^/.o< • J- 50* .*' 50* N "ft SIX SEASONS ""^^ ON OUR PRAIRIES Six Weeks in our Rockies. THOMAS J. JENKINS, OF THE DIOCESE OF LOUISVILLE. PUBLISHED BY CHAS. A. ROGERS, 167 West Jefferson Street, Louisville, Ky. 1884. / SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES Six Weeks in our Rockies, THOMAS J, JENKINS, . OF THE DIOCESE OF LOUIS \'ILLE. „ MAY 20 1884 '„ PUBLISHED BY CHAS. A. ROGERS. 'o'^""^'^:^^u^'^ 167 West Jefferson Street, Louisville, Ky. 1SS4. ■Jsz Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1SS4, By Thop. J. Jenkins. Knoefel, Berne & Co., Printer?, 210 Market St., Louisville, Ky. TO THE EVER-VIRGIN QUEEN MARY, Immaculate and First Patroness of these States, whose Dower is the WHOLE NEW WORLD, And by Excellence, the Best it Contains in the NORTHERN FR^IRIB VALLEY, Watered by her own "River of the Immaculate Conception,'' And Bounded, towards the Setting Sun, by the WALLS OF OUR ROCKY MOUNTAINS, Inlaid with Gold, Silver, and Precious Stones, Emblematic all of what we would offer OUR ONLY QUEEN, This Slight Attempt to Mirror Forth HER VIRGIN LANDS, is Dedi- cated, with all the Effusion of his Heart and with all the Ardor of his Inmost Soul, by her forever Devoted Client, THE Author. May, 1SS4. Six Seasons on our Prairies: A DIARY. Six Seasons on our Prairies, A PREFATORY MAY. ^T(|)T-WAS on the first of May. in the year of grace '^^^j^iSSz, we three — a practical Irish Kentucky I farmer, his sturdy son, a young man of good, hard sense, and an aihng ecclesiastic — started to travel North and West by the circuitous but interesting route, across Southern Indiana and Illinois, and from St. Louis by water to the other saintly city in Minnesota. We went sight-seeing and health-seeking, as well as on business intent, to secure personal knowledge of prairie farming, by "doing" the Northwestern Catholic Colonies — with possible and probable choice of new homes for some families who were wearing out both patience and good Irish and American muscle on Middle- Kentucky farms lying back from the Ohio, and cut oft' from railroad lines. The agitation for the migration of Catholics from the crowded cities East, and the poorer agricul- tural districts South, was inaugurated fourteen or fif- teen years ago. The plan was carried into execution beyond the Mississippi River, so that we find a more or less connected system of plantings scattered in every State bordering its western banks. Practical laymen have joined hands with practical prelates all 8 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. along the line, and Catholics find themselves pro- vided with resources to place families with moderate means, and no good establishment where they live or come from, to people the glorious West, and take possession of their God-given inheritance. Deus fac sit I For ourselves, we did not get ofF without some difficulty. Embarking rather late in the day we boarded the wrong boat on the Ohio to make rail connections on the other shore. Here we were separated by some misunderstanding — two of us finally bunking on the floor of the state-room- less craft all night, as it made its regular or rather irregular trips. Mishap No. i. Mishap No. 2 fol- lows on its heels. We united next morning, and moved on towards St. Louis — to be caught on the way by a furious hail-storm, that made the car-top and windows rattle like musketry, as we neared the big city of the Father of Waters. The place, strange to us, we booked in the Planter House — imposing enough when you were inside the colonnaded office. We were shown to a room with three beds, the lights smashed by the hail, and scattered glass and ice all over the floor. When we came to pay our bill, and the clerk coolly informed us it was nine dollars for a nighf s lodging alone, we looked from one to the other in amazement, but after demurring, paid him the outrageous charge. He didn't know par example^ that one of the costliest boats on the Ohio — the unfortunate "Pat. Cleburne" — had been blown up for charging one of us somewhere about eight or nine dollars too much for carriage. He was innocent — that Planter House clerk. It was not two, at most three, months afterwards, when the Planter SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 9 concern was burned to the ground, with a great loss, uninsured. And w^e assure the suspicious that we caused neither catastrophe, but considered both as providential retribution, sure to overtake those per- sisting in legalizable theft. May the 9th, and we had steamed up the ever more beautiful Northern Mississippi, noting par- ticularly the thriftier towns and cities on the West- ern prairie side, the fresher air, the limpider water, the painted rocks, and realizing how poetic and true was the Catholic instinct that named this upper continental stream the "Immaculate Conception." Hail, spirits of heroic priests and men! We other Catholic wayfarers salute you with reverential love as we pass. Our tarry in and about St. Paul was short. We had come for everything but big cities and grand buildings. We moved westward. I will admonish the reader that tho' the writer was, the whole three seasons in the prosperous year of 1882, traveling on the prairies, as well as during the corresponding time of which a diary follows in 1883, no detailed account of the first half of these six seasons was* kept. The account of one set of seasons will answer for the other, and 1882 will be noticed only supplementarily, and as occasions recall it, except the relation of this month of May. We found it cool — cold to our Southern blood; and woe to him who had come unprovided with his overcoat — as one of us had! It was a constant source of fun for us two, and occasional shivering and self-reproach to him. Takinsf the Northwestern route from St. Paul on lO SIX SEASONS ON OUK PRAIRIES. the way to Graceville, Minn., on the borders of Mid- dle Dakota, we were not favorably impressed with the wisdom of the projectors of the way towns. Following the railroad strictly many of the villages and more pretentious places were built in sloughy situations, and had to have their streets mounded to keep somewhat out of the water. Much of the country contiguous to the older Catholic foundations of colonies, in Swift and ad- joining counties at, for instance, Waverly, De Graft', Clontarf, and further north, on examination, proved to be generally good, if well selected; though tracts are found more or less marshy. Sections can be picked, which, with drainage by ditching or tiling, make good farms and fine crops. Some such I al- ready saw in tillage, and of fine records. It is con- siderably similar to Northern Illinois, some ninety or one hundred miles south of Chicago. New selec- tions have been made at Adrian, Minneota, and southward. To Minneota, Rev. Fr. Cornells, the former pas- tor, has just brought from his native land one hun- dred new families of Belgians, mostly farmers. So successful in their own garden country of Europe, they are sure to succeed on these prairies. Graceville — named after the present venerable second Bishop of St. Paul — Rt. Rev. Thomas L. Grace, O. P. D. D. — is a rising town, and surrounded by perhaps a better country than is met east or- southeast in Minnesota. Communities of this kind are left to their own resources, and are not "boomed" like numerous localities — in fact, the whole of the region west. It has attracted, however, some two hundred families in a moderate radius; and the vil- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. II lage boasts of goodly rows of houses, a large mill and general stores. There is a belt of natural timber three-quarters of a mile from town, of large trees of various kinds — a resource for firewood not often attainable on the prairie from the Dakota line, as far east and south as Swift County, Minn. Outside the great pineries of the North, which cover, with other wooded portions, one-third of the area of the State; and the "Big Woods" of some thirty varieties of timber, and containing, in its breadth of forty miles, and length of upwards of one hundred, 5,000 square miles, wood is scarce, except about the larger lakes. Spring ploughing and planting were going on actively in the middle of May here and in South- western Minnesota; tho' as shall be remarked, there is a difference of from fifteen to twenty days in the maturing, as in the earlier planting, of crops as com- pared with the wooded regions in Southeastern Minnesota. Of game there was all abundance. We kept our table well supplied with plover, jack-rabbits, snipe and other varieties of smaller game. We chased a rabbit one day, looking fully as large as an ordinary dog, but caught — only a good glimpse of him, nota- bly his uplifted cotton tail. Towards the middle of the month we shifted our headquarters to Avoca, Minn., and came into the • charmino: resfion detailfullv described, in all its moods and phases, in the Diary of 1S83. This Diary embodies my diurnal and nocturnal experiences, not only, tho' mainly, in the ''Land of Sky-tinted Waters," but also excursions into Iowa, 13 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PKAIItlES. West and East; Dakota; Nebraska thro' its whole length; Wyoming's southern corner; the "•Rockies" in Colorado. It does not forget general items of Catholic, mineral and agricultural interests in Mon- tana, Idaho, Nevada, New Alexico; and winds up with comparisons of the States lying on both sides of the Mississippi Valley. If descriptions seem to crowd the early months and the latest, the reader will be the more astonished that Nature is so various and interesting on \vhat are esteemed as flat, dull, prairie lands. And Nature's, because God's remedies, are prescribed for ills of mind and body. The Diary's range precludes the idea of its bein.g classed with what I at least ignore — special booming campaign papers; does not, how- ever, disdain to tell all the inviting truth it can lay hold on, and where proper, give details worth know- ing to projecting movers, to enable them to judge for themselves when they come to examine localities for future homes. Finally, I believe and confess, with Mr. John Sweetman, the experienced and can- did author of ''Recent Experiences in the Coloniza- tion of Irish Families," that it is as well — nay just — to show some of both sides of the practical settling of Catholic or other families on our Western prairies. A man and a priest need not stick at acknowledging a few palpable disadvantages, and predicting the certain disappointments of too gold- en dreamers. ''Forew^arned is forearmed" — still the , good w^ill prevail, like Truth — and here is proof of it. Diary of the Seaso-ns of 1883, AvocA, Minnesota, June 6th, 1883. r/iHY not ? It can be vain — it's useful, and, [gone day, interesting. And to store up facts and observations for a future period! My friends, too, hovs^ sv^^eet for them ! Then on, Auspice Maria! Let's mirror the Virgin Lands. City Diaries? What? Musty, dusty, great cities. Aw^ay v^ith the necessary evils! Now^ for the necessary good. Walls are manufactured — towns built by men — God made the fields and '^their beauty is with him." They are temples "made without hands" — God-made. The best is not the rare — contrariwise. The best beautiful is cheap, common for all. Men! make but a pond in imita- tion of that Lake St. Ro&e. Paint but a feather in semblance of this poor bird's that clings to my fingers from the hunt. The undefiled — alas ! except it all be sin-tainted — is here over the ocean of the prairie, in the changeful face of the waters and the sky. I repeat: "God made the country^man made the town:" or, as some will have it, it was the old enemy made the town. Just two weeks to-day! Ah! what a long day since I came. Night has at last been dissolving under the influence of this pure air of heaven, the balmv breezes, the sweet sunshine. I have begun •to sleep. "Ho!" said the housekeeper, "father, it's 14 SIX SEASONS ON OUll PKAIRIES after seven by this clock." I was conscious enough to respond: "Oh! your clock is too fast." I feel sleepy in the day, after my hearty meals. After-dinner nap — I'm afraid, bah! I'm not afraid either, why not be glad? — will be the order of commencing the evening properly. Repose, I have lost plenty ! aye, superabundance, and I'm going to make it up this summer, please God. Besides, the days are so long — ^just think, from 4.22 to 7.38, fifteen hours, sixteen minutes; nay, over seventeen hours of dayr light, including the two hours' twilight. The half moon hangs out her silver lamp and the stars fade. yune \^th. — That was a prefatial plea in advance for a longer sleep this morning; ahem! arose at 7 o'clock whistle. Let's put it on the storm and the pup that pawed the door open. I heard him leis- urely scratching himself beside my couch at some- thing near 4 A. M., and drove him out with my boot. Moore might extenuate, paraphrastically: ■'The best of all waj^s to shorten long days, Is to lengthen the hours of the night." M. W. Spring, of the University of Liege's, Pop- ular Science Monthly article, "On the Colors of Water," might be illustrated in the lakes of this re- gion, notably St. Rose's. Its face changes like the human physiognomy — all depends upon its mood. When very angry or placidly calm, its color is dark blue, almost purple. In medium, undecided weather, its cast is more inclined to earthy, a brownish red. But curious to say, when the main body is reddish, the slough beyond the railroad bridge and mound appears deep, beautiful blue. I will watch this. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I5 The sky influences as much as the lake bottom, and the season agahi makes remarkable differences. The water now appears in se, of a light brownish tinge, except on the pebbles. White Bear Lake, Minnesota. yune i^th. — Curious, how this rainy, falling day should make sunshine within and bring me back those unparalleled days of first delighted experience in this crystal climate — when it wants to be crystal. White Bear Lake, twelve miles east of St. Paul, commands some eighteen miles of shore and is diversified by not only the now smooth, now as- cending banks on inlet and bay; but far off' to the northern end is dignified with a promontory of uncommon beauty and pleasant surprise. Across the causeway, too, is a secluded offing where grow the yellow and white waterlily, the former rather indelicate, but the latter approaching the exquisite- ness of the night-blooming Cereus. We would stoop and reach down low into the water to catch the stem long, and detach it from its vase-like socket. These and wild roses, meadow sweet, larkspurs, and baybells mingled their sweets about our Lady's feet in the May services. How many and varied in form, hue and scent, the wild flowers on the shores about the green avenues of the oft-rifled island: Sweet Williams, wild violets and saff'ron blossoms, calla lilies, and purple bunches of fragrant lilacs. And how vivifying the bevies of joyous youths and maidens in their gay summer costumes, culling them and sporting in the checkered shades by the beach and bluflry outlooks on the occassional stretches of lake. l6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. When I look back now to last summer, at the per- fect days and heavenly nights at "White Bear,'' domesticated as I was with the cultivated family who made my stay so pleasant, I marvel how I could not sleep. I was unstrung indeed. A man may laugh at nerves before he discovers he has any; but let him hang over the ragged edge of suppressed or excited palpitation for a run of tw^elve or fifteen niofhts without the break of a solid rest for even four hours! And, well — I used to sit in the spring sunlight, w^hich makes diamonds on the lake, opals in the sky, and emeralds and amethysts on the leaves of the wooded shores, and see as distinctly as a crystal in a microscope the exact form of the remotest objects sharply defined. The large island, with winding drives, piled tiers of shaggy trees and lake-lapped, was being connected to the main land by an arching, balustraded bridge. The shores, down by the music balcony and on to Williams' Hotel, were dotted on land by the peeping tents and white villas, and spacious retired hotels ; w^iile bobbing near the ishores, the sailcraft invited you to a scud across the bays or out into the deep. The green and red bath houses and out-jutting piers formed accompanying ground and background for the lounging fishers, flapping sails and pleasure hunters. Our moon-lit nights out in our swift sailers, with violin and flag- eolet or flute, according with the lightsome boat- songs or opera snatches, kept young hearts sweet and fresh, raised the drooping, rejuvenated the older, smoothed the wrinkles of care. The inhabitants about White Bear, wdien the Aveather is storm v, and the blue waves trembling SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 17 out in mid-lake, dash up a crest of white foam, say: ''The Bear is showing his teeth!" How beautiful! White Bear, tho', you are aware, is the Indian chief's name, who is buried in the fine mound with the rustic arbor, made in vacation by an ecclesiast- ical student, but naturally utilized by lounging lovers as midway station in their round of the lake shore. Avoca, June i^th, night. — How w^onderfully var- ious have been the past three or four days' sunsets across the lake. Monday's w^as an entrancing vis- ion, more like the stories of Aladdin's Lamp or Mirza's vision — if not even recalling the Revela- tions of St. John. What a scene of ecstatic glory, calmly sublime! Bars of vivid lightning arrested in mid-volley, spread horizontally across the molten islands of liquid amber and onyx. The rounded, softer contours of the southw^est and north gently burned like heaven's cornelians of rich red islands of clouded pearl, hillocks of feathery orange, filled out the back and upper ground. Away off to the horizon's south and north dwelt that indescribable peace of suffused pink light. About the sun there seemed a living, glorious tabernacle of white and rose and gold and precious metals burnished — a long island lay spread out of silvered gold "like purest glass." "He hath set in them a tabernacle for the sun," {David Ps.) and in the midst blazed with bearable effulgence the imao^e of the Great Kino- on his great white throne, diffusing glory and benedic-^ tion for evermore. I gazed and w^as never sated with gazing, as the heavenly slides shifted the chang- ing revelation, and an inspiration struck me to climb the highest point accessible over the lake and see l8 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. the mirrored glory in its fair bosom. I saw, and the roses bloomed softly confused in the waters' depths, a dream of a vision spread beneath, while the glory above canopied all. John Ruskin's great attraction was the grand- iose — mountains, piled clouds, rushing torrents, fiery glaciers. I have failed to notice that he has any practical idea of plain beauty, simplicity, pas- toral picturesqueness alone. Still and all, if he had had opportunity to enjoy such a land as this, such sky, such water, such air, the very names, Minnetonka, "great waters" — Minnesota, "sky- tinted waters," would have charmed him. He missed something in all his wanderings through Europe, Asia, even across the Mediterranean. He never saw America, and say what they will, we cer- tainly have the most superb natural scenery, with- out prescinding from the sublime, at least, in high altitudes, the world can show. And one must travel far before he will find any parallel with the unique enchantment of these western prairies, when an eye for the simple works of Nature, the attention ta details, the broadest and minutest, are appreciated. This land, and its low-voiced, unobtrusive charm, puts me in mind of the simple majesty of the word of God, whose very most attractive feature is its adaptability generally to all minds and all peoples and times; which wears well and improves with meditation, and palls not on long acquaintance. Ruskin's truly aesthetic interpretation of the passages from Holy Writ, describing the clouds as indeed God's Throne and best manifestation of Himself in Nature, came home, and a lofty peace awed my SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I9 awakened soul. Ezechiel: "'Behold, He cometh with clouds and every eye shall see Him." Psalms: "Thy Mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. His excel- lency is upon Israel and His strength is in the clouds." "The heavens declare His righteousness and all the people His glory." "Swear not by heaven, it is God's throne." Tuesday's sunset w\as less beautiful — only orange and rose confused in sw'eet disorder, and about the north, colder heaps of creamy snow. Again, in the east, the slate- colored, elongated islands of solid vapor in a sea of greenish blue, and a grand tumb- ling of w^'ung-out rain clouds crowding the tops and sides of the vault. Wednesday's, finally, with- out a cloud; no side scenery, no varied colors, but one wide bosom of warm, red-rose lierht, formino- an expansible hemisphere of comforting glory — spread- ing over the broad prairie and up into the w^estern sky; the gold burning ball majestically sinking, sinking until the quarter disk, the centre of the half- periphery of heaven's Bengal light, seemed to draw:, nay, did draw% the heart after it to witness the essential glory of which it was but the outward gate. June i6th. — Yesterday's and this evening's train, bless it! brought my first batches of letters. My friends, that God has given me on occasions un- looked-for, but determined in his loving Providence, these are your self-draw^n photographs, more precious 20 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. than the very artists', because drawn in the colors of the heart. Here more than all does one begin to appreciate them, the dear absent. How I have col- lected them more carefully and culled them out with greater solicitude than any other belonging. Friends of mine in every clime, from the village friends of first school davs, when we coasted together the great maple-tree hill-sides and waded the pure rock-bound brook, on thro' school and seminary; in Europe at our dear American College, and all thro' these near fourteen years of joy-and-sorrow-check- ered man's life, friends of unforgotten boyhood; clinging hearts of young manhood; brothers-in-arms in celestial warfare; sisters more of spirit than flesh, sweetest because nearest my heart in God; children- friends, to you all, living on earth, blessed in heaven, I consecrate this page, only written, but indelible! Orate pro me! And here they troop to say their little speeches before friendship's throne. How kindly my majesty inclines towards them and gives a right royally gra- cious hearing. "Ah! bless you all, right well! Now the 'winter of my discontent, doth thaw quite out in the glow of your spring-time faces! Sweet friends, glad welcome!" And little by little, one comes down, like Joseph, from his stateliness and mingles with his brothers and sisters — and falling on their necks he weeps for joy: "I am Joseph, come nearer to me — I am Joseph, your brother." Here is many a Benjamin and royal Judah, gen- erous Reuben — aye, sometimes, repentant Issachar and Zabulon. They will, many a time as now, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 21 brighten my not unpleasant exile and freshen ties never broken. All this gilded climate, new-found friends, healthful benefits, would scarce fill the place of a tithing of my loved correspondents, from the gray-haired brethren in the ministry and sisters under the white hood, to the children, known from peachen-cheeked girlhood to the age of the mother-eye and the purer cap of the religious. Again, bless you all well and forever! Prairie Sunday. Sunday, I'jth. — The week is so quiet and Sabbath- like out on these iinpolluted prairies, and the stillness of the Sunday is not striking, save for the ghost of a holier calm that everywhere is its natural halo. Only the little train, gliding almost noiselessly on the level track, comes not back and forth; and the single piping whistle of the tow-mill, playing tenor to the bass of the droning machinery, is hushed. But every day here is nearer like the day of the Lord's rest than the busy, rushing, city church-going and coming, the rattle of the street cars, and screech and yell of the locomotives, and the jangling of the different-voiced bells of the discordant creeds. Avoca, Sunday Forenoon. — Some other friends met me on the morning ramble along the lake in the much-clouded sunshine that gave the moving, glassy surface of St. Rose's the tint of watered blood. Who would you guess? One would little expect a sportsman — especially only an amateur and mediocre "shot," to be a friend of the birds, eh! When such cannot get legitimate game, they are apt to shoot for fun and slay right and left, what they happen to hit. Not so, however. One can love sport, not for the 22 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. sake of slaying, but. to obtain necessary exercise, irreplacable by anything different; to eke out the scantier board, and because the fish of the waters and birds of the air, as well as the beasts of the field, are God-given for food, since the vegetarian diet was abolished after the flood in the permission accorded divinely to our second father. Familiar friends! The cat-bird, with not only his short melo- dious calls and fitful phrases, but his flat, soft cat- call unmistakable. One struck up his intercalated matins for, no doubt, the twentieth, or even fiftieth repetition, down at the head of the lake near the windmill; and as I sauntered up meditatively along the shore to the west, I heard hfs notes sounding clear over the half-caw of the multifarious varieties of the black-birds, the clang-like notes of the prairie lark, the whistle of the hovering plover and the minor pipes of the winged mites, chirping, twitter- ing along the bushes. For a quarter of a mile or more, the pleasant notes came borne by a gusting breeze, even sometimes piercing past an adverse wind; and I could fairly fancy myself in the wooded hills and sweeping vales of old Kentucky. The illusion ^vas eked out by the frequent passing to and fro of the fan-tailed, flutter- ing beemartins; the distant, then nearer, short melody of the clearer-throated lark, and the first fitful, then swimming, flight of the tawny-breasted black-and- yellow bird. Anon, as I lost the last notes of the first songster, another set up his music box in the bosk of the next lake-jutting, and took upwhere his fellow -singer had left ofi'. Curious! the matins of the prairie birds continue far into the day by reason of the uninterrupted SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 23 freshness of the mornings. Here, as the half-past- ten church bell calls to last Holy Mass, they chirp and chatter, call and quawk, sing singular melodies, and the irrepressible cock crows between. 17/// — Still Sunday. — It has been fuller of inci- dents than usual. I got home from up the lake at 1 1:20 P. M. Up, then up and down the rapid little shoots of the inlet stream, around the graceful curves in the offings, we glided and threw out the troll hooks, spinning in the wake of the boat! Houp, first bite! haul in: small pickerel. Second, a larger, still another, a half, a whole dozen, in something over an hour. The sky continues cloudy; the lake dull crimson. A patter of rain. It makes the fish crazy for a frolic and food. They shall have it — and so shall we! They nab the hooks: we snag three, four, by the ribs. They bite away as fast as I can throw out the line. Four, five, literally in as many minutes. A great cloud lowers over us. In the excitement a smart April shower, in June, sur- prises us, wets us pretty superficially and hurries us up and out, to escape. We wait many a weary hour to return to our sport; but no! Rain, rain! I have to get home two miles down lake and the northerly wind only stops the down patter at 10.30 P. M. These April-in-the-middle-of-June showers are not so innocuous to catarrhal throats, as I experienced for two days afterwards. But oh! that batch of seventeen or eighteen fine fish! that pays for all. The Little Sleeper of Avoca. Monday^ iZth. — Ah! Sweet God of infancy! This time brings a sad, suave recollection and anniver- sary — the sickness and death of little six-year-old 24 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Beatrice Aungiers. How it tears the heart to recall the mother's softer grief — grief dissolving in tears, vet "would not be comforted, for her child is not!" How contrasted with the father's sterner, tearless de- spondency, ending in his clotting a ball of dirt and throwing: it on the lowering- coffin with an iindis- tinguishable mutter, almost a curse, at the frenzied moment of losing, so long, his first-born. They had come from their pleasant yeoman's villa in rural- England, ivied, stonewalled. Their three children, Beatrice, Laddie and baby Florence, w^ere worried by the sea sickness and the usual discomforts of a voyage, a fourth 'round the globe; and too, by the unpreparedness of prairie hotel life. All drooped. Beatrice grew worse, commenced to wither — sweet flower of beauty and innocence! wilted, dropped her fair young head, like a dead rose on its stem, and the sick spirit was gone! I saw her but as the lily corpse, a little livid now, lay in its white grave-clothes on the great bed over the parlor. The sobbing mother led me in; we had never seen one another before, but, "A fellow-feeling makes all the world akin." and hard would be the heart that throbbed not the throb of sympathy with a blow such as this. We stood beside it. But somehow, a child's remains scarcely ever inspire me with grief, and tears dis- solve into a bow of light above the sweet — aye, sweet in death's cold arms, broken soul's tabernacle. I smiled at the sleeper of Avoca, and thought of the daughter of Jairus. In whiter robe we wound her, in tiny cream coffin; and tho' something moved to show of grief, we made her funeral and its touch- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 2^ ing circumstances like only the bearing of the little virgin martyr, sweet smiling in death, away from the amphitheatre of horror to the calm and holy catacombs. Only it had rained, and the poor grave was filled with mud and water; and oh I it hurt so to put that body in so foul a resting place. God heal smarting hearts! what a proof of the curse of sin even over the personally sinless, yet inheriting, fruit of sinful womb. With deeper sorrow we laid her low; but then we had only sown a grain in God's Acre on the prairies, to be a ripe blessing on this colony and sanctify the soil for the future dead and the present living. How I recall afterwards that the merciful God vouchsafed the life of baby Florence, sick unto death, thro' the intervention of our Lady of Lourdes; v^^e consecrating the child to God and promising her full retirement from the world, with her discretion- ary consent. She lives now, a very darling, a little browned, but rosy-cheeked, sweet-eyed and chest- nut-haired — fast filling the gone Beatrice's place and helping in her child's and artless way to nurse little Francis Eric, our God-son — sent some months later literally to refill the number at the fond mother's knee! Aye, Beatrice! well named, like the angels of God, sleep on with thy comrades of Avoca grave- yard, little John and the two baby Catharines — lost babes. "Thy lovely companions Are faded and gone ... I'll not leave, thou lone one, To pine on the stem ; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them!" 26 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 1 8/7/ — Evening. — There are sudden gusts of wind, some showers, pretty sharp claps of thunder, re- sembhng our Middle States end of April or begin- ning of May. The birds do not seem to mind the weather. I hear them singing away. Rt. Rev. Dr! Ireland visits us, principally to look after the Nuns of the Holy Child, who have come to take charge of an academy and parochial school at Avoca — much needed in these parts and destined to be the seminary of future branch houses through- out southern Minnesota, and maybe in neighboring States. God prosper them, and His cause is theirs! Tuesday, \<^tk. — What a faultless day has this been! From the early sunrise, the first I have seen this season, until the late set, there has been scarcely the slightest fleck in the pale sunshiny sky; except now, at the last moments, a filmy veil of cloud has gathered over the western horizon to catch and embody the fine red light streaming over air and earth and sky. Is it presumptuous to say this hyacin thine, spot- less heaven, with its brilliant sun in the midst, like Gods' own Kohinoor, is the worthy bridal ring of the Maker's marriage with His unstained Virgin Earth! And the harmonies that have been playing in the air from the winds, sweet harpers, harping on all Nature's yEolian harps; mingling with the sonorous hum of gratitude from man and beast and bird, are all but the echo of the sweeter symphonies Earth's Angels have been harping all the day long! And a worthy, calmly beautiful night has com- menced to drop her curtain, ever so silently, in the south and east, thro' which shines in her moony sheen the full orb. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 27 Here and there a few diminished stars pulse, teebly twinkhng on the bosom of ether, but far removed from the Great White Throne of their earth-wedded queen. A greenish brightness still lingers on the upper edge of the light bank of vapors that shade off the path of the down-going of this day's sun. Blessed be God! "Holy in all His works, and won- derful in the heights!'' He has compensated for the simplicity of His Virgin Mother's prairie inheritance by the glories of the sky above it by day, and the quieter beauty of the nightly firmament. Avoca, yune 20th. — Two hunts, one fruitful of naught but exercise and giving a long ramble, mus- ing along the great slough; another of an hour, dropping five birds and a mallard. They supplied our ecclesiastical supper for three priests and the Rt. Rev. Bishop. Dr. Ireland opened the convent chapel to-day by celebrating the first Holy Mass in St. Rose's little original foundation on the prairies. The Mass was in honor of St. Angela Merici, foundress of the Ursulines, quite appropriate for the opening of a house of education. There being no other boarding school in all the wide distance from here to the Rocky Mountains, and only five or six httle local Catholic schools, there is left a wide scope for the development of this community — of which more anon. 10.10 P. J/.— All is still. Not a leaf stirs. Not a ripple, I think, on the lake. No sound but the soli- 28 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. tary "clack," ''clack" from a disquiet water-bird, the fiddle of the cricket, or the hiz-z-z of the mus- quitol — "Te lucis ante terminum, Rerum Creator, poscimus Ut pro tua dementia Sis Presul et Custodia." * British Importations into Canadian North- west. yiine 2 1. 22 and 23 were occupied by discussions on the iniquity of the selfish British Government sending paupers, criminals or others to Canada and even to our shores. We must lump all in the fol- lowing letter to the Boston Pilot, adding somewhat. AvocA, Minn., June 34. Edito7' of tJie Pilot : — Your, and the prominent Catholic American press', late strictures on the im- portations of people from the British Isles to the Canadian Northwest and even to our own States, encourage me to advance some practical commen- taries from the very neighborhood. The seventy-odd delegates to the C. T. A. B. Union of America, who were favored ^vith free tickets to Winnipeg and Manitoba last summer, could give no good account of the trumpeted Red River Valley or its contisfuous territory in British *) First >erse of Hymn for Complins: "Thee, God, before the end of day, Creator of the worlds, we praj, Do for thine own sweet mercy sake Us under thy protection take." SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 29 America. They complained especially very bitterly of the swamped wheat fields, the alkalined water, and corroborated the detailed reports of correspond- ents to the Chicago Tribune and other practical sightseers. Having made it an object of particular inquirv, on the testimony of several — two or three I specially remember — I have found that there are but patches of decently cultivatable land near the Red River, in fact at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, the re- mainder being nothing more than A Grand Natural Drain and swamp of the northern "divide.'*' All the disad- vantages of cold, w^et, proximate untamableness, militate against this valley more and more strongly as you leave the middle line of even Minnesota and Dakota, and above the British line; and as you as- cend through Manitoba and Saskatchewan into Athabaska-Mackenzie and the surroundings of Hud- son's Bay, you are climbing the butt end of the North Pole. In conversation to-day upon the English Govern- ment and syndicates' shipping of human cattle to Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Canadian Northwest, I propounded the question to a prominent dignitary, how it was possible for the imported poor to survive in those untamed wintry wilds? He agreed fully with me that it was hard to see how% taking into consideration, first, the aw^ful degree of cold preva- lent or, at least, incident there last season — up to 60 and 67 degrees below zero at periods, and a late cor- 30 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. respondent stating average winter cold at 40 degrees below; secondly, the improvidence of the people and want of shiftiness; thirdly, the companies' and Government officials' cold business arrangements, and lastly, the immense number shipped at once and houseless. To be sure, the same happens in great part in Da- kota and Montana, when two lines of railroad (if they do not lie in their reports), the Chicago and Northwestern, and the C. M, and St. P. Railroads have shipped, this spring, upwards of 200,000 to Dakota. There, no Government provision was made; the demands far exceeded supplies both of lumber for houses or sheds and provisions for man and beast. They explain the problem partially by stating that the freight cars used for transport were left the shiftless families for shelter. But it would be impossible. We agreed that there was Great Negligence, and in fact, rascality on the part of the interested Britishers in their anxiety to get rid of troublesome "paupers." Our own interested railroad officials and land-grabbers on our side of the line, and the omnip- otent syndicates on the British side, have studiously avoided letting accounts of colonists' surely appall- ing sufferings and present destitute condition creep into the current press. But facts from individuals have leaked out and those living in Minnesota, who have their ears open, know at least enough scattered details about both the lands of the English Gov- ernment and the appendant RedjjRIver Valley to warn off people who donH intend to commit suicide. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 3I If this whole sche?ne — sche?ne, indeed, of schemers of the abominable Irish-hating and poor-despising English officials — be not a practical repetition of the Cromwellian transportation to the colonies here and the Barbadoes, of the enslaved "Hell-or-Connaught"- bound prisoners of war, one would inquire the hair- splitting difference. If this be miscalled voluntary emigration, the fact that Ireland has come to her present pass by the fault of her seven-century op- pressors gives the lie to the misnomer. Woe be to those so miserable, they have naught before them but a choice between British poor-houses and emi- gration to British America. I might conclude by predicting very safely on the basis of some already accredited data of single fami- lies and small batches of colonists who, having got- ten soon disgusted with much further North and West, actually fell back on the southern half of Minnesota, that there will be an ebb of emigration of this wild, Avholesale, compulsory or foolishly voluntary emigration, as well as a flow. A great proportion of the best class and colonists of some means will inevitably have to use their common sense in ebbing back to this favored region — and the surrounding eligible prairies of Iowa and Nebraska, Southern Dakota and Montana. If some disadvantages of weather are trying, they are much less so in degree and by comparison even with our own public lands; while immeasurably, in fact incomparably, superior are matters of soil, weather, people, cjiurch facilities and schools of these parts as put in possible competition with the inhospitable regions of British rule. 32 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. At the last moment I have come across a map of pubHc lands in the Dominion of Canada, printed at Montreal and by the authority of the Minister of the Interior, which lies as palpably under wilful mis- takes about the summer and winter climate as any advertisement. Just imagine, as here red and black lined, the same summer degree (sixty) from Victoria, U. S., around Great Slave Lake, past Deer and Winnipeg Lakes and down to forty-third parallel, a difference of about 20 degrees of latitude. And all the southern included region is marked in red letters, Vas^ Region of Excellent Farming Lands. Another enclosure, of course of more exquisite country, of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, from Peace River to off Long Island, N. Y. Happy New Yorkers! A winter of average 15 degrees (not said whether above or below zero) is divided off from Mt. Fairweather, Alaska, in southeastern course, to Rush City, Minn., and Ot- to wa. Can.; or of 20 degrees from top of Lake Michigan, past Toronto, to Albany, N. Y. And we write thus even with the admitted probability of the fact in sight, that the lines of cultivatable lands ex- tend many more degrees north, in the region west of the great lakes and the Mississippi, than they do either side of the Alleo^hanies in the East. . . . To all this might be added, what the editor thought proper to omit, that Fr. Nugent of Liverpool and other ecclesiastics or prominent laymen, engaged in forwarding the interests of immigrants' to the Canadian Northwest, do not, I believe, take the re- SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 33 sponsibility of answering for the wisdom or iin- charity of the speculators in human flesh and souls; but use their influence and do personal work in alleviation of the evils concomitant with anv slio-hter benefits accruing to the exported. Importations into England are fraught with so many proved dangers to the mercurial Celts, that a very hard alternative is often chosen to avert iictual loss of souls — even, we may argue, by running risk of loss of lives. Besides (and I will freely admit the testimony of all good men), who knows? There are those who aver that life and a reasonable prosperity are among the possibilities in settlements of such high latitudes. After all, Horace Greeley and the New York philanthropists, together with the majoritv of our jDast geographists, had finally to admit that the race rising in America is practically fitted for coping with what would be chimeras with other peoples. This has been demonstrated by the much more bear- able and profitable habitability of the western plains ascending to the Rockies than was credited or credible to the uninitiated. Therefore, the Pilot letter may be modified to the extent to confess that, if interested "Englishers" and their inhuman accomplices on both sides of the water have -at best only worldly and self-interested motives in running the necks and souls of the un- protected poor into jeopardy on the one side; on the other, the candid opinions and believable experi- ences of our Prelates on both sides of the British line here disagree to the point, that what some con- 34 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. demn, others as freely endorse and want to see car- ried out. One probable argument, however, might be a sub- ject for debate as for or against the proximate utility of lands and regions above described, viz: Why did not the stupendously powerful Hudson Bav Com- pany, which had the actual dominion, like verv monarchs, of all this British America, do something more, in their over two hundred years' possession, towards attempting the, to them, most profitable colonization of these wilds and steppes? Maybe, it was not their interest or philanthropy, if you will, to let any of their power slip thro' their fingers by giving chances of free holdings.'^ Possible. But why, again, did they make such a tremendous row, in the long national contest concerning the fix- ing of our northern boundaries, about getting hold of the country included in Washington, Oregon Territory and present Montana, in fact, the whole line to the great lakes? if all the, now American, ground was not so much more valuable that they preferred it — and they knew the comparatiye values — to a great part of what they had indisputably pos- sessed. Doubtful — but preponderating for the American side and views. We may safely conclude this prolix and vexatious discussion by adducing two of the highest authorities — one in spirituals, one in temporals — namely. Most Rev. Archbishop Lynch, in his second great letter, written at the suggestion of Pope Pius IX to the whole Irish Hierarchy; and Mr. John Sweetman. Here is the first: "We repeat again, that wdiich could not be effected in Ireland by religious persecution, loss of lands and homes, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 35 social disabilities and starvation, has been accom- plished here, in too many instances, by the enemy of all good and his agents. This forced emigration of an impoverished people into a new country whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly non -Catholic, has effected it." The second is the conclusion of ''Re- cent Experiences:*" "From the experience of this Company's efforts in Southwestern Minnesota, a countr}' already largely settled and thoroughly inter- sected with railroads, I would conclude that any Government scheme to settle large numbers of des- titute Irish families in the Canadian Northwest would be sure to fail. They would, no doubt, have the advantage of having free land, instead of having to pay twenty -five shillings the acre, but the price of land is a small portion of the expense of farming in the West, and they w®uld have the disadvantage of being fav from markets, and having a longer and colder winter." Avoca, yune 2\st. — I said the second day's Mass in the Convent on St. Aloysius' feast — "the angelic youth, exemplar of innocence and chastity," given by Benedict XIII as "the patron special to studious youth." How fitly these two first Masses in honor of St. Angela, and the angels' compeer, will be rounded off in sweet trinity by the 30th of August's feast of our own St. Rose of Lima! — just the eve of school opening in September, when our colonists' bright children sing their own peculiar hymn to St. Rose, to invoke her blessing on school, home and heart! 36 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. ST. ROSE OF HOLY MARY. When blush of light had shown Thy face, like roses blown. The Queen claimed thee Her own. St. Mary's Child! Sweet in thv garden cell Thine angel loved thee well. And with thee camejo dwell, Rose undefiledl Till Jesus' garment hem Did touch thy leafy stem, Thou droopedstjike to them Thorn -crucified; Erecting sudden head. With ardors blushing red. When, "My heart's Rose"! He said. "Be thou my bride" ! Sweet God! whose dewy grace Blessed dear Columbia's race With meek St. Rose's face. And virgin bloom : Make us, 'neath Convent guides. Thine own devoted brides. Scent all thy prairie wides With Christ's perfume! yune 22d. — Next day we had a hot but success- ful fish in the inlet, capturing some fourteen fat pickerel. Great flocks of jack snipes, a large game but rather tame bird, the size of a spring chicken, came sailing over the upper end of the lake, and wc got two distant shots, failing to stop their progress. Moonlighting over the Prairie. We rode in the face of the full orb of night. How beautiful to see the star of first magnitude rising SIX \vp:eks in our rockies. 37 fiery in the West, gradually increasing in splendor, advancing like the Star of Bethlehem, until the broad Jieadlight bulged into the village with clang- ing of bell and scream of engine whistle, while the dull gold moon rose simultaneously in the East, chased with its defined chasms and moon moun- tains, great and broad ; anon lessening and silvering as it mounted, until its bright disk controlled all the sky! We heard a strange "click"-"click" over the drear prairie as we drove along. It precisely resem- bled a telegraph taj ping, only in the quality of the sound, which was woody. It followed and came along near, and involuntarily a sort of superstitious creeping stole up our spines — the noise was cer- tainly weird — doubled finally and seemed to be pur- suing us. I wonder yet what it was, it could scarcely be a bird, certainly not a serpent, nor did it sound like any known insect. We slept soundly after our drive. Night air is proved not unwholesome where there is no rank vegetation, nor foul standing water. Finally, on the 23d, we went to Currie, the present representative of a county seat, late for Mass on St. John's day. I shot some birds at 8| P. M. and tried how late I could see to aim, spotting a plover at just 9 o'clock, but missing him. I could see the time by my small watch on the prairie to fully ten minutes or quarter past 9 o'clock. June Zd^th.—G\Qx\o\\^ St. John the Baptist! Pray for us. ''Solve polhiti labii reatum, Sancte Joannes^' indeed be our prayer for the purification of our guilty lips that talk so much and such foolishness! Savs a Holv Father: ''We hear naught of St. John 38 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. in Scripture, "save his conception and father's oracle, his leaping in the womb and his voice in the desert." .... "He had no childhood, but, above nature, above his age, placed in his mother's womb, he started life with the full measure of the age of the fullness of Christ." Three Winters in Murray County, Minn. While at Currie, we learned some items of the past three winters from a practical German trades- man, wheelwright and carpenter. The first in 1880, was the worst in memory; but even then com- menced only late in February. For fifteen days, people had no mails. Seventy men had to dig a road by shoveling away the great banks of snow, from Tracy, fifteen miles north, to get at a hundred cords of firewood piled within three miles of Currie. This winter you could not stir about much. In '8i-'83, the weather continued so mild that the $10,000 Currie Church, all frame, was commenced after Christmas and put under roof by the following- March. Men worked for weeks together without fire in their shops. There was notably not enough snow for sleighing the whole season thro', tho' the roads continued frozen. In '82-'83, in spite of the six or seven short severe blizzards, there was fine driving, of course in sleighs or slides, most of the time. The sfreat snow storms lasted but one, or at most, two days, tho' I have it from a sufferer, that he had been blocked on a train for three days and had to live on pretty hard tack till relieved. It is not coldest during the blizzards, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 39 the thennoineter seldom ranging to i8 or 38 degrees below zero. The coldest here recorded last winter was 35 degrees below, ten or fifteen degrees lower than the worst at this writing, January, 1884, and the actual point reached, even in the Ohio valley this winter. By contrast, we had at Avoca on Wednes- day last 114 degrees in the sun; on Friday 86 degrees in the shade. First bouquet of prairie roses! It is a singularity that many a time, as is the case commonly in the Ohio valley, there is decided win- ter weather in the shape of profuse snow falls or bitter, biting spells, only after Christmas, or even sometimes not before Candlemas, on the 3d of February. So here, there are severe frosts and freez- ing, but these are not so violent but, winter about, public work, building, even plastering with stoves to dry gradually by, may not be continued far past the fall season proper. In fact, in St. Paul, Minne- apolis, and other large cities, housebuilding goes on every winter almost without interruption, except for severer intervals. This may happen out on the prairies too, as I have learned from honest mechanics. In looking over a record, which a prominent farmer and grazer, Mr. Dan. Murphy, of Avoca, kept day by day for the past two winters, springs and falls, I was astounded to find a large proportion of days marked as "fair," "fine," "very fine," and so soft as "pleasant" in the heart of the hardest season, viz: about January and February of the worst winter. Very bad weather is the exception here as elsewhere in the habitable agricultural districts, according to eye and touch witnesses ; nor does it last so long, ordinarily, as strangers imagine or believe. _j.O SIX SEASONS OX OUK PRAIRIES. It would, however, be folly to deny that it is very cold almost all the winters. Long cultivated dis- tricts, especially tree-planted, do seem to change temperature for the better. It is equally true that there is no such thing as what is vulgarly termed a "let-up" to the dry per- sistent grip of winter proper. There are indubitably dreadful snow storms betimes, lasting for several days — in effect by exception for a week — in which it is dangerous, not only for foot passengers and riders or drivers to be out far from help, ])ut even for the great iron horse. Adrian, Nobles Co., Minn., June 2^th to i^th. — Rev. Wm. Keul, pastor of Avoca, and I have just returned from an overland trip to Adrian, Nobles County, a progressive colony town. We are tired out for the nonce. Badger Lake, on the way to lona, Murray County, with cross-armed tree, al- ways consulted as a guide across the southwestern prairie, is quite full of water. Slough would be its more proper name, for it is very sedgy yet. Not many ducks on it, tho' in full season. The goodly number of trees that fringe the western shores would, if trimmed and cared for, mark the place with a parklet of uncommon beauty. It commands a fine prospect over the lake and surrounding roll of hills. Fr. McDonnell's Home of the Sacred Heart. Father McDonnell, the projector of the Home of the Sacred Heart for orphans at lona, has a new matron over his embryo establishment, assisted by several maids to attend the inmates, now consisting SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 4I of some live little fellows of tender age. The Rev. Superior is also factotum in temporal matters of the neighborhood, being, I believe, a civil magistrate, and certainly the local postmaster and storekeeper. In this latter capacity he is famed the country over for selling very low and cheap for cash — perhaps sometimes on "tick," the good Father! The nine thousand acres turned over to him at the division of the Avoca colony land comprise some fairly rolling sections, notably about the seven-or- eight-house village of lona, around the promontory- like front of which flows a small stream. There was once practical question about settling some of the Avoca township farmers and other new comers in and about the supposedly government land near here. A few took steps to secure it, and maybe one or two actually lived on it a time. The tract was however in dispute between the railroad companies; and it was perhaps fortunate enough that the specu- lating parties did not invest, as it has come to ear that the C. St. P. M. and O. Railroad Company, in final suit, has had the land adjudged to them as part of their bonus. Qiiite a picturesque railroad trestle fronts the Home, a large square frame, built originally for a hotel, with spacious rooms for store, office, refectory and kitchen down stairs; and the upper story di- vided off into small and larger apartments for sleep- ing, storage, etc. We had occasion to find out that the innocent lookinsf stream circlinsf about the town limits is nearly up to a horse's neck, viz : by our vehicle being nearly foundered in the deep narrow sink. The water is clear and sweet. 42 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PKAIIJIES. On the borders of the great sections of the farm Hes a beautiful, quadrangular lake, ''Cora Belle," if you please, wherever it tripped up on such an aes- thetic name. In* very deed a fine expanse of water, level shores, deep, and half a mile square. To the right approaching it from the village is a smaller lakelet with little round tufted islands, quite taking in their light green softness and grace. Both are the great haunt of grand flocks of wild geese, of course, thousands of duck, and particularly fre- quented by a singular large white crane, of good edible quality. We knew the sandhill crane, which is properly a land-lubber, is prized as a delicacy; not so of water cranes. Going to and from Adrian, we made a thirty-mile- sided parabola; thus seeing upwards of fifty, near sixty miles of the borders of Murray County and a gross half of Nobles County. The land seems ordi- nary prairie, rather inclined to sudden elevations and depressions, flat levels of miles of watery bottoms stretching frequently between the lines of knobby rolls, which latter are mostly thin soiled and gravelly. Deep sloughs and water cuts diversif}- the landscape and spoil many sections. .. Adrian (Minnesota) Colony. Mr. Wm. J. Onahan, Secretary of "The Irish Catholic Colonization Association," in his third annual report. May, 1882, furnishes the preliminary information of this Catholic settlement: ''Rev. C.J. Knauft', pastor of the Adrian (Minn ) Colony, gave an account of his charge. The colony was estab- lished in 1877 by Bishop Ireland, of St. Paul, who SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 43 obtained the right from the St. Paul & Sioux City Raih'oad Company to sell 70,000 acres of land in Nobles County, on the Worthington and Sioux Falls branch. In that year there were but two houses in Adrian, and now there are four hundred. Father Knauft' was the first Catholic and the first priest to settle in the place, and now there are two hundred and fifty Catholic families there. It is situated on a high plateau forming the divide between the Missis- sippi and Missouri rivers, and the soil is very rich. The products are wheat, corn, flax, barley and oats. The heavy rains of last season reduced the crops, but the prospects for a big yield this year are very good. Two-thirds of the population are Irish, and one-third of German nationality." x\ccustomed to levels on the prairie, you look down astonished at the cattle and sheep grazing in the low bottoms near Adrian. We met on the jour- ney the largest herd of cattle I have ever seen on the open prairie, as many as two hundred head of beeves and some three hundred sheep, herded by a cowbov on horseback and a shepherd dog. A large field of waving rye sways ready for the sickle, and rising as high as four and one-half to five feet. Bar- ley is nearly as far advanced. Wheat seems some fourteen to eighteen inches. Vegetables are getting plentiful in well-weeded gardens. Adrian has so manv as six hundred inhabitants, rises tierwise on a gentle slope — good school build- ing w^orth $2,000. and Catholic establishment and comfortable priest's residence, surrounded by nur- series of trees, a modicum giving tolerable shade. The pastor, Rev. C. J. KnaufT, claims (as previ- 44 "^'X SEASONS ON OUlt I'KAIRIES ously reported) two hundred and fifty families here and in surrounding missions, five in number. This learned gentleman is also a member of the great Colonization Board of Chicago, in charge of numer- ous prairie colonies. We were much jaded by the tedious ride with a backless buggy over the uneven, almost roadless district. We kept the prairie most of the way, passed some sloughs up to the hub in black loam; and finally thro' sheer fatigue and back ache I sat in the front booth of the buggy, leaning my back against the dash board with my legs thrown over the seat. Returning, we had a ""lazy" back arranged after long manufacture; gave our poor horse a new rig and net, and enjoyed cooler weather. One finds it can become uncomfortably warm riding hours out, even while it remains cool and pleasant indoors. We killed and messed on eleven curlews and as many plovers on the w^ay. The number of shots fired (we counted for curiosity) was about thirty- five; so some two-thirds hit, on the wing. Avoca, yune 2^th. — Back to our Avoca; I have scarcely begun the day; woke at 5; arose at 5f ; Holy Mass at 6|; served another at 7. Fr. Koeberl, the first colony pastor, is visiting us — a fine, tall, well- formed Austrian, with the characteristic blonde hair, fresh as new silk, and bluish eyes. He had a rough mission here — a pair of small box rooms to lodge in and board at the hotel, such as it was. How the glorious sunny days follow one another, each finer than the succeeding; some so magnifi- cent with glittering, sparkling shine, coolish, vivify- ing breeze, haloing influence on the shrubbery on SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 45 the lake banks; the simple stalks of green waving here and there, rendered vocal by the multifarious calls and catches of birds of sea and land, that one is tempted to shout aloud for very joy and exulta- tion: ''This is the day that the Lord hath made; let us exult and rejoice therein. My soul doth mag- nify the Lord. And all that is within me bless His Holy Name." Thus one lives at times intensely. I can scarce contain myself, and after such exterior joy I am set musing, oh I so sweetly! 2(^th. — ^Sts. Peter and Paul! How cold we are in presence of such ardor of words and deeds! What right ambition have I that with St. Chrysostom, I do not weep over the w^ords of the ardent apostles, impetuous, human Peter, diviner Paul — but both after their conversion. Give me but a throb of their devotion to the cause of Jesus the Christ, living in them, working by them. Have mercy, clement Lord, on all thy consecrated servants this day and forever! Austrian Colonists. We came home late last evening from the really beautiful family of Austrians, the Steincrs, living to- wards the Des Moines country, five miles east. We had some fracas tho' on the way with an indignant Norwegian who wanted to collar us for riding thro' his grain field. Fact is, we had got mixed up in finding a proper road and seeing worn tracks thro' the wheat drove ahead regardless of naught but our direction. But the fellow was a sorehead and wanted to pick a quarrel. Expostulating with him mildly we could not allay his anger and he threat- 46 SIX SEASONS OX OUR PRAIRIES. ened us with prosecution for trespass. We let him lather away and bade him — go to the judge. He was very curious to see what one of us had just shot on his premises, as the chicken season was not open and he was itching for a chance to indict us for law -breakage. But we had the inside track ; they were only plovers. But our Austrians! How singular, or rather how natural, to find such genuine worth and attractive moral beauty in one of these low box houses of a single room and kitchen — with naught to recom- mend the inmates but their Christian manners and trifles of attention. Here is apparently a rough man of the prairie, who, with his unshaven face, bristly mustache and red complexion, has withal the actual politeness of reverence and true humility, mingled with, and grounded on. an unobtrusive charity. There is no genuine politeness and all is hollow, without these three virtues. Waiting on the table and changing the common stone china plates, his kindly eye of bluish grev, and intelligent person become an object of complaisence, tho' he says only: "Bitte (please take this or that") as he relieves you of something and hands another, adding as he heaps your plate: ''Essen Sie, nur, Herr Pfarrer, was Ihncn gefcellt, und lassen Sie dass andere!" (Eat only what you like, sir, and leave the rest.") And his practical wife, a true woman, who is a good cook of her specialty of Austrian dishes, and careful housekeeper, priding simply in her art with- out least oftense, aye, only for your gratification. She is, w^e find, an educated woman, cultivated, un- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 47 derstanding person, who knows her business in hand and is only artlessly curious to know of thinors pertinent to utility. Her care of her three hearty children, beautiful in their prairie rosiness and plump health, is only of a moral piece with her deferential conduct towards her husband, and her heartfelt passionateness in kissing- on her knees the hands of each of the priests, asking their blessing for a purpose. With homeliness tho' some regularity of features, in her simple dark calico, and without an ornament, fresh from over the stove, cooking our meal, she is attrac- tive. Her smile is sweet when she shows her regu- lar teeth and her e} e kindles with pleasure and pride over the honor done her by her loved ''Herren Pfarrer." In the beauty of her prairie home, and its to her all-in-all inmates, the woman's untainted womanliness makes her lovely and lovable. Dear Christian hearts, willing hands, health v bodies and sound minds! Here they dwell on the rolling banks of the meandering Des Moines river; in view of their flourishing crops and small herd of lowing cattle, which they are but keeping however, their souls clinging to God and truth first ; succeed- ing moderately in this world's goods, they are an example and a sample of the all but inimitable good German Catholic colonists. I was repaid for my necessitated promenade be- tween twelve and one last night. The sweet dav had lingered so long, long over the favored summer plains. Little strings of coral, amber, amethyst and 48 SIX SEASONS OX OUR PRAIRIES. pearl dotted and fringed the horizon. The roUing smoke grew pink in the setting rays. The sun dis- appeared and the shades crept majestically over a section of the east, then over a larger and ever larger half-circle. But on to even 10 o'clock, the last faint rays played on the western limits of the billowy fields. I went to bed, but could not rest 12, mid- night. How only mildly, warmly bright, the glories of the heavens, the branching milky way, feathery silver ; Lyra, in middest heaven, enthroned ; Sirius sharply brilliant; the Dipper broadly luminous. How near seemed the soft pulse of the starry host on the bosom of ether! Could not an attentive ear hear the symphony of these God- worthy spheres? An awe of divine presence crept over me, and a thrill shook the sanctuary of my soul. How prayerful the night. Alone with God and his silent, majestic creation. I heard the solitary scale of the bittern in the slough. A prairie lark gave vent to a single, trumpet-like call. A dog bayed the rising moon with a single bark. I stood alone awake of all the inhabitants of these limitless regions. And these were but imitative cries of the soul towards its Creator! I bowed struck with over- powering emotion, bent the knee and recited the 8th Ps.: "Domine, Dominus, Noster.'' Holy Trin- ity, save me ! '-Thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens. I will behold thy heavens, the works of (but) thy fingers: the moon and stars which thou hast set." And I am of those "whom thou hast made little less than the angels, crowned with glory and honor and set over all the works of thy hands!" Tho' this last applies only to the perfect man — SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 49 Christ Jesus — until we shall have grown to his stat- ure, "been placed over manv things'' w hen ''found faithful over few." White Heat and Cruel Hunt. 'ipth yiine — 15/ jfuly. — Some grass is read}- to cut in the first dry sloughs. A few arc cutting in patches. The degree of heat, growing greater each day for half the week, is wonderful for the prairie. Were it not for the almost continuous breeze it would be insufferable without shade. 97 degrees in the middle half of the day. From 9^ to 98 degrees throughout Southwestern Minnesota, reaching, I hear, a hundred, in some localities, the hottest for the day of any part of the 'United States. I suffered from it hunting yesterday evening; could make out but a meagre tea. We killed some nineteen birds in this and the morning's passing hunt. The chicken-like plover, how confidently they strut in my neighborhood this sunny, Sunday morn, regardless, ignorant of my bloodthirsty persecution of the feathered kind. I could all but side with Thomson in his Seasons where he writes : "This falsely-cheerful barbarous game of death, This rage of pleasure, which the restless youth Awakes, impatient with the gleaming morn: . . . Man . . . with the thoughtless innocence of power Inflamed, bejond the most infuriate wrath Of the worst monster that e'er roamed the waste. For sport alone pursues the cruel chase. Amid the beaming of the gentle days. Upbraid, yo. ravening tribes, our wanton rage, For hunger kindles you, and lawless want; But lavish fed, in Nature's bounty rolled, To joy at anguish and delight in blood Is what voin- horrid bosoms never knew." 50 SIX SEASONS OX OirK PRAIKIHS. Very appropriate if proper exceptions l)e allowed. It seems indeed a cruel alternative. The saints of old and of our own times have been noted for their kind treatment of, and ftimiliarity with, beasts and birds and fish. It is like the two things to choose between in answering blow bv blow even in self- defense, or in allowing the smiter to strike the other cheek. The latter is more perfect, but the former allowed. I would not deprive tiiese innocents of life for mere sport's sake, and will not wantonly de- stroy them, fearful of the threat of the Holy Writ : "The life of the beast shall be required at thv hands.'' Shall not even they stand in judgment against us, tho' St. Thomas teaches none shall be resuscitated! I found a sort of ''cockscoml)" growing on tall underbrush by the higher lake banks. And more worthy of note, what but a genuine wild "vSweet William" with its pleasant, red, tive-petaled blos- somlets and bursted, sheath-like, striped oalheads! The dwarf wild roses dot the prairie and lake shores in all stages from tiny buds to full-blown pink and white five-leaves. The very grasses are wondrous, finer far than Hungarian or ordinary material for aluming for winter bouquets. Some tossing feathery plumes of exquisite gloss and fine- ness grow in patches — filmy textures like tangled spiderwebs hide the dark soil of slough beds; dozens of varieties of heads and stems, partitions and branch- ings make the prairie bloom without blossom. Two more Nuns of the Holy Child arrived bv last night's train, bringing also a voun^r Cuban to SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. Z,l summer with them for her health and to avoid the plague that is prevalent in her island-h(jme of the West Indies. The number of nuns is now seven; but Mother Waldburga, the Mother Vi caress of the whole Society, after settling the propertv of the Community, will leave its organization and the school to gentle Mother St. Antony. There is re- markable refinement combined with veriest industrv in these ladies of this Anglo-American Congrega- tion. Their notable Anglicisms are prettv, and thev seem withal to have the push of Americans. Comic Characters. We have them on the prairie as elsewhere and maybe, as Addison argues, our laughter at them proceeds from our pride that we are smarter than they. Here is an original but not imaginary hero of the cap and bells. He was imported from — you mav guess where. Very broad-faced, deep-whiskered, narrow between the eyes, with tongue hung like a clapper, our extravagant braggart, poor fellow, is, if not happy in his ignorance, very deep set in his opinions — if always a responsible agent. Book- learned in part and with a smattering of experience in odds and ends, specially however a sort of expert in hunting and a fair "shot," he sets his mouth going as by machinery on his pet subjects, and gets out the absurdest oddities in neatly trimmed phrase. *'Ho! do ye know^? my dog, pure Irish setter, is perfect. Never knew him to fail to set a bird in due rang^e. You must sfuard agfainst saving- the least word to him on the field.'' Well, that dog has the queerest look and manner one ever saw in a ca- nine. He is sharp, brisk, but his eye wanders and ^2 SIX SEASONS OX OUR PRAIRIES. his head seems fuddled, if his brain is not addled. For, bv m\ fowling piece! if I didn't take him out one day and he managed with great halloing to ''put up" two chickens tolerably. The next thing, left to himself, he ran over six birds, all hand-running but one, and this one he ran into in plain sight of all but himself, after havnisr set him for nearly a full minute just preceding. "Oh! I thought he was perfect. He never does the like with me." I doubted this considerably. But what was added proved the dog smart: ''Do ye know" — with a slv wink — "that dog knows a gentle- man at sight, and won't pay the least attention to a soldier or a policeman!'' But halt, lest we commit the fault we condemn. Still it's all in good humor and only observations on particular studies in human nature. What If we in- terlard such with real nature notes, mindful ever of St. Augustin's dinner-table motto: "Whoso back- bites his neighbor is not welcome at this board." "Qiiisquis proximum carpit absit a' mensa" — or such words. About this time was published the following let- ter, with these head and sub- captions, by the veteran editor of the New York Freeman's Journal: MINNESOTA: ITS CLIMATE ; BUT ESPECIALLY, A GRAND EDUCA- TIONAL ESTABLISHMENT. Editoi' N. T. Fi-eeman s yournal : Dear Sir — Whilst some of your contemporaries are flooding SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 53 their coliinius with '^CathoHc colony prospects in Florida," some jottings from the opposite point of the horizon will not seem intrusive. The agricul- tural and educational items (published in the Philadel- phia ''Catholic Standard'') which I sent from i\voca last fall were meagre, and I shall not be longer now — not much. Last winter here, from all accounts, was most blizzardly affected — the very extreme pole of the winter preceding. There is no denying that an earnest business blizzard is a fearful demon — not so fearful, however, as vour demoniacal tornadoes south and east from here. But what's a blizzard to me any more than a State penitentiary? I do not expect to get into either one, if I know myself, and it's pleasant looking at a grand, blowing snowstorm from a cosy room. Have a right and tight house, not too fashionable, but very sensible; watch the sicrns of the clerk of the weather out of the corners of both eyes, and drive like fury, if out, in a certain direction of a house, and you need fear nothing much more serious than chilblained toes and numb hsts. Only look out for your nose, if peculiarly Roman! Only one man in this region froze to death, and he was brimful of whisky. And if there be anv one thing a person ought to avoid when travel- ing in fierce winter weather — here as elsewhere — that thing is throwing a spirit flask to your head every few miles — especially when you feel be- numbed. Walk and drink water is nature's pre- scription — or take a few swallows of good butter or some good sweet oil. The spring, indeed, seems backward; not excep- tionallv so, however, as travelers up through Indi- 54 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. ana or Illinois, with their prairies floating in water and many wheat fields ploughed up for corn, evi- dence. When those conjuncting planets stop fool- ing with our atmosphere, North and South, we may expect more normal seasons. As to the prevalence of spring rains out this far, I l:>elieve, from close oh- servation, that, unpleasant as they are, they are necessary for this sand-mixed and high-rolling soil thoroughly to modify it for the short, hot summer, coming on like a thief in the night. In any case, crops, except corn, are not looking so bad, though low yet; on the contrary, you w^ill hear good farmers, who have put their time in and have a fairly rolling section, report other grains as prospering. We have some lettuce, greens, onions and even a few strawberries in gardens. Reminiscences of Kentucky. Passing along the undulating farms, partly wooded, partly prairie, from Winona, on the Mississippi, to Heron Lake, almost on a direct west line, I found things looking charming indeed — the vegetation only about six weeks behind the blooming fields and wooded heights of my native Kentucky, thro' which I had just finished a five weeks' trip from Cincin- nati to Paducah by w^ater, and inland from the mouth of the Tennessee to the glorious regions of the Blue Grass. I could not fail to notice the pre- cise resemblance of the best Minnesota prairie with our finest farm and grazing lands along the "Beauti- ful River" — but especially about our Lexington and the valley of the Kentucky river, minus, of course, the park -like, magnificent forest trees, the dusty SIX WEEKS IN OUll ROCKIES. 55 pikes, white fences in the green meadows, and the lordly country villas. It is worthy of incidental re- mark that the seventeen counties of middle Ken- tucky, bordering on the one side the Blue Grass region and the Big Bone district, and in between the great coal belt about Green River and the Cum- berland, were, in the first settlement of the State, found to be pure prairie, devoid of all but coarse grass, and roamed over by buffaloes, frequented by deers and the haunt of large game birds. Outside of this, there are sections interspersed be- tween neigrhboring- hills on which old inhabitants say you could not find a riding-switch forty years ago. As all this is now grown up in dense forests, and finely timbered, may not a like event happen — mutatis mutandis — in the breaks of the Northwest.'' Thus the tim])er question may solve itself after the fir^t plantings of trees shall have grown a decade old and form nature's seminary for propagation. The timbered portion of Minnesota, containing nearly all the best forest trees, is itself not too far away to supplv the winged seeds to the breezes from the East and South carrying them West and North. The com- parative stoppage of the formerly most destructive prairie fir^s will then also allow the tree-seeds to pul- ulate in the open soil; antl the frequent rains largely supplement the eftorts of man and nature to reclothe the wide areas with the fruits of arboriculture. Further, it's remarkable that the largest oaks, maples, hickories and ash trees of the older Kentucky forests will not, ordinarily be found to be more than from fifty to one hundred years of age; so that old farmers tell us they believe a much larger area was, say a hundred years back, pure prairie. 56 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Eight or ten new arrivals this spring, and in Fulda about a dozen new houses l)uilt. This much about materiahties. Schools for Cathoeic Chiedren are a notable dehciency in these regions outside of the largest cities and greater towns. In the small towns, out in the forming sections, and even in the colonies there are not and have not been hitherto any provisions for Catholic education. The ubiqui- tous public system of colorless instruction has grap- pled the soil and followed the onward march of the invading railroads. One coming from the southern Dioceses, either west or east, or even the German- settled archiepiscopal territory adjoining Canada, feels the absence keenly, and his first regret is that Catholics had not prepossessed the educational facil- ities, and led instead of dragging behind in the first school enterprises. When the majority of town and country districts are schooUess for Catholics, even if the greater num- ber are of the faith, it will hardly do to solve the education problem by grafting a sickly catechetical instruction on the tail-end of the school-day. Doses of Christian doctrine have been tried on both Sun- days and week-days, and been found w^ofully wanting in supplying backbone to our air-poisoned children. Certainly reasons there are for the slower multiplication of our schools this far out — one chiefly lying in the incredibly rapid increase of pop- ulation of both State and Church, and in the new- ness of Church establishments, especially in the colonies. SIX WEEKS IN OUK ROCKIES. :>/ When we state that the population of Minnesota has increased over a thousand per cent, in ten or twelve vears, and the Church has spread her tent and widened her borders in proportion — the priests amounting in St. Paul Diocese to 140, churches 189, schools 79, with 9,418 scholars — one may understand the growth of twenty-five years' Catholic hfe. A Great Boon. And now, to come to some particulars al)out one of the oldest of the existing colonies. The wedge has been entered on this, the fifth anniversary of the foundation of Avoca, by the introduction of the Order of the Nuns of the Holy Child Jesus, of whom a colony of six or seven have lately arrived under Mothers Walburga and St. Antony, to start a board- ing and day school. The building used hitherto as a hotel, and a really handsome and roomy two-and- one-half story frame, is being proximately arranged for the reception of scholars. With such re-arrange- ment and the portioning off of a large plat of ground near the^ Lake of St. Rose of Lima, the Lincoln Hotel will scarcely know itself in the beautiful Con- vent of Avoca. Foresight and foreknowledge have been brought to bear on the scheme by the matter having been thoroughly examined and agreement made with Right Rev. Dr. Ireland by the Rev. Mothers last fall ; so that, relying on Providence and being backed up by this already pretty large community of Catholics, slowly but surely increas- ing, and the whole territory of Southwestern Minne- sota to draw upon for boarders, there is certainly reasonable prospect of success, when at least the 58 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. colonies shall have been educated up to a proper patronage of the God-sent institution. Some fifty children have attended the district school at x^voca. If no brilliant success be its portion in the first few }'ears, provided only a decent maintenance be secured, it will not be unlike the remainder of God's foundations on this earth, grounded on faith and patience, and seconded by an industry, practicalness, and thoroughgoingness characteristic of these expe- rienced religious. A Pkaciical Priest's Suggestion. Whatever drawbacks there are otherwise — and some there do exist, humanly speaking — may, we think and hope, be counteracted by a /ift from the East. How? you will ask. Well, to say simply the truth, admitted by candid people who have tested it, this being the highest elevated plateau in the plain running parallel with the Mississippi River and stretching on to the Arctic Ocean — securely proven by its being the water-divide between the gulf and tile ocean — it is one of ^/ic healthiest places on this continent. One of thcin — I don't say the only one. Sensible men, outside of land speculators, colonizers, or even physicians, from all but every clime, have had delighted experience of it, and your Southern resorts are slowly — and not so slowly either — being abandoned for the purer, drier, less malarial, better oxygenized and curative plains of the Northwest. T have nothing, the least, to do with colonization, land sales, railroads, or speculation, and I can freely say on the word of a man and a priest that, judging from my own experience for this, now the second sum- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 59 mer, and that of persons scattered all over South- ern Minnesota, I have nowhere found the relief from chronic dyspepsia, nor others from incipient con- sumption, to be had here for the asking, and the running- a little over these dustless and smokeless prairies. And on this subject I would refer the in- credulous reader to the most timely articles of Dr. Felix L. Oswald on the "Remedies of Nature — Con- sumption," in the May and June numbers of the Popular Science Monthly — et alibi. "God's medi- cine'" — the certainly best of all — is here in abundance: the three requisites of moderate diet (until you climb to a Minnesota appetite!), plenty of pure water and the royalest exercise. The innumerable lakes teem with varieties of some of the sweetest fish that ever swam; the prairies are alive with game nearly the year round — certainly for three seasons — and fish can be speared by the hun- dred pounds in winter; and what roads we Jo have, barring a few sloughs now and then in early summer or spring! So, my plea is for encouragement, practical and pressing advice to be given to our thousands of deli- cate girls and women, to invade the West in quest of health, as men do for gold. Health is the better of the two, and more needed. Here is a spot for per- sons able to travel (and it's no trick to get out here from Chicago in twenty-four hours), and wanting to join practical education with a supply of physical and mental health that will be stock enough for half a score of years. On particular inquiry, I can say with confidence, that there is nothing in the regula- tions of the Holy Child Nuns which would prevent them from risceivinof members of other sisterhoods. 6o SIX SEASONS OX OUR PIlAUllES. • who might be sent for then- health to these parts, if their stay be but Hiiiited to a season at a time. Many hves of our deUcate Southern rehgious might be saved or prolonged by a summer here. In the naiiie of common sense, nay, in the holier name of the God of Nature! send your drooping daughters here to the Convent of Avoca, and as sure as pure air, glow of exercise, attractions of unpol- luted Nature, can dispense w^ith doctors and their doings, their cheeks will acquire the noted Minne- sota rose that blooms only this side the Mississippi; their delicate bodies will brace up, and they will bound like the roe. There will simply be no con- trolling their vigorous appetites, when they shall have been properly acclimated, and — well, that's what they will come for, besides their education, which will not fail under the hands of these religious ladies, who evidently do not believe in fringes and folderollerv, but educate for life." Nuns of the Holy Child Jesi^s. A circular of the Nuns of the Holy Child Jesus' vSchool accompanied this letter, in which intimation was made that a midwinter vacation, instead of the one in midsummer, would be introduced as a new feature suitable to changed circumstances. Domestic Teaching. And it was dared to be announced that these relig- ious ladies would teach on the practical basis of in- cluding woman's general work among their scholars, and insist with the Rt. Rev. Bishop's express agree- ment, the girl pupils should be practiced in sewing. SIX WEEKS IN OUR IIOCKIES. 6l cooking, ironing, etc. It is a new departure in this country and a needed innovation Or rather return to common sense principles in education. I will not weary bv introducing Sr. Mary Frances Clare, the famous Nun of Kenmare's, practice in her poor schools in Ireland, as told by the Philadelphia Press correspondent: "You see, sir," she said, ''w'hilst there is a great deal of talk about doing good for the Irish peasant, there is very little real work being done. Now the women are exceedingly ignorant. Certainly it is not their own fault, poor things, but that is all the more reason for teaching them. There are ver}' few girls or women in this very surrounding country who can make their husband or brother a good shirt. No Fresh Eggs in Ireland. "An egg is fresh sometimes, yet one seldom gets a fresh egg in Ireland. People attribute this to the climate. That is not the cause. The women don't know how to preserve them at all; so, too, w^ith butter. Well then, mv idea is to teach all practical house-keeping knowledge, to train house-servants, to educate girls in the art of cooking, and to prepare them for good, useful, intelligent wives and servants, so that when they go out to America you good peo- ple will find them serviceable. "In this way we hope to return, in a very small way, the charity your people are giving toward the school. Whatever I find a girl most fit for I intend to train her for. The school will not be a patent groove machine. \ The education, the book-learning, will be confined to practical English branches only. "To sustain this school the o-irls must work. I 62 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. therefore propose to buy knitting machines and make knit goods- for the market. These goods are not to be sold as charity goods. I shall compete in open market, and no other way. If the work won't pay that way it will be a failure. Sisters or nuns will be taught by professionals, and they will instruct the girls. So many hours a day will be devoted to such work as will bring in a remuneration for the support of the school. Of course, there will be regu- lar hours for books, but they will not be many. '•I am seeking to do a practical good, and not to found a great school of learning. Besides the pu- pils we shall have as boarders, we will utilize all the women about the neighborhood who can spend their now idle time in learning practically needed home accomplishments." Here are some religious from Switzerland, who are braver yet : ''The Theodosian Sisters of the Convent of Holy Cross, Canton of Zug, Switzer- land, have hit upon a programme of female education which ought not to pass unnoticed. Instead of training their pupils into lady barristers and lady doctors, they aim at turning out practical mothers of families and thrifty house wives. Thus, cooking in all its departments; the art of carving and serv- ing up; the uses of the various market supplies; the elements of household chemistry; the scientific ar- rangement of kitchen, stores, cellars, and pantries; the profitable laying out of vegetable gardens; the metliods useful in the laundry; the cure of infant diseases; the rearing of babies — are the chapters which they courageously write at the head of their programme of studies. And this is no mere boast, for their teaching- was tested by ladv visitors, and SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 63 pronounced most satisfactory. The confidence of parents rewards the efforts of the trood Sisters; they closed the year 1881 with ninety-five boarders, and .the year 18S2 with one hundred and thirteen." yuly 2d. — And our Lady's beautiful visitation. Our Conyent children join with the little ones of the whole colony in singing a home-made hymn to their patroness, St. Rose of Lima, as fanciedly con- nected with our Blessed Mother's visit to her prairie children : AMERICAS ROSE. This visitation day We cull each flowering spray On prairie, lake and way Of sweet St. Rose: Pink buds and white to bloom, Fit types of virgin womb. — St. Rose's breath perfume The fliower she chose I Who hath but virgin been Exults a Mother Queen; John Lily's Bud hath seen On Jesse's rod; Elizabeth does know Wliat prophets dimly show, And greets her, bending low, Who bears her God. To seraph's lyric strain St. Rose hies o'er her plain To join Queen Mary's train Ere she departs: Her feet a carpet tread Of green with blossom spread, — St. Rose shall crown her head With children's hearts. 64 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. How much more applicable to the religious teacher than to even good Mrs. Hemans, the poetess, are these lines addressed to the latter by Mrs. Sigourney: "Every unborn age Shall seek thee with its household charities; The hoary sire shall bend his deafened ear And greet thv sweet words with his benizon; The mother shrines thee as a vestal flame At the lone temple of her sanctity, And the young child who takes thee by the hand Shall travel with a surer step to heaven." Avoca, July 2. — The heat was so sensible all day yesterday that the priest giving benediction of the most Blessed Sacrament thought proper to warn the congregation to pray God to avert any calamity that might be impending, as he feared some dreadful storm was brewing. At the vespers the singers fairlv gave out from exhaustion, and the services had to be shortened. The thermometer stood at 96 degrees in the shade from 10 A. M. (110 degrees in the sun, increased at its height to i30 degrees), and culminated at 97 de- grees in the Nun's piazza at 4^ or 4^ P. M. It sub- sided to 85 degrees by 9 P. M. I was much fearful of a storm, if not of a regular cyclone. The sun shed a vellowish shine in the afternoon; the horizon at all points but towards the West seemed closing in upon us, and the wind was warmish until near six o'clock, when, in the broadest shade outside and in the middle of the house with all apertures open, it became somewhat tolerable. The clouds in the Northwest were wind-rifted and draggling To- wards eig-ht P. M. the heavv bank that had settled SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 65 due North commenced to show signs of disturbance. In an hour or more sheet Hghtning played more or less vividly behind it, and by midnight a short toler- ably gusty wind swept about us, rousing light sleepers and rattling doors and casements annoy- ingly. Curious too, for the past two nights, I have noted a large section of an arc of dimly radiating twilight, directly on the horizon under the North Pole Star. It looked like the reflection, tho' moving, from a quarter-moon or rather distinct Aurora. Was it pos- sibly the summer solstice apparition of the borealis? It surely must have been; for these premonitions evidence an electrical storm, whose seat natural phil- osophists have come to conclude resides at the North Pole. Or, if not, what could probably throw the long evening twilight, reflected often in the North- east, so far due North, at half-past ten or a quarter to eleven o'clock at night? At eight, some twenty or thirty minutes after sunset yesterday, we enjoyed that as rare phenomenon of the after-rays of twi- light stretching .clear across the zenith and down to within 2^ or 30 degrees of the opposite horizon. It formed broad, then tapering and expanding, belts of whitish light in concentric or eliptic lines from Northwest to Southeast, a clearly defined amphi- theatric series of alternate white and blue bows. It was not so discernible in the Southwest. This morning, July 2d, at ten minutes after three A. M. I saw the time on my watch dial by daylight. Tho' one could stand a blanket on him at mid- night, at 9.30 A. M., as I was returning from Church carrying a chalice and paten, the reflection of the (i6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. sun on the paten burnt my chin; and people are sitting around in the open air getting what coolness their ingenuity can eke out of the pretty constant breeze from the South, by a few points East. We'll have a crack and blow yet, and I doubt very con- siderably if somebody or bodies have not had one or the other or both lately, no great distance from here. July 3d. — We have not had it yet, tho' the wind has now veered around to the Northwest and the sun again sank in clouds after a quite sultry. middle day. I learned to-day that the degree in St. Paul, Sunday, was even 100 — higher, as above stated, than at any other point at the given time anywhere in the United States, not excepting New Orleans. Heavy Hunt and Whimsical Fish. Our sportsman and man-of-all work, to-day, con- tends that he not only killed forty birds with forty - one shots, but in some six weeks killed for a firm in Tracy, twenty-four miles north, five hundred and twenty chickens, twenty odd per day for six days in the week! But if he did, and it is possible, he knows more about hunting than fishing for pickerel, mud cats and bass. He showed me a case of hooks, artificial flies and baits, from the finest trout hook to the great clumsy harpoon with peacock feathers at its heel; and was explaining to me how splendid they would be to troll with in the lake. I am not sure but he tried his luck with some of his flies, where no one could observe him, but one thing was sure, he never brought back any fish. He hooted at our coarse hemp lines and three hooks and spoons, ordinarily used to troll for pickerel. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 67 "Hoot, man! why sure, in Ireland if ye put out such a line as that — why it's a regular cable! — you'd be booted for scaring all the fish away. Try some of these fine flies." "Oh! well," he was answered, "that's the differ- ence between America and Ireland. You would have as much use for your horse hairs and silk lines here as you would for a horse's tail or a silk dress." But he insisted he was right, until I found out he was disputing in order to have a j^i'etext for not rowing for me, so I had finally to shut him up by bidding him keep his tongue and row up. I acknowl- edge it was tough work in and out the many turns of the sedgy and weeded inlet; and the poor fellow was tired enough when we had caught a string of some half dozen pickerel in the old-fashioned way. In the talk by the way home he told me some curi- osities anent the hawks and merlins noble folk yet use on the hunt in the old country: "When out, they 'hunt' four or five birds apiece; but when the hawks get their fill of the hearts and tidbits of their prey, they'll stop hunting, short oft'. Why, sir, I've shot at a bird, a snipe or grouse, and missed him; and a merlin 'd sw^oop down and clutch him before he'd touch ground sir! They'll jump down on a hare and clinch him with one claw on his neck and the other on his back, in a jiff} • ' "Ho! talking about hunting, a man from Tracy sent me word about training a dog for him, and when I charged him $35 for it, I thought he'd let me alone. But behold ye, he sends me two, but they're not much account." And I did see the dogs about — a scabby brace — and hear he was paid, or was to be paid, $25 for each one. 6S SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. yzify ^t/i. — Our part of the storm, gathering for two days, has come. Last night at two o'clock we were all awakened at the presbytery by the vivid lightning in the Northwest and the sharp detona- tions. The surplus electricity was well eliminated by a good twenty minutes' cannonading, tho' I did not take it that the crash was so great or the rever- berations so earth-shaking as with us further South, among hills and in cities. The nearest bolts meas- ured four seconds after the flash. The great heat wave is passing South and East; the temperature to-day allowing one a drive out in a fall surtout, and mildening at this, four A. M. to a dampish coolness that is agreeable. I should guess the thermometer had not passed 60 degrees, and that only for an hour or two. We shall now revert to our cool summer weather; warmth prevailing, tem- pered by an all but incessant breeze. But these extremes are felt by visitors much more sensibly than by those more accustomed to them. We have had limitless sport over the squabbles between the Village Worthies in and those out of office — the all important office of trustees of the municipality. It is about the matter, just now, of allowing the Nuns to extend their lines down to the lake border by vacating or not vacating an intervening street. The feeling of the outsiders seems in favor of conceding the Nuns the whole property, street and all, with the portion of a hun- dred trees in the plantation dignified by the name of "park" — more properly a nursery. The village SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 69 fathers insist that the street must not be touched, because it would block out a party or two from the other side of the railroad -cut from getting to church; and because it would spoil the future drive along the lake shore; and because— well, several more potent and sapient becauses. Ah! and the Sisters could have an under-bridge gangway for private entrance secured by decree of the town government, etc. The out-politicians put forth patriotic resolutions what they will do when they get back into office: one saying he will expend $ioo but what the Sisters shall have the whole property undivided; another, this our man: "All the art of a gardener could not make the park conceded available for private use if the street be left" — and wanting to know in the next breath w^hat plan I would suggest for landscape- gardening a plat as large as a calf- paddock. More stories for the soldiers and marines about our hunter, Nimrod the XXII, averring on his honor as a man, that out of twenty -two birds in a flock he laid about him until he knocked nineteen and hadn't time to put his hand on a bird until he had all but exterminated the whole covey! Fourth of July — Independence Day at FuLDA, Minnesota. The unfavorable outset of the morning dampened the patriotism of many whose clothes it but slightly moistened, in the rare celebration of the Fourth at Fulda. I hardly imagine the sunrise caniiorj^ot, which was to have been the harbinger^^j>fi!he day for the forenoon performances, to have been very sure of being carried out. Sure it is, that almost the yo SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. whole programme for the first half of the day was dispensed with, except the march of the fifty odd men who rode out in cavalcade to meet Rt. Rev. Dr. Ireland; and then the disposition of the dinner where it would do the most good, at meridian. Some cannonading and shooting-crackering was the voicing of the outburst of patriotism of the noisier populace. That cannon, if but small arms, made a grand racket withal. The procession in town was not an imposing improvisation, for lack principally of participants, who, all counted, could muster but a baker's half-dozen of vehicles. It was vanguarded by a small calibre brass band, somewhat mixed in its composition by the control of the tenor being throw^n upon a single clarionet. The piping effect of the small orchestra under the broad canopy of a prairie sky was not agreeably relieved by the solitary bycycler running out as on parade with a ten cent child's trumpet, at which he would take a solemn "ta-ta-taw, ah!" at every presentation of front to the line of procession. At the order of a sub-marshal, the crowd of men and small boys, numbering a score and a half, strag- gled on behind the wagons and buggies, but in a confused tho' quiet rout. Through all these and similar drawbacks, however, the dignified but hearty participation of the Bishop of the Church in this civic celebration healed many deficiencies — in fact, at last made the day a striking success. There was taught thereby the proper appreciation of "the glory of the liberty of the children of God" in this country, if it be not perfect; and it showed how highly bene- ficial is the visible effect of bringing out the people SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES, 7 I en masse to do honor to religion in its chief repre- sentative, and in allying love of country and virtue in a common bond. Of many things desirable this is strikingly so — that the children of the Church should mingle, as far as compatible w^ith their faith and socially, with the children of men, and thus in all lawful degrees draw them to a reverence for earth-blessing and heaven-gaining faith by public exhibitions of the alliance and compatibility of true love for fatherland here and hereafter. If the vivi- fying religious sap permeate not the pores and chan- nels of the tree of public life, the juices of earth will not nourish at the root what the sun of the skies fails to enliven and the rain of heaven to freshen. That beautiful continued metaphor of Romans (XI: i6, 24) would also teach that the Church is the true Olive Tree, rooted, branched, fruitful — the world that is even convertible, but the wild olive branches grafted or graftable upon her. And if even the Church, show defects in individual branches, on her human side, her root is sound, incorruptible and un- improvable by the insertion of forced growths. Whatever was calculated to stimulate a stran- ger's risibles was soon over, and the stately figure of the Rt. Rev. John Ireland, orator of the occa- sion, with his well-worded address of eflfective Christian patriotism, gave another turn to the day. The towns people had fitted up a large open booth, floored, seated, roofed and somewhat decorated in the body with garlands and festoons of leaves. Some mottoes of "Liberty," "Welcome," "The Fourth," in fancy lettering, and a brace of bouquets graced the speaker's stand and the organ in front— 72 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. the former occupied by notables, ecclesiastic and lay, the latter environed by its bevy of girls and ladies and a triplet of male singers. Songs and band pieces introduced the exercises, while the open-air hall was filling, and the long space under either eave was being enlivened with busts of men and boys — sturdy farmers and lads, brawny mechanics, farm people, huddled groups. The grand, simple and simplv sublime "Declara- tion of Independence" being recited in an oratorical and emphasized manner by a lawyer (new resident of the village), and, of course, whole-souledly ap- plauded, the presiding oflScer, Mr. Woolsencroft, introduced Dr. Ireland for his oration. Needless to say, the eloquence of words and earnestness of man- ner was grounded upon great solidity and appropri- ateness of Christian and social matter in the address, occupying something over an hour in its delivery. An accommodating and skillful physician took down the address in stenographic characters, and it was fully expected we should have a full report ^'in perpetuajn rei memof'iam'' for the press to copy everywhere, citizens to frame in their homes and hand dow^n to their children. Especially was it the business of the managing committee to procure and distribute copies among the colonists. But after months' delay nothing of the kind has been done, and we must only console ourselves for the irrepa- rable loss by the reflection that those present wxre so vividly impressed by the moving eloquence and Christian patriotism of their Bishop that they will not only remember it to their latest day, but have ere this repeated it so often to others that they know its substance by heart for future repetition. The SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 73 rest of the programme was devoted to desultory sports, winding up with a dance at 8 P. M., and thereafter until the "wee sma' hours.'' The comical interspersion of the evening was a race against him- self by that singularly prominent bycycle strider, who must have tooted his tin trumpet lustily to make his hind wheel catch up with his front in the contest in which he was the sole visible competitor. Maybe the winged Goddess of Liberty waited upon him and spurred him like did Minerva of old, to add zest to the glory of the Fourth. The but seldom rippled gravity with which he had the cheek and jowl to blow that horn for the onset must have re- mained, as it certainly inaugurated, the most laugha- ble bit of humor in all the sports. Prairie Drinkers. I scarcely know how many, if any, drinkers were developed in the course of the evening after the dignitaries left. I \wi\\ not, however, conceal the truth, that a neighboring, tho' quite small, mostly Catholic town showed less soberness than the prac- tically non-Catholic one of Fulda. Partially this may be accounted for by the fact that the former was left without controlling guidance to the unscru- pulous fun of a small clique of half-grown boys and fellows, whose proof of asserted manhood lay only in the exhibition of the quantity of beer they could gulp in an out-of-the-way grove, and the racket they could raise, what with crackers and pistols, what with their brazen-muzzled throats Without going into further moralizing on the subject in hand, it may be well to state plainly that the best coloniz- ers are unanimous in declaring abuse of drink to be the greatest enemy of their projects. And we find 74 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. those most engaged in planting Catholic settlements taking a firm stand against intemperance and hold- ing up, in general, for total abstinence as the surest means to cut oft' even remote temptations from the unwary. An old word of Rt. Rev. Dr. Ireland comes in place: "A Minnesota farmer must work persever- ingly and energetically. The man who will appear in his field when the sun is high in the sky; who must go into the village two or three times a week, to lounge around the railway station or the grocery store, is sure to fail. I have met specimens of this kind, and have heard them too often blaming the country for the results of their own idle habits, not to wish to meet more of them. * * * There is no hope for those who love whisky in our colonies, and as we have built no poor-houses they will starve on the prairies. We do not want them." With whom Mr. John Sweetman, his lay associate in colonizing Murray County, is in perfect accord, in his letter of December 15, 1S83, when describing the qualifications of a settler, especially under his revised plan of operations: .... "I shall conclude this by warning off' from the prairies one class — drunkards. "They cannot succeed. They will surely find their way to the nearest village, where the vilest drink is always to be found, no matter how much it may pretend to be a temperance town with saloons strictly prohibited. "I warn the families and friends of drunkards that the prairie is the worst place for them. They will, as I said before, at once find out where drink is to be obtained. They will find plenty of congenial companions who will surely show them the way to SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 75 get through their money, no matter how much it may be." Pity ! shame I rather, that two virtues — the nat- ural one of patriotism and rehgion, the epitome of all — should be abused by being made the occasion of treason against reason and mankind, and sacrilege against God and faith! yuly 6th. — To-day was raw, with cold north wind so disagreeably brought home to our feelings thro' a broken pane of glass, that a body would feel like going to bed to get warm, as I know of some one doing. The show of a storm of which we had had signs and a slight touch, I just learn, turned out a quite serious hurricane at Graceville and on the line south. The violent wind leveled several houses, killed a boy outright by falling timbers, injured others pretty badly, and scared the community at the Northern colony, if not out of their wits, severely anyway. A wind storm is reported also from parts of Wis- consin and Iowa on the same day on which we had the fearfully blue signs here, on July 2d. A Naming Day. yzily ']th. — The weather has come back to its nor- mal summer temperature, fair sky, cool winds, brigt shine — "And the birds make music all the day!" And we opened, accordingly, the Nun's pier at "Harbor Grace," on their bit of lake shore. They enjoyed their first boat ride, with our Cuban, Marie Laine, gracefully guiding the rudder. It is rather a new-fangled kind of a sail we have 76 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. fashioned and does not work very well, especially in tacking — and the rudder is on a par with the two "wings" attached to the side in lieu of a center board. But all our company are green sailors and mind so little the inconveniences of our old rough-plank hulk, that they came back to "Harbor Grace" de- lighted. We named our fine points and bays on Lake St. Rose to-day. The larger coppice, with greater number of shrub trees, we call "Bird Nest," because the little ones sing their matins, lands, ves- pers and complins there, interspersing their Little Hours thro' the long, sweet summer days. This is thick and bushy too — fine retreat for their tiny nests and nursery for their tender voung, hid away from the many kites and hawks. The opposite bay we content ourselves with calling "Grove Bay," for the quite pretentious set of cottonwoods at Mr. Rad- ley's, across the bridge, where picnics are held and festive youths while away sunny hours on Sundays and off'-days. But the trees are really not more than a quarter to a half grown ; and are only dignified by the name of a grove by comparison with the lower brush along the lake edge. The long, high promon- tory, on account ©f an arbor projected there — the material brought, the seat already made — we named "Arbor Point." But alas! the project came to grief; for the carpenter who had a lumber yard discovered the materials, and imagining they had been stolen packed them, seat and all, away to town. The little beach near tow^n is denominated "Park- let Beach," for its proximity to the town park; the low lands opposite "Arbor," "Meadows"; the turn of the elbow-shaped point beyond the outlet, "Point Marie." We tried to find some appropriate point SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 77 for the name of "Sharon" in honor of our Nuns of the Holy Child's superb Institute near Philadelphia, but could not succeed in pleasing ourselves. The most beautiful spot and the nearest to being a hill would be the fine, sloping knoll back of "Arbor Point," in fact, inckiding it; and some day when a large College, for instance, or great Western Indus- trial School, shall have been established there, overlooking the town and rolling prairies, the lake and its then deeply wooded shores, we shall come together and name it beautiful "Sharon Hill." I was shown to-day a flax plant nearly two and a half feet in height, already flowered and seeding. It was proof of the push of this rich soil. Towards night yesterday evening, an ugly black waste of clouds poured over the sky from the North- west to the Southeast, like routed, retreating cavalry, smoking with straggling mists of perspiration — all succeeding a day of glorious shine and fairness. With but two words of change, it is the picture pre- sented by one of the Shakspearean sonnets I have been conning these two days: "Sunshine and Cloud." "Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the (prairie wilds) with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadow gi-een, Gilding pale (lakes) with heavenly alchemy; Anon, permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to West with his disgrace." 78 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Again this morning the picture was reversed, and the day ends with a heaven full of glorious sun- set colors, bright yellow above the royal couch, like freshest sammets and corded hangings of lustrous silk. A bank and promontory in front of crimson; up sky, orange. Far over the zenith, rose and rich red, paling all until the curtains immediately above the setting glowed with last bright orange. And in the open heavens, delicate beading w^ith exquisite blue between, and the indefinable light that is all but unearthly, calling on to the beyond. One would be tempted to outrage astronomy by imao^ininor the Aurora Borealis reflected some of the splendor of its fiery coloring on the burnished morn and eve, so full of fire they show. Indeed, the rise and set are both removed from their normal latitude, as compared with further south; the sun seeming to come up inside of northeast and set north of north- west — certainly due northeast and west. Celestial Glories. yuly ^th. — How can we pass ovei; this celestial glory without giving fit praise to the Eternal Artist, the God of Beauty! If these be but reflections from His sun's face, how much more of His own. Fount of loveliness! It was half an hour before sunset, and clear oft' in the southeast. Three grand mountains of clouds! Behind them the most brilliant station- ary range of great shelves of rock, like precious stones from the foundations of the celestial citv, wherein numberless caves recede, well defined in shaded lines of beauty. These Titanic rosy and sapphire recesses are par- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 79 apetted in front against the immense walls of coral rock looming up behind and around, whose higher receding gorges and culminating peaks are filled and capped with heaps of vapor-snow. The white laps of the skyey Alps throw out the deeper colors of the rocks and mountain flanks in such enchanting contrasts of lightsome shadings over the fairy caves, that we cry out with exultation : " My God ! how beautiful must Thy light be to reflect such scenes to fallen earth and mortal eyes!" Before this heavenly background two opposing glorious panoramas of mountain-clouds move ma- jestically into and past one another. These proces- sions are not illumed, rather darkish blue and shaded to define themselves in every feature against the background. Every shifting of the sky scenes by the fair-weathoj* angels call forth renewed expres- sions of delight. Finally, a magnificent rosy peak of light coral ascends above the-snow banks and blue, higher and higher — bends over more than the sculptured town of Pisa until — inirabile dictu! the base gives way and the mighty eminence seems ready to topple. It does not. It only breaks oft' and floats upwards self-sustaining, like the "pillar and base of truth," figure of the supernatural Church, as described by the great Louis Veuillot. Under- mined from below by the machinations of secret societies and apostate kings and baseless upon earth, she still stands majestic aloft, upborne by an invisi- ble power and sustained of God. After a half-hour the dim blue ranges float past one another and leave the rose caves and coral reefs, the mountain snows in the laps of the towering 8o SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Ossa-upon-Pelion, in their scarcely dimmed celes- tialness. The god of day descends and shedding the hght of his face over all the the western firma- ment hides his flaming forehead behind his barred cloud-prison. '''•Et U7nbrae ex cacufnlnibus montiiun . . . cadebant^' There are left in the opposing sky but the ghosts of the whilom Alps — the ashes of the heavenly burnings, smouldering, yet not consuming. The informing lightning passes sw^iftly into the dull masses, heaped like charred paper, and shoots and quivers in ascending river-like tongues, sheeting the now^ d^ark caves with sudden gold — flashing up be- yond them into the darkening ether, blazing up in the mountains of ashes. 'Tis a brighter glory than that departed, because it is life from within, not a reflection from without. Such might be the soul after the splendors of earth are past — splendors that are but reflected, exterior, temporal, until the in- forming fire of hidden grace makes the dead man live, and the undying spirit flame but the brighter from the ashy corpse. Crops and Gardens. yuly loth. — I saw a field of small standing oats headed out. More grass is ready for the mower. It is continuous and new grass harvest on the prairie from about the first third of June, in good summers, on till nearly the end of October. As the increasing- sun successively dries up the lower lands and in- vades the sloughs, one by one, the new crops succeed one another. I verily believe, and am sustancd by some practical farmers, that there could be three hay SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. bl harvests, taking two months each between the cut- tings. Those prairie farmers who are raising cattle principally make it a business to cut and press hay, selling it to large buyers at the railroad towns or shipping it to large cities. I noted particularly and measured by eye some grass and vegetation roots in a caved-in ledge of the lake. The fibres of the roots run down below the two-and-one- half or three-foot loam into the gravelly dirt; the longest reached as low as four feet. And certainly nature must make provision by putting the roots belo^v ordinary freezing depth, and make allowances for the extraordinary. Here in midsum- mer we are eating the finest radishes. They are firm, brittle and from as large as the ham of your thumb to the sinaller, as big as your fore or middle finger. Lettuce is still coming on fresh, and young onions are not run out. I ate a few strawberries some days ago; but my particular treat of the deli- cacy was as remarkable for its acidity as for its rarity. Some wild ones also have been eaten by the Nuns and pronounced palatable. The better pota- toes have blossomed, and I have heard some two farmer's wives boast they would have new potatoes for the Fourth of July. Maybe they did. Corn, the best, is now about a foot high, and generally looks thrifty. Far-seeing people w^ho are industrious will raise all the vegetables they can; and the enormous quan- tities they can produce from even an ordinary gar- den plot in this soil will keep them jumping to clear the fast growing weeds and wild grasses; but in the end yield them all they can house for the 82 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. longer winter one may expect. This is the paradise of gardeners and root raisers. Twin City of the North. yuly i(^th. — I have been eight days in the North- ern Metropohs; and, Httle as I Hke cities as com-' pared with the purer country, I am more and more astounded at the marvelous development of this Western New York and Brooklyn, called St. Paul and Minneapolis. Their rivalry is something on a grand scale; the differences of business they claim, severally, run into the sum of seven or eight millions in a short time, and their house building amounts to from 1,500 to 2,000 structures going up simultane- ously in each place, winter and summer. The tvv^o cities combined are said to rank about third in the United States in the matter of general business; and when their but four-mile-separated suburbs join, as they are continually tending to do, the possibilities of the future Twin City at the head of Mississippi navi- gation, in reach of the great lakes and midway of the continent from every direction, are simply incalcu- lable. But let some one else chronicle cities. How glad I am to get back to my prairie with its simple beauty, its peaceful rest, its better friends — back to my letters from friends and good children. "Oh, who would inhabit this bleak world alone!" Yes, but some are most alone when in greatest crowds. It is my weakness, or strength. It is not so much the Thomas a Kempian reason: "The more I converse with men the less I return a man," tho' that be partially the personal truth; but modern civilization, as understood and professed practically SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 83 in our business cities, is so mechanical, wooden, stony, iron. There is the eternal sameness of great dead, smoked walls and smoking roofs and filthy streets; the elbowing madness of rushing crowds; the ever anxious brow and bent body of the seeker of Mammon's favors ; the horrid squalor of poverty and pinched faces beside the palatial, park-environed homes of the princes of fortune. Like the poor famishing Arab in the desert who found a bag, and hoping to Allah it were dates or figs, discovered it full of miserable baubles of pearls, one finds but machinery, hard money, man-culture, and no foun- tain of living waters, in the hearts of great cities. And tho' we must not judge harshly and must look below the seething surfaces of the sea of tossed mankind for the real pearls and coral caves and painted shells in its depths, still I could not refrain from apostrophizing: "Ye simply flowered prairies; ye pellucid lakes and clear-breasted waters; ye living in the grasses and rushes; soarers on high, mewing, whistling, trilling, warbling tribes; ye waving tree- lets and low shrubs, I greet ye all again and rejoice with you in the commonest, best gifts of the sweet God of Nature, blest be His name!" Southeastern Minnesota. Going back and forth to the Mississippi along the Southern line of railroad last week, I found the prairie crops about the same as in Murray County. No corn is past plowing or "laid by." Some headed oatfields and a little headed wheat, west of Mankato. Garden truck is in its first summer yield; a few stuck peas and beans, potatoes about all blossomed. 84 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. but some considerably bug-eaten, and scarcely any messes of new ones. Haying is going on pretty extensively and the yield is fair, even often abundant on good, vs^ell-tended farms. I understand some barley and rye is being cut, and I saw fields yellow- ing and goldening for the sickle. Advancing past Mankato to the East into the wooded prairies and forty-mile belt of timber along the Mississippi, things are considerably more ad- vanced than on the open prairies. All the wheat and oats are headed out and filling fast for the har- vest, coming on in two or three weeks. There is more hay and the meadows are evener and better, tho' the grass is not so heavy as on the prairie, or as the slough grass. Corn, in several fields, is plowing for the last time or actually "laid by" — tho' the greater portion seen from the track is not higher than the prairie product; say, averaging some twen- ty-two to twenty-five inches. Patches, however, of garden and field corn will reach three and one-half or four feet, and I have heard of stalks standing six or seven feet. As usual in our Western World, people do not pay half attention to farm gardens, too anxious to get at the more money-producing crops to raise necessary vegetables for their own consumption, not to speak of sale. Few or no gar- dens are apparent in smaller towns here, tho' more in larger burgs and extensive villages. In this latter, I saw stuck peas standing waist and breast high. Potatoes generally are luxuriant and clean of bugs; pretty fair cabbage and beets; lots of great under- growth of rhubarb, currants and gooseberries. The two last grow also wild on the prairie lakes and vield tolerable berries. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 85 In the vegetable markets of St. Paul, you find any quantity of fresh early vegetables, past the middle of July; young succulent onions, lettuce, strawberries, carrots, beets, cauliflower, head -big cabbage, fist-big turnips, single or double-fisted new potatoes; abun- dance of small flower bouquets of flesh' colored roses, crimson and purple fuchsias, Sweet Williams, etc. Lake Minnetonka. yuly \6th — Our orphan's excursion from Minne- apolis to-day recalls an episode of last year at this time — just the prime season to enjoy a run out to Minnetonka, the superbest lake in Southern Min- nesota. The rail route is very attractive. You rush thro' the suburbs of Minneapolis, the city of the level as compared with the more ascending St. Paul, past the fine lakes Calhoun, on the right, and the quieter, because less frequented, Harriet, and sum- mer resorts for campers especially, on the beautiful left. Native woods line the road, and you pick, as you have a chance between stops, the wild flowers along the cuts. The country opens as you approach the vicinity of the station of Wayzata, by one direc- tion, or the lake-town of Excelsior by another. Up-hill and down-vallev charms meet you at many turns, peculiarlv reminding of the Ohio River scenery, or the less diversified valley of the Mo- hawk, in Central New York. The new "Belle of Minnetonka," or the great "St. Louis," comes steam- ing up with flags of many nations fluttering at the bulwarks. The irregular shores bend in and out. 86 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. aftbrding a variety of shifting scenes for hours', nay days', ride back and forth of the twenty odd miles traversed from navigable end to end, or the over-a- hundred miles of the circumference of the shore. Now little, then longer, pleasure crafts and tugs pass and repass like verv gondolas, only more cheer- ful far. How those wooded points project graceful into the lake, throwing into prominence the villas, peep- ing out with ornamental frieze and cornice and tur- rets from the foliage, perched on their blue-grass plots. Ho! another pleasure party salutes us on the right, and "hails" are exchanged between the merry- goers. These return- as we go out, and leave us the "Narrows" free. Pretty narrow indeed ! A row of slender piles stake off the space, just barely broad enough for the hull of our steamer. Right oft' there looms the grand "Lafayette" Hotel, a monstrous pile of hundreds of rooms — all outside rooms — in the curious Qiieen Anne style of architecture, and painted the oddest green and iDcnitentiary brown. But it is elegantly appointed, and you mav surfeit your rage for expenditure by paying five dollars a day — or even as much a meal, as was actually charged on the opening occasion. The "St. Louis" is not so expensive, but still a large establishment. A dozen other hotels dot the shores and people the islands. A "cute" little island, with vined summer-house and trellised residence, is romantic enough for an idyl; and there it peers sheer out of the water, just broad enough to have no neighbors. A "fish" is the order of the evening, and the ex- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 87 pert can land his string of bass, delicate croppies, or wall-eyed pike, and grosser pickerel. Again, as vve work our easy way back thro' the bays and "Narrows," the resemblance to the "Beautiful River" scenery is so marked you exclaim involuntarily, as I heard a cultured lady do: "This is verily a section of the Ohio Valley!" But the air is perfect, and puts on a charm not felt elsewhere. This i6th July, we went out excursioning with the orphans and children on Lake Minnetonka — a ride on its wind-blown bosom from ii A. M. to 2 P. M. Tho' grand it be, with fine points, harbors, islands and promontories, as I have described it, Minnetonka has not the ethereal beauty of the White Bear, or even little St. Rose, or Buffalo Lake on the prairies. And to-day, with the gale of wind making it uncomfortable, it does not impress me as it did last year. Captain Hill, the proprietor of the colos- sal Lafayette, has been working very hard to make this a great summer resort, even going to the length of establishing a special railroad line; and eventually, for the rich, it will be brought to wide public notice. It has had fewer guests this season; perhaps all the visitors would not aggregate two hundred and fifty or three hundred, and it takes many times these to support the expensive and elegant establishments. July iS^/i. — The Great Artist seems, to-day, to have his colors on the pallet of the sky only in pro- cess of mixing. There is still a varying beauty in the irregular dabs here and there of clotted whites, creams and shaded heaps, all this neutral day. To- w^ards twilio^ht the skvful is tinted faintlv, fairlv. 88 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. On visiting the land office of C. St. P. M. and O. R. R., we were shown by the general agent, Mr. Drake, the grand sale of 105,000 acres, extend- ing in alternate sections from the Murray County line, south of lona, on to past Adrian, Nobles County, for '"^5.35 an acre, to the English syndicate of Close Bros. A curiosity of the minor purchases by indi- viduals are two whole sections bought by the Protestant i\rchbishop of York, in England. The sale is for cash, over $600,000, and includes every- thing as it comes; and I hajDpen to know from an extended trip over the identical region, that there are entire sections of rather hopeless sloughs, and others of sandhills, fit perhaps for sheep grazing. The entire purchase is about twenty miles square. Mr. Drake informed us that in a week he expected to close a similar sale of fifty thousand acres in Mur- ray County, trenching on the environs of Avoca and Fulda; ^6.^0 an acre will be the price. These are some of the best wholesale trades in land made in this or the neighboring States or Territories in a great while; and include, as to the first in Nobles County, the precise lands once held by the Catholic Bureaus of Colonization, but of which never an acre was sold. ■ Avoca, Midnight, yuly 19-30. — The full moon's face is obscured by the drifting clouds from the Southeast, but gives good light withal. In the North is shown a startling display of electricity among the banked and piled ranges of cloud- mountains, as ''Alps on Alps arise." The noiseless lightning now blazes out into a sun, as quickly extinguished; now flashes into rivers and darts in bolts — incessant. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 89 changeful, lighting and going out, revealing the cloudy heights, caves, chasms. Glorious, unearthly! Great, my God, is Thy majesty! I gaze v^ith awe — with no fear, but of a son. "Incline, O Lord, unto my aid! Lord, make haste to help me!" This week two more spots are growing in the sun, making the number now not less than seven. Storms are predicted. On the 13th there were cyclonic winds, and twelve or thirteen electric storms in different localities from New Jersey and New Hampshire west to Montana, and from Mis- souri north to Canada. We are coming to pretty decided proofs that the electrical center is at the North Pole, and that the sun spots portend trouble in our air. yuly 20th. — To-day will witness about our last fish. We trolled and bobbed over all the lowev end of the lake the other day, and caught one miserable catfish. And w^e have w^'ought our w^ay into the inlet thro' the growling weeds and beds of w4iite blossoms (called aquatica something by botanists), and for our two hours' ^vork brought out a single pike. Some other fishers caught tw^o, and two others again a small string. The old-time dozens are no more. The fields about our colony are finely advanced. Wheat is fully headed, and the ears taste of the "dough." Oats are much farther matured, and begin to whiten over the fields. Some L'ish Barbary seed counts 135 to 130 oats to the stalk. Wheat heads measure, some five, some six inches. Corn is still backward in farms whose owners are not much used to it, and value it too little. Much will hardlv sur- 9© SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. vive the early frosts. I noticed some fine-looking barley patches headed and flossed heavily No amount is raised hereabouts. I just heard of a good field of grain ready for the machines in two weeks. yuly2ist. — To-day opens with an unusual visitor — a genuine heavy fog, that obscures the view of the lake to even now at 8 A. M. Large drops of rain exude from out the thick damp, and still the bee- martins flit and hover; twit-twats chatter; sea-birds cry and me\y, and the cat-bird calls to merry heart from the tangles of the bush banks. During the obscurity let us speculate for a page on water. Tho' I believe with my "Nature Remedy" man — Dr. Felix Oswald, posing in the "Popular Science Monthly" as the physician — in the use of water, I would not coincide in his strong condemnation of warm drink or hot water, for a great many chronic suflerers. Get the water into you anyway and any- how; it is the best of elements for recuperation and cleansing the system, besides being absolutely neces- sary in some form or other to every kind of animal. Writing for health seekers as a special class in my interested readers, I ^vould not deprive them of the follow^ing thoroughly scientific resume: The Hot Water Treatment. "Dr. Eph. Cutter, in Gaillard's Journal, describes the system of administering hot water, as originally practiced by James H. Salisbury, of Philadelphia. As this hot water treatment is receiving some atten- tion by the public as well as the profession, the sa- lient points are here reproduced : The Salisbury System of Using Hot Water. — i. The water must be hot ; not cold or lukewarm. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 9I This is to excite downward peristalsis of the aHmen- tary canal. Cold water depresses, as it uses animal heat to bring it up to the temperature of the econ- om\% and there is a loss of nerve force in this pro- ceeding. Lukewarm water excites upward peristalsis or vomiting, as is well known. By hot water is meant a temperature of no degrees to 115 degrees F., such as is commonly liked in the use of tea and coffee. In cases of diarrhoea the hotter the better. In cases of hemorrhages, the temperature should be at blood heat. Ice water is disallowed in all cases, sick or well. 2. Quantity of Hot Water at a Draught. — Dr. Salisbury first began with one-half pint of hot water, but he found it ^vas not enough to wash out 3. Times of Taking Hot Water. — One hour to two hours before each meal, and half an hour before retiring to bed. At first Dr. Salisbury tried the time of one hour before meals, but this was apt to be followed by vomiting. One hour to two hours allows the hot water time enough to get out of the stomach before the food enters or sleep comes, and thus avoids vom- iting. Four times a day gives an amount of hot water sufficient Should the patient be thirsty between meals, eight ounces of hot water can be taken an}' time between two hours after a meal, and one hour before the next meal. This is to avoid diluting the food in the stomach with water. 4. Mode of Taking the Hot Water. — In drinking the hot water it should be sipped, and not drunk so fast as to distend the stomach and make it feel un- 92 SIX SEASONS OX OUR PRAIRIES, comfortable. From fifteen to twenty minutes may be consumed during the drinking of the hot water. 5. The Length of Time to Continue the Use of Hot Water. — Six months is generally required to wash out the liver and intestines thoroughly." This is required in the understanding that the treatment is used, as the basis of a cure, in a chronic case of any kind; and when the patient will be pa- tient, especiall}^ as he can suit the water to his taste, as follows: "6. Additions to Hot Water. — To make it palata- ble, in case it is desired, and medicate the hot water, aromatic spirits of ammonia, clover tea blossoms, ginger, lemon juice, sage, salt, and sulphate of mag- nesia are sometimes added. Where there is intense, thirst and dryness, a pinch of chloride of calcium or nitrate of potash may be added to allay thirst and leave a moistened film over the parched and dry mucous membrane surfaces. When there is diar- rhoea, cinnamon, ginger, and pepper may be boiled in the water, and the quantity drunk lessened. For constipation a teaspoonful of sulphate of magnesia or one-half teaspoonful of taraxicum may be used in the hot water. 7. Aniount of Liquid to be drunk at a Meal. — Not more than eight ounces. This is in order not to dilute the gastric juice or wash it out prematurely, and thus interfere with the digestive processes. 8. The effects of drifiking hot water as indicated are the improved feelings of the patient. The fieces become black with bile washed down its normal channel. This blackness of faeces lasts for more than six months, but the intolerable fetid odor of SIX WEEKS IX OUR ROCKIES. 93 ordinary faeces is abated and the smell approximates the odor of healthy infants suckling healthy breasts; and this shows that the ordinary nuisance of fetid faeces is due to the want of washing out and cleans- ing the alimentary canal from its fermenting contents. The urine is clear as champagne, free from deposit on cooling, or odor, i.oi:; to i.o3o specific gravity like infant's urine. The • sweat starts freely after drinking, giving a true bath from the center of body to periphery. The skin becomes healthy in feel and looks " And if any one objects to the infusion of so much liquid, tell him he is, like yourself, seventy-five per cent, water. x\dd, hot water is almost the only safe specific for the physical reformation of inebriates. Regarding the purity of the water on the prairies, it may be safely averred that the contents of rivers, lakes and even of sloughs, are tasteless, colorless and wholesome, for the eleven out of the tw^elve months of the year. This odd month is in the end of June and in July, being the only exceptional time when more stationary waters show signs of impuritv bv scum or bad odor, as it is the ordinarily hottest sea- son in this latitude. There are, indeed, special local- ities after you leave the middle line of Minnesota and Dakota, where you find some lakes and stagnant river bottoms alkalined to such a degree as to require boiling before their water can be used for drinking or cooking. Wells and cisterns, which are properly boxed, (they generally call the lining with jointed pine "curbing,") and carefully dug, either entirely above, or far below, the blue or black clay strata, furnish unexceptionably good water. 94 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. We do not, however, include the plains proper as distinguished from the prairies; for the latter at higher altitudes often have no escape from alkali and other had elements excepJt by boring the fine artesian wells. There is the least here in summer or early autumns, of "The melancholy days .... the saddest of the year." A dash of rain and a grow^l of thunder dissipated the gloom in a jifFy: such in short is the sequel of the fog spell w^e are now^ thro' — all gone while I would write out these water pages. How beautiful to see the heavenly prayers of the Missal verified, so frequently, to the letter, in the Convent of these good Nuns of the Holy Child Jesus, some of whom go to Holy Communion nearly every day, and all several times in the week. The celebrant so often reads prayers of the Post Com- munion especially referring to the family of the faithful present, who have that day participated with him of the Sweet Mysteries of the Divine Table; and alas! seldom is there one to share them with him and make true the blessings called down upon the communicants. Against one and all anyways Jansenistically inclined, one must heartily believe in frequent w^orthy feeding upon our Lord, "the Way, the Truth and the Life," the Viatecum of wayfarers by the Truth towards Life that is, and shall never be swallowed up in death; more notably for many SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. • 95 religious who share in part with the priest in the New Law some of the ordinary privileges of the Holy of Holies, within the sanctuary veil. July 2^th. — Our occupation for a few days has been the plying of the trade of the Apostles in sail- making. We have indeed but a sorry hulk of a flat-bottomed, rough-board, lockless sort of a boat. And we are inexperienced enough tradesmen and sailors. Our first trial showed our ignorance of the craft. We had no breeze, and it was perhaps a blessing; for with our poor tackle we might have found the nearest land, as the Irish wag suggested, straight under us. To-day opens fine, sunshine, clear lake, good air. But, all of a sudden, a dense fog arises, creeps over from the East and down from lake head, and we are enveloped. By a quarter to eight it is lightlier, and the sun struggles to launch thro' his glittering spears. Some predict these fogs, if they continue, will shorten the grain crop, which God forefend! Two Prairie Pets. We have caught a couple of pets lately. I got hold of a fire-eating, full-blooded yellow-head, an irrepres- sible grain-preyer. He could scarcely fly a rod, having been disabled somehow, and being young be- sides; but had sharp claws, snappy beak, and would fight you as literally as he could, even in his ad- vanced pin feathers, with tooth and nail. He has a scolding caw, something like a soreheaded crow's. Indeed he resembles the famous marauder mate- rially, and is, like him, a great pest to corn. They not only pick the grains and ears, but league 96 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. with the rascally gophers — the little striped, short- tailed prairie squirrel — in pulling up whole acres of young corn sprouts. Then, a townsman has what he calls his "canary," tied with a strong twine about the leg to a stake in his back yard. This singer's legs are all of twelve inches high, and he stands, in his brown coat and dun leggins, over two feet in his tight boots. He is somewhat knock-kneed, by reason of his youth and infirmities, having been left on the prairie by his unfeeling three-and-a-half foot parents to the use- lessness of his legs and tender wings — neither able to locomote nor even help himself up on his gaunt limbs when he once gets down. He is, namely, a young ostrich of these parts — an infant sandhill crane with a "peep," "peep," quite like a tiny chick. His main body is deep brown with under wings of dirty blue; his head is fuzzy, light brown, pin-feath- ered, lighted by an eye perfectly round, of beautiful brown, as large and with as distinct a pupil and iris as a man. His beak, with decided pecking inclina- tion, is long and tapering — about five inches. We have been eating our unhoed and once- plowed potatoes for a week, and the Sisters are getting some sparse first fruits from their unculti- vated garden. The tubers are pestered by the bugs, but it is rather late to harm much, except perhaps in the size of the roots. Very pretty wild tiger lilies (red) have been found, and have graced our chapel altar many mornings. July 2^th. — After several days busy with other matters, we resume our journal to note that there has been grreat racket — "fuss and feathers," we SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 97 might put it, if it were just that — on the raih'oad these three or four days. The train has been bring- ing back six, eight and more empty cars from a spot up north from Avoca, where a new town named Wilson is building. Its projector is a man evicted by his tenants, they say, in Ireland, who came over to buy and possess a town, all his own. The railroad needs all the paying stations it can raise to keep up rolling stock, and pay a small surplus over running expenses. Hadley bids fair to become a good grain station. Slaton is pretentious enough to have fought in its baby clothes for the assertion of its eligibility for the county seat, and came near "lobbying" thro'. A Well or Two. There have been several wells dug in our town- ship lately. It is a very simple process. The borers erect a three-legged derrick, with block and tackle, whence a windlass lets down an auger a foot or two in diameter. Two men turn the auger with hand spikes, boring down thro' the soft loam sand, and sometimes gravel, then blue and black clay, for say, fifteen or sixteen feet, and meet veins of water in abundance. The depth of blue clay is as far as you ordinarily bore; if you stir it up you are forced to bore thro' it, often from sixteen to forty feet. It is dry, hard, impermeable matter, stops the flow of water, and has the reputation of spoiling the wells, where it holds contact with the water. Wells are dug and "curbed," that is, planked down the sides, for eighty or ninety cents a foot. The Nuns' well is some ninety feet deep, and has given trouble on account of "seeps" making the water offensive. 98 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. These are two most glorious days we have just enjoyed, sunshiny, but cool and bracing, delightfully full of the tonic that gives vigor and health. Such is Minnesota's finest and peculiar wxather, inspiring these strictly descriptive verses: MINNESOTA'S SUMMER CLIME. Now perfect-mixt of climes, Of all that sweeten air or earth bedeck, Thy crispy summer times Thine angel saved from Eden's wreck. As is thy sheen of stars From out thy depths of limpid blue; As spring sun's glinting bars The earth and spirit's strength renew: So seems it me these days Come down from ether's starry height, Descending on the rays "Sky-tinted waters" mirror white. In summer solstice e'en When burn the ardors evermore, Sweet breath of snow, I ween. Thou breathest from the Arctic shore. Wild flowers, thy frequent spring — Thy soil, quick fruits and later, yields: Lands, lakes invite the wing Of birds and men to quickening fields. To sanitarium, thee. From genial clime and country come Strong, sick, the bond and free, Wealth- seeking — refuge, health and home! Taylor's Falls on the St. Croix. Not far from as lovely a day as this, tho' vastly hotter, was it last summer, when a party of four of Six WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 99 US crossed the lake-river at Stillwater, Minnesota, and passing over to Hudson, on a primitive flat of a steam ferry, steamed up the St. Croix River to the famous Dalles, or Taylor's Falls. Next time, how- ever, we beg to have better transport than afforded by that poor little steam-run concern, called by cour- tesy a pleasure boat. The St. Croix here is a narrow strip of water, rather on the order of a series of ponds, so very shallow in places we had to tack every fashion to get the junk ahead. On one stretch we called up all hands and actually poled our way for some rods; and when we came to the great log boom (this being the ordinary channel for logging from the contigu- ous forests of Minnesota and Wisconsin) we were checked completely and forced to halt until word could be got by skiffs to stop the booming, or "boom- up," as the technicals say. Finally, with the sun driving us from one side of the slender craft, we sweated our way up, and were well rewarded by the fresher mountain-like air breathed thro' the Dalles, and by the sight of the finest rock scenery of perhaps both States. The singularity -of rougher, rockier sections in the midst of the plains and prai- ries, rolling for hundreds on hundreds of miles on either side, makes the Dalles more interesting features of landscape. How the word "Dalles," meaning flat or table rock, came to be applied to these great gorges of piled walls, is hard to conjecture; except that, perhaps, it refers to the actual building of the masses, seemingly in horizontal lines and as if piled one flat surface on another in the manner somewhat of human constructions. There are up- lOO SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. wards of five miles of more or less elevated sites and shapes, the "Devil," as usual in the rather profanely famous West, getting more than his share of prom- inence by standing sponsor for rocks, chairs, bowels and slides. Here you see a great bend in the rapid Falls, en- walled by sheer precipices rising boldly and irregu- larly on both shores: now forming a grand Giant- causeway front, now breaking into large points and minor peaks. Across the falls, between the two embryo towns, both finely situated and embowered in stately trees and evergreens, spans an arching bridge, setting oft' the natural scenery to an unusual degree. Bridges are always beautiful, whatever it is that consitutes the quality; but in wild gorges like these nothing satisfies the sensation-nerve of the beautiful so fully. Down in the Dalles fishing smacks row to and fro in the eddying waters; and far down, the musical echo brings back, perfected in Nature's grand organ, the shouted song and whistle, the forced exploding laughter and "yodel." We climbed the rugged roads above the Minnesota town and explored the vicinage with cautious foot and rapid eye. No easy task! The brushing underwood is massy and the steeps made for goats or acrobats. Strange ! we found, as it were, great bored cisterns, as circular as if done by human machinery, but evidently worn so by eddying pools, carrying, doubtless, granite and flint bowlders, for centuries of fret. One exceeded the other in singular imitation of human craft, and we lingered examining them. Once out on the rocks overlooking- the lower Falls, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. lOI we enjoyed a view worth double our toil and moil. The river, clear as all mountain streams are clear, wound down between the Nature-built walls of fine browned and mossed rock; the banks now lowering, now rising in beauteous change. We shouted and sang to the Echo; and the Echo talked long and sweetly back, ever agreeing to all our moods. But what a night we passed at the hotel in the poor quarters assigned us directly under a mansard roof, heated during the day to past boiling point! At least it made us boil and froth over with the lathers of perspiration it cooked out of us, especially some rather portly ecclesiastics, whose stock in trade of entertainment amounted to doleful groans over the sultry heat, interspersed with frequent mop- pings. I happen to know even one spare body who deserted his bed for the hall, and steamed there as if afire. Avoca, yuly 2Q)th. — I have heard of barley and rye being harvested in the past week, some of extra- ordinary growth. Garden corn is tasseled in lo- calities. This morning, the park-garden's corn (hardly more than voluntary) is tasseling at less than three feet; tho' the stalks look thick and healthy, barring that the leaves are too close. A few stands are silking. The weather has been varying; for two weeks cool, but warm, even sultry, after dinner for a short time, breeding some night musquitoes. Yesterday was rather cold. To-day is bright and sweet, with good northwest breeze. I02 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. On St. Anne's eve we trimmed and set our sail boat, launching her under the name of the feast, "Santa Anna." The wind was north by a little west, and we had to pull over with oars to the north shore in order to get a start. We cruised a half mile at a brisk run. We spied a batch of wild ducks on the upper lake, perhaps some five dozen. Good omen for opening of the season on August 15. A few will kill game in the closed time, but they get little good out of it; as breeding fowl are strong of flavor and lean, they are quite unfit to eat. A Run into Dakota and Iowa, EFORE we detail the account of the Six ^ Weeks in the Mountains, we find this a suit- ^able intervening space for a more general description of a ten days' run into Dakota and Iowa at about this season last year. The old story is often yet a stern reality about parties inscribing on their canvas-covered wagon on the tramp for Dakota, "Dakota or Bust^^ and coming back with "Dakota" heavily marked out and "Busted, by Gum!" inserted in its place. But it hardly applied to us in the early fall of '82, when we two gentlemen of leisure made a trip into a tract roughly estimated at four hundred by four hundred miles square, now before Congress as a candidate for admission as a State. We had seen an exhibition of Dakota's products, natural and culti- vated, funny rocks and bowlders, geodes and crystals from the "Bad Lands," and its stupendously large, nay overgrown, squashes, roots, grains, and weeds. These were kinds of things that could not be man- ufactured like wooden hams and nutmegs from the land of inventions and humbuggery, aesthetic cul- ture and some pure cussedness. Neither could they well be duplicated this side of California or the Gulf States. But it is better to see, for one's self, even if only representative portions of the enormous territory could be visited. I04 SIX SEASONS ON OUK PRAIRIES. "Would a little trip of five hundred miles suffice, and that in a circle around the contiguous corners of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Dakota!" Hardly — maybe! We would go into the country of "magnifi- cent distances" indeed: for five hundred miles can be covered here by putting down the point of your finger into the intersection of the four States on the, ordinary map. It is August and all is in freshest bloom. From Heron Lake, Minnesota, to Flandreau, Dakota, was all old stamping ground; and we could find few accessions to our wonted observations. Flandreau, Dakota. Flandreau, a prairie town of some pretensions, is named after an old French settler, and a Catholic, no doubt, who drove a stake and threw up a tent here some two decades or more past. It was then the land of the Dakota Indian, and a man's scalp wasn't worth hardly as much as a good powdered wig — until the scalp could be dressed. The Pipe- stone Reservation is not far off' now, and a curious body may run over and witness a cheap savage pa- geant of a war dance, some Indian drunkenness and slovenliness, a little sharp-shooting, and mayhap an old-time arrow shot, for a few dimes' admittance. Sometimes, tho', they advertise to show, and do not follow up the programme. So all one gets for his trouble is the sight of some ragged old tents propped on a rough, pyramidal-shaped frame of poles, a set of squaws, squatting about making bas- kets and canoes of birch wood for trinkets to sell; a lounging brave or two, much the worse for wear, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. IO5 and with nothing remarkable about them except the way they wear their new-fangled, civilized suits, and the way they do not wear their hats on their unkempt poles. A few half-breed children, a bright- eyed Indian lad or lass rolling lazily about and talk- ing baby-talk, fills the picture — if you throw in a wrinkeled old squaw, a battered, blinking, blear- eyed, aged horse thief; and take in the whole culi- nary department, by adding some strings of jerked meat, a few pounds of bacon, and a hodge-podge pot simmering over a fire on a pole crossed on forked stakes. But we came to see white people; and to say that we saw crowds of them in every town of any size down the road and valley of the Sioux River to Yankton, would scarcely express the very truth. People? Why you might go into some thoroughfares of New York and New Orleans and you would not meet with more persons in a given time than in Sioux Falls, Sioux City and Yankton. Fairs were going on all along the line, and all the world was abroad; and all the hotels, hostelries and boarding houses so full you did well to secure a camp bed in the "oflSce" or waiting room. About Flandreau are the wide, slightly rolling prairies, yet full of game at a reasonable distance, and fragrant with wild flowers. We visited no par- ticular farms; but one can easily take for granted that anybody with the least Western "get up" about him can raise what he pleases in this grand, sandy loam, except, perhaps for a while, fruits like pears or peaches. It is almost useless to repeat that all the Western prairies, outside of strangely rock- Io6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. dotted portions and surprising Dalles about unex- pected river torrents, are all of about the same identical formation as to quality and, no doubt, also as to chemical combinations of earth. Sioux Valley. Descending South until you touch the Sioux River, you come into one of the simply most charming w^ooded and w^atered stretches of rolling prairie. The modest Sioux increases in w^idth and volume as you go dow^n, and its banks are profusely fringed w^ith goodly timber ; in places, thick shrubbery. Towns, great and small, succeed one another as rapidly as one w^ould imagine they must in this favored valley. "Picturesque as the valley of the Mohav^k," w^ould be the natural expression of a comparer, minus the more cultivated state of the soil and the frequency of v^^ell-ordered farm establish- ments of the famous Central New^ York vale. But the fine Sioux meanders just like its counterpart; the railroad follows its banks as closely ; bursts of glorious landscape of land and water delight as frequently, and with more wild freshness and un- touchedness. The glint of the- sun on wave and leaf is purer, the air lighter and sweeter, the sky lim- pid. Oh ! for more inhabitants for these glorious sites for homes away from cities, "confusion worse confounded"; for Catholic spires and school bel- fries to rear amid these shades of peace; sweet-faced nuns to pace and bright-eyed youth to romp in these natural avenues; and the beaming face of a SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. IO7 happy priest to foster all God's work for soul and earth! But she is coming, Holy Religion, and taking up her seat in spots wide apart, collecting her scattered children, and not forgetting the build- ing of their happy homes on earth, while she turns the gaze and inner heart to the everlasting abodes. The church at Flandreau we found on the sub- urbs, just only closed in and made serviceable for summer use; no altar but a rude frame, no plaster nor laths, benches of rough boards. It will make a handsome structure when finished, and the high- ceilinged interior with semi-circular apse for the sanctuary, and outside a tolerable belfry, combine to promise a good-looking church. Sioux Falls is a much more pretentious and more beautifully sited town or young city than its northern neigh- bor. It is a young queen of the hills, as you would call its more than usually high-rolling streets and environs. Its streets are well laid out, and green with lines of maples, cottonwoods and harder trees. Buildings and stores are tasty and some even elegant. Church spires crown well-planned and executed houses of worship, especially of the Protestant denominations. The sweet Sioux rolls past and thro' in a somewhat rougher bed and between high banks, refreshing, re-greening and enlivening earth and gladding man and beast. A fair was going on, and we must not miss the opportunity to see the animals and products which the country could show. It was its first fiiir, and the ground was situated in a luxuriant corn field I08 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. with many of the stalks standing. The ring indeed was not much of a novelty and the animal exhibit was small. One notices the paucity of horses and draught animals out West, and wonders why some less western and southcrji States, which raise horses and mules in such abundance, do not furnish men with brains and capital to make a great trade in this line, and thus be a source of mutual benefit to both sides of the valley of the Mississippi. Vegetables and ground products, however, were plentiful, and showed prolific soil and some care of culture. On down the line of railroad we passed into more and more beautiful regions, some of whose inhab- itants have had the sensible poetry to name after the primeval garden they must resemble. We are not astonished to hail a representative Paradise and an Eden. Little Eden ! how beautiful in name and truth. It is however of^' the line of Dakota and just over the borders of Iowa. Ha! but we had our own private chuckle at the grave conductor, who got us ofl^ our track in his comfortable enough freight caboose and took us a pleasant jaunt over the borders and back for — ^just nothing. "Lookee, here, I want fare for this trip!" "Very likely," we returned; "but you won't get it. We bargained to go on in Dakota and you have lugged us off into Iowa, and you may quietly get us back on our route." "Yes, but you've got to pay for it." "Not a red, my uniformless official. " And he, after seeing he was caught, took the matter with good enough grace and rolled us on to SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. IO9 the land of promise, Eden. We had some adven- ture there; a big hunt before dark that day and some chickens of our own kiUing for supper, late enough to make us render justice to our appetite and the cook's art. We met some strolling blind fiddlers in the little beautiful burg, and helped them by gratifying our- selves with really charming music. They were sharp enough to get their audience in for a gratis concert and not let them out without a handsome contribution. Next morning, another hunt and long, long ride in the fresh of the day, the grasses all dank and glistening with dew; the slight misty haziness but glorifying the atmosphere; chickens "flushing" up out of the meadow lands and snipe from the low lands. These are but sample towns and townlets along both sides of the Sioux River as it wends its gener- ally straight course directly south towards the great Jim River and the mightier Missouri. As intima- ted, all this region is well timbered — along the banks of streams peculiarly. As however you approach the junction of the three great rivers between Sioux City, Iowa, and Yankton (the now disputed capital of Dakota), the lands become lower, show signs of periodical deluges and are more specially adapted for grand meadows of prairie grass, where millions of tons of hay stand stacked, like dotting wigwams, as far as the eye can reach in every direction. Yankton, a usual passing point for emigrants and supplies for all the interior from the South, is too well known IIO SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRlES. for special description or more than transitory refer- ence. Its site is more diversified with rise and fall in levels than the surrounding country. It has a small stream or two running thro' its suburbs and unusually copious fountains of water, some miner- ally impregnated. The late seat of the vicariate of Dakota, removed in January, 18S4, to the more central Jamestown, ruled by the famous and laborious Benedictine, Rt. Rev. Dr. Martin Marty, Yankton is better supphed with churches and schools than any point west to the Rockies, tho' this is not saying much, as there are not four other large towns. It is well known that the former abbot of St. Meinrad's in Indiana has literally made all the churches and establish- ments of the immense territory, which now circum- scribes the Vicariate. The establishment of Bishop Brondel in wide Montana, has only divided the im- mense former Vicariate of Nebraska. Going and coming for years among whites and Indians, the monastic Bishop Marty has been wearing his life away for the life and weal of his fellowman; and he is still in vigor to prosecute his work. The academy established formerly at Yankton had to be discon- tinued, and only day schools furnish education for the growing Catholic community of whites — the Indians having a few government-supported and industrial schools. Northern Iowa. On our return to Sioux City, we were astounded to find such a wide-awake and stirring place, away from what many would call the currents of cam- Six weeks in our Rockies. hi merce. Streets crowded, hotels full, brisk business and cosmopolitan population, are outlines that faintly describe this, but a few years ago, border town. Then we hurried on thro' the great hay-making portions of Iowa. The more northern counties are beautiful gardens and farms, raising corn and grain in rivalry of the compeer State just over the Mississippi. Such miles and scores of miles of haying fields: such illimitable reaches of maize, surrounding rich farmers' residences and pouring gold into the lap of of the State! This northwestern half of Iowa, with all its wealth of rich prairie, is not so thickly settled, nor perhaps so adapted to general farming and pro- digious corn raising as the corresponding eastern half. Along the Mississippi we have noted the models of thrifty towns and growing cities engaged in milling, and specially in the great lumber trade, situated as they are on the main artery of some of the most extensive pineries of the continent. But back of these roll contmuous hundreds, thousands, of square miles of the choice prairies, adapted to anything in the growing line according to their latitude. It is plain, however, that corn is the staple, and far outstrips in quantity, luxuriance and profit, any other grain. Man never put his eyes on finer fields than those lining the almost entire route from Albert Lea in Minnesota, in a southeasterly course, to the cross- ing of the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. No one need be told this whole region is long ago "taken up," and is not being relinquished for what is esteemed better, like corresponding Northern and Middle Illinois. Prairies AND Plainson to the Rockies, Sioux City, Iowa, Monday, July 30, 1883. FEW of our religious, and our Cuban, Marie, •formed my company on setting out at 11.30 ^P. M. from Heron Lake, Minn., to Lincoln, Nebraska. We were treated to the best, tho' weak, manifestation we had yet enjoyed of the Northern Lights, on the route from Avoca to the junction at Heron Lake. It consisted of, at first, a glow of whitish light arching low on the horizon, and now and then expanding by division into long rays like departing twilight, all pointing up very similar to one's fingers outstretched apart. The diminishing points reached nearly half way to the zenith. But all was so p^le, we agreed in call- ing it the "ghost of the Aurora." The lands in the valley of the Missouri on the Iowa side from below Sioux City to Omaha are nearly flat, as if used to being overflowed. Swampy places occur now and then. About half the corn is large and tasseled; the other half low, and a num- ber of fields are neglected and turned out to weeds and grass. Barley and rye are being harvested. The reserve banks of the river — provided by nature against the great overflows — stand far out from the actual w^ater course, leaving long and wide meadow lands of great value for grazing and hay. Council Bluffs and Omaha. Tuesday. — Very slow officials and little accom- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. II3 modations for strangers seem the order of the day at Council Bluffs — quite a miserable-looking, muddy place. We got trapped for an hour's delay, but the railroad-run hotel, which makes it a business to force custom by retarding passengers, got none of our cash — plenty of round abuse, in lieu. It seems the railroad companies run the dummy connection between the two towns, and either care nothing for, or purposely work against, travelers catching trains on the opposite side of the river. It was, at least, our experience both times we passed by the twin cities here. The banks of the Missouri, the water, and all its surroundings, impressed us as ugly and unhealthy-looking. Large round iron pillars sup- port the singular bridge, trestled off to a considera- ble distance on either of the low sand banks. There is no provision for communication other than b}' rail. Back of Omaha, and in the corporation, is quite rolling prairie, very w^orrisome to teamsters inside the city limits, but that more picturesque. The Catholic institutions are perched around on commanding eminences — a similar spot being re- served for the new cathedral when it shall be built. Tho' this be all prairie land for hundreds of miles, we found a rock quarry on the route to Lincoln. There are doubtless others. The environs of Omaha and all along the sloping hills of the wide, shallow Platte River in the direction of Lincoln are well wooded. Corn is tasseled, but a good portion we see is low and uncultivated — a few fields of bar- ley being cut. There is a curious salt river in the neighborhood of L'ncoln, along which the vegetation is stunted 114 ^^^ SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. or killed out. But freaks of nature increase upon you as you advance into our wondrous Rockies — the home of the grand and the awful, as of the weird and novel. Items General on Prairie Lands. Mr. E. V. Smalley, author of "Travels" and of the "History of the North Pacific Railroad," in the "Century" of February, 1883, writes that to the west of the Missouri and in Yellowstone Park the soil "abounds in lignite deposits; tho' the whole region between the Minnesota prairies (and on the same line south) and the Rocky Mountains is (now) bare of timber. The strips . . . along water courses in Dakota . . . consist mainly of cottonwood, soft maple and alder — of no value as building material. West of the Missouri there is . . . nothing w^orth sawing ... as far as the advanced spurs of the Rockies, and ... on to the Yellow Mountains. In the gorges there is sufficient bull pine and spruce for ties and bridge timbers. ... It is a mistake (to think) . . . that the rigorous Minnesota winter climate con- tinues ... all the way to the Rocky Mountains. Dakota winters are even more severe . . . because there are no forests to break the force of the bliz- zards. West of the Missouri the mean winter tem- perature steadily increases . . . and in December, January and February, in the valley of the Yellow- stone, it is not ruder than in Maryland or Southern Ohio." The Union and Northern Pacific Routes. "The snow fall is much less than in the belt of country along the Union Pacific R. R. . . . There is SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. II5 no serious obstacle to regular winter traffic between Lake Superior and Puget Sound!" One would be inclined to criticise these two last assertions, as the partial statement of a paid agent of the Northern Pacific R. R. The late collapse of the work on the Canadian Pacific, on account of finding no passable mountain gap in the route, may be taken as a fair warning by the North Pacific, which is not so far south of its parallel neighbor. Rev. S. Byrne, writes : "The Northern Pacific crosses the Territory from East to West. It follows the Yellowstone River for about three hundred miles, then turns North, and after having crossed a range of mountains, soon enters into the valley of the Missouri. It then makes its way to Helena, and a few miles beyond that city begins to cross the Rocky Mountains. It is impossible fully to describe their wonderful work in a brief space, and the reader of these lines is referred to other recent works on the subject. There are eight hundred and forty-eight miles of their road in Montana, and branch lines are already commenced. The branch leading to the Yellowstone Park will be finished in a year or less. Besides the Northern Pacific, a branch of the Union Pacific Railroad has been in course of operation two years, from Ogden, in Utah Territory, into Montana. Its great utility is widely felt; and it will be a salu- tary stay upon the first-named road in the matter of regulating freight and passenger rates." "That Montana," continues Smalley, "formed the great buflalo range and is fast becoming a vast cattle range, verifies the assertions regarding light snowfalls . . . ," which often melt, I have learned Il6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. from another source, on short notice. North of Benton, in a large valley, the snow is melted by a periodical warm wind, and in another locality in Wyoming the railroad was blocked by herds of ante- lopes frequenting such a spot This may be the case elsewhere. Again says Smalley: "The forty - fifth parallel is the proposed line of division of North and South Dakota. . . . Montana is larger than Dakota but contains less farming land ; and, save in a few valleys, will not support a dense population. East Montana is mainly grazing; the west, a mass of mountain ridges, between which are narrow fertile valleys, where agriculture may be made profitable, but cannot be carried on except by irrigation. . . ." Again I quote Fr. Byrne: "Another and perhaps a clearer description is as follows : This territory, in its physical conformation, is naturally divided into four sections. First, the northwestern section lying between the Rocky and Bitter Root Mountains, which is very rugged and broken, and intersected by many mountain spurs. Secondly, the northern dis- trict, extending three hundred and fifty miles along the Missouri and Milk Rivers, is a vast, open plain, almost destitute of trees, and descending towards the East at the rate of five feet to the mile. Thirdly, the southeastern section, bordering on Dakota on the east and Wyoming on the south, is more rolling and better wooded. Fourthly, the southwestern section, containing fifteen thousand square miles, is very similar to its neighboring district of the North- west where we began, that is to say, very mountain- ous and covered with dense forests. Several moun- tain peaks attain a height of over ten thousand feet." SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 11/ That irrigation is going to be undertaken and pur- sued to some practical advantage by the General Government on a vast scale, all along the rainless regions leading up to the mountains, is confirmed by the fact that a number of artesian wells are already bored. Mr. John Fitzgerald, of Lincoln, Nebraska, a public-spirited gentleman in every sphere of busi- ness and enterprise, especially in carrying out railroad plans in the West, asserted to me that it was under- stood the Federal authorities would further the interests of the West by subsidies reaching still more generally among already established communi- ties, in the matter of water supply. Lincoln, Nebraska. To descend now from these generalities to partic- ulars of our special journey thro' Eastern Nebraska, the name of the princely railroad contractor and banker, Mr. Jno. Fitzgerald, would suggest some attempted description of Lincoln and the flower of the settled communities in the charming southeast- ern portion of the State. The subject is very tempt- ing to the delighted visitor; for than the city of Lincoln one can meet no finer city or more faultless surroundings in a long trip West. New as all things are new in this region, Lincoln is so situated on a slightly rolling and wooded prairie, that its streets are just enough varied by gentle rises and falls to cause no hardship to driving, and to be brought, withal, from the monotony of a dead level. Its buildings and business houses are not the blank, bare walls you see in similar centers of brisk trade; and Il8 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. the suburbs contain some of the kinghest residences, with grand yards and drives, boi^dered and diversi- fied with shrubbery, plats of grass and beds of flowers. The genial climate is favorable to all growths from the daisy to the sturdy oak. Nearly on the utmost boundaries of the corporation is situ- ated the New Convent of the Nuns of the Holy Child Jesus, under the prudent management of the first Superioress, Mother Agatha. The commodious and well-arranged three or four story building had been put up at great expense by a corporation to serve as a succursal establishment to a public institution of study; and required but the fewest changes to make it subserv- ient to its present and future purpose as a first-class day, and finally as a boarding, school. Every one knows about the Catholic West, who it was that, under the Rt. Rev. Dr. O'Connor, was the chief agent in securing this fine house aiid property for the deserving community, now making such suc- cessful headway in establishing its peculiarly well- ordered schools. It is no secret either that the same great' hearted gentleman has used his deserved wealth in settling the community and constituting himself the first prop of this establishment. Need- less to say, the good Nuns have so many scholars they can receive no more. A big blackberry crop is coming on, for which low lands are peculiarly adapted: and as for fruit, Nebraska boasts of having produced the premium SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. II9 apples at the Exposition of 1876, I should think this somewhat confined to the eastern third or at most half of the State — some five hundred miles long. Thursday^ Aug. 3^. — On the road from Hastings to Wyoming Territory. Here is Dorchester — five hundred inhabitants, five bins for corn, an elevator and two brick stores, which I could see from the train. Crops of oats in the vicinity are good, some fine — six or eight armsful of sheaves every eight or ten yards. Barley is splendidly luxuriant ; wheat only fair and but small lots. Corn stands tolerable, medium height — some pretty low. Friendville — eight or nine hundred inhabitants, with dozens of railroad corn bins and an elevator for grain. The prairie here is level, about like on the line from Watseca to Chatsworth, Illinois, tho' not so flat or inclining to a swampy character. The grass we see cut with oats is neither good in quality nor stands well. Exeter — a scattered village. There are no cuts along the railroad, tho' some snow fences. Sutton, coming next, is on rolling prairie and has considerable cuts. Harvard — fairly undulating town of some size. About are fields of drilled corn, and we come across a sod house or two. This official report of the Rev. J. M. Smythe, pastor of the Catholic Colony, Greeley County, Neb., is incorporated in Mr. Wm. J. Onahan's third annual report, 1882: "The original tract of the Association I20 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. was twenty-seven thousand acres, was purchased hi 1S77 from the Burhngton and Missouri Raih'oad Company in Nebraska, and is north of the Platte River, about one hundred and twenty-five miles directly west of Omaha. The colony is divided into two districts, named respectively after Bishops Spalding and O'Connor. The population now em- braces one hundred and seventy-five families, nearly all Irish, although France, England, Belgium, and even New Zealand, are represented. The first colo- nists had hardly money enough to buy oxen, but now they are well-to-do. The character of the country is rolling prairie, with uplands, valleys, and table lands; and the soil, which is a rich, dark loam, has an average depth of from three to tw^elve feet, though vegetables have been raised in soil taken out of wells at a depth of eighty feet. The soil w^ill never need manure, as by sub-soiling it will renew itself The colony is twenty miles from a railway, although the Union Pacific has a line to the Black Hills surveyed through it, wdiich will likely be built this summer, giving an eastern and western outlet. Although without a railroad, the people get higher prices for their corn than are paid in the railroad towns, as it is said to supply the stock ranches to the west. The stock men, instead of driving their cattle to middle or eastern Nebraska, can now fatten them on the ranch, and ship them direct. Greeley county is known as the banner potato county of Nebraska. One colonist realized $1,000 oft' of three acres last season, and three others planted one acre each, and each yielded three hundred and ninety-five bushels. The Association has only two thousand SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 121 acres unsold, which it offers to colonists on eight years' time at 6 per cent. Parties who have been renting farms at $5 per acre, have paid $2.50 for farms in the colony and raised better crops. The colony is situated between two rivers, so that if there is any rainfall in the vicinity it is benefited by it. It has a natural drainage, and there being no stagnant water, there is no malaria. There are no long winters, and the summers are not hot, the nights in the latter season being cool and delightful. There has never been a case of sunstroke in that country. The climate is phenomenally healthful, and the people hardly know what sickness is." The region of this Catholic colony is described as fertile as the best, and is considered by the coloniza- tion officials as the flower lands of all they control from Minnesota to Texas. Parties within easy reach of them, and disinterested as far as any connection with the sale or occupation of them is concerned, give me very favorable reports of the contentedness of the colonists; adding that they have never had a failure in their past seasons, and their crops this year are rather above the average. The land is cheap and given on easy terms. In one-half mile from Grand Island, the station whence the visitor takes the railroad North for twenty-five miles to reach the stage connecting with the colonies — poor farming land sells for $1.25 per acre; and in four or five miles from the city, $8 to $20 per acre. The Catholic congregation here and in the neighbood numbers some eighty-five families, while the colony now counts two hundred. Taking Nebraska as a whole Fr. Byrne, O. P., gives the fol- 132 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. lowing Items of interest: ''During a period of five years the average yield of crops per acre was as fol- lows: Wheat, eighteen bushels; corn, thirty-five; rye, twenty-five; oats, thirty seven; potatoes, eighty. Nebraska wheat usually brings the highest price in the St. Louis market. Cottonwood, oak, soft maple, elm and black walnut are indigenous to the soil and are found chiefly along the water courses. It is in the southwestern counties we find the best supply." Bayard Taylor, the great American tourist and scholar, describing this country, writes as follows: "This is one of the most beautiful countries I ever looked upon. There is in it none of that weary monotony that you find in the prairies of Illinois or in the swamps of Ohio or Indiana. The wide, bil- lowy green, dotted all over with golden islands of harvest — the hollows of dark, glittering maize — the park-like clumps of timber along the course of streams, these were materials which went to the making up of every landscape; and the eye never wearies of their sweet, harmonious, pastoral beauty." Bayard, the tourist, recalls the funnily illustrated book of A. C. Wheeler— "Nym Crinkle" of the "New York World" — on a tour on the "Iron Trail," thro' the next lower line of railroad by way of Kan- sas to the Rockies. He gives an illustration of the flat, limitless, buffalo-roamed plains, only you must substitute commoner cattle for the wild bison, now, like his human counterpart, the red man, moving in- definitely west and nearly extinct. An old time railroad station indicator, a great clothing store sign with an awful hand and "one mile to t're (sic!) Rail- road Station Food and Water," painted with a house SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I33 brush all over it; next, "Lots for Sale," stuck on a slanted stake and surrounded by skulls and ribs, big- eyed owls, and present and perspective prairie dogs — underscored "First Farm-site Speculators!;" a house-roof covered with hides in lieu of boards or shingles — the body buried; "ship of the plains at sea," viz: long lines of ancient house-like wagons pulled by a dozen oxen or mules; "ship of the plains in dock" — our prairie schooners backed up to the curbs of big-as-all-outdoors warehouses and being packed by "Greasers" and land-lubbers of the cow- boy persuasion, such as you see yet frequently in Cheyenne, Denver and in their neighbors of the foothills; a single braced-bed wagon, ornamented by a clothes-line string of jerked beef or rather bison, and enlivened by the proximity of two of the proprietors cooking their meal over a camp-lire — mules grazing in reach : and we have something of Nym's sketches on the plains of Kansas, which will fit any of the plains. Six Weeks in our Rockies: A DIARY. Diary of Six Weeks in our Rockies. Grand Island, Neb., Friday, Aug. 4, 18S3. iN spite of pre-arrangements by telegraph for ja sleeper at Grand Island, I found nobody up mi the sleeping car, and had to help myself to some slipless pillows and stretch out on the seats. Maxwell, the first place we strike in the morning, is a primitive settlement w^ith half a dozen dingy frames. But soon after we pass it we encounter some nine hundred or one thousand sheep pasturing along the River Platte — which we are following three hundred and fifty mijes. The soil is very sandy and level. No farms or houses are to be seen, but a few "bunches" of cattle and more sheep in the space between us and the inter- minable low ranges of mound-like hills on either hand. We encounter, too, some handsome trees and shrubs. Again, hardly any dwellings except a spare sod hut, intended for rangers and cowboys. It has been raining ever since we left Grand Island at 2.30 A. M. The inhabitants say Providence is sending rain as the boundaries of civilization advance; and aver they have hopes they shall lose no great time irrigating, after a number of years, as the rainfall will then sufiice. Breakfast we get late at North Platte, two hun- dred and ninety-one miles from Omaha, and two thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine feet already 138 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. above sea level, with two thousand inhabitants; and some ten thousand cattle and sheep in sight. lo A. M., we arrive at the village of Alkali, so called, an old ranger told me, on account of the much impreg- nated nature of the soil, whose surface water, thirty years ago, killed numerous animals and a few men who drank it. Artesian wells are already in requi- sition. Ogallala signs : "General Store" — "Clothing at Cost" — "Saloon"— "O. K. Saloon" — "Post Office and Bakery" — "Rest for the Cow-Boys." The Platte here is a shallow pond of scattered sand islands. On the flats feed three hundred or four hundred horses and ponies; twelve hundred or fif- teen hundred cattle on the opposite side. Again, thousands; then forty or fifty. Cattle are shipped from along here for $5 per head to Chicago (twenty to a car) and average $40. Sydney : four thousand and six feet high — good dinner of fish and vegetables. This country is some- what bluffy, and scattered table rocks abound. Hills are becoming more decided; on them a few spruces are appearing. Some houses of railroad ties dot the bare plains, built much like our old Ken- tucky stockades, only with sod roofs. Cattle pens, or corrals, are made of the same, and old ties are used also for firewood. Those thrown along the track seem to have rotted easily — from the alkali, I suppose, as it would hardly be natural for native pine, spruce or hemlock to decay so rapidly of itself. Fifty-two miles from Cheyenne. Pine Bluft's, from natural features so called, are a semi-circular range of rocky, wooded hills, rounding SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I29 off beautifully to the left. The trees are, or look to be, stunted. To the right, the plain sweeps past a jut of headland. A storm mutters over it sullenly. Grass has been growing shorter, soil sandier. We pass a hut of logs with shingle front and a log and dirt stable. Signs: "I's Place" — "Saloon" — "Halo ther" — "Dry Goods and Groceries." Here are stable and plank stockades of slabs — also used extensively for out-houses in the mountains. Here we meet bluffs of crumbling rocks, pools of rain-water at their feet. The six hundred-mile plain stretches on ever the same. Fifteen miles from Cheyenne. Tho' the grass is very thin and suitable for sheep-grazing, we see at- tempts to cut and cock it for hay. The hill ranges for scores of miles have been soft and undulating, with exceptions above. A few rocks and gravel are the sole next feature. Cheyenne, Capital of Wyoming, sprang up the "Magic City of the Plains" in '67 with the advent of the Union Pacific Railroad. Catholics set up in '68, with a $9,000 church, of which Rev. T. J. Nugent is the present pastor. The city is just midway between Ogden and Omaha, five hundred and fifteen miles from each. Water is obtained from lake "Mahpalutah," three-quarters by three- eighths of a mile in extent. But ten or twelve inches of rain fall here during the year, I was in- formed by the Government meteorologist, a cour- teous Catholic gentleman. But few trees diversify the streets or yards and they decay soon. Grass and greenery are precious and cherished as jewels. The I'^O SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIKIES. plains in the neighborhood are illimitable, except to- wards the Rockies, and are thus very favorable for building. They produce little more than sparse blades of grass and a fevs^ weeds, and are very grav- elly. Scattered wild blossoms sweeten the wild. The spurs of the southern Black Hills rear in the Northwest; and Long's Peak, one of the highest in the main range, looms up grandly at a distance of seventy -five miles. The range shows clefts in the sunshine thirty miles away, and appears but twenty- eight or thirty yards against the sky. This town of five thousand inhabitants is already six thousand and forty-two feet above sea level; the air is cool and bracing in the dog days — even cold, now in August. The country is blessed with sunshine nearly the year round, even in dead of winter. As little rain, so little snow, falls here; but the w^inds are described as awful, when they sweep unobstructed down the even plain, hedged by the mountains on but one side. August \th, II A. M. — I start to Denver. At Carr the hills are rolling; ruins, as of ground founda- tions, dot the hollows, and the prospect of the roll and tumble of the hills to the Rockies reminds me of the storm-heaving sea. The midchain on the back-ground walls up the horizon by its huge bulk peaked with summits of snow; and like the magnifi- cent dome of Nature's temple. Long's Peak towers majestic over all. Eaton, Greeley, Evans — we leap suddenly from a sandy, volcanicly sterile region into cultivated farming oases, colored with great fields of fair wheat, half-sized potatoes and corn. Harvest of Six weeks in our rockies. 131 barley is going on. Evans is a bloom in the desert; fine trees towering up over the pretty prairie blos- soms of yellow and purple, red and white ; corn fields, drilled and sown broadcast, wave green; and all this is created by artificial irrigation from the river (the South Platte), which flows crooked and well-wooded along the base of the foot hills on to Denver. If, on gazing at the bald-headed, snow- peaked Rockies, one exclaims in praise to the Cre- ator: "Thou, indeed, art Almighty God;" as he turns to the feats of little man in these newly-populated regions — vegetation produced from gravel and sand dunes and ant hills — cactus, like great green prickly human tongues, and sage not half concealing the arid ground — he is forced to add : " Oh, powerful man! thine image and likeness is indeed of the Cre- ator, and His work shines brightest in thee, head of Nature." Here's another plain mountain townlet. Canvas-roof house, then a brick; a saloon with great canvas sign, "Railroad Crossing;" a tent; "Saloon and lunch room;" good brick and sizable frame — and you have the photograph, instantaneous and perfect. To Central City. A storm of mist and rain just past as we push into the mouth of the mountains, now spanned by a glorious rainbow. The spurs rise, mottled, pillar- headed, on either hand. All the torrent-watered valley smiles with greenery of wild shrubs of Cot- tonwood, alder and willow. Little two-foot corn, whitish hay and greenish oats, some cut, dotted alonof. 132 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Golden, a city shining with green vegetation, has fine buildings, in a rocking vale up and dow^n the sides of the hemlock-flanked spurs. This is a tough climb for the grimy and griming little narrow- gauge up Clear Creek Canon, forty miles to Central in four hours — some hundred feet rise to a mile in distance. Qiieer series of towns or scattered houses, rather; mines; abandoned prospect holes and "dumps" fly slowly past, up and down the enormous gulches. All nationalities are working side by side, and all mixed— Chinese, Irish, Cornish, Welsh and Scotch; English and Yankees bossing the capital, Irishmen principally the labor. Items Religious and Profane on the Rockies. In '59, the American Desert stretched from almost the Missouri River to the Rockies. Flour was sold at the very nominal value of $50 a sack. It may interest to jot some items of the older history of these parts. In the clifl' houses of Rio Mancos there lived the supposed descendants of the Aztecs. Later the Mexicans ascended as far as Pueblo. Indians in- habited Colorado. As late as 1806 Colorado was a part of the French Louisiana Purchase. Jim Pursley, of Bardstown, Ky., was the first explorer before Pike, Long, James; or before even Fremont came in '43. Of the early history of Pueblo, Wilbur Stone says: "Game was plenty in early days and settlers frequently indulged in it during winter, both for food and pastime. It SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I33 consisted chiefly of deer, antelopes, jack rabbits, monte and seven-up!" From '60 to '79, fifteen daily and fifty weekly papers have sprung up. The three thousand Ute Indians in Western Colorado have twelve million acres reserved for their use. The average of the timber line is eleven thousand eight hundred feet; average height of mountains being eleven thousand feet. An average of seventy- two cloudy days in the year is calculated from the signal service since '63. Average snow, forty days. From a pamphlet of '74, we learn of two hundred and fifty authenticated cures of asthma in this mountain country. Rheumatism and purely nervous diseases become worse, and mountain pneumonia prevails. The geologists have it that in the tertiary period at Denver and Golden, there was a large swamp for hundreds of miles north into British Columbia and south into New Mexico, wherein flourished a luxu- rious vegetation, whose decomposition has resulted in the largest strata of tertiary coal in the valley of the Missouri. In the Spanish part of the State there were churches at La Trinidad, La Costilla and Los Con- eyos, with some dependent chapels. As TO Idaho. the Jesuits from St. Louis received three delega- tions of Indians from '30 to '39, all begging for a priest. The Jesuits baptized six hundred of the Iroquois and Flatheads in six months. The first mission was founded in '41, and the Vicariate Apos- tolic included Idaho and Montana in '68. Popula- tion of CathoUcs in '78, 5,850 — 3,000 whites. 134 ^^^ SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Catholic Pueblos and Missions. Not only can we claim that the Catholic Norse- men from Iceland founded churches in Greenland and Martha's Vineyard, just five hundred years before Plymouth Rock, and remained until an ice revolution from 60 degrees north destroyed the whole face of the country, but Dr. G. Shea proves that long prior to the Puritans there were three missions of religious: i. Spanish Dominicans, Fran- ciscans and Jesuits in the South, from Florida to California. 3. French Recollects and Jesuits from the St. Lawrence to the Pacific, and from the Gulf to Hudson's Bay. 3. English Jesuits in Maryland, of whom all but the last preceded the advent of any sect or minister. The earliest friar, Mark of Nice, came in 1539, but had to relinquish the field of California and New Mexico in 1542. The expedition of Coronado reached the head-waters of the Arkansas, but turned back to the Rio Grande in the diocese of Santa Fe — Father Padilla and Brother John of the Cross only remaining and obtaining martyrdom at Qiiivira, just fifty years after Columbus and forty years after the Franciscans had poured out their blood in New Mexico. Others succeeded them and "all the tribes on the Rio Grande," whose towns are still extant, "were converted." In the next century, the Apaches destroyed many villages. New Mexico was con- quered by the United States in '45 and annexed. In 1768 Upper California was bereft of its Jesuit missionaries, who were immediately succeeded by the Franciscans and a few seculars. There were SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I35 twenty-two missions there up to 1822. San Diego, Monterey and San Francisco had seventy-five thou- sand converts in 1825. Mexico became free, and the Spanish missionaries being driven out, rehgion languished here and in Texas, which was French in the seventeenth cen- tury. There were martyrs in San Antonio and San Francisco. Rehgion has revived since the estabhsh- ment of the Vicariate ApostoHc in 1842. The Cathohc population of New Mexico is the largest, in proportion, of any State or Territory of the Union. The Catholic population west of the Mississippi River in 1882 was 1,461,500; the whole population in 1880, 11,282,000; the Catholic popula- tion being to the whole as one to seven, about. To Georgetown. August ()th. — Wheat is being harvested, preced- ing a week or so, the cutting of hay, oats and barley; which latter, in the mountain valleys, is generally cut green, in the "milk," to serve as food for animals. Corn is thin and low, hke the wheat, which is prin- cipally of spring variety, tho' I know of a field of oats seeding itself from the past season. Wheat has to suffer if not rained on before it comes up, as irrigation only serves for later stages of growth. Everything is green — vegetables fresh, young lettuce, peas, radishes, etc. The cars make but ten miles an hour up the Ca- non, and ease down about at the same speed. As the proverb says, '^Every blanket, its flea;" so every up-train its motes for the eye, by reason of its hard puffing. 136 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Here we come to "pie-station," so called from the substantiality of refreshments in the shape of milk, coffee, sandwiches and pies, to satisfy the increased appetites sharpened by the rarifying air. Cool, cooler as we branch off to the Georgetown Canon, and along the plunging, dashing Clear Creek, which comes nearer being a reality, by the cold, glassy waters foaming into pearlier beads and runs. Up this branch there is little gulch mining and no defilement of the torrents — the opening being much broader and finer than up to Central, as the gorge widens on either hand into grander slopes of now jagged and bony, now smoother and grassy fianks. Nor do we meet such precipitous overhanging masses. "Hills peep over hills" — profiles past pro- files, where we see cows browsing the sweet grass on leveler ledges. Here is a level tract with angles of hills at 45 degrees; then great groves of pine trees, regular and beautiful — their paler spring or summer foliage comparing with their older needles, as pea with sea-green. These hills — hills? They are as high as the aver- age Alps — rise upwards of 2,500 and 3,000 feet above the torrent. This Georgetown and Central City measure respectively 8,400 and 8,510 feet, and you can ascend to over 14,000 feet above sea level in twelve miles of here, at Grey's or James' Peaks. So that instead of comparing these with the Alps, the Europeans must compare theirs with ours and say the "European Rockies" instead of our saying the "American Alps." The Alps ? The Alps aver- age but 10,000 feet. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 1^7 Coleridge's poem on Mt. Blanc and the Vale of Chamouni has double application in Colorado: '•Thou . . . most awful form . . . Risest from forth thj silent sea of pines How silently. . . . Sole sovran of the vale, Who sank thj sunless pillars in the earth? Who filled thj countenance with rosy light.'' Who made thee parent of perpetual streams.^ And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called ye forth from night and utter death, Down these precipitous, black, jagged rocks. Forever shattered and the same forever! Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!" And Chas. Mackay poetizes on such " Mountain Tops:" "The earth beneath them seemed as it had boiled, And tossed and heaved in some great agony; Like suddenly at fiat of the Lord The foaming waves had hardened into hills And mountains, multitudinous and high. Of jagged outline, piled and overpiled One o'er the other. Calmly the grey heads Of these earth-fathers pointed up to heaven; Titanic sentinels, who all the night Look at their kindred sentinels, the stars. To hear the march and tramp of distant w orlds. Ye hills, I love ye! Oh! ye mountain tops, Lifting serenely your transcendent brows To catch the earliest glimpses of the dawn! It is a pain to know ye and to feel That nothing can express the deep delight With which your beauty and magnificence Fill to o'erflowing the ecstatic mind!" Vegetation, in a chosen spot, is glorious for this altitude — gardens showing, farms broadening, among the gulches. We can not see the creek for the gross undergrowth, interlocked pines and spruces. Here 138 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. are rich patches of grass and some healthy-looking potatoes. It is claimed the mountaineers can raise as fine j^otatoes as are wanted. The strata of rock travel up to Idaho Springs from below and down from above, this point being their meeting place. And how beautifully shine with mica and metallic lustre some of these superb moun- tain flanks! Aladdin's cave turned inside out! Friday — We arrive at Georgetown, of some 4,000 inhabitants, in an arm of the mountains — a flat sand- level, watered by the great roaring Clear Creek, with its tributaries from the Silver Plume gulches. The city is headed oft' by a mountain front, and walled on either part by precijDitous half rock, half earth, altitudes of 2,200 feet to 3,000 feet above the town. The ascent up one side, to what is called Highland Park, is so great a climb, that it takes two hours and one-half of moderate travel on foot to make it; and w^e, who have been there, can aver that a nian only finds out, when too late, what a fool he was to go up at all, as the ascent is of the hardest and least in- teresting, and you have but a poor prospect when you have reached the top. Some snow ranges; the little conic, white-streaked "Professor" looming up in a point: Grey's peak, looking lower, tho' higher: the plains oft' towards Denver appearing up over the tops of the peaks; the silvery line of the motionless looking torrents down the gulches, and you have it all in a sentence. Then comes a plunge down of an hour and one-half, breaking up the muscles spared in the ascent! And an act of contrition with a firm purpose of never doing so any more — and you have only to groan and ache the rest of the day over your folly. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I39 August loth. — We visit to-day with Fr. N. Matz, the pastor of the mountain city, the famous Green Lake, which report wants to place at 10,000 feet and which it scarcely reaches; as Highland makes only 10,400 by the instrument, and the lake is near seven hundred feet below this. The extent of the really bottle-green and glass-clear lakelet, embedded be- tween a rough hewn tumble of rocks dressed in shaggy pines, and a shady, graveled shore, is three- quarters of a mile long, by about three-eighths of a mile wide. The bottom, visible for twenty-five or thirty feet, is a rough, rocky funnel, some seventy- five feet at the deepest, while the walls ascend 1,500 to 2,300 or 2,300 feet above. You mount to the Lake by a zigzag route up the Clear Creek bed until you reach a fine forest of almost untouched growth. We had a row on the placid green bosom, reflecting the mountains and pines, and visited the "Battle of the Gods," an awful tumble of granite bowlders and stones, heaped up like a pyramid in ruins and copped by a wigwam-like, open cave, called "Cave of the Winds;" whence you descend by leaps to the lake edge. This is the poetic fruit of the visit: GREEN LAKE OF THE ROCKIES. Chaste emerald lake! Snow nursling, awake! Thou crystal, pure fountain, In lap of the mountain, Art child of the steep and the sky. Snow Naiads, Star Pleiads — 40 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. God's angels erst courted thine eye. Ere earth -wrack had torn thee And time-fret had worn thee, Thou mirror of light in the hills! In spring rime Of old time, Thou fruitful wert mother of rills. Yet, creamy white daughters Of molten-glass waters Make glad by their laughing. As mountain wine quaffing, Bead-foaming they bound to the river. How calm thine increase. In rock eyrie of peace. Green well-spring of torrents forever! Thy tossed rocks And torn walls. Thy pine locks And foam falls But make thy serenity grander. So pray we. Oh! may we Survive the first ruins of birth, Reflect heaven's light upon earth; And in the strong hour Of self-possessed power — In earth-seeming madness Give waters of gladness, To green o'er our sadness, As to eternity's ocean we wander. A school of fat trout are nurtured and fed by hand near the shore; they are above ordinary size and are fairly spoiling for a fry. Strangers are not allowed to fish. There are two other basins, or hatcheries SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 14I for the smaller and smallest fish, in the shape of wood-walled and rock-bound tanks or reservoirs. Little frail mica shales that you grind to powder in your fingers, with gneiss, quartz and mineral ore, ibrm this mighty spinal column of the Western World. But all the mass seems — is, disintegrating and falling to ruins. They have frequent scurries of rain and snow in this spot. In the first days of August, last year, came a fall of snow, and twelve inches the 15th of July before, while fifteen inches covered Georgetown, August 29th, 1882. Snow falls almost every month in the year in some part of the mountains; still sunshine prevails six-sevenths of the year. How bright and fresh the young city in the lap of the mountains! The light is the white light, bright light of the sunny East, whose Lebanons and Olympuses it reflects — whose ruggeder Sharons and Carmels. The rough-faced flanks glow with reflected sun-light ; and when we add the magic silver and gold heart of the mountains set in brilliant crystals and pyrites, one is fairly in dreamland. In sight of this we sing: A SONG OF THE MOUNTAINS.^ Ye rock-pine ranks And nascent rivers, On mountain flanks — O lesson -givers! I would ye fire Earth's ruined eclipse, And sky-inspire These earth-sealed lips! ♦Published in the "Ave Maria," September, 1S83. 142 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAlRlfiS. For sin -mad few Have marred what God hath done; And nothing new Is now beneath the sun. How looketh all unto a primal state, And Nature, like its unthroned monarch, Man, Stands ghastly, oft, a ruin of itself So stood the ruined Archangel at his fall. — Were these sheer peaks not lordlier erst? Nor shot Them down below jon earth-heaped vale? And what Hath scalped these summits of their verdant locks, And left them open to the tempest's rage — Their foreheads ploughed, like Satan's, lightning-scathed? Were they but unclean vessels then as now. To hold the broken corpses of the steeps — By Death-sin felled, and hurled by rodent Time! The plain — saith Nature's seer — quiescent earth, — While mountain labors and dismembers self. As quakes its aspen, and its stately pine Hangs rigid arms and wrings pale hands in woe; Anon, the tear-stains soil the sensive rocks, Whose tear-drops steal adown their rugged cheeks. To swell the floods of wounded Nature. Thus, Its lord, created on a pinnacle. So little less than angels that they sought His converse, and sweet symphonied about The jasper walls of Eden. Man looked, — Creation crouched submissive at his feet To learn its name. He, ruined hierarch. Was stricken from his height, for pride and lust, — Was shiftless goaded down the steep, to fight His Mother Earth for suck, and ward his life From rebel brutes, revenging God 'gainst man. The mountain torrents nearest native snows. Unsullied, sparkling, leap and glad the heart — SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 143 Until they touch the haunts of men. Then, fouled By contact, haste the murky waters on, Awaking mountain-echoes with their roar Of pain at chastity defiled. Pure winds. The breath of mountain peak and vale — sisters, Unsmirched as they, of glass-pure waters, sigh Of unflecked stars and heaven, until they soar About the smoking mines and hives of men. Thus all, befouled by sinful creature, wreaks Revenge on him and his who ruined all. — No hope ? Forbid it God, and Christ who died! The millions of fingers Of armies of singers Point up from on high — From their ranks in the sky ! Their green arms not swinging, Nor silvered hands wringing, But strong arms outflinging. To lift to the height. Their red crests aglow 'Gainst driftings of snow. They hail after sunset — Yet gilding the runlet — The kindling of camp-fires, Ignited from cloudland; — 'Tis trysting of war Of the Pines and the Star! In sammets and sapphires, A king o'er his proud band. The Prince doth appear. With his glittering spear — Bright harbinger. Eve-star, Leads on to the sky war. To clamber the blue height. And conquer the Old Night — Unbending and proud, 144 ^^-^ SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Their banner the cloud, The phalanx of Pines Storm up the inclines! Such, Christian, the lists Of the armies of Christ: So, e'en thro' the mists Of the twilight of wrath, Must ye seek the path To the mountain of tryst. By gluttony, pride, By duties denied. Ye fell from the right! — March on up the height, Like your brothers, the Pines, Unbending to winds And hurtling storms. Not angelic forms, But mankind have trod These mountains of God. E'er Christ-led And Christ-fed: All tearless And fearless, Storm sky-height By Christ- light, And, wavering never. Wear laurels forever! These heights are growing on me. What I took to be 500 or 700 feet high has shot up to three or four times as much and not exceeded the reahty. The bold headlands about here are many above timber line, some probably 12,000 feet high, and up- wards of 3,500 or 4,000 above town. Green Lake is 1,500, and thence we can see mountain heads above 6iX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 145 US certainly 2,000 or more feet higher. It took Stanley and the astronomers of the total eclipse a couple of years ago, some three or four hours to reach such a spot from this Green Lake. There is a flag staft" on top of the highest, left there by the party of scientific climbers. To Silver Plume. August iith. — Up the gorge or open Canon, to the right of Georgetown. The new railroad, whose track is just being laid and bridges built, takes this wind, always rising about 200 feet per mile, in per- fect lines of curve, with five bridges, one seventy- five feet high: the line of road runs along the base of the great masses on the left and in front of George- town; crosses the creek-torrent; doubles back on itself over the high bridge, then ascends; crosses twice again, once more redoubles and finally takes a long sweep up. Silver Plume is 500 feet higher than Georgetown, situated in a little lap of the gorge, the sublime rocks, towering to thousands of feet on both sides of the silver-foam torrent, rushing past and around the houses, some of which are built in fancy styles. Oflfto the left rears the bald Elephant Back, 12,000 feet; to the right swings the mighty hill, and the great jutting rock-land rises beyond, a background imposing and beautified by a fringe of fine spruces, one of which, specially remarkable for its height and symmetry, forms the apex to a soli- tary peak of piled granite. Middle Park, Colorado. Sunday, Aug. 12th. — To Middle Park, on Frazier River, over Empire Pass, which our aeronoid regis- 'l/j.6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIE^. ters at 8,500, to Empire, 8,400 feet. As we rise on the flank of the rocks the valley widens and deepens to the vision; the little town in Clear Creek Canon some couple of miles below, with its superb grove of native pines, puts on a picturesque air, and the mountain walls rise and roll in their majesty, forming the ascent to the high distant sky. Glorious! Wind- ing down over the creek at the bottom of Empire- town, we circle to the left and toil along a fine gravel road up the Canon and past the beautiful pine and harvest-green valley of Empire. This is capable of being an extended town, stretching back and forth thro' the higher sides of che inclining flat to the creek. Passing further, we come to a fine race-track on a good level and surrounded by pine groves and willow brush. Great dalles of rock close in the torrent; and as the pass narrows, the moun- tains swing ofl' more sublimely to the right and left, until we come to the grandest pile I saw in the foot-hills of the Rockies, the famous "Skull Pro- montory," so-called because of its peculiar repre- sentation of a human head-piece. In a general pro- file it resembles, however, a gigantic stair-case, of more or less regular steps, such as one might imagine to be the lower flight of that Godly way down which He, who has His tabernacle in the sun, de- scends with mighty leaps to earth. "He comes, skipping over the hills." Oddities among Sublimities. Ah! here's the "Atlantic House" — a fine good- lettered gold sign, on a black sanded ground, attached SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 147 to a house — well! a big box three-fourths of a story, opposite a saw-dust pile. On one end a hotel: ahem I on the other, a bar room with a pair of deer- horns over the entrance. A little farther on and we come to a new ''camp," where extensive mills and boarding house are nearly completed and a town commenced of one-half dozen or so shanties of log and boards; all springing, they say, out of an inspira- tion of some fool spiritualist, with spare cash of his own (or may be somebody else's). He knew by mediums there was a fine prospect for a good mine in these rugged hills. So far it has panned out noth- ing — but a hole in the hills. Passing the toll-gate, where we pay nearly $6 toll, we strike the foot of the range on a superb mountain road, level and well kept. And we are delighted to greet an abundance of wild flowers: American blue-bells, heliotropes, mountain daisies — very aster-like — and little dew-drop lilies, roses en masse, and at all stages from tiny buds, to full-blown, deep-blushing, full dress. At 5.20 P. M., we reach 10,000 feet and see skip- ping about the old robin and the new magpie, the latter looking pretty rusty and bachelor-like in his neglige and ruffled plumage of black and white. Smaller chippers dot the fir boughs. Looking down thro' a rift in the dense forest, we see the clouds drift- ing in the gorges, and by the mountain sides and tops; while the torrent calls from 2,000 feet below, and the mingled scent of pine gum and snow rein- vigorates the uptoilers. In front is a great sharp backbone of the Red Elephant, the naked sides like fine keel. At 10,250 flowers follow scantier; and climbing 200 feet of a short cut of sixty degrees in- 148 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. clination, we fall upon the reddest, red roses and buds sweet as can be imagined in their first blush in the hard world and against the rugged, time-stained rock faces. Whitened stems of the pines on the opposite mountain show Nature frozen out in the attempt to scale the sides, while we, ourselves, begin to tuck our clothes about us more closely, and add to them to keep out the ever more chilling air. Here we discover our first Indian pinks, a kind of Indian, fusky red, of rather coarse texture, pretty, a way oft'. •Berthoud Pass. At the top of the Pass, at 6.20 P. M., we halt to lunch and breathe. We are on the continental Di- vide; and from a swing, tied in the bough of a fir, we can enjoy the sensation of one minute breathing the air of the Atlantic, the next of the Pacific slope. James' Peak, oft' to the right with its snow -patched head, seems only a rifle shot or two away, tho' it re- mains that far and more for over an hour of travel towards it. We knock at the perfectly cruciform log inn at the top for a drink of coff'ee, but "the water has not boiled," and we drink California sherry. We are glad to get down out of the chilling cold — tho' the grass is emerald green beside the snow patches and potatoes flourish below — into the more genial latitude of 9,400 feet. The triple source of the Frazer leaps down across our path in brilliant amber waves and beady foam. Green meadows of great, long grasses glide swiftly past us; while, opposite in the setting sun-rays, the solid mounts of pine sweep up alongside the bur- nished king's becker of California gold, redly glow- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I49 ing, and stretching above in the mountain heights to within a few degrees of zenith. Having taken four hours to labor up the Atlantic slope, we scud down the Pacific, twelve miles, in just 1.35 by the watch. Monday morning we had two Holy Masses at Cozen's Ranche, a good roomy and porched frame, capable of com- fortably accommodating twenty-odd besides the fam- ily, and on a pinch some thirty-seven or thirty- eight, as has been practically proven. This is situated below Vasquez's Creek, a branch of the Frazer, which agfain feeds the Grand River, and is the inevi- table and much-sought resort of travelers from the "outside" and the "inside," as the mountaineers call the ultramontane and cismontane regions. The enter- tainment is of the best — the fat of the land and of the water — in the shape of all the diverse wild game and mountain trout. Superadded fruits and even moun- tain vegetables help to regale the sore and hungry traveler, who blesses the soldierly host and his kind deft lady and daughters for their fine inn and all it represents; praising it as the very best place for a stoppage anywhere about Middle Park. Cowboys and Gentler Folk. One meets every variety of traveler here, like in the famed old English and Scotch taverns — from the devil-may-care, but really often kind-hearted cowboy, to the poHshed gent from the East, who between fishings, dons his fine garters and knee-breeches, puts on a fresh "biled shirt" and sports a necktie. 'Tis true, the cow-boy — who is not, however, either cow or boy, but a fullgrown steer on his hind legs — does f50 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. not generally indulge in the expense of lodging under a roof more pretentious than a log-and-mud hut or rough-hewn ranche hostelry. He is of the genus vagabond on horseback, and as often as not ties his horse to a stake, flings the saddle and blanket on the bosom of mother earth, tucks his own robe and yel- low rain-proof about him and snores aw^ay under the canopy of heaven — ready to snort himself awake when his turn for guard over the herd is w^hooped into his ear by his indelicate comrades. But if he be oflf duty and has received his $30 monthly wages, and finds an opening for a social drink, drunk and ''round- up," he is as free with his cash as his oaths and "damns" if "he isn't ready to holler''' — as he expresses his desire to turn into his gentle couch, when the shades of night have fallen and the mists of his "rye" mount to his brain. But gentler folk frequent the park ranches — the refined family, with lady-wife and smooth-cheeked little ones; the summering barrister and bachelor merchant with their files of city papers and copies of "Punch," "Ledger," and the like to supply the room of their inevitable "Morning Jour- nal" and "Evening Post;" the journeying students with virgin rod and unfired gun — softly persuasible by the "cock-and-bull" stories of the bear hunter, deer-stalker and promiscuous mountain villain. In the little tap-room — which happens to rejoice in no tap, except that in the private pocket of each provi- dent traveler — you see groups about the stove of the various men-folk of the rougher sort, while the ladies and cultured gentry resort to the lace-curtained and tastily-uphostered parlor, not devoid of its cabinet organ and many tinted chromos and family photos. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I5I But the exquisites of all betake them to their private apartments, amusing themselves betw^een selecting their "flies" for trout with literary small talk, puns and amorous discussions. Anon they turn them to their more serious occupation of the toilet, buff', but- toned pumps, sweet straw hats and snuff'-colored knee-breeches — ah! pantaloons — trunk-hose! I will not soon forget the harsh expression of a rough pair of prospectors, with their horse and pack-ass trudg- ing about for gold, whom we met and lunched with, when we described to them our fine gentlemen afore- said. "Bah!" said they, with grim humor, "wouldn't we like to take them fellers out and stick 'em up to their neck in some of these sloughy bottoms — roll 'em over in the mud and spile their duds!" Such is the rougher Westerner's estimate of his Eastern fellow - man who comes out fishing with a Saratoga trunk* In Frazer Creek Valley. In this even valley of sage on one side and mostly good grass on the other, one is in a basin surrounded by three tiers of hills leading up to the James' on S. E., Long's on N. E., the snow range on three sides — the rocky peaks, especially on the east being jagged and angular. This mountain meadow is part of a system that extends for upwards of a hundred miles, they say, in all directions. Sheltered and cool is it all, with generally rich, though not aKvays sightly grass. Cattle fatten wondrously here. And haying is as fine as in the Black Forests of Baden or the Valleys of Switzerland, yielding the firmest, richest butter and cream, thick as good molasses. There was, just as we entered, a goodly herd of 152 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. one hundred and forty-four head, summering since June and tho' bought, thin and poor all the way from Iowa, for some eighteen dollars per head, for two and three years old, ten to twelve dollars for year- lings, and twenty calves, they sold for $4,500, the sellers losing on account of great cost of carriage. Our tent pitched, ditched and swung, instead of poled, we set out fishing and hunting. The hunting now, as afterwards, yielded us little small game, the birds consisting of chicken and bird-hawks, a good many robins and a few scattered twitterers. But our fishing yielded us sixteen or seventeen sweet trout, two or three fingers broad, long as your hand, or hand and wrist, from the by-flowing Frazer at our side. This was brook and spring for all purposes. A few slices of our streaked fat-and-lean bacon, good rye loaves, a brimming pot of strong but groundy coftee, milk and sugar to taste, with our already acquired mountain appetite, made a meal right more than royally enjoyed by the six of us down-squatters and etiquette-forgetters. After a very amateur pistol practice, in which we studiously avoided the bull's-eye and sometimes missed the good-sized trunk of a pine, we fished again; a new hand or two catching their first trout. What beauties with golden and silvery silk skin of the varied hues, from lightest to near the darkest browns and greens, delicate as butterflies, fine as colored meerschaum ! First Night Out. This bright day goes down in a painting sun and orange clouds. The camp-fire is smoking for supper and sixteen trout with some accompaniments are SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I53 served. War-whoop call and pan-beating are scarcely needed to keen youth. Fine night before us, three- quarter moon half up the sky and our spirits mount- ing with it. God's angels guard my first night out! "Hue, custos, igitur pervigil advola, Avertens patria de tibi credita Tarn morbos animi quani requiescere Quidquid non sinit incolas." Which stanza of the Church's Guardian Angel hymn may be rendered: "Then hither, fly succoring, Guardian sleepless. Averting from fatherland trusted to thee, Distorted diseases of fancy — whatever Makes Sleep its inhabitants flee!" August \\th. — Ugh! awfully cold night. Ice on our bucket and heavy frost coming in our open tent slit. I got chilled so thoroughly in the shoulders and back lungs that I crouched up to my companions and kept them awake. Whisky and rubbing lasted for only an hoiu* or two — the hills, not to say moun- tains of cold, pressed down upon me and made me fear a risk of pneumonia. It reminds me forcibly of that other miserable night of nights in my youth, when three or four of us boys were taken up by the negro soldiers about this day and date in 1862, and marched off to their camp in the suburbs of Louis- ville, Kentucky — so kept all night in our summer jackets, without tent or sufficient fire and made to work on the fortifications against Morgan the next morning. My God, it hurt! Ho! ho! you may imagine some one w^as glad to see morning and two of us were out fishing by 5 A. M., scarcely hght We thrashed the Frazer lustily 154 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. for upwards of two hours, and got nothing for our pains but an enormous load of appetite for our mea- gre breakfast on some fried potatoes and three fried fish! We eked out with our staple rye bread, rough butter, and groundy coftee. All soon disappeared. We did better for dinner — had, between us, ten fair troutkins. It seems from repeated experiments that trout will not bite early in the morning, the very time for most other fish. At any other times, say from nine or ten o'clock to eleven or twelve at night, they take hold readily, if one knows how to ''fly" or bait them. We regaled on five or six for supper. To- day I killed some game; a fine jack-rabbit of six or eight pounds weight, small birds and a squirrel, two- thirds the size of our southern grey, with foxy tail, white belly, and dark grey back, blackish snout and paws I spent this Off Evening at the Camp conversing with our Captain. He is a Stonyhurst College man of eight years study, English ways and fine off-hand manners, generous as his Irish nature, enterprising manager of the "Pay Rock" mines and mills, running over one hundred hands and paying him $350 a month. Mr. J. M. S. Egan, tho' evidently well informed, is modest withal, and it was only by dexterous questioning I got out something of his his- tory and college life. He has a brother a Benedic- tine, and a sister, a nun, I think. One of his old college chums is editing the Stonyhurst College Jour- nal, and Mr. Egan is collecting a cabinet of mineral ores for him and his old Alma Mater. It seems the Alumni have a regular club-room in Dviblin with SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I55 officers to conduct it in the style of a good private hotel, furnished with library, billiards, etc. Here the old graduates meet from all parts of the world and representing all professions. Their standard and grade are very high here as well as at Downside — the Benedictines and others, as evidenced by their pupils taking many first prizes in the University contests' My other two companions, the cousins Guanella, Italian by name but thorough Americans and fairly educated, are fine young fellows. They made it very pleasant for -all by their hearty enjoyment of our daily sport and mutual reports of feats and disasters. The Assumption in Middle Park. August \^th. — Ah ! Our Lady's — bless her for- ever! We had the consolation of Holy Mass at Cozen's Ranche in their cozy parlor, and the whole family went to their duties, glad to get the chance of seeing a priest two or three times a year. Our men assisted, of course, and the Captain served Mass in good remembrance of his school days. We enjoyed an excellent meal with the family and went home to camp for a big hunt and a big "fish." We — the Guanellas and I — went eight or ten miles up into one of the mountain gorges, winding around with our team, thro' the patches of grass, and ascended some seven hundred or eight hundred feet higher to hunt elk. We saw some tracks more or less mouldy, had a hard old tramp and climb over dismal broken ground and fallen timber in the hot sun for hours, and brought back a rabbit, squirrel and plover, bless the mark! Our friend Egan, who went fish- ing, had got never so much as a bite, and we settled 156 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. ourselves down to a capital, but rather greasy, rabbit-stew, which he had the fortune to condiment with corn, vegetables and oranges, obtained from a traveling huckster. Our next neighbors moved their camp to-day and we are alone. This whole valley and the next on the right have been lake-beds, seven or eight miles long by two and one half or three broad. The banks rise visibly on all sides and are bluffy in one point, several small streams feeding the Frazer from Crooked and Ranche Creeks. The right valley, watered by the latter creek, seen from a precipitous promontory is beautiful at a distance with its straggling riverlet and great soft bunches of green willow. — Musquitoes are so thick they won't let me write any more to- night. August ibth. — I could not say Mass on account of an old gentleman prostrated with nervous debility occupying the parlor at Cozen's. The sunset was fine yesterday. The floating clouds flaunted their waving red-tinted banners about the heads of the mountains "like flaming locks of hair," to use Ruskin's comparison. As the sun disappeared the long rays gilded the green foot-hills and threw deepening shadows aslant and atop. The rocky caps over timber line, refining more and more in the red rays, changed their dull gold to brighter sheen and tints pinker and deeper — so threw the snow drifts into whiter prominence, like rising foam in burnished beckers. We found strawberries, small but spicy in flavor, in the spurs and picked away as we waited for the deer to come. They didn't arrive. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 157 I got up at six and finding the boys asleep at camp, the early bird had to wait — for its worm! We had better luck fishing — bagged two dozen, counting three we hooked out in the dark and couldn't re- cover. Boys tell magniloquent marine stories about their fishing, but we count heads. A Cowboy Story. Our Stonyhurster has had great sport "codding" a neighboring cowboy of genuine greenness and profanity, telling him of the feats of the priest. The said cowboy, a youth of some twenty-one years, shock-hair, belt and big spurs, thought the priest rather quiet. "But then you had to look out for them quiet fellers — by gosh!" He smothered his curses in my presence, but couldn't restrain himself in Egan's vicinity and would damn for everything and nothing. Egan made him believe that the priest could, with a pistol in each hand, knock bottles at thirty paces right and left, hitting his mark every crack. And he cursed and damned if that wasn't "powerful shootin'." The priest could hang on the side of a horse and lasso out of a herd any cow or steer he pleased by both horns: "Ge — menentely! I've been at the business twelve years, and d — n my skin if I could ever hook but 07ie horn!" Egan played the game well for he knew the fellow had to leave early next morning with his herd. But the cowboy swore: "If I didn't fear bein' docked, I'd come over and see that priest shoot and ride." The mountains look grander with storm clouds for a back-ground than in sunshine. Their bold 158 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES^. summits loom up dark and distinct in shade from the cloudland. The green pines take a deeper, solemner hue. The thunder mutters and rolls longer and the crashes are full of sublimity. Where could one more enjoy the thrill of awful pleasure felt in a rattling storm than here! Where more realized the glorious hymn of the Psalmist King and poet: "The voice of the Lord upon the waters; the God of Majesty hath thundered, the Lord upon many waters. The voice of the Lord in power; the voice of the Lord in mag- nificence." You hear "the voice of the Lord," as he breaketh the cedars on the very mountains above you. "Yea, the Lord shall break the Cedars of Le- banon." See as in the forked tongues "the voice of the Lord divideth the flame of fire." Imagine the reality of "the voice of the Lord preparing the stags," on these very jungled heights; "and He will lay open the thick woods" they inhabit. And in this, His most gloriously mountain walled "Temple," in- deed, "all shall speak His glory." (Ps. 38.) It rained to-night. August i^th. — Raining yet — a good shower, ac- companied by rumbling, reverberating thunder We are not having good luck fishing, but somehow always manage to scrape a meal together. Some- times we hear of two professionals, now staying at Cozen's, from New York, catching upwards of a hundred trout a day — we suppose it true, but never counted them. We heard of an elk cow and calves at the head of Crooked and St. Louis Creeks, tw^elve miles up. What a consolation to get some letters in these untaught wilds, especially when they have been for- SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I59 warded three times! Bless my sours friends, they never desert me in all my wanderings. To estimate the height of this valley, or park as they call all the lower levels and grass plots in these parts, one has only to look out and see the clouds skirting the pines on the rises of the foot-hills, some 9,000 feet high. Numerous cloud -banks weigh down between the higher steeps and the snow-patched range. We are nearly in storm-cloud region. At 5,280 feet to a mile, we are one and one-half mile high on this level; and can climb to over two miles and find men working mines, such as the "Ruby," owned and run by Barbee & Co. of Louisville, Kentucky, twelve miles from Grand Lake. August i^th. — We ate breakfast this morning, literally, in the clouds. Chilly. Two of us went fishing on Ranche Creek and caught two dozen but one, after striking the wrong place for fish, wading and getting stuck in the mud, horse and foot, in the sloughy bottom, that looked so softly green and poetical from the bluft' just anon. We came home wet and worn. Our mountains with "the hair float- ing from their fiery foreheads," reminded me of smoking volcanos ready to belch — or just having belched — flame and lava. It sweetens our pleasure toils to observe the features of the not beautiful but sublime section of these, the advance hills of the Rockies. The Guanellas struck ofl' afoot to hunt deer, and aver by everything truthful that they made forty-odd miles, which may be whittled down to twenty-five l6o SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. and then be considered awful. All they got for their tire and foot soreness was the glorious surplus of exercise and a pint-cup nearly full of diminutive strawberries. Bears, elk, deer, mountain-lions, saw they none, and brought not even their tracks back. A Deer-Capital Prize. August i^th. — Oh! But people must not think us so verdant as to come away from the Rockies deer- less, bearless and all. To-day we secured the capital prize — a glorious buck elk, some six or seven years old, and kicking the beam at probably eight or nine hundred pounds, gross weight. And the manner of its drawing was this: We had some nearest neigh- bors — nearly as green as ourselves, by the way, and in your ear — who, having pitched camp in our grove, had gone out the previous evening to hunt elk resorts, and stalk or wait for them near by. Miller, an ear-whiskered New Yorker, and his com- rade found a "lick" — something very like a hog- wallow, and trampled with innumerable elk tracks — in a spur of the hills, back of Crooked Creek Valley. They were making ready to hide and squat for the night, when fortunately up came the buck, within fifty yards of them, unsuspecting and standing quietly WMth his hindquarters exposed from behind a tree. Miller took his chance and sent a great rifle ball crashing thro' its buttocks, piercing thro' and thro', and sprawling the poor beast, dragging its helpless hind legs. As he crawled a few yards on his front feet, the hunter came up with him, scram- bling on some fallen pines, and shot him in the head, keeling him over half upright on some horizontal SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. l6l trunks. The two men fell on him, cut and hacked at hhn with a jack-knife — more like a pocket-dag- ger — until they sawed the body in two. After much grunting and stumbling under the dead weight of some three hundred and fifty pounds, they succeeded in getting the hindquarters down the hill to the mouth of a grassy park, and hung it by prising on the lower limbs of a shaggy pine. Finding they could do no more that night, they traveled to camp by moonlight, arriving there in time to catch our Egan on his way back from Cozen's at about 11.20 P. M. Egan saw the verdancy of the chaps by the silvery light; and knowing they had no team, put up a job to haul over their game for half the carcass and all the credit of killing. "Agreed" — it was just what they wanted, minus, of course, the latter clause of the contract, which our man prudently suppressed. We got a start by nine o'clock after Holy Mass, and by ten we pushed out of camp, with a "Hip, hip, hur- rah! ho! for the mountains!" all armed cap-a-pie — two rifles, two shot-guns, three revolvers, and two butcher-knives! We had to make a great round of some seven or eight miles, and then succeeded in getting our team within but a mile or two of the lick. It was 12 M., when we spied the grand hams hanging from the pine and started up the hill with bated breath and cocked guns towards the lick, talk- ing of naught, in mysterious tones, but lions, bears, etc., eating the carcass, and the probability of our having to fight for the remains. It was exciting — painfully so for greenhorns and "tender-feet" — the latter being the name for everything fresh and un- sophisticated in the mountains. The most danger- l62 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. ous thing that we encountered was the remains of the deer, whole and intact and dead as a door nail. The lick, however, was freshly trampled and showed how ignorant the hunters were that they had not re- mained and got another shot or two. While the butchers were getting the head ofl^ and the quarters divided, I took a stroll out in the jungle of pines and fine quaking aspens, as high as the spruces, with smooth, light green trunks, bare to nearly the top. I must confess to a feeling of shyness, not to say anxiety, when I had got out of ear-shot of the party. So after contemplating nature but a moment I re- turned — bearless. The head and horns being pre- sented to me, I thought it proper I should "toat" it down, which I did, swinging the head back of mine, and holding by the reversed horns. I found after- wards I had bloodied my duster, pants and boots from my neck to my heels. At the big pine we packed the quarters on the horses, slung the head on a pack-stick and processioned down the hill-park to the wagon. We got back to camp after a nearly eight hours' trip, dinnerless, tho' pleased and "enthused." Oh! how we did eat elk for our din- ner-supper! After good night-fall one of our boys fished out by moonlight the finest trout of the week, three in number, one weighing just fourteen ounces. This rounded our hundred trout caught for the whole trip. I find peculiar calculations having to be made in the mountains. They manufacture pumps with six or seven feet difference of suction from what they would be in the valley or plains. This peculiarity regards weighing and dynamics also. There are no SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 163 lightning rods in the whole region, I understand; none being needed, tho' electrical displays are of daily occurrence. I don't recall a day in which I heard no thunder or saw no rain in some direction or other. Of these mountain parks, I heard the story contradicted by an old hunter, that lightning would play about fire arms in a storm at this height. August 23<^. — This the date of our camp break- up, when .our Captain profaned the good old Irish emigrant ship-song by paraphrasing it, as applied to our wagon-ship: All at 10 o'cl'k in the morning oh! Our gallant ship set sail — With "Pickles," "Dan," two quarts of oats, And a pint of vellow male! Which would require a good deal more of gloss- ing to make its elegant appropriateness apparent to the poetical reader, than it would of choice and pruning of words to make it smoother and less truthful. 'Tickles'' and "Dan" were our steeds and knowing ones they were, as their names indicate, and the rest of the verse comprises in laconic con- ciseness the amount of provender left for man and beast after our ten days' camping. No particular adventure marked or marred our return, except the unfortunate circumstance that our elk-shooters had the meanness to tell how they had shot that animal ive all shot and circumlocutorily lied around for most bravely. But then we stayed all adverse stomachs and allayed all unjust suspicions of our integrity in being able to let folk be deceived without direct im- pugning of the known truth, by simply letting the 164 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. ranche folks have a fore leg of our booty, in part exchange for some dozens of fat trout we innocently brought to Georgetown as the result, remotely, of our dexterity in fishing, and otherwise, in the Park. It's only a pity and great loss to the public our ex- ploits had not been telegraphed like President Arthur's. Grand Lake, Colorado. Grand Lake, Col., September ist, 1883. 'l-iO Grand Lake, in express and four-in-hand. ^gWe had an old-time stage driver who could swear on occasion, reg^ardless of surroundings. and whip up according to approved customs of brutality to animals. We were nine — ten with the driver — but two went on ahead as outriders, one of them a joking lawyer whose aching tooth was jumping almost as much as his horse. Starting at 9 A. M., we arrived at Cozen's by about half-past three, and at Ostrander's by 6^ P. M., kill- ing a grouse by the roadside and seeing no other small game but a squirrel or two feeding on the fine cones. Primitive place, the latter, situated in deso- late gravel and sand beds, and surrounded, at a distance, by curiously water-fretted rocks and sage heaths, supplemented by the raggedest pine fellings. After a thorough search no game could be scared up in the whole vicinity; and on being further assured by an honest-spoken mountaineer of whom we in- quired — "Be d — d, if he ever saw any grouse here- abouts" — we gave up th^ hunt. The hostler had hanging, around his characteristic waiting-room, some deer and doe hides and pretty spotted kid's furs as large as a small cur's skin. They ornamented the walls between the elk-horns and heads and the l66 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. rifle racks above the doors. The body of the house is of logs — pines make first-class timber for such — and has batten doors only, on the outside and partly down stairs; the traditionary make-shift of blankets over the other door openings being supplied by cheaper cotton or calico hangings. The inside is gorgeously papered all over with every sort of imaginable odds and ends of New York story paper pictures, giving an elegant finish, and frescoing even the ceilings, a la Rockies. All the party but one slept soundly: there was no difiiculty in hearing the snorers between the cracked partitions from any quarter. Oft' by early and nasty breakfast — as the supper had been before it — we got on, thro' the winding valleys, to Grand Lake by dinner on Sunday. Bet- ter fare, if not quarters, awaited us, and we were ready for everything in the shape of tasty edibles. Grand Lake. This really not misnamed lake is two to two and one-quarter miles in length by about three-quarters of a mile w^ide — seems, how^ever, very much larger to both gazer and rower. 8,700 to 8,800 feet above sea-level, it is walled in on all but the village and out-let sides by gloriously swelling spurs. Its head is fronted by the superb dome-like mass of Round Mountain. Pity it was not christened Grand Dome, for it needs but a Titanic proportioned cross to crown its summit in order to constitute it a more magnificent than Rome's Pantheon, raised aloft on St. Peter's colossal transept. The cyclopic K formed by the swinging heights on either side of Round SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 167 Mountain and framing it in — their snow-patched ridges rising shoulder and shoulder above even their mightier rocky dome — form a picture of grandeur satisfying the soul as few scenes are wont to do in these sublime regions. The Round, unlike its neigh- bors, seems a solid mass of granite, reflecting shine and shadow like a giant's face — its deep-cut features rounding off' in the melting distance in well-nigh perfect symmetry, tho' rough and inaccessible to the approaching adventurous climber. It is Bald Mountain, with scalped elephant back, that swings off' to the north; and of its opposite neighbor I either never heard, or do not remember, the name. But what are names, especially when given by some squad of roughs or, at best, by unreal- izing and perhaps religionless American surveyors.'' What are names to whosoever feels fit to name what moves the conceptive powers to take in, at a glance, characteristics of a talking nature? The whiter Snowy Range closes up the higher sky midway to the zenith; and a row of successions of varied moun- tain fronts and faces stand in motionless ranks. Nature's Sphinxes keeping Nature's Secrets, yet speaking without tongues. The hamlet of Grand Lake, with one crane-gut street and on a sand level behind a shaggy foothill, is flanked by a brawling torrent that subsides into a placidly murmuring creek as it nears the lake it helps to feed. It has behind its back-most houses yet again a rugged ridge walling in a stretch of mountain meadow, miles square. Its new, yellow- pine houses are unpainted. Some of its inhabitants are of the rougher class, a few celebrating a grand l68 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. "drunk" periodically. The better citizens are begin- ning to frown down ruffianism to some effect. No house of worship is yet erected; in fact the village is but an infant, one however that will take some re- ligious spanking to train it to a model youth. Rev. Wm. Howlett, of Central City, was to visit, and did visit, this and the scattered spots of the whole Middle and North Park settlements; was however so unfor- tunate as to be blocked in by the snow, falling when we left. He wrote me it was good I had not waited for him, as he had been forced to return home, away around by Wyoming Territory! Two Weeks' Adventures, September \ith. — To sum up our doings and hap- penings, we have had rare luck fishing — our catch for the fortnight amounting to three bites and one sardine four inches long ! while fishermen by pro- fession go out of days and nights — the latter often- est — and "box" a cool seventy-five or one hundred trout, large and small. Hunting, we have shot eleven grouse, six beautiful teal with blue and gold and green-gold wings, eight or ten harqs and squirrels. There are two or three frame boarding houses on the lake and at the village, and two of log. One of the latter is pretty substantial and roomy, and with a brave show of boats and sails in its miniature bays over the outlet. The other remains unfinished, and with partitions between apartments that partition nothing, each occupant being allowed the luxury of feeding ear and eye on all the sights and sounds on his level. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 169 Our host and hostess, rejoicing in the name of Adams, are old lUinoisans, and quite hospitable, for reasonable cash. Their table is of the best. Fresh- est trout, good beef, better venison, canned fruits and vegetables, served with some modicum of skill and maximum of good grace and the best of will, are commendable rations for ten dollars a week — and fifty cents off for every meal or night you miss. Curious to relate, we had fresh vegetables too be- times, brought out at great expense by traveling hucksters from Denver, who ply their trade in and out all the settlements in the parks, but make cus- tomers pay for the luxury to the tune of five or six cents a pound for all vegetables and fruits they buy. Housekeepers pay ten and twelve dollars per barrel for flour, and fifty cents a hundred for hauling gro- ceries and supplies, unless by special contract. Our daily plan — of course, after invoking the protection of God by his saints and our angels from the dan- gers we might meet — was to breakfast heartily and early as possible, sling our guns and game-bags with lunch for midday on our shoulders, tramp over flats and mountains all day, and come back for our rel- ished supper at 7 or 7^ o'clock, almost dark. We met with no astounding adventures, but heard of marvelous escapes, bear and deer hunts, without any definite limit. One day in Soda Creek bottom we came across a mother with three little children, living in the long absence of her husband in a cabin with floor and roof of dirt, miles away from any human help or habitation. Her sole protection consisted in two dogs of very ordinary size, and seemingly cowards lyo SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. from the way they cringed and shnik away at a harsh word, but one full and the other a half-blooded bull dog. Between whiles, as we w^ere waiting for her to boil us a little coffee to wash down our cold lunch, the brave 3^oung mother related to us how her two canines had had a two hours' ugly tussle with an ancient grizzly, making the woods and hillsides ring with the fierce roars and yells, barks and grow^ls of the furious contest. She had listened with bated breath — she did not say she took any particular means of defending the cabin — only fearful her precious "bulls" would be torn to pieces by the bear. Her fears were not allayed by the length of the fight and the frequent yelps of pain and rage. The brave little fellows came oft' with their lives, tho' minus sundry paws' full of hair. And their scalping was accompanied by smart incisions from the beast's great claws. The poor brutes looked considerably short of rations too — we had to drive them oft' half a dozen times during our dinner — and they were as ugly, especially the female, as the Miltonic dogs at Hell's Gate — if not so huge. The "Rococo" and Ptarmigan. Anent hunting stories, I must not forget some capital things our Louisvillian, Mr. John Barbee, used to get up, literally, to regale our fancies, while a frequent and most welcome guest at Mrs. Adam's well-supplied board. He is well built, tho' more athletic than stout, wears his miner's and hunter's canvas rig with the manly port which is so becom- ing; his hair is clipped close and a pair of rimless pebbles make his brilliant, fine blue-grey eyes more SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I7I brilliant still; while his incessant fund of humor, re- partee, puns, inventions, kept us all enamored of his company. One of his stories was in this sort: "The rococo! — ho! never heard of the beast? You poor ignorant outsiders.! Perhaps you don't believe it? Why, you know of the ptarmigan, that double-plum- aged timber-line grouse? It is as gray as a rock, as green as moss, and you can hardly distinguish it from the ground where it crouches." "Oh, yes, of course!" answers the addressed, a young student, versed in books rather than in life, and with capacity for astonishing stories probably invented. "Well, that ptarmigan changes color completely in winter, so that it's white as snow and you couldn't tell it if it were two yards from you.", "That's so, too; I've read of that and been told the facts frequently," I chimed in. "Yes, but that's got nothing to do with the rococo. You know, young man" — addressing our student, and ourselves over his shoulder — "this mountain fox has a regular ''round' like your hunting fox. When chased, he goes 'round and 'round a mountain top. And mind you, he's got the right kind of legs for the business — they're some inches shorter on the one side than on the other so that he can run on the slant of a hill with perfect facility, on account of the adaptability of his limbs to his mode of locomotion. And—" "Oh — o! Mr. Barbee, thaf s a little too strong," ex- postulated some two or three. "Too strong, thunder!. Wasn't I just now telling you of the timber-line grouse? Is it any more won- 172 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. derful than that? And, as I was going on to say, you have to know this pecuharity of the fox — the famous rococo — in order to hunt him successfully. For, he can't run up or down — he'd tumble over — couldn't run on a level; he'd be lop-sided and nabbed in no time. Then he's got to run just 'round and 'round; and all you're obliged to do is merely to find his exact circle — let him . . — him run 'round to where you want to catch him and just put your hand down, with gloves on, and lift him." "Ha! ha I that's a good one," was roared from all sides of the table, while Mr, Barbee would compla- cently wipe his mouth and call for "some more of that trout — venison: you all fairly spoil my appetite," He got our student in a corner one day and fairly ])ersuaded him, judging from symptoms, the rather imaginative vouth had been retailing- that he was in danger of some malignant disease: '"Pon my word, I believe you've got it, and you'd better set in doc- toring at once." The patient was badly worked up all that night and thought he discovered more and more striking proofs of his having the disease, for certain — while he was as lusty a young fellow as you could well meet with just out of school. Ice-cold Ducking. We had a fair chance of testing some of our enter- tainer's relations of the mountain, and found him so truthful in some cases that we doubted whether he was not in earnest oftener than we believed. We had been told of the almost natural impossibility of catching a cold in the parks, and, one famous day, SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 173 were indulged with the fairest opportunities of "catching our death." Coming to a series of creeks and shallow rivers there was nothing for it but to pull oft', strip up our pants and wade — in the ice- coldest water that runs. It failed to make us scream with sheer pain only because we meditated upon how unmanly it would be. We only halloed and danced — rubbing our limbs when we got over. But then, once or twice we attempted crossing on great causeways of granite bowlders, so rounded oft' that our hob-nailed boots shpped frequently, and, at last, we got a considerable wetting. But the climax came the third time, when to avoid a long road we wanted to ford the south fork of the Grand — a brawling half-torrent, with loose rock bed and swift current. My more youthful companion first at- tempted the venture and made it with the mishap of wetting|his pants and boots. Ha! I could do better than that. I calculated, planned — saw a clear route and with trousers tucked high, carefully set out — making a way about half across, when I tried to rest my feet on some stones I had spotted from the shore; and my misfortune began with my missteps. I slipped on one pesky, slimy thing and trying to balance and get on a better one, stumbled and sat down fairly in the liquid ice. Ugh! but up and try again. Another stumble, a lunge, the water was sweeping me and again I nearly went headlong, only I went the other way long. Laughter could hardly mend things — I was soaked — gun, bag, boots, pants, vest to halfway under my arms. And to think of straggling home, wet as a rat, cold as an ice-house filler, clothes flapping at every step. Fortunate for I74 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. US that we had to walk so long and briskly home. It was our salvation — only, "Most unkindest cut of all," we took nothing home besides our soaked selves but one solitary mountain squirrel, netting about as much meat as your moderate thumb hams, or good frog legs. But not the slightest cold did we catch. Grand Lake^ September 13//^. — Last night and yes- terday it was raw — raining wnth hail below, and evidently snowing above, whitening Snowy Range royally. The bald and wooded heads above us and below the Snowy Range are sprinkled this morning as if with the grey hairs of old age. It is time for us to take warning and be gone. As we start away from the hostelry, the clouds are lowering on the face of Round Mountain and the V — their filmy trails nearly sweeping the lake shores. It is a veil worthy of the Grand. We see our last of the sub- lime panorama fronting the outlet of Grand River. We shall row no more over the dark blue waters — halloo no more to the quadruple Echo, seated on the base of the stupendous cliff's, in comparison to which Rhenish Lorelei is but a mole-hill — and we shall receive back no more such flute-like trumpetings as angels might hearken to. Mirabilis Deus in altis! We glide into a cloud-hanging mist, finally pre- cipitating into fine rain, and drizzle, drizzle, is the tune all the way to miserable Ostrander's — a place I detested. Glad to get in and warm — but our din- ner was of the meanest as usual here; fried bacon swimming in its ov^^n fat, sooted hominy — all topped off with some compost of an apple dumpling. Hard SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I75 eggs we got by special and repeated order, and we eked out on our appetites, some platters of sclimeer- kase and the apple — what-do-call-it? To make bad worse, our driver (Mills) had a brilliant case of ob- stinate stomach complaint, and was as sour and uncompromising as an ancient Persian monarch about getting away, heedless of driving rain, now mixing with slushy hail and snow. But our side of the corporation, mindful of No. i, and determined to protect ourselves, swiftly packed a lot of straw in the end of the wagon, appropriated two blankets, spread the tarpaulins over the raised spring seat in a sort of low-tent fashion, and snugly ensconced ourselves thereunder — prone but snug and defiant of mud and storm. Thus we weathered out the blowing snow storm that began to rage around us when but a few rods from the house. Blow! snow! bump! smash! scrape! trot! thump! roll! — up and down, right and left, we were hauled with only a cautious peep out on our coigne of vantage at the furious elements. After their rage was nearly spent, we could enjoy more leisurely the sight of the beau- tifully snow-drifted and deep-sprinkled hills, with the totally covered white summits of the range beyond, and the misty, impenetrable clouds, half- discovering, half-concealing, the lower foot-hills and the second range below the rocky peaks which closed up the sky. We resumed our shelter and fairly emerged from our manufactured bed-booth only when the wagon pulled up at Cozen's fine ranche, where we found a house full of fresh arri- vals, caught like ourselves in the storm. Frazer, September i^t/i. — As we start out to re- 176 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. turn over the Range, snow covers the w^hole route, scenting and refreshing the ah* all the way back to Empire. Georgetown has all its higher elevations white — the lower besprinkled nearly all the way down; and the atmosphere is the opposite of what we left here over a fortnight since. It is bracing, withal. Regretfully I leave — fearful lest my first visit may be my last; and such is man's life! Georgetown^ September i^th. — The mountains ap- pear grander as we wing down past their suddenly projecting, and as suddenly retreating, faces — save now and anon, when longer stretches in the circuit- ous torrent-track afford the glorious perspective, shadowed on one, reflecting the white Hght on the other, side of the double panorama. The sun, mid- way in the western heavens, is already setting^br us^ walled in on two, sometimes on all, points of the compass, by the precipitous thousands of feet of God's masonry. How the . . . "King of day . . . rejoicing in the West," glares hotly thro' the narrow Canon, and dazzles the daring eye "searching his glory!" As we bid farewell to Clear Creek Canon, we are treated to a gorgeous, jeweled sunset at the City of Golden, which stretches on either side of the stream in beautiful lines between the encompassing ram- parts. As the reappearing sun gilds and burns the massy clouds over the mountain heads in the west, the fair full moon rises over the rock-castled ridges on the east. The palisade rocks, further on, stand out defined and regular in the twilight. Far down beyond the SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I77 mouth of the Canon greens the fertile, watered valley, with its corn-bearing uplands and its boshy, feathery willow low lands. The smoke alone of man's fur- naces, smelting gold, obscures the scene of beauty and makes one sigh for the primeval untamedness of this mountain haunt of grandeur and softness of feature combined— like God's justice and mercy. As we look back, Nature's fortifications stretch in mile-wide wings with jutting buttresses to guard the passages of the hills of God. To the right, the shadowy, pale blue masses cut the sky in nobly vary- ing lines, and great peaks loom over them in the far off. Denver Exposition, 18S3. Denver, Septe?nber i6th. — The only items jotted from the vaunted Denver Exposition — which, like bad wine, needed much praise — were: a fossil tree from Wyoming — a section of the trunk with open hollow and pillared on a pedestal, full of bright, per- fect crystals; some others lengthwise, and lying like a fairy cradle bedded with crystalizations; also a fine show-case full of specimens furnished by the Union Pacific Railroad Company; among which some bright red and dull purple crystals in quartz and agate; a cross section of the "Big Tree" from Pueblo, which is estimated at 380 years of age and measured twenty-eight feet round and seventy-nine feet high. Singularly enough, Virginia — the State — was rep- resented in tobacco, ores, coals, etc., from along the line of the Richmond Railroad. In the fruit depart- ment, a luxuriance of pears, peaches, and especially luscious purple and white grapes from California — specimens of the like in the county departments of 178 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Colorado and New Mexico — were of fine quality. Colorado wants to claim the finest grade of wheat grown anywhere. Except for the expert and con- noisseur of jewels in the rough, in precious ores and useful metals, the Exposition is a flat aftair ; it is only praiseworthy, lefthandedly, because it procured us travelers cheap round-tickets. But better than even its gold and precious stones was the grandest embossed shield of the actual moon, appearing above the horizon as we passed into the open air, in the largest magnified disk I ever saw — framing on her broad bosom a living sec- tion of landscape. As she diminishes in size she increases in .silveriness beyond the skill of human artificer, as she ascends her nightly throne. In the West, oh ! what glory above and behind the unusually dark line of the Rockies. The clouds form in irregular bars and parallel burnings, brighter and brighter, from the rose-red of the mists on the left and away up on the right, to the glow of the whitest molten gold and most fiery topaz and chrys- olith. Just above the verge of the mountain line is a uniform sea of the heavenliest mingling of color which I can find no name for — it is light glorified and glory transfigured, light of light created — the threshold of heaven! Land of gold, silver and jewels, Colorado Eldo- rado! this is thy fit parting greeting. With all thy beauty and magnificence united and blindingly dazzling in this focused representation of all thy wealth and worth, God give thee to be richer in virtue and rival thy sister republic of New Mexico, in pressing to thy rocky bosom proportionately more CathoHcs than any State in the Union! six weeks in our rockies. 179 Pencilings of the Rocky Mountains. We close the Six Weeks in the Rockies with these pen portraits from our accommodating "Nym Crinkle," as he quits the plains and reaches the sight of the dim distant mountain land. Striking Colorado he pictures, sure enough, some greasy, rugged, slouch-hatted, or sombrero-capped Mexicans; portrays "Old Times on the Borders," in "Rice's Ranche," a solid-walled enclosure, with a flat-roofed dwelling and a bastioned tower, flanked on either hand by a park and tree rows; "New- Times on the Borders," in South Pueblo, an outskirt of which shows the broad avenue, with shaded t alleys, and the trim new frames, such as one sees everywhere in towns West; a life-like illustration of a "Middle Park" pasture such as we have described, not forgetting the contrast in the foot-hills: "Behind they saw the snow-cloud tossed By many an icy horn: Before, warm valleys wood embossed And green with vines and corn." Our dear "Grace Greenwood," the writer's cottage at Manitou, sweet wi,th embosking shrubbery, brawl- ing mountain brook, crossed by rustic bridge, is struck off' to the life. Of the "Garden of the Gods" where are Poe's Bottomless vales And chasms and caves and Titan woods With forms that no man can discover, we have no space to speak, but can refer the curious reader to the original "Iron Trail," and the Rev. Prof. Zahm, of Notre Dame's late lectures on these very themes and illustrated with the very prints. l8o SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. We may add what Mr. Wheeler testifies as to the health-restoring qualities of the mountain air and exercise — extending the endorsement, however, to most parts of the Rockies inhabited: "Now as for salubriousness, I made a special study of it in Colorado, and I interviewed all the scientific men I met. The conclusion is this: Colorado, for weak lungs, bronchitis, rheumatism, gout and those diseases that have their origin in malaria, is a certain cure. It is the only place in the world where a man can get along comfortably with one lung so long as he has got two legs. All forms of phthisis are bene- fited by the air. This is not a random statement; I make it from actual experience. The dry, electric air of such places as Manitou, to say nothing of the effects of the waters, has made it the resort of invalids." Prairie Diary Resumed, Blair, Nebraska, September 20th, 1883. (;^W(|^w^^HE country from Omaha north to Blair, Neb., \vsJ^ well occupied and cultivated to a degree be- ^yond expectation, as to the portions used for agriculture. It is, for the most part, utilized as pasture and meadow, hay being harvested in ^ enormous quantities; and fine herds of cattle and sheep, from hundreds up to thousands, browse in the undulating hills. The surface is, however, leveler than further on towards Hubbard, where the Omaha Indians have just vacaced a magnificent tract of rolling, well-watered farm and pasture lands, amounting to 50,000 acres. All this is only awaiting the United States' Commissioner's proclamation to be thrown open to expectants who will instantly take up every square rod of it. The towns, before we reach this ex-reservation and after we pass it, are flourishing and a fair proportion of them large; tho' north of Hubbard we strike again the Missouri River bottoms, thinly populated and taken up with haying operations on the usual gigantic scale. Persons conversant with this special region say, that between the malaria and the overflows, these great wides are undesirable for anything beyond seasonable haying. The few houses we saw were heavily marked by water and mud lines high up l82 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. over the windows and under the "boxing." The Iowa side north of Sioux City resembles this region closely — in fact is but a continuation of it on the opposite banks of the river Vermillion. Avoca, Minn.^ September 22d. — Fulda is just now the center of interest, the two most prominent Bishops connected with the Colonization Society, Rt. Rev. Dr. Spalding, President, and Rt. Rev. Jno. Ireland, having come to give a business push to the county, before they proceed to the spiritual object of their visit to the Convent at Avoca, and to dedicate the finished Church of Currie. Fulda is sustaining its reputation and going ahead with solid strides. More of the twin lake shores is being laid out in building lots on ground sold by the two Bishops on easy terms. The upper lake, contiguous to town, has been named Lake Ireland, the lower, Lake Spalding. About five acres on the extreme end of the former has been sold, this morning, for $30 per acre, to the town clerk. A new $3,000 public school is nearly completed. There is a practical project on hand to extend another railroad north and south thro' Fulda and Avoca, and taking in the vicinity of Currie and Mr. Jno. Sweetman's large purchase. This will open out the superb Des Moines River country and connect with Tracy. The surveyors are already on the route, and will reach Murray County in a few days. The thing is put down as a certainty by the people, and will be of immense advantage as giving direct connections SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 183 North, and opening up the coal fields of Iowa to the prairie inhabitants, whose fuel is such a large item of expense. CuRRiE Church Dedication. This 23d September is the date of the long-looked- for dedication of Currie Church, built at the sole expense of the munificent gentleman, Jno. Sw^eet- man. It is an elegant building, commodious and finely appointed, from the superb bell in the front to the carved altar in the sanctuary. The priest's resi- dence is nearly finished and matches well with the church. The ceremonies of dedication brought the whole surrounding country to witness the grand pageant — grand for these parts — two Rt. Rev. Pre- lates, assisted by a number of priests, performing the sacred rites, after the public dinner furnished for all the world in the town hall. The reverent crowd of the faithful formed the living crown of the church to be dedicated as God's House — symbolical, as they girded the walls, of their own future exaltation, when they are taken up to build the walls of the Celestial Church. How appropriate the Chorister's magnifi- cent hymn of the ecclesiastical service: CELESTIS URBS JERUSALEM. "Celestial city, Jerusalem! Of peace the vision blest, . That high of living stones are built To heaven's starry crest: In sponsal rite art belted round By thousand — thousand angels crowned! O thou in happy lot espoused, With Father's glory dowered; 184 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. O Queen, most lovelj of the fair By Spouse's grace o'ershowered; With Christ the prince in wedlock joining — City with heavenly brilliance shining! Here sparkling gemmed with precious stones Stand wide to all, the portals; For clothed in virtue's Godly deeds Are thither led, e'en mortals, Whom passionate with Christ's true love Nor torments, nor e'en death can move. By pruning chisel's saving strokes. And smoothing touches oft Of mason's mallet, the polished stones Build all the pile aloft; And shaped with goodly joints aright Are raised to crown the building's hight," Ten Days at Buffalo Lake. Septetnber 2^th. — In a stay of ten days at the resi- dence of Mr. John Sweetman — the farm villa of Buffalo Lake — it is needless to comment on the in- formal hospitality one receives and the home-like feeling that is cultivated in a few days' converse with the managing director of the Irish Coloniza- tion Company. Leaving aside the confidential pleas- ures of indoors, our journal proceeds to record that we younger folk passed most of our time on the prairie at our prescribed sports. To-day's luck sums up the bagging of some ten ducks and chickens — four ducks lost in the sloughs, and a good deal of ammunition wasted in shooting holes in the air. However, we will keep the table in game, and inter- change our fine English-cooked roasts with dressed duck, chickens and smaller fry. Septefnber z^th. — Learning w^e could get a trained SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 185 setter from an old hunter of the vicinity, we sped over in haste to secure him. But bother! either thro' our own fault or his wildness — we put it on the latter, of course — we had a chance to lose half a dozen chickens, and "dropped" one only. September 26th. — Mr. Walter Sweetman accom- panied us on the hunt over the rolling hills and sloughy valleys of the farm, and great exercise did we enjoy in the free, glorious air. If the "stillness of the desert fill the fierce Arab with rapturous en- joyment," as Cardinal Newman writes in his "North- man Character," how much more could we delight in the unrestrained liberty of our blossoming prairies! The feeling of glorious independence from the tram- mels of fashion and "society" often makes us shout aloud for sheer joy, thanking the great God for these fenceless wilds, where there are no bounds but the horizon around and the sweet skies above. The grand thinker, Chateaubriand, joins with the strong poet, in his "Bride of Abydos," in seeming to limit this indescribable rapture to the nomad of the Sa- • hara; but they, like Ruskin, had something to learn about our grand prairies. Besides this singular sen- sation, however, we scarcely got to-day enough game for our sharpened appetites — a brace compris- ing one water and one land bird, with four ducks lost. September 2'jth. — Again, however, we have had what we call another good day, securing ten pieces — one chicken out of several flocks. People not au fait in hunting, like ourselves, will count this great luck, and professional nimrods will turn up their noses and give expression to their contempt of such trifling by a boisterous gufiaw. Let them! l86 six seasons on our prairies. Murray County Fair. Ctirrie, September zStk. — To-day, raw and un- promising as it is, we have had our County Fair at the pro-count}^ seat of Murray. In default of an official report, I can say that two priests of us made ourselves conspicuous by handling vegetables and products of all kinds, weighing and measuring by the inch, yard and hour. It was a really creditable display. We have said: "This is the land of roots, pa7' excellence,^' and here is palpable proof we were not hardly doing justice to the various and enormous productions of this soil. Pumpkins! but let us not mention such monstrosi- ties! Squashes! Reader, you never saw the picture of such squashes. The beets and rutabagas, Nor- wegian turnip, and other turnips were as big as a child could carry. Potatoes, any variety! Size: from eight or ten ounces to two and one-half pounds apiece. Cabbage ? But away with such ! Peas, beans; corn, green yet, and succulent for roasting ears. We had all the figures down, but it boots little to trumpet what talks for itself. One lady relates she had received nineteen premiums on as many kinds of vegetables. Outside were, of course, the horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, turkeys, wild geese tamed, etc. All stood fair. September 2^th. — Eight ducks and a brace of prai- rie chickens rewarded to-day's labors by land and water, somewhat counterbalancing matters, tho', by tossing a $30 rifle overboard on reaching for the last fowl. September -ipth. — Seven more ducks to-day. six weeks in our rockies. 187 Herds and Grasses. But from ducks to cattle is not as much a change of subject here, at this season, as in other parts. Farmers of considerable means do not farm so much as graze and rear cattle. It is the same in southern ao^ricultural districts among' men who have made enough by hard knocks to lie back on their oars and rest while their beeves and hogs are fattening, and coining good trade-dollars. Of hogs, of course, there are comparatively few here, but much more atten- tion and care are spent upon cattle and sheep. Where prairies are limitless, your herds and flocks can roam at their sweet will. But it is troublesome and expensive in other respects, and you must pro- vide for enclosures of some sort, meadows, corrals. But again, the prairie grass will not stand the con- stant grazing and trampling under which tame grasses will survive. Hereupon comes a question, sprung this morning, on observing that the meadow on the hillside and near the residence of Mr. Sweet- man was wearing out, and on being told he had sowed tame grass over this and similar spots. Nature has to be aided and supplemented in this matter as in the other of timber planting. It may be in place to extract somewhat from Prof. Thomson, of Nebraska's observations on Tame Grasses in the West, as pertinent here: "In the prairie regions of the great West, for some time after the country is settled, only native grasses are needed. The conditions of a settled country are not congenial to the wild grasses. As a rule, tame grasses furnish feed about a month l88 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. earlier in the spring, and the same length of time later in autumn, than the wild grasses. When the wild grasses begin to dry up in the fall they are tougher than tame grasses with the exception of the buffalo and bunch grasses of the arid region along the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. There is no kind of forage which will fatten cattle faster than our native prairie grasses during the growing season, from the middle of May to the middle of August." The last statement must be modified for regions parallel with St. Paul, and not further south than Yankton, by pushing the latter date into September at least, if not also in putting forward, ordinarily, the former to perhaps the end of May. The subsequent advice about making tame hay will not apply to these parts, and hence to the valleys of Western Montana, for many years to come: "Tame hay is more nutritious, but stock usually like good prairie hay better. Tame hay must be made at a season when rains are frequent; while the best time to make prairie hay is in the month of August and the early part of September, when, as a rule, but little if any rain may be expected." Whereon we refer the interested reader to obser- vations scattered thro' our summer journal. "... In the latter part of the growing season tame grasses furnish a better quality of feed than the wild sorts. "The first and simplest mode is to sow tame grass seed, especially timothy and blue grass, on the native prairie, when it first begins to fall from tramping or too close feeding. This seeding should, if possible, be done early in the spring, on one of the late snows. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 169 If the soil, when soft, be well scarified with a sharp harrow, it will increase the chances of a catch. With good seed sown in this wa}', success is almost certain. "The only kinds of tame grasses that have been extensively tested west of the Missouri, are: Timo- thy, Kentucky blue grass, and orchard grass. Only red clover and white clover have been grown on a scale sufhciently extensive to justify absolute con- fidence '' October ist. — Mr. Sweetman brings in some nine- ty-three quarts of cream for the creamery at Slayton. This or nearly as much is the daily output of forty- odd cows, which yield about $1,500 a year in this way. His two hundred head of cattle and some eight or ten horses are fed in vsdnter with the four hundred and fifty or four hundred and seventy-five tons of hay put up — except the milk cows, which receive extra feed. The triple stables are immense, and capable of comfortably housing all the live stock. A large wind-mill supplies water from a well for house, creamery and stables. Some six or seven men run the farm and stock. Cattle from Buffalo Lake are going to market only next year — the third — for cattle calved here in the year 188 1. October id^ '}^d and \th. — At night we have been having heavy frosts, the thermometer ranging from 38 to 25 degrees above zero. Ice formed several nights in a hard scale on watery puddles, even on the slough shores. Snow^ is reported this week from St. Paul, Mankato and Sleepy Eye. vSome fog and droppy rain out of the mist to-day constitute the weather record. 190 six seasons on our prairies. Fall Crop Reports. Without official inquiries or figures, I learn from private sources of farmers here and about, that wheat has ranged in yield from thirteen to thirty-one bush- els per acre, the average being somewhere about twenty or twenty-odd for this and the adjoining region. Oats run from forty to sixty bushels — one poor fellow next door to us having the latter, and almost everybody exceeding the former. Flax runs variously from twelve or thirteen to eighteen bushels, and sells for from one dollar to one dollar and five cents. Oats brings only fifteen cents; wheat about eighty cents. The corn yield has been light. Frost has caught considerable in flat lands in the lower levels. In general, treeless prairie corn can scarcely be accounted except for fall feed. Vegetables, how- ever, are just the reverse. They grow enormous, with careful culture; and good, with almost next to none. Large quantities of fine potatoes, fine cucum- bers, onions, beets, turnips and beans, tolerable cab- bage and parsnips, have been gotten out of this patch of ground — second time ploughed — just over the road from the priest's house. And I can aver it has all not received the cultivation that would re-yield seed elsewhere. Here are some samples from our neigh- boring county, Nobles. Tho' but newspaper reports, they coincide so closely with personal observations that they may be received with but few "grains of salt:" " Garret Fagin threshed sixteen bushels of flax, twenty of wheat and fifty of oats per acre. James Carey threshed fifteen bushels of flax, eighteen of wheat and fifty of oats per acre. Dick O'Hearn SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I9I threshed eighteen bushels of wheat, twelve of flax and fifty of oats per acre." "Mr. William Harrison has been threshing some. His wheat turns out about twenty bushels per acre, and his oats fifty. Sam. Harrison had one piece of wheat that went thirty-one bushels per acre." "Tom Burke threshed thirteen bushels of flax to the acre. Tom Fagin threshed twelve bushels of flax, twenty bushels of wheat, twenty-one bushels of bar- ley. Tim Larkin threshed thirteen bushels of flax, forty-seven bushels of oats, eighteen bushels of wheat to the acre. Mr. R. O'Day has been threshing on the Boyle farm, north of town, and gives the follow- ing results: From seventy acres of wheat they got 1,400 bushels; one hundred acres of rye, 375 bushels; nine acres timothy, seventy-seven bushels, and flax 478 bushels, or fifteen and one-half bushels to the acre." From Pipestone County Fair we have this general corn record: "Considering the season, corn of astonishing size and in great abundance was displayed. Ears from twelve to fourteen inches long and proportionately large in circumference, and stalks ten to twelve feet high, do not grow every year in every county, but such were on exhibition at the Fair." J. T. Suftron's exhibit of pumpkins: "On less than an acre of ground planted promiscuously thro' the corn, he has raised one hundred and seventy, a large majority of them perfectly ripe, and many of them extra large size, three of which weighed respectively forty-six and one-half, sixty-two and one-half and seventy pounds. The two largest were purchased 192 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. on sight by the enterprising Close Brothers, to be placed on the tables in their office for exhibition, to show what Pipestone soil can produce." From Jackson County: "Reports and big samples continue to roll into the 'Republic' office of the im- mense and perfect crop of potatoes raised in Jackson County this year. We last week spoke of a citizen of Jackson raising one and one-half bushels of white elephant from two potatoes, and now in comes Mr. Gillis and scoops the Jacksonite by raising a plump two bushels of the same kind from the 'same amount of seed. And Barney Qiiinn, the jovial settler up the river, from the Emerald Isle — he has raised some 'whoppers' of the star variety, and reports getting an honest ten bushels of the raspberry variety from twelve seed potatoes. H. S. Schlott, of this village, has grown large quantities of several new and choice imported grades." Finally from Murray — our own county — we pre- sent these: Thos. Doolin threshed six acres of wheat that yielded thirty and one-half bushels per acre, and four acres of flax which went twenty-eight bushels clean. Mr. H. Stanley's threshing machine, run by Wm. McDermet, threshed seven hundred and ten bushels of oats for H. Scovell, of Cameron, from morning until 10 o'clock. Only one, A. B. Smith, raises 1.370 bushels of oats on eighteen acres, or seventy-one bushels per acre! which is hard to swallow. October ^th — Sunday. — At leisure from the busy flurry of the moilful week, we can rest on the Lord's day, aye, and Lady's day, the solemnity of the SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I93 sweet Holy Rosary. To-day is blowy and rainful, fitfully. Heavy summer rain, and distant thunder prevailed last night, and the low, soft, white moun- tains in the East, that looked earth-mountains of snowy piling, had melted into the leaden rain sky, until just now, when the sun, struggling with the watery vapors, gave signs ol conquering. Autumn and Summer are contending loo, and suggest the de- scriptive lay: PRAIRIE 0( rOBER. God give unbosomed ^. immer Yet awhile to stay: Nor muffled Winter cii.nber Prairie sky and way! To-day is lowering, leaden — Mournful pipes the breeze; Blades yellow, leaflets redden — Fall hath painted these. But yesterday was blooming, Softly warm the clouds! Ah me! the Winter's looming, Fierce in snowy shrouds, October's life November Chills and palsies thro': Bleak winds blow, man, remember, Suinmer's dirge for you. Yet hope! the sun grows whiter, Fleece clouds gem the blue. — Death's life foreruns a brighter — Be among the few. Sprite month, days russet — shady, Whose each Sunday's thine, Conduct us, Angel's Lady, Thro' life's chequered shine! 194 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PKAIRIES. October ()th. — I see reports of Indian summer visiting our neighbor counties. I believe it has come in its northern guise to our Avoca. The three past days have been warmer; in fact, quite warm at times. Even the nights have been a trifle close until frost accompanied the clear evenings. Soft clouds and warm tinted sunrises and sets have brought geniality. The birds twitter some again. I don't find the sweet haziness, but seldom at least — that is a characteristic of lower latitudes. The equableness is disturbed by fretful gusts of storms and wind. The weather changed perceptibly yesterday evening from what it was in the morning. At first, before noon, out foot- ng after a stray flock of ducks or chickens , I got into a great lather of perspiration, well madefied thro' and bathed. Riding in the afternoon, a good fall overcoat was a necessity. And so it changes. The muskrats are building high and narrow, and I heard a shrewd farmer predict an autumnal winter, more open than usual. The muskrats know if Ven- nor don't. October loth. — Mr. Drueke, agent of a large grain firm, reports thirteen car-loads of flaxseed of four, hundred and fifty to five hundred bushels each — since about a month — received and shipped from here. He paid ninety-five cents. It advanced to $1.05 here. Rumor says to $1.17 in Fulda. The agent expects to export some 30,000 bushels of flax from here by January ist. Up to last Saturday Avoca had shipped twice as much seed as Fulda; and only Hadley, twelve miles above, had reported more. Wonderful, tho' natural, to relate, only thirty bu. hels of wheat have left here; people only raising SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I95 for their own consumption. One Thos. Hargedon says he has housed one hundred and fifty bushels of wheat — some damaged — a tolerably large yield, if rightly measured. Our Indian summer has been rudely broken into last night and this morning by a fall of snow, which melts pretty much as it touches ground. The roofs and trees were plentifully sprinkled with a light coating of white at six A. M. Our hunting for the past ten days has been sporadic, resulting in only scattered braces of duck and trios of chickens, in all about sixteen pieces, including some yellow-shank snipe. Some fine specimens of snow-white, long- billed pelicans were shot at Mr. Dan. Murphy's in the last fortnight. They had the great pouch under the bill, and were so white they were mistaken for swans on the wing. Ducks are swimming by hun- dreds and thousands; some seeming inclined to migrate. Geese quack about every day. Chickens even yet are found in quantities. All game is shy and hard to get at. By II or 12 M., the snow has, after a more violent effort at a little blowing storm, subsided, and the evening has been of fitful sunshine. Wintry clouds hang about sullen and cold. Conquer Autumn! Nuns' School Examinations." October \zth. — In view of the superficiality and humbuggery of public school examinations of four- teen and fifteen-year-old girls for teachers — some right here, who are given certificates or offered such before their papers are examined — it is refreshing to see the semi-annual examination reports of the III 196 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. and V Forms, in the schools of higher grade of the Nuns of the Holy Child. Here are specimen ques- tions answered by a girl thirteen years old in her third year: Geography — Draw from memory map of Central Europe. What rivers empty into the Baltic, North, Mediterranean, Adriatic, Black Seas, etc.? For what are these cities remarkable, and where situated? — Lyons, Sevres, Ley den, Tokay, Trieste, Basle, Pisa, Lausanne, etc. (The map drawn is excellent, fit for copy for the press. It is colored, and the principal rivers, mountains, cities, and many of minor importance are given, especially in France and Germany.) Natural Philosophy — What is com- pound motion? Illustrate. (And the illustrations are real pieces of art for a child, better than most printed ones.) Define Cohesion, Adhesion, Capil- lary Attraction. Why do salts, etc., dissolve in water? What is motion? What are gravitation, gravity, weight, etc.? General Knowledge — What do you know of the history of pottery? General characteristics of a family of birds — describe? De- scribe process of making leather. French — Qu ap- pelle-t'on verbes irreguliers? Temps simples de Fin- dicatif, subjonctif, des verbes: savoir, dire, courir — leur auxiliares? Ecrivez une lettre descriptive: Ceque vous savez sur le riz, le clou de girofle, le cafeier, la canne a sucre. Latin — Of possessives, declension, conjugation. Translation, parsing. Nine questions. (And these, with the ones above in French, are an- swered rather better than some others; the French notably so, because of the French extraction of the pupil.) United States History — Principal battles fought in Revolutionary war: year, name, American SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I97 and British Commanders, victors, accounts of par- ticular battles, Burgoyne's campaign, sketch of Wash- ington's life (map is attached of American Indians, a rather difficult subject for grown persons.) En- glish History : Chart of Tudors and Stuarts, Lady J. Grey, account of reign (.'') of Oliver Cromwell, Ar- mada, Elizabeth. Church History — St. Paul's journey with large map (good.) The ten persecutions, emperors, and popes, and other martyrs. Heresies between I and VIII centuries. Apologists, Latin and Greek Fathers, sketch of two Saints, St. Paul of Thebes, St. Cecilia. Grecian History — Map of Archipelago and Greece, and Coast of Asia. E^iglish Literature — History of Robert of Sicily. Explain: 7neet^ blare^ Saturnian, reign^ motley garb, dais, clerk. Derive: Chant, sedition, etc., twenty words. Grammar — Parsing. What are the three ele- ments of English? Describe Greek elements: From what other sources are some words derived? (And the child gives a list of four to six words from thir- teen different languages, at thirteen years old! The report is, however, genuine without a doubt; for it abounds with faults of grammar and specially orthog- raphy, blamable much on her French origin.) The V Form, by a girl sixteen years old, em- braces Astronomy, Higher Grammar, Literature, Physical Geography, Physiology, Mediaeval His- tory, etc. I. Astronomy — (with tolerably drawn map of North Polar section of the sphere, drawn from 198 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. memory, as those given above.) Signs of Zodiac for three months, North ecliptic constellation, Hydra and Centaurus. II. Grammar — Analysis of Milton's "Sonnet on Blindness." Uses of "it." Gerund. Table of Aux- iliaries: strong, weak and mixed verbs: Do^ be- ware, q7ioth, ought. Infinitives. Literature — Shakespearean Dramatists, dates and works. Writers and Poets from Elizabeth to Resto- ration. Ben. Johnson, on "Decay of Drama," Lives of Cowley, Waller or Benton and Hobbes. Criticize Milton as poet and prose writer, his works, "Paradise Lost." IV. Geography — Character of Ocean Currents, (fairly good and full). Explain all about them, in seven questions. Atmosphere, Winds, Monsoons, Routes, United States to Europe, Australia, Map of vicinity of New York city (more than most people know). V. Physiology — Skin, Hands, Nails, Teeth, Voice, Lungs, Heart. VI. Mediceval History — Eight Crusades — Table of Summary, Fred. II., Fred. Barbarossa, Emancipa- tion of Cities, Feudalism, Chivalry, Sketch of Knight Templars. Contemj^orary Sovereigns of IV Epoch, with great men. Table of events and persons in V Epoch of Middle Ages, RudoljDh of Hapsburg, "Golden Bull," "Hundred-years" War. Council of Constance, "Sicilian Vespers," Rise of Ottoman Empire and taking of Constantinople, 1453- Map of all. Avoca, October 11th. — Record of Mr. Mike Shan- key's threshing: J. Fitzsimons, one hundred, and SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. I99 eighteen bushels flax. Phil. Flynn, wheat, one hun- dred and thirty-three bushels; flax, two hundred and fifty-one and one-half bushels; oats, four hundred and ninety bushels. Jno. Johnson, wheat, sixty- eight; oats, sixty-one; flax, one hundred and twenty- five. Pat. Dwyer, over nine hundred of oats; two hundred and thirty flax; some four hundred left to thi'esh; wheat over two hundred. Pat. Farrell, oats, seven hundred bushels. Lawrence Brien, i,ioo bushels oats from twenty-two acres; wheat, three hundred bushels from eighteen acres; barley, two hundred and thirty-six from nine and one-half acres; flax, one hundred and five bushels from twelve acres; peas, seventy-five bushels to the acre. Pete Conroy, of Avoca, twenty -seven bushels of wheat to the acre; fifty-two of oats; seventeen of flax; had very tolerable corn. Prairie Indian Summer. October \2th, i^th, i th and i^th. — Our Indian summer has resumed its milder sway, and we are having glorious days and fine, tho' hoar-frosty, nights; the frost making almost as thick a layer as the actual snow we had. Birds of hardier kind are about yet, and I have seen several yellow and other colored butterflies. Fhes trouble one but little, still make their presence felt. About lo to 2 P. M., or a little later, the sun is quite warm to the exerciser. A hearty sweat can be had on short notice for the chase of a chicken or duck. We have enjoyed several sunsets, one specially fine colored and the sunrises are, if not warm, clear and beautiful. The painting the prairie fires, now rampant, make on the horizon 200 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. are nearly as varied as the clouds. The smoke slants up in a rippling mass, dark pink, even crimson, be- times The flames remind one of fiery sunset clouds, except, of course, they change more rapidly, and lick up into the curling smoke with their great forked tongues. Looking at the village to-day from oft' in the prai- rie, it has the appearance of w^hat we enjoyed in the young spring time, save for an undefined haziness. Trees are fast losing their verdure, and still more their leaves. I just learned one could buy a tolerable- sized tree, on a district about a lake some distance oflT, for seventy-five cents. Cheap fuel can be had at Mankato for $2.50 or $3.00 per cord, the freight to here of course extra. It is hard and good. October i6th. — High cold wind blew from south- east nearly all day, and we have stirred out but little. Struggling Sol was ruled out, and his fitful shine but added gloom to the mournfully piping winds. This is surely too cold for even Indians in summer. The rawness eftects more than the cold. We have had several fine messes, Fridays principally, of frog- legs. The creatures have been swarming, jumping the lake banks in living cataracts, for these two or three weeks, all about the prairie in several rods of the water. They are the orthodox green and brown edible frog, proved so by the good eating we have got by frying and stewing them. Pity some young- sters do not get up an industry in frogs, killing them with sticks, or better, beating them down to the lake shores, where others could hold long nets and scoop them up by the literal thousands. They would sell well in any city or town of size. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 20I October i^th. — The blow from Southeast turned in some rain upon us last night, and to-day it has been keeping up a steady gale of some velocity, ac- companied by intermittent, driving rain and some- times sharp showers. It was cold, even cuttmg, on about noon and up to dark. October iStk. — The weather has changed to the op- posite pole of crystal clearness, comfortable warmth in sun and with exercise, ushering in with a bright sunrise, and going out with a roseate sunset, fringed with galleons of crimson edged with fiery jewels. The night fell under one of those topazine skies, lustrous, shaded, and contrasted against blue islands — a face of a nun in her hood of white and serge. Our but little waned moon shone out in her em- pyrean sphere, softening all. We had a short hunt before dinner, and before supper. We got but one fine-plumaged wood duck out of two water fowls we shot, and the ones which flew away with possi- ble loads of shot in and about their feathery coats. If a cat has nine lives, surely some drakes can boast of ten. The other day we killed a regular north- western diver, and for want of better had it served up to some newcomers, who devoured it all in a trice, and smacked their lips over it. Tricks on Travelers. This is not the first we have had cooked for con- noisseurs. We put a mud hen or two on the table before some Eastern ecclesiastics, and they ate them without a whimper. Even a full-blooded John Bull averred there was nothing peculiar or distasteful about them, tho' he didn't eat more than a taste. 202 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. The worst joke we have practiced was to mix a prairie squirrel — practically a burrowing rat — before an eminent dignitary on the same platter with a rabbit or hare. He ate several quarters of it without changing countenance. And yet here comes an English-bred and nourished gentleman, who uses profane expressions v^hen you mention eating frog- legs to him! We'll serve him some for dinner to- day in a stew or fry, and wager he'll eat and drink without nausea, suckino^ froo^s' toes! Some one characterizes ''a Scotchman as one who is never at home except when he is abroad;" an Englishman, "one who is never contented save when he is grumbling;" an Irishman as "an individual con- tradictory, who is never at peace unless he is fight- ing." Bon-77iot^ not far from the truth. I believe — I know — English eat too much, not to speak of drinking; "thinking they should starve," as a gentle- man just over and well acquainted with their habits, says, "if they didn't eat five meals a day — at least four square ones. At 9 A. M. a great, solid break- fast; lunch big as an ordinary meal, only cold (and who would not lunch on English cold beef roast?), at meridian; dinner proper at 4 P. M., and with tea at six; a gross supper between 9 and 10 P. M. To this may be added a tasse de cafe, when they awake in the morning, if they do before regular breakfast time. It is rather discouraging on sacerdotal spirit- uality to learn these five meals are the ??iot cVordre in an English seminary." I fancy it will be rather a disadvantageous change, if not an impossibility in the line of mortification, for those accustomed to five or even four dainty SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 203 meals, to come down to two rough repasts on some- thing as strong as corned beef or uncorned pork and sourkraut, as is so often the practice here in winter. People naturally staying up late and rising not much before nine or ten o'clock in the morning, in the short cold days of only about half the length of the summer days — eight or nine hours — it would be folly to eat more than say two regular meals and a luncheon. One finds, however, his appetite calls for the substantial, and he can stow away so much at a sitting that he will not be considered safe in replenishing too soon. October \<^th. — Our capture of frogs this morning was a splendid failure, as the cold, biting winds drove the poor leapers into their hiding places. Of the millions generally seen hopping around we found but a few benumbed little stragglers, not worth attention as game, and too pitiable to touch. The northern breezes have played havoc with our Indian summer again, and nearly stripped the re- maining leaves, already "... Fallen into yellow .... and sere." This fits pre-eminently the description of the greater grasses ; nothing apparently remaining green but scattered bunches of blades on the sides of the new breaks. Last night a skim of ice from one-half to three-fourths of an inch coated the small sloughs, and the water left over in buckets and barrels froze an inch thicker still. It was some warmer at and after noon, turning again bitterly cold towards sun- set, heavily beclouded. I begin to believe the ducks and geese are migrating or proximately preparing to move South. They fly about violently and rest- 204 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. lessly, higher than usual. Messengers seem scurry- ing back and forth, bent on business communications requiring dis] atch. Flocks are growing larger, and crowd into greater masses. There are no vegetable islands on upper Lake St. Rose, as we had last fall. On these used to congregate the flocks of smaller and greater snipe, and tiny water birds; and how- ever ungenerous it may seem, we took advantage of the innocence of the creatures, and, rowing up, poured broadsides into them that soon filled a good pail with the choicest game. Our once carefully rigged, flatbottom sail-boat is lying up at "Arbor Point" in a dilapidated condition — the hulk under water, the rudder broken, mast loosened at the base, and sail flapping. How I could tweak the nose of that opposite and obstinate Norseman who took the "sail" to get home, and tied it so carelessly the gale broke it loose and drifted it here to ruin. I heard to-day of a farmer who has two dozen hogs he has fattened on unripe corn and is ready to sell. Others might imitate this scheme. Flax has advanced to $1.07 at Avoca, and $1.12 at Fulda; tho' raisers say they would rather sell here, five cents a bushel not paying for hauling further. October 2\st. — We predicted snow last night; and to be sure, we peep out this morning and see the ground covered to the depth of several inches and flakes still falling. The wind is from the southeast, and it is not distressingly cold, in fact much more pleasant than yesterday or the day before, overhead, tho' the roads became very muddy this afternoon. The snow held up about 10 A. M., and melted nearly all away by night, day setting cold and drizzly. SIX WEEKS IN OUR ROCKIES. 205 I have heard of and seen nothing in the shape of game, except some whitebodied, quacking geese, flurrying west. October 23^^. — Tho' the snow disappeared from Avoca and thereabouts on the 21st, it remained at Woodstock, thirty miles above, till last night; also on the road to St. Paul. I find it lies pretty thick at and about Kasota and all along the line to the Mis- sissippi. It is something like an ordinary snow in Kentucky, half-and-half snow and sunshine, little falling and melting soon. Eastern and Western "Valley of the Im- maculate." October 2']th — y:)th. — As we pass thro' Southern and Eastern Wisconsin the short meadows are green, like choice plots about the wooded region of Min- nesota. Some fine, tho' less frequent, lakes diversify the landscape, framing their mirror-bosoms in the rustic copses of the shores. We leave the rugged pineries and dalles and cataracts far towards the North and West, and glide over wooded prairies now. Madison, Wisconsin. I do not find the corn better, in many places, than on the Minnesota " Coteaux des prairies''' we have just left, until we approach the border country be- tween ' Wisconsin and Illinois. Here the staple grain seems, from the specimens we spy in passing, about of a similar quality and quantity per acre as on the wooded portions across the valley of the "Im- maculate Conception" — the old Catholic name for the Upper Mississippi. It will bear still further re- 2o6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. petition, that the southeastern part of Wisconsin is very Hke its compeer's corresponding portions across the river in singular beauty and fertility. i\n Irish gentleman farmer has gone so far as to compare feature for feature of the soil, natural growth, land-lie^ etc., of Southeastern lovv^a v^^ith the best agricultural regions of the interior of England. Similarly, one might counterpart rural Belgium, the inland Rhine provinces, Alsace — any of the best and most picturesque prairie portions of Europe — in a random selection from the better lands in the prairie belt west of the Mississippi — in the country watered by the still greater Missouri and its tributaries — the Platte, Niobrara, James or Dakota. There are sim- ply no finer — scarcely as fine — lands in the wide world, as can be selected here by a mediocre judge. But it speaks for itself, this eastern valley of the "Im- maculate Conception," as we will persist in calling it, in spite of the seemingly hopeless fixing of the Indian-derived, but doubly corrupted name. Mississippi is neither the right Indian appellation, nor the original one given its waters by the pioneers, Hennepin, Marquette, LaSalle, LeSueur and their comrades. It takes observation to determine that, in fact, the Missouri is the "big" as well as the "Muddy Waters;" and that the Mississippi, of en- tirely diflferent character, is but its greatest north- ern tributary. This tributary is vindicated as the original discovery of the priests who named it for its amber-like limpidity, its green shores, and sweet islands, its now and again expanding lakes, as the river of the "Immaculate." six weeks in our rockies. zqf] Catholic Future of the American Prairies. Shall this omen, this constant tradition, be buried with the bones of the only half-immortalized Recol- lect, Hennepin — the but lately recognized Mar- quette.^ It behooves Catholics of Europe and Amer- ica — above all English-speaking Catholics — to con- tinue to answer this galling question by joining in the increasing chorus from Catholic throats, that are making the "Immaculate Conception Valley" ring with the acclaim: "Blest Mary shall be dowered anew with these beautiful and broad lands of hers, in bountiful compensation for the loss of her dowry in once Catholic England and Europe." Catholics shall so "possess the land" by the meek conquest of occupation and immigration into the western valley of the Mississippi, that every State and Territory in its imperial extent shall rejoice in an ever-expand- ing majority of the children of God and Blessed Mary Immaculate.* It is being done — the Church is extending her borders and widening her tent, more beautiful than the painted skins of Solomon's, in Minnesota and Iowa, Dakota and Montana, Nebraska and Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri, on to the Rocky Mountain States and Territories. Nay, we leap the grand Rockies and extend her glorious bounds from the "great river even unto the sea." Balboa, who feasted his eyes on the Pacific, but represents feebly the mighty multitude of Catholics who shall one day make the sea alone the boundary of the sweet con- quests of the Mother of Civilization, the only Church of the living God. * This practical work of the Colonization Association will be much ad- vanced by the Rev. J. J. Riordan at his post in Castle Garden, New York. 20$ SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Nor will it be by mere rhapsodies — tho' enthusi- asm be the great prime mover of all great designs. Take the square of about a dozen States and Ter- ritories from the British to the southern line of Ken- tucky, Missouri, and westward to the Rocky Moun- tains, including, however. New Mexico. Bound its western limit by the Rockies and the east by the two greater lakes and the Indiana eastern boundary. And in this area of about 33 degrees, respectively, of latitude and longitude, you have in the valley of the Upper Mississippi, in this year of grace 1884, over 3,000,000 Catholics, under four Archbishops, with eighteen suffragan Bishops and Vicars Apostolic, and two Coadjutors. These twenty-four Prelates are assisted by 2,600, near 3,700 priests, who serve 3,300 to 3,300 churches and chapels. The schools of all grades, from the theological seminaries to the humble orphanages, number up- wards of 1,500, with 177,000 students and pupils, taught by over 4,400 religious and lay teachers. Most of these figures are only approximations — esti- mates more or less accurate, but not calculated to mislead into exaggeration. Continually inflowing tens of thousands up to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from abroad, and of migrators from the South and East, make accuracy almost impossible, but allow additions in- stead of subtractions. It needs no extraordinary talent of forecast to pre- dict what is being actually fulfilled before our eyes, that these dozen States, by the first decade of the twentieth century, will have swelled to sixteen or eighteen and sustain twelve, or at least ten millions SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 2O9 more of people — near half of whom shall be chil- dren of the Church. The Apostolic Vicariates will have grown to Bishoprics — Bishoprics to Metropol- itan Sees. Kentucky, or more probably Indiana, on the east of the valley may compete with Minnesota or Nebraska on the west, for the next Archiepisco- pal Sees. Many new Sees are bound to follow the great influx of Catholics on all the prairie lands to the very roots of the Rockies and from Montana to Mexico, in proportion as the center of the whole population moves steadily and rapidly from the middle of the Ohio Valley towards the juncture of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Our most Catholic cities on or near the Atlantic, the great Lakes and the Mississippi, are made the largest of the Union by their millions of Catholics, who con- sequently have not room to turn round in their tene- ments or in their churches. And these cities must give up their wanting poor and starving souls to freedom and plenty and salvation on the boundless prairies of God. The overcrowded, and conse- quently ill-served churches of the North Atlantic States must, perforce, send their surplus Catholics West, if they would save them from temporal and spiritual loss — not to say, damnation. There must come a crash if the eastern and western pans of the scales be not more equally trimmed. The West pos- sesses what the East desires — room and feed. Happy shall be the lot of the Church in her new conquests and gatherings of her multifarious chil- dren, if she but find ever the same zealous coadjutors to build up homes and altars for her dear ones! That she shall be equal to the task we have proof 2IO SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. in the unprecedented increase of dioceses and arch- dioceses in Wisconsin, Michigan and IlUnois. See the corresponding increase of the Church's priests and people, crowding the shores of all the lakes of our northern line. Look across the Mississippi and see whether you do not recognize the new Chicagos, Milwaukees and Clevelands rising in the new West. Illinois and its northern neighbors do not much more than compete with the opposing States over the valley in temporals or spirituals. The child will soon be the equal of the parent — the State of yesterday with the State of the day before yesterday. Twenty-five miles north of Chicago you have but a model of what the environs of St. Paul and Min- neapolis and the twin cities of the Mississippi and the Missouri will become in a quarter of a century, more or less. The Twin City of the Upper Mississippi is already third in expenditure of wealth and increase of build- ings in the Union — either one of the pair, seventh in the long list of American cities. God bless! Mary extend her white hands over, these consecrated regions; give increase of the earth as it retards not in the road to heaven, and make this the chosen home of as many devoted millions as failing Europe, our crowded East and poorer South, can pour on the prairies! CONCLUSION Whence to Come — Where to Go. But there is another aspect of the comparison of the Eastern as put alongside the Western Valley of the Mississippi. It is the business aspect of finding better locations for homes, more room for farms, better farms — the many advantages of the West over the East, as a region to people w^ith those spe- cially having no good establishment where they are and possessing moderate means to start elsewhere. As to the persons themselves, no one is going to be so mad in this practical community of ours as to advocate wholesale, indiscriminate exoduses of the poorer and better-to-do classes, of malcontents, real- ly solid farmers, tradesmen — everybody to make up at once a Commonwealth complete. Selections (percentage) are all the East needs to give, and all the West cares to have, to make both better off. One by one, or at least, the society unit, family by family, is the oldest and best style for civilized peo- ple to emigrate and migrate, unless such peculiar cir- cumstances — such unbearable hardships of life, of Government or community hatred should make it reasonable for many to leave together and settle down again together. The Horace Greeleyan advice has some pith of wisdom in it. But he said cautiously, "I say — "as if afraid of his too great generality of invitation, even 212 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. after being restricted to the "young man" class. If it was only relatively good then, it is less good now. The isolation and separation of sexes will cause as much dearth of women in the prairies as of men in the manufacturing districts of New England. The West wants indeed, at first, agriculturists — practical farmers, and more of them than she posses- ses. vStill, it is not such an anomaly to invite more city people, tradesmen, mechanics, and those who have no such settled occupation, to join with farm- ers and mingle among them, learn from them and become like them. Farming is easier West than East of the Mississippi, and our inventive genius has made knowledge common and once exclusive expe- rience the boon of the community. Nature favors machinery more in the West, and the unpracticed can learn to run machines where they would be long awkward at manual labor at the plough, hoe, axe-handle. Besides, too many youngsters have crowded the cities, and are trying to shirk labor by seeking clerkships, and find both spiritual and temporal loss in the midst of unaccustomed contami- nations. Fifteen years ago it was proven that the very great majority of those living in the country principally east of the Mississippi, were crowded, into about fifty cities. What is this but the country people wresting themselves from their legitimate occupations and usurping the places of townpeople? The balance must be restored by giving back these crowded millions to their God -given and once pos- sessed freedom — health, home, faith — by transferring them back to their native occupations. It is only trimming the scales by restoration of equal weights, of accustomed weights. SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 213 The rural population ought to exceed the urban — the country at large to contain much more than often badly-selected sites to crowd millions into and crush the life and energy out of them, make machines of them for selfish purposes, for monopoly, for the glutted few — the aristocrats among us who are becoming nobles too fast, and have too many vas- sals. We want no oligarchies, and we shall go on creating them, or bolstering up still more the ones already in power, and disposed to use their power, even against the will of Legislatures and Senates? We want Catholics especially to be freed from tram- mels and vassalage, filth and consequent endemics and epidemics, elbowing and discontent. We want broader fields for their ambition, greater aims for their designs, better and farther-reaching results from their hard labors. The ground faces of the poor must be uplifted and look abroad on plenty; the worked-down must have some content of life, and not curse the day in which they were born. A time will come after the communities in the West grow larger and more comprehensive of all that is ne- cessary for a good civil life and temporal prosperity, when we can invite with more confidence the poorer, the worse- provided classes of our brethren to sit down at the board of plenty in the household of faith built up in the glorious West. We do now re- strict invitations to those who are not perhaps suf- fering worst in the built-up and overcrowded cities, simply because the poorest are shiftless when thrown entirely on their own resources, and would not only suffer more, probably, when left to make a subsistence on the prairies than in the city, but would be a burden 214 ^^^ SEASONvS ON OUR PRAIRIES. on those who are not uncharitable so much as they are unable to stretch their hands in relief, for a few years, beyond their own thresholds, and have to feed the mouths more dependent upon them. But the time of the poorer shall come, and it shall come the more quickly by those just above them leaving the poorer their places by moving West, and giving the same a chance to rise to some industry, self-dependence and energy of practical work before they expose themselves to the hardships they would not survive. Where, next, ought people to come from inside our United States, and to what spots ought they to migrate to furnish those prairies of ours with their proportion of population and rendei them the granary of the world? No man can speci- fy where they should not come from, provided always the individual families are not well estab- lished and have means to move. Not to be too general, however, a letter of August, 1880, (private, but tacitly left free to publish) from Rt. Rev. John L. Spalding, of Peoria, opens both sides of the practical questions by determining as follows: "Nebraska and Dakota are the best points in the United States for settlers. Several new railroads are building into Dakota, and homesteads of 160 acres can be had very near the depots. There is a great rush for these lands, and our good Kentucky Catholics will wait until they are all gone. Dakota has a fine climate and excellent soil. There are Catholic settlements in Kentucky where the soil was never good and is now worthless." * * * These predictions have been fulfilled, and the choice shown good. Since the middle of '80 the eftorts of the SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 215 Colonization Associations have been directed success- fully to the obtaining of lands for Catholic settle- ments in one of these two regions, and the many others south to the Gulf, commented on twice or thrice in these pages. The recent wise appointment of Rev. J. J. Riordan, of St. Peter's, N. Y., now at his self-sacrificing post at Castle Garden, will speed the practical working of the settlements, both for immigrants and migrators in the West. I have heard the colonization authorities often assert that the railroad lands in Minnesota have about all, if not quite all, been taken up, and you can now, outside the general offers of the colony agents, only watch your chances for obtaining choice spots from the scattered dissatisfied or the non-Catholics in the vicinity of Catholic settlements, who want to sell out and go farther. The other States and territories have plenty of room for fine selections, to please all tastes and judgments — from the very warm to the much colder climates, and with soil of almost the identical formation in all our latitudes. The prospector ought to look for and inspect the desiderated locations for himself and those intimately interested; for, good and less good, tolerable and proximately useless lie side by side, in these as in all other farming and grazing sections. And when he shall have definitely chosen, he may congratulate or blame himself first and last, and not be necessi- tated to fall back on vituperation or praise of those from whom he has obtained general or particular in- vitations. No one knows exactly what may fit an- other in land any more than he can judge precisely what will fit another in a hat. Finally, as to where to move from? 2l6 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. The episcopal remark about the thinness and the present iiselessness of certain regions in Kentucky can be verified to the letter. The vState has so long been settled and picked over, tho' sparsely populated and never invitingly opened to immigrants, that the great majority of farming sections have already got- ten into the hands of tight-grip owners who will not part with their holdings under a high consideration. A large section of the Bluegrass region w^as once largely in the hands of Catholics — and now, in the district of Georgetown and White Sulphur, for instance, but from three to five names of the old Catholic settlers can be found opposite these mag- nificent lands in the assessor's books. About Lebanon in Marion, Bardstown in Nelson, Springfield in Washington, many well-to-do Catho- lics of the old Maryland stock are scattered among many more non-Catholics; and great portions of the country are rocky or worn, and contain nothing like what ought to be, by this time, the thousands of children of the original sixty families of the famous league of emigrants from St. Mary's, and the shores of the Chesapeake, and descendants of later comers. The older settlers, again, in Breckinridge and lower Daviess Counties are comparatively com- fortable in comparison with their fathers, but have yet to grub in only tolerably productive soil- for their now-accounted short crops of corn and tobacco. Breckinridge, especially, the old "Bracks in the Ridges," is true to its name, and is rather more inclined to mountainous than hilly. The newer set- tlers among Catholics have gotten poor lands, and '.vear out their fingers' ends moiling in the rugged SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. 217 ridges and the rougher forests for often but a bare subsistence. Who would blame many from wishing to better their condition by migration? Our Ohio River-bottom farms, on both shores, are among our most valuable for grain production, but have so often, of late years, been subject to over- flows, that they invite cultivation by their richness, and repel by the manifold chances of seeing the farm produce, cattle, houses and all swept down to the Mississippi. Besides, except in Union and the borders of Daviess and Henderson Counties, the better locations are not possessed by or salable to other than wealthy Catholics. Those indeed of our Kentucky farmers who have moved to Missouri on the bottoms of the Mississippi have not fared much better, being often ruined by disastrous overflows as frequent as ours. As to Illinois and Indiana the inference is obvious that their Ohio river boundary lands, of very much the same fertility as the opposing Kentucky shores, are the victims of the same watery destroyer, tho' no one dis- putes the safer fertility of back-lying farms. A great — perhaps the greatest — corn and railroad State is the "country of the Illinois;" but it is so surrounded and run over by water in its lower lying portions, and even on the flatter prairies, that it takes considerable expense to make its prolific soil yield its full comple- ment. One who has traveled much in, for instance, the belt between Watseka on the east and Henne- pin on the west, after thanking God, turns to con- gratulate man on the invention of the ubiquitous, ever-crossing and re-crossing railroads — they are nearly the only mode of locomotion in parts of the year. 2l8 SIX SEASONS ON OUR PRAIRIES. Lower middle Indiana, to judge from what one can see from repeated transits by rail, seems produc- tive enough as far north as Indianapolis; but the higher in latitude you ascend the more unpopulated — if not depopulated — the prospect appears; and the land seems to yield little beyond scrub-oak and sparse w^eeds, until you touch the counties border- ing on Michigan. Thousands have moved from these, and the Indiana and Wisconsin prairies on west. No one who has traveled along the boundary lines of Illinois and Indiana can speak well of what he can see from the trains. It is one of the most uninteresting and apparently hopeless regions on the whole prairie east of the "Great Waters" for farming purposes. Michigan will scarcely come into our count; Wisconsin farms, tho', may, and stand fair in comparison of either their western or southern neighbors — at least in the parts south from a line drawn from the St. Croix river opposite St. Paul to a point above Milwaukee. Most of these States, indeed, have other and for them much more profitable outlooks in their coals, timber and minerals, as Kentucky and Michigan; in their manufactories and pineries as, respectively, Wisconsin and Illinois. But it may be said broadly that none of them will finally yield the same riches in grain and general pasturing, and must turn to riches of another source before they will, in the long run, compare favorably with the "Golden West." CODSTTEZSTTS. DEDICATED TO OUR LADY IMMACULATE. Paee MINNESOTA. A Prefatory May 7 Graceville, named after Rt. Rev.Thos. L. Grace, O. P., Bishop of St. Paul 10 Swift Co 10 DIARY OF SEASONS,iS83, 13-123 Avoca 13 White Bear Lake 15 John Ruskin, 18 Prairie Sunday 21 Prairie Birds .' 22 The Little Sleeper of Avoca.. 23 Nuns of the Holy Child 26, 35, 50. 57, 1 18. British Importations into the Canadian Northwest 28 Letter to "Boston Pilot" 28 Most Rev. Archbishop Lynch. 34 Mr. }no Sweetman 12, 35, 74 Prairie Hymns to St. Rose. 36, 63 Three Winters in Murray Co. 38 lona, " Home of the Sacred Heart" 40 Adrian, NoblesT| Co 42 Austrian Colonists 45 Letter to ''New York Free- man's Journal" 52 Domestic Teaching in Nuns' School 60 Fourth of July at Fulda, 18S3. 69 Rt. Rev. Jno. Ireland, D. D.. 70 Prairie Drunkards 72 St Paul and Minneapolis 82 Southeastern Minnesota 83 Lake Minnetonka 85 Minnesota's Summer Clime. 98 Dalles of the St. Croix 08 DAKOTA AND IOWA 103 Flandreau, Dak 104 Sioux Falls 107 Yankton, Dak .109 Bishop Brondel — Rt. Rev. Martin Marty, O. S. D no Northern Iowa no Prairies and Plains to the Rockies , 112 N. Pacific Railroad— Dakota —Montana 114-116 Items General on Prairies 114 NEBRASKA nj Council Bluffs and Omaha 112 Lincoln— Mr John Fitzgerald 117 Towns on the Platte 117 Rt. Rev, Jas, O'Connor, D. D.iiS Page Lands in Greeley County no Fr. S. Byrne, O . P., and Bay- ard Taylor 122 Nym Crinkle's "Iron Trail". 122 DIARY OF SIX WEEKS IN OURROCKIES J25 Towns and Herds on the Plains 128 WYOMING TERRITORY.... 129 Cheyenne 120 COLORADO 13b Central City 131 Items Religious and Profane on the Rocky Mountains — Colorado — Idaho — Montana —Mexico— N. Mexico 132 Georgetown i^e Green Lake of the Rockies... .139 A Songofthe Mountains 141 "Heigh ho! For the Mount- ains" i^e Berthoud Pass 148 Middle Park 145 Cowboys and Gentler Folk. ...149 Camp in Frazer Valley 152 A Cowboy "Codded" 157 A Deer-Capital Prize 160 Grand Lake, Col i6c A Fortnight Afoot 16S The"Rococo"and Ptarmigan. 170 Rocky Pencilings 170 DIARY OF SIX SEASONS RESUMED 181 Fulda, Minn 182 Currie, Minn., Church Dedi- cated— Rt. Rev J. L. Spald- ing, D. D 183 Ten Days at Buffalo Lake — Residence of Mr. John Sweetman 184 Prairie and Tame Grasses 187 Fall Crop Reports 190 Prairie October iq^ Nuns of the Holy Child's Semi-Annual Examination. 195 Prairie Indian Summer 199 Tricks on Travelers 201 EASTERN AND WESTERN "VALLEY OF THE IMMAC- ULATE" 205 Catholic Future of ourPrairies 207 Rev. J. J. Riordan 207 Whence to Come— Where to Go 2U BY THE SAME' AUTHOR: THE JUDGES OF FAITH VS. Godless Schools, The evidence of nearly 300 Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops in the past 50 years, all over the world, against secular State Schools, especially the testimony of over 50 Archbishops and Bishops of the United States condemning the unchristian character of the Public Schools. A work encouraged before publication by a number of American Bishops, and cordially endorsed by his Grace. Arch- bishop Gibbons, of Baltimore, Bishop O'Farrell, of Trenton, N. J., and others. Addressed to CATHOLIC PARENTS. PUBLISHED BY THOMAS D. EGAN, Catholic Agency, 42 Barclay St., New York, N. Y. For sale by him and Catholic Booksellers. Single copy, 25 cents; $18 a hundred; $2.50 a dozen. A LIMITED LOT ON SALE BY CHAS A. ROGERS, IBS & 1E7 Ulest Jeffersan Street, LauisnUe, Ky. IMPORTER, STATIONER, AND DEALER IN Catholic, School and Miscellaneous Books and Religious Articles. Wax Canci/es, Wax Tafers and Lighters^ Stearic Acid- Candles^ Olive Oil, Incense, Prepared Charcoal, Crucifixes, Medals, Candlesticks, Pictures, Picture Frames, Statues. <£rc. UfS' Liberal Discount to Clergymen, Libraries, School and Relig- ious Institutions. « 10? 89 il4 •l