaged in drying his clothes by the stove.  They accuse him of keeping up an uncomfortably hot fire, detrimental to everybody’s comfort but his own, and threaten him with dire penalties if he doesn’t let the room cool off; also broadly hinting their disapproval of his over-fondness for “Adam’s ale,” and threaten to make him “set ’em up” every time he tumbles in hereafter.  In revenge for these remarks, “Beaver” piles more wood into the stove, and, with many a westernism - not permitted in print — threatens to keep up a fire that will drive them all out of the shanty if they persist in their persecutions.  Crossing next day the low, broad pass over the Uintah Mountains, some stretches of ridable surface are passed over, and at this point I see the first band of antelope on the tour; but as they fail to come within the regulation two hundred yards they are graciously permitted to live.

At Piedmont Station I decide to go around by way of Port Bridger and strike the direct trail again at Carter Station, twentyfour miles farther east.