we bought two sorry-looking Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the

wrong way and more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque

of Omar; we hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver

did not complain. The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town and

then gave out. Then we three pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver

moved ahead and pulled the horses after him by the bits. We complained,

but Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze our backs while

we slept; the wind swept across our faces and froze our noses. Oliver

did not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon by day and freezing by

night brought us to the bad part of the journey--the Forty Mile Desert,

or the Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this

mildest-mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We started

across

at eight in the morning, pushing through sand that had no bottom; toiling

all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the skeletons of ten

thousand oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington Monument

the top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by human graves;

with our throats parched always, with thirst; lips bleeding from the

alkali dust; hungry, perspiring, and very, very weary--so weary that when

we dropped in the sand every fifty yards to rest the horses, we could

hardly keep from going to sleep--no complaints from Oliver: none the next

morning at three o'clock, when we got across, tired to death.

Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow canon, by

the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the imminent danger of

being "snowed in," we harnessed up and pushed on till eight in the

323

The Innocents Abroad