We were approaching the end of our long journey.

It was the morning of the twentieth day.

At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of Nevada Territory.

We were not glad, but sorry.

It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not agreeable, but on the contrary depressing.
Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad mountains.