the eastern sky, from the jagged summits at the south to
where the northernmost peak,--the Inyan Kara,--the Heengha-Kaaga of the
Sioux, stands sentinel over the sisterhood slumbering at her feet. These
are the Black Hills of Dakota, as we see them from the breaks of the
Mini Pusa, a long day's march to the west. Here to our right,
southeastward, rolls the powdery flood of the South Cheyenne, when
earlier in the season the melting snows go trickling down the
hill-sides. But to-day only in dry and waving ripples of sand can we
trace its course. If you would see the water, dig beneath the surface.
Here behind us rolls another sandy stream, dry as its Dakota name
implies,--Mini Pusa: Dry Water,--and to our right and rear is their
sandy confluence. Southward, almost to the very horizon, in waves and
rolls and ridges, bare of trees, void of color, the earth unfolds before
the eye, while, as though to relieve the strain of gazing over the
expanse so illimitable in its monotony, a blue line of cliffs and crags
stretches across the sky line for many degrees. Beyond that, out of
sight to the southeast, lies the sheltered, fertile valley of the upper
White Earth River; and there are the legal homes of thousands of the
"nation's wards," the bands of the Dakotas--Ogallalla and Brule, led by
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. There, too, are clothed and fed and cared
for a thousand odd Cheyennes. Just over that ridge at its western end,
where it seems to blend into the general surface of upland prairie, a
faint blue peak leaps up into the heated air,--"Old Rawhide,"--the
landmark of the region. Farther off, southwestward, still another peak
rises blue and pale against the burning distance. 'Tis far across the
Platte, a good hundred miles away. Plainsmen to this day call it Larmie
in that iconoclastic slaughter of every poetic title that is their proud
characteristic. All over our grand continent it is the same. The names,
musical, sonorous, or descriptive, handed down as the heritage of the
French missionaries, the Spanish explorers, or the aboriginal owners,
are all giving way to that democratic intolerance of foreign title which
is the birthright of the free-born American. What name more grandly
descriptive could discoverer have given to the rounded, gloomy crest in
the southern sierras, bald at the crown, fringed with its circling
pines,--what better name than Monte San Mateo--Saint Matthew,--he of the
shaven poll?

Over a century the ti