nite Falls, I stepped off, but did not succeed in finding employment.
It is probable that being filled with the desire of exploration I only
half-heartedly sought for work; at any rate, on the third day, I found
myself far out upon the unbroken plain where only the hairlike buffalo
grass grew--beyond trees, beyond the plow, but not beyond settlement,
for here at the end of my third day's ride at Millbank, I found a hamlet
six months old, and the flock of shining yellow pine shanties strewn
upon the sod, gave me an illogical delight, but then I was
twenty-one--and it was sunset in the Land of the Dakotas!

All around me that night the talk was all of land, land! Nearly every
man I met was bound for the "Jim River valley," and each voice was
aquiver with hope, each eye alight with anticipation of certain
success. Even the women had begun to catch something of this
enthusiasm, for the night was very beautiful and the next day promised
fair.

Again I slept on a cot in a room of rough pine, slept dreamlessly, and
was out early enough to witness the coming of dawn,--a wonderful moment
that sunrise was to me. Again, as eleven years before, I felt myself a
part of the new world, a world fresh from the hand of God. To the east
nothing could be seen but a vague expanse of yellow plain, misty purple
in its hollows, but to the west rose a long low wall of hills, the
Eastern Coteaux, up which a red line of prairie fire was slowly
creeping.

It was middle September. The air, magnificently crisp and clear, filled
me with desire of exploration, with vague resolution to do and dare. The
sound of horses and mules calling for their feed, the clatter of hammers
and the rasping of saws gave evidence of eager builders, of alert
adventurers, and I was hotly impatient to get forward.

At eight o'clock the engine drew out, pulling after it a dozen box-cars
laden with stock and household goods, and on the roof of a freight
caboose, together with several other young Jasons, I rode, bound for the
valley of the James.

It was a marvellous adventure. All the morning we rattled and rumbled
along, our engine snorting with effort, struggling with a load almost
too great for its strength. By noon we were up amid the rounded grassy
hills of the Sisseton Reservation where only the coyote ranged and the
Sioux made residence.

Here we caught our first glimpse of the James River valley, which seemed
to us at the moment as illimitable as the ocean and