it is not uncommon to see men riding or walking with a bit of paper instead of a straw between their lips. Wounds must be treated to great disadvantage where the climate, like that of Abyssinia, renders a mere scratch troublesome. The dryness of the air produces immunity from certain troublesome excrescences which cause shooting pains in humid regions, and the pedestrian requires no vinegar and water to harden his feet: on the other hand, horses' hoofs, as in Sindh and Arabia, must be stuffed with tar, to prevent sun-crack.
Under the generic popular name "mountain fever" are included various species of febrile affections, intermittent, remittent, and typhoid: they are treated successfully with quinine.
Emigrants are advised to keep up hard work and scanty fare after arrival, otherwise the sudden change from semi-starvation and absence of fruit and vegetables upon the prairies to plenty in the settlements may cause dyspepsia, dysentery, and visceral inflammation. Some are attacked by "liver complaint," the trivial term for the effects of malaria, which, when inhaled, affects successively the lungs, blood, liver, and other viscera. The favorite, and, indeed, the only known successful treatment is by mineral acids, nitric, muriatic, and others.[1] Scurvy is unknown to the settlers; when brought in after long desert marches, it yields readily to a more generous diet and vegetables, especially potatoes, which, even in the preserved form, act as a specific. The terrible scorbutic disease, called the "black canker of the plains," has not extended so far west.
There is not much sport with fur, feather, and fin in this part of the Far West: the principal carnivors of the Great Basin are the cougar (F. unicolor) and the the cat-o'-mountain, the large and small wolf, a variety of foxes, the red (V. fulvus), the great-tailed (V. macrourus), and the silver (V. argentatus), whose spoils were once worth their weight in silver. There are minks, ermines, skunks, American badgers, and wolverines or gluttons, which ferret out caches of peltries and provisions, and are said sometimes to attack man. Of rodents the principal are the beaver, a burrowing hare, the jackass-rabbit (L. callotis), porcupines, the geomys or gophar, a sand-rat peculiar to America, the woodchuck or ground-hog, many squirrels, especially the Spermophilus tredecim lineatus, which swarms in hilly ground, and muskrat (F. zibeticus), which, like other vermin, is eaten by Indians. The principal pachyderm is the hyrax, called by the settlers "cony." Of the ruminants we find the antelope, deer, elk, and the noble bighorn,
- ↑ The following is the favorite cure: it is upon the principle of the medicinal bath well known in Europe.
℞ Acid. Nit. ʒi. Acid. Mur. ʒii. Mis. Of this fifteen drops are to be taken in a tumbler of water twice a day before meals. The local application to the hepatic region is one ounce of the nitro-muriatic acid in a quart of water, and applied upon a compress every night.
