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[portion of San Francisco letter most likely written in January 1866 and published between January 6-9, 1866. Recovered from the Salt Lake City (Utah) Daily Telegraph, February 7, 1866, p. 4.
Mark Twain, writing to the Territorial Enterprise, says the entire Fourteenth Regiment is destined for Arizona, but they have to send the boys forward in small detachments because they go overland, and water is scarce -- if they went in a body there would not be enough of the article to go round. This is the military explanation, but it looks weak to me. Those Fourteeners do not care anything about water. All they want is lightning to drink and something to steal. After they pass over the ground between here and Arizona the ground can never be mapped again with any degree of accuracy, because they will steal the very parallels of latitude as they go along and carry them off with them.
[Recovered from Salt Lake City (Utah) Daily Telegraph, February 7, 1866, p. 4. The earliest recovery date for this article was in the Marysville Appeal, January 12, 1866.]
