This  rest,  together  with  preparations  for  the  journey
to  Esmeralda,  kept  us  there  a  week,  and  the  delay


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W  ROUGHING    IT

l^ve  us  the  opportunity  to  be  present  at  the  trial  of
'^e  great  landslide  case  of  Hyde  vs.  Morgan — an
^sode  which  is  famous  in  Nevada  to  this  day.
'After  a  word  or  two  of  necessary  explanation,  I
'■gnU  set  down  the  history  of  this  singular  affair  just
as  it  transpired.
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CHAPTER  XXXIV

THE  mountains  are  vsry  high  and  steep  about
Carson,  Eagle,  and  Washoe  VaUeys— very  high
and  very  steep,  and  so  when  the  snow  gets  to  melting
off  fast  in  the  spring  and  the  warm  surface-earth
begins  to  moisten  and  soften,  the  disastrous  land-
slides commence.  The  reader  cannot  know  what  a
landslide  is,  unless  he  has  lived  in  that  country  and
seen  the  whole  side  of  a  mountain  taken  off  some
fine  morning  and  deposited  down  in  the  valley,
leaving  a  vast,  treeless,  unsightly  scar  upon  the
mountain's  front  to  keep  the  circumstance  fresh  in
his  memory  all  the  years  that  he  may  go  on  living
within  seventy  miles  of  that  place.
General  Buncombe  was  shipped  out  to  Nevada  in
the  invoice  of  territorial  officers,  to  be  United  States
Attorney.  He  considered  himself  a  lawyer  of  parts,
and  he  very  much  wanted  an  opportunity  to  mani-
fest it — partly  for  the  pure  gratification  of  it  and
partly  because  his  salary  was  territorially  meager
(which  is  a  strong  expression).  Now  the  older  citi-
zens of  a  new  territory  look  down  upon  the  rest  of
the  world  with  a  calm,  benevolent  compassion,  as
long  as  it  keeps  out  of  the  way — when  it  gets  in  the
way  they  snub  it.  Sometimes  this  latter  takes  the
shape  of  a  practical  joke.
