OUR DOG ROVER. IB 



perfectly agreed. The dogs kept tumbling off their 

 slippery perch, and hung dangling by their chains at 

 either side, half sttangled, until hauled back again 

 with the help of a " leg up " from the people inside. 

 This seventy mile drive to St. Cloud, where we stayed 

 the first night, was the most disagreeable experience 

 we had. There six of the passengers left us, but 

 the two German women, with the four babies they 

 owned between them, still remained. The babies were 

 much more irritable than ever the next day, and their 

 limbs and faces, red and swollen from the effects of 

 mosquito bites, showed what good cause they had for 

 their constant wailings. 



The country rapidly became more open -and level — 

 a succession of prairies, dotted with copses of vdld 

 poplar and scrub oak. The land appeared exceedingly 

 fertile, and the horses and draught oxen most 

 astonishingly fat. Sixty-five miles of similar country 

 brought us, on the second night after leaving St. 

 Paul, to the little settlement of Sauk Centre. As it 

 still wanted half an hour to sundown when we 

 arrived, we took our guns and strolled down to some 

 marshes close at hand in search of ducks, but were 

 obliged to return empty-handed, for although we shot 

 several we could not get them out of the water with- 

 out a dog, the mosquitoes being so rampant, that 

 none of us felt inclined to strip and go in for them. 

 We were very much disappointed, for we had set our 

 hearts on ha\dng some for supper, as a rehef to the 

 eternal salt pork of wayside houses in the far West. 

 On our return to the house where we were stajdng, 



