walking along the road. To my inquiry whether he was going into 

 "the Springs," he made an affirmative grunt and, on asking further 

 whether he didn't want a Uft, I received no answer, but he cUmbed 

 into the back of the wagon and uttered no sound for the remainder of 

 the drive. When we reached the town, he jumped down and walked 

 away without a word of thanks. Happening on an acquaintance at 

 that moment, I asked him if my churlish passenger were not a sheep- 

 herder and was told that he was. In my day, at least, the fearfully soli- 

 tary lives that the herders led made them extremely taciturn, drove 

 many of them insane and, in some, seemed to cause the atrophy of all 

 human feeling. 



So far as we could judge, we had about exhausted the possibilities 

 of our two localities. "For their size, I never saw any beds so rich, but 

 something is due to the fact that only one collector has been beforehand 

 with us and it is eleven years since he was here, so that we have had 

 almost virgin soil to work, a pleasure which I have never enjoyed be- 

 fore." On packing up our treasures, I found that we had nine large 

 boxes full; these we took into White Sulphur Springs and turned them 

 over to the large general store, the proprietors of which very kindly 

 undertook to get them to the railroad for us. With the wagon thus 

 lightened, we were able to travel relatively fast and got down to Liv- 

 ingston, on the Northern Pacific, in less than three days. Though the 

 road we followed was a busy freighting route, inches deep in dust, we 

 were able to find abundant grass for our horses. In one day we met ten 

 great ox-teams, some of them of twelve yoke each, hauling three huge 

 wagons coupled together. As there was then no railroad between the 

 Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, there was an immense 

 amount of work for the ox-teams to do. 



From Livingston the party proceeded to the Yellowstone Park, where 

 we wanted particularly to see the Giant Geyser erupt, the periods of 

 which are so irregular that no time of activity can be predicted. We 

 had many false alarms and, on one occasion, after running a mile 

 through the woods, to no purpose, Charlie, the cook, declared his inten- 

 tion of ignoring the Giant thereafter, saying: "'Taint nothin' but hot 

 water anyhow." 



"Tuesday afternoon, the first division of the geological party arrived 

 and, for the rest of the evening, I had a glorious time with my French, 

 German and English friends, the very ones I wanted most to see being 

 all in the first division, and I also met a lot of new ones. Every one 

 was most desirous of hearing about my summer's work and gathered 



