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Around the World on a Bicycle - Volume 1 - From San Francisco to Teheran by Thomas Stevens
page 56 of 572 (09%)
I shall be agreeably surprised if I am able to aggregate ten miles of
riding out of the thirty. Immediately after getting down into the bottom
I make the acquaintance of the tiny black gnats that one of our whiskey-
bereaved friends at Tacoma had warned me against. One's head is constantly
enveloped in a black cloud of these little wretches. They are of
infinitesimal proportions, and get into a person's ears, eyes, and
nostrils, and if one so far forgets himself as to open his mouth, they
swarm in as though they think it the "pearly gates ajar," and this their
last chance of effecting an entrance. Mingled with them, and apparently
on the best of terms, are swarms of mosquitoes, which appear perfect
Jumbos in comparison with their disreputable associates.

As if partially to recompense me for the torments of the afternoon, Dame
Fortune considerately provides me with two separate and distinct suppers
this evening. I had intended, when I left Promontory Station, to reach
Corinne for the night; consequently I bring a lunch with me, knowing it
will take me till late to reach there. These days, I am troubled with
an appetite that makes me blush to speak of it, and about five o'clock
I sit down - on the bleached skeleton of a defunct mosquito! - and proceed
to eat my lunch of bread and meat - and gnats; for I am quite certain of
eating hundreds of these omnipresent creatures at every bite I take. Two
hours afterward I am passing Quarry section-house, when the foreman
beckons me over and generously invites me to remain over night. He brings
out canned oysters and bottles of Milwaukee beer, and insists on my
helping him discuss these acceptable viands; to which invitation it is
needless to say I yield without extraordinary pressure, the fact of
having eaten two hours before being no obstacle whatever. So much for
'cycling as an aid to digestion. Arriving at Corinne, on Bear River, at
ten o'clock next morning, I am accosted by a bearded, patriarchal Mormon,
who requests me to constitute myself a parade of one, and ride the bicycle
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