A tough bit of Country.  The next day at noon finds me “tucked in my little bed” at Carter, decidedly the worse for wear, having experienced the toughest twenty-four hours of the entire journey.  I have to ford no less than nine streams of ice-cold water; get benighted on a rain-soaked adobe plain, where I have to sleep out all night in an abandoned freight-wagon; and, after carrying the bicycle across seven miles of deep, sticky clay, I finally arrive at Carter, looking like the last sad remnant of a dire calamity — having had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours.  From Carter my route leads through the Bad-Lands, amid buttes of mingled clay and rock, which the elements have worn into all conceivable shapes, and conspicuous among them can be seen, to the south, “Church Buttes,” so called from having been chiselled by the dexterous hand of nature into a group of domes and pinnacles, that, from a distance, strikingly resembles some magnificent cathedral.  High-water marks are observable on these buttes, showing that Noah’s flood, or some other aqueous calamity once happened around here; and one can easily imagine droves of miserable, half-clad Indians, perched on top, looking with doleful, melancholy expression on the surrounding wilderness of waters.  Arriving at Granger, for dinner, I find at the hotel a crest-fallen state of affairs somewhat similar to the glumness of Tacoma.  Tacoma had plenty of customers, but no whiskey; Granger on the contrary has plenty of whiskey, but no customers.  The effect on that marvellous, intangible something, the saloon proprietor’s intellect, is the same at both places.  Here is plainly a new field of research for some ambitious student of psychology.  Whiskey without customers.  Customers without whiskey.  Truly all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Next day I pass the world-renowned castellated rocks of Green River, and stop for the night at Rock Springs, where the Union Pacific Railway Company has extensive coal mines.  On calling for my bill at the hotel here, next morning, the proprietor — a corpulent Teuton, whose thoughts, words, and actions, run entirely to beer — replies, “Twenty-five cents a quart.”  Thinking my hearing apparatus is at fault, I inquire again.  “Twenty-five cents a quart and vurnish yer own gan.”  The bill is abnormally large, but, as I hand over the amount, a “loaded schooner” is shoved under my nose, as though a glass of beer were a tranquillizing antidote for all the ills of life.  Splendid level alkali flats abound east of Rock Springs, and I bowl across them at a lively pace until they terminate, and my route follows up Bitter Creek, where the surface is just the reverse; being seamed and furrowed as if it had just emerged from a devastating flood.  It is said that the teamster who successfully navigated the route up Bitter Creek, considered himself entitled to be called “a tough cuss from Bitter Creek, on wheels, with a perfect education.”  A justifiable regard for individual rights would seem