American Big-Game Hunting 
Here the luxuries) begin to lessen, Yanda 
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 seeking homes.” 
Fruit and grain no doubt grow somewhere in 
it. What I saw was a desert cracked in two 
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