Roughing It by Mark Twain (large screen ebook reader .txt) ๐
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When Orion Clemens is appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory, his brother Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, joins him on his journey west. Together with their all-important six pounds of Unabridged Dictionary they make their way to Nevada in a six-horsed mail coach and are, of course, derailed by all sorts of problems.
In Roughing It Twain combines the beautiful descriptions of the Westโs idyllic landscape with his now-patented sense of humor. He joins the silver and gold mining scramble, begins his career as a writer working for different newspapers and journals, visits the Mormons of Salt Lake City, and even makes his way to Hawaii, then still known as the Sandwich Islands.
Roughing It was written as a prequel to his earlier travelogue The Innocents Abroad.
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- Author: Mark Twain
Read book online ยซRoughing It by Mark Twain (large screen ebook reader .txt) ๐ยป. Author - Mark Twain
โHello!โ
I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked toward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:
โโโSt.! Listen.โ
I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure what they did. One said:
โI heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be about thereโ โโ
A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last, though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men said:
โIโll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when he said he saw Whiteman today. I heard horsesโ โthat was the noise. I am going down to Welchโs, right away.โ
They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they went. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.
As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and as day broke we reached the โdivideโ and joined Van Dorn. Then we journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours later the rest of the population filed over the โdivideโ in a long procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!
Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at least one thing was certainโ โthe secret was out and Whiteman would not enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with chagrin.
We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and enjoy a weekโs holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is sometimes called, and sometimes the โDead Sea of California.โ It is one of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We hired a large boat and two shotguns from a lonely ranchman who lived some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation. We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its peculiarities.
XXXVIIIMono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn, silent, sailless seaโ โthis lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earthโ โis little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has seized upon and occupied.
The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it had been through the ablest of washerwomenโs hands. While we camped there our laundry work was easy. We tied the weekโs washing astern of our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped overboard one day to get away from the flies.
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