The White Goat and his Country 
mid-air, sailing along their wire to the mill; 
little new staring shanties appear daily; some- 
body having trouble in a saloon upsets a lamp, 
and half the town goes to ashes, while the 
colonels and Hurry Up Eds carouse over the 
fireworks till morning. Ina short while there 
are more little shanties than ever, and the 
burnt district is forgotten. All this is going 
on not far from the mountain goat, but it 
is a forlorn distance from the railroad; and 
except for the stage line which the recent 
mining towns have necessitated, my route 
to the goat country might have been too 
prolonged and uncertain to attempt. 
I stepped down one evening from the stage, 
the last public conveyance I was to see, after 
a journey that certainly has one good side. 
It is completely odious; and the breed of 
sportsmen that takes into camp every luxury 
excepting, perhaps, cracked ice, will not be 
tempted to infest the region until civilization 
has smoothed its path. The path, to be sure, 
does not roughen until one has gone along it 
for twenty-eight hundred miles. You may 
leave New York in the afternoon, and arrive 
very early indeed on the fifth day at Spokane. 
27 
