Explanatory Notes
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Apparatus Notes
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CHAPTER 4
[begin page 18]

CHAPTER 4

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea. Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they had settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them—for, there being no ladies either at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had looked to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o’clock in the morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water canteensemendation and pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the pipes, tobacco and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and then fastened down the coach curtains all around, and made the place as “dark as the inside of a cow,” as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque way. It was certainly as dark as any place could be—nothing was even dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled ourselves up like silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully to sleep.

Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to recollect where we were—and succeed—and in a minute or two the stage would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now, threaded here and there with little [begin page 19] streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: “Take your elbow out of my ribs!—can’t you quit crowding?”

Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged somebody. One trip it “barked” the Secretary’s elbow; the next trip it hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis’s nose up till he could look down his nostrils—he said. The pistols and coin soon settled to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us, and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and water down our backs.

third trip of the unabridged.

Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible [begin page 20] through the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter of our six horses’ hoofs, and the driver’s crisp commands, awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed. It was fascinating—that old overland stage-coachingemendation.

We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the stables—for in the eyes of the stage-driveremendation of that day, station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures, useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himself with; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the hostler, the stage-driver was a hero—a great and shining dignitary, the world’s favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the nations. When they spoke to him they received his insolent silence meekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admiration (he never honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding country and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his one jest—old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time his coach drove up there—the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and [begin page 21] swore it was the best thing they’d ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same, or a light for his pipe!—but they would instantly insult a passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it from—for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little less contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers.

The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful conductor of the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but the driver was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped. How admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved himself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held the bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And how they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his long whip and went careering away.

The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun-driedemendation, mud-colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks, and Americans shorten it to “ ’dobies”textual note emendation). The roofs, which had no slant to them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man’s front yard on top of his house. The buildings consisted of barns, stable-room for twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room for passengers. This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to bend in order to get in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole about large enough for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it. There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard. There was no stove, but the fire-place served all needful purposes. There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerable tin coffee-pots, a tin teapotemendation, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.

By the door of the station-keeper’semendation den, outside, was a tin wash-basin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow [begin page 22] bar soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt, significantly—but this latter was the station-keeper’s private towel, and only two persons in all the party might venture to use it—the stage-driver and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency; the former would not, because he did not choose to encourage the advances of a station-keeper. We had towels—in the valise; they might as well have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used our handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, inside, was fastened

a powerful glass.
a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with two little fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it. This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when you looked into it, with one-halfemendation of your head set up a couple of inches above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a string—but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample coffins. It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair ever since—along with certain impurities. In one corner of the room stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches of ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven
an heirloom.
stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode horseback—so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of [begin page 23] high boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a huge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no suspenders,
our landlord.
no vest, no coat—in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great long “navy” revolverexplanatory note (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie knifeemendation. The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and sofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two empty candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the table-cloth and napkins had not come—and they were not looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup, were at each man’s place, and the driver had a queenswareemendation saucer that had seen better days. Of course this duke sat at
dignified exile.
the head of the table. There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the caster. It was German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even in its degradation. There [begin page 24] was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested there.

The station-keeper up-endedemendation a disk of last week’s bread, of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as good as Nicolsonemendation pavementexplanatory note, and tenderer.

He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the United States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage company had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and employésemendation. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on the plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it—there is no gainsaying that.

Then he poured for us a beverage which he called “ Slumgullion emendation,” and it is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients with.

drinking slumgullion.

[begin page 25] We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the “slumgullion.”explanatory note And when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote (a very, very old one, even at that day)explanatory note of the traveler who sat down to a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said:

All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel enough there for six.”

“But I don’t like mackerel.”

“Oh—then help yourself to the mustard.”

In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor out of it.

Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.

I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. The

a joke without cream.
station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last, when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with himself upon a matter too vast to grasp:

Coffee! Well, if that don’t go clean ahead of me, I’m d—demendation!”

We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and herdsmen—we all sat at the same board. At least there was no conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from one employéemendation to another. It was always in the same form, and always gruffly friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at first, and interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost its charm. It was:

“Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!” No, I forget—skunk was not the word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, [begin page 26] it is no matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous new vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains.

We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to our mail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right here we suffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our six fine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away from the mules’ heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had issued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a fierce and furious gallop—and the gait never altered for a moment till we reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of little station-huts and stables.

So we flew along all day. At 2 p.m. the belt of timber that fringes the North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the Plains came in sight. At 4 p.m. we crossed a branch of the river, and at 5 p.m. we crossed the Platte itselfexplanatory note, and landed at Fort Kearnytextual note emendation, fifty-six hours out from St. Joethree hundred miles!


Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the railroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times, of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. I can scarcely comprehend the new state of things:

ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

Atemendation 4:20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha and started westward on our long jaunt. Aemendation couple of hours out, dinner was announced—an “event” to those of us who had yet to experience what it is to eat in one of Pullman’s hotels on wheels; so stepping into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves in the dining car.emendation Itemendation was a revelation to us, that first dinner on Sunday; and though we continued [begin page 27] to dine for four days, and had as many breakfasts and suppers, our whole

pullman car dining-saloon.
party never ceased to admire the perfection of the arrangements and the marvelous results achieved. Upon tables covered with snowy linen and garnished with services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico explanatory note himself could have had no occasion to blush; and indeed in some respects it would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak, (the gourmetemendation who has not experienced this—bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) ouremendation delicious mountain brooktrout, our choice fruits and berries, and, sauce piquante and unpurchaseable, our sweet-scented appetite-compelling air of the prairies? You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things; and, as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whileemendation we sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two days afterward, when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns—“Praise God from whom,” &c.; “Shining Shore,” “Coronation,” &c.—the voices of the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring [begin page 28] Polyphemusemendation eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the sleep of the just, and only awoke the next morning, (Monday,) at 8emendation o’clocktextual note, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte, 300 miles from Omaha—fifteen hours and forty minutes out.textual note emendation explanatory note

Editorial Emendations CHAPTER 4
  water canteens (C)  •  water-  |  canteens (A) 
  stage-coaching (C)  •  stage-  |  coaching (A) 
  stage-driver (C)  •  stage-  |  driver (A) 
  sun-dried (C)  •  sun-  |  dried (A) 
  “ ’dobies” (C)  •  ’dobies  (A) 
  teapot (C)  •  tea-  |  pot (A) 
  station-keeper’s (C)  •  station-  |  keeper’s (A) 
  one-half (C)  •  one half (A) 
  bowie knife (C)  •  bowie-knife (A) 
  queensware (C)  •  queens-  |  ware (A) 
  up-ended (C)  •  up-  |  ended (A) 
  Nicolson (C)  •  Nicholson (A) 
  employés (C)  •  employes (A) 
  Slumgullion  (C)  •  Slum-  |  gullion  (A) 
  d—d (C)  •  d——d (A) 
  employé (C)  •  employe (A) 
  Kearny (C)  •  Kearney (A) 
  At (C)  •  “At (A)  It had been my intention, on this trip, to go only as far as Ogden, there diverge to Salt Lake, and finish the trans-continental ride after some stay in the City of the Saints. When, however, the Chicago and Northwest train came into Omaha, on Saturday afternoon, I found occasion to alter my resolution. I learnt that the train was to take out two of the Pullman palace cars on their initial trip across the continent, and that Colonel Pullman himself was along, and with him some of my old journalistic friends—Simonton, of the Associated Press, Governor Bross, of the Chicago Tribune, and some others; so the invitation to join the party was not to be refused. Accordingly, at (NYT) 
  A (A)  •  [¶] A (NYT) 
  dining car. (C)  •  dining-car. (A)  dining car, the “International,” which, O, muse of gastronomy, inspire me with language fitly to describe! (NYT) 
  It (A)  •  [¶] It (NYT) 
  gourmet (NYT)  •  gormand (A) 
  our (NYT)  •  and (A) 
  while (NYT)  •  whilst (A) 
  Polyphemus (A)  •  Polephemus (NYT) 
  8 (C)  •  eight (A)  6 (NYT) 
  Omaha— . . . out. (C)  •  Omaha— . . . out.” (A)  Omaha. (NYT) 
Textual Notes CHAPTER 4
 “ ’dobies”] The A spelling (“ ’dobies”) is the only instance where the typesetters used italic type for an English word treated as a word, where no special emphasis was intended. They normally reserved italic for foreign words, and of course for emphasis. To accord with the treatment of all other like cases—e.g., “The first crop is called ‘plant cane;’ subsequent crops . . . are called ‘rattoons’ ” (480.13–15)—quotation marks have been substituted here for italic type.
 

[begin page 935] Kearny] The A spelling (“Kearney”) has been corrected. The spelling “Kearny” dates from January 1849, when the federal government officially assigned this name to a newly established military post on the Platte River:

It was the same spelling as that used by General Stephen Watts Kearny and also by General Phil Kearny, it is the correct spelling of the site of the present fort. The fact that in subsequent years someone not familiar with the correct spelling inserted an “e” in the last syllable and this error was perpetuated in the name of the present Kearney county and present city of Kearney does not alter the historic and orthographic truth that the name Fort Kearny is correctly spelled K-E-A-R-N-Y. (Sheldon, 274)

 ACROSS . . . out.] This extract was taken from an article written by Mark Twain’s friend William Swinton (see the explanatory note)—either directly from the New York Times, as Mark Twain states at 26.29, or from an unidentified reprinting in another newspaper. Mark Twain extracted only a portion of the original article: the title, one sentence from the end of the third paragraph, most of a sentence from the eighth paragraph, and all of the twelfth paragraph. Except for the correction of “Polephemus” to “Polyphemus” (28.1) and the change to “8 o’clock” at 28.3 (see the next note), all the A variants have been rejected as nonauthorial.
 8 o’clock] The change from “6” to “8” o’clock (spelled “eight” in A) may have resulted from a typographical error in Mark Twain’s copy of the article. The error is uncorrectable, however, because of the authorial addition of “fifteen hours and forty minutes out” at 28.5.
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 4
 a great long “navy” revolver] A large-caliber revolver with a barrel measuring seven and one-half inches, first manufactured in 1851 by Samuel Colt (1814–62) and shortly thereafter adopted as a sidearm by the United States Navy. The revolver (with its imitators) predominated in the West in the latter half of the nineteenth century, becoming “Colt’s passport to undying fame” (Edwards, 277–79, 283–84; Mathews, 1115).
 Nicolson pavement] A type of street pavement, patented in 1854 by Samuel Nicolson (1791–1868), which was used in numerous American cities during the 1860s. Consisting of thick blocks of wood embedded in asphalt, it was less expensive than stone, rapidly laid, smooth, and relatively durable (Mining and Scientific Press: “The Chicago, or ‘Nicholson’ Pavement,” 7 [21 Dec 63]: 4; “Patent Department,” 8 [16 Jan 64]: 39).
 We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the “slumgullion.”] The brothers’ meal was evidently typical. Richard Burton, who traveled west by stagecoach in August 1860, described a breakfast “prepared in the usual prairie style”: the stale coffee of “burnt beans” was simmered “till every noxious principle was duly extracted from it,” the bacon was “rusty,” the antelope steak was “cut off a corpse suspended for the benefit of flies outside,” and the bread was prepared with “sour milk, . . . saleratus or prepared carbonate of soda or alkali, and other vile stuff, which communicates to the food the green-yellow tinge, and suggests many of the properties of poison” (Burton, 104).
 the anecdote (a very, very old one, even at that day)] At least two writers known to Mark Twain published versions of this joke: John Phoenix (George H. Derby) in 1855, and Albert D. Richardson in 1867 (Bellamy, 39–40; Fried, 42–43; Derby, 211; Richardson, 493).
 At 4 p.m. we crossed a branch of the river, and at 5 p.m. we crossed the Platte itself] The route reached the south bank of the Platte River at this point, but did not cross it. Orion’s journal makes no mention of river crossings near Fort Kearny, and places the fort itself only seven miles beyond the sighting of the “Timber of Platte” (supplement A, item 1).
 At . . . out.] This paragraph was reprinted, with a few minor changes, from the New York Times of 28 June 1869 (1–2). The article from which it was taken was the last of a series published by Clemens’s friend William Swinton (1833–92), who had been a Times staff member since 1858. As the newspaper’s special correspondent, he traveled to California in the spring of 1869 on the first run of the Pacific Railroad to employ “Pullman palace cars.” His train departed Omaha on Sunday, [begin page 580] 13 June, and arrived at Sacramento four days later. On 8 July Swinton accepted a professorship at the University of California in Berkeley, where he remained until 1874 (New York Times: “We had a dispatch . . .,” 9 July 69, 5; “The New West,” 11 June 69, 5, and 14 June 69, 8; Ohles, 3:1262–63; Swinton to A. J. Moulder, 8 July 69, Regents’ Records, Box 2:16, University Archives, CU-BANC).
  Delmonico] New York restaurateur Lorenzo Delmonico (1813–81), whose principal establishment, at Broadway and Chambers Street, was internationally renowned for the quality and variety of its menu.