human
Bitter Creek Country, accursed of all who cross the continent. Here, when the sun got fairly up, the sharp keen winds of the night hours changed to hot sirocco breezes, that laden with the alkali dust there became absolutely stifling. Alkali or soda--the basis of common soap--abounds throughout all this region for two or three hundred miles, and literally curses all nature everywhere. It destroys all vegetation, except sage-brush and grease-wood, and exterminates all animals, except cayotes and Indians. The Indians even mostly desert the country, and how the cayotes manage to