Roughing It · Chapter
XXVII explained
The narrator describes a grueling fifteen-day, two-hundred-mile journey across the desert with three companions: a blacksmith named Mr.
What happens
The narrator describes a grueling fifteen-day, two-hundred-mile journey across the desert with three companions: a blacksmith named Mr. Ballou, two young lawyers, and himself. They buy a wagon and feeble horses, but soon find themselves pushing the wagon through sand, walking the entire way. They camp in the open, divide labor, and endure hardships including weak horses, alkaline water, and a troublesome dog. Despite the toil, the narrator finds joy in the evening campfire camaraderie and reflects on the nomadic instinct.
Themes in this chapter
Work and Labor
The chapter details the physical labor of pushing a wagon, dividing chores, and the exhaustion of a fifty-mile trek, highlighting the harsh realities of manual work in the West.
Humor and Exaggeration
Mr. Ballou's misuse of long words like 'bituminous' and 'meretricious' provides comic relief, and the narrator's deadpan suggestion to tow the horses behind the wagon adds to the chapter's humorous tone.
Frontier Myth vs. Reality
The romantic notion of camping out is contrasted with the gritty reality of pushing feeble horses, drinking alkaline water, and sleeping on frozen ground.
Characters to notice
- The Narrator
Volunteers to drive despite no experience, resigns when walking proves necessary; participates in pushing the wagon and camp chores.
- Mr. Ballou
The blacksmith, aged sixty, does the cooking, uses long words humorously (e.g., 'bituminous,' 'meretricious,' 'organic'), and is described as gentle, simple, and unselfish.
- Higbie
Not directly named in this excerpt; the two young lawyers are Clagett and Oliphant, but Higbie is not mentioned.
Key passages
“We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon.”
They loaded the wagon with supplies and mining equipment and left Carson City on a cold December afternoon.
Sets the scene for the journey's start.
“Mr. Ballou, through whose ironclad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses being 'bituminous from long deprivation.'”
Mr. Ballou, too earnest to recognize sarcasm, insisted the horses couldn't be put in the wagon because they were 'bituminous from long deprivation,' a nonsensical term.
Illustrates Ballou's humorous misuse of language.
“He always let his ponderous syllables fall with an easy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness.”
He used big words so naturally that no one took offense, even though they often made no sense.
Describes Ballou's peculiar habit of using grand words.
“We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and countless ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of us the nomadic instinct.”
The narrator suggests that humans have an innate love for camping and nomadic life, inherited from ancient desert ancestors.
Reflects on the universal appeal of camping.
“The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet invented.”
The coffee made from the alkaline water was the worst drink imaginable.
Highlights the unpleasantness of the water at the Sink of the Humboldt.