American Big-Game Hunting 



Here the luxuries begin to lessen, and a 

 mean once-a-day train trundles you away on 

 a branch west of Spokane at six in the morn- 

 ing into a landscape that wastes into a gallop- 

 ing consumption. Before noon the last sick 

 tree, the ultimate starved blade of wheat, has 

 perished from sight, and you come to the end 

 of all things, it would seem; a domain of 

 wretchedness unspeakable. Not even a warm, 

 brilliant sun can galvanize the corpse of the 

 bare ungainly earth. The railroad goes no 

 further, — it is not surprising, — and the stage 

 arranges to leave before the train arrives. 

 Thus you spend sunset and sunrise in the 

 moribund terminal town, the inhabitants of 

 which frankly confess that they are not stay- 

 ing from choice. They were floated here 

 by a boom-wave, which left them stranded. 

 Kindly they were, and anxious to provide the 

 stranger with what comforts existed. 



Geographically I was in the "Big Bend'" 

 country, a bulk of land looped in by the Col- 

 umbia River, and highly advertised by rail- 

 roads for the benefit of "those seekinor homes." 

 Fruit and grain no doubt grow somewhere in 

 it. What I saw was a desert cracked in two 



