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Books, Journals & Diaries
On the Frontier:
Rock Springs
We turn our backs on
Marl Springs
gladly -.- almost as gladly as we arrived there. In such a place there is no
inducement to remain. It is an excellent place for only one thing -.- to leave. Its one redeeming feature, the pied
quails, have no longer any charms for us. We have eaten our fill of them, and on no account would we wish to
remain long enough to get hungry again; and though we have fared sumptuously, our animals have not, for the
grass in the neighbourhood is only remarkable for its absence. Twenty miles of alternate barren rocky ridges
and desert valleys, of steep hills and abrupt declivities, bring us to our next
halting-place-.-Rock Springs. Here
we
find the only really good water on the entire route ; and it is good water -.- pure, limpid, and cool, and, above all,
plentiful We find it in a succession of natural rock tanks, running in a sharpish stream from one to the other of them,
but sinking into the sand, directly it is reached, on escaping from the last tank.
Near Rock Springs is a silver mine, which was found and opened by some adventurous prospectors, and into which they
drove a tunnel forty-five feet. Then they were murdered by the
Pah-Utes. The
charred and smoke-stained ruins of
their burned cabin, a heap of ore, and the tunnel, remain mementoes of their hardy enterprise.
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