Some of you may be aware of my attempts at recording readings of Mark Twain and producing videos. I have more than 300 of them on YouTube at this time. Lately I've been reworking my videos for the Roughing It chapters. I became annoyed with chapter 19 and decided not to enhance my video for it. In my mind this chapter presents Twain at his worst. It presents Twain as prejudiced and a bigot in regards to the Indians of the Great Basin, the “Goshoots”. The one moment of humor is a sarcasm, that the “Goshoots” are not quite as bad as the employees of the Baltimore and Washington Railroad Company. Chapter 20 is also a relatively inferior production, merely repetitions of an anecdote of an event that never occurred, Horace Greely and the stagecoach driver Hank Monk. The chapter is saved, however, by poignant description of his penultimate day on the road. These two chapters leave this portion of the country without adequate description. Rather than produce new videos for these two chapters (my original videos remain on YouTube) I have created a video based on a Google Earth Tour of the Overland Stage/Pony Express trail through the Nevada Territory. I have included in the narration what bits exist of his description of this territory along with material describing the stations and something of their history. This left some rather large gaps of dead air which I have attempted to fill with material related to the Paiute/Pyramid Lake War of 1860. This conflict and the circumstances that created the conflict were largely responsible for what Twain encountered between Utah and Carson City. Bottom line is Twain was grossly unfair in his portrayal of the Paiutes, or “Goshoot” Indians and he was entirely ignorant of the cause for their apparent impoverishment, the destruction of much of their food source and the monopolization of the water supply and grazing lands. Perhaps he can be excused a bit for likely being ignorant of the original cause of the Paiute war, the kidnap and rape of two Pauite girls by some men from the Williams Station, a stagecoach stop, saloon and general store on the Carson River. The video is approximately 52 minutes long and includes some very nice banjo music from the Heftone Banjo Orchestra (made available through the Creative Commons ShareALike license). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpqWwNWdD0