;6 A SPORTSMAN'S EDEN. 



hour. The fact is that the surveyor has not got 

 as far as this along the trail, and the mile-marks 

 have been the result of extremely casual guess- 

 work among the natives. But at last a broad 

 blue river between bold mud-bluffs smiles up at 

 you as you ride through the bull-pines of the last 

 upland, and in another half-hour the river is 

 forded, and we are at Alison's, a large single 

 house, built by the pioneers who dwell in it, 

 fenced about with rough snake-fences, and sur- 

 rounded by three or four little log - cabins, in 

 which Chinamen or Indians dwell. Alison's is a 

 good sample of a pioneer's home, the centre of 

 a large but thinly peopled district. Upon the 

 bluff opposite you can just see a few yards of 

 snake-fencing. If you rode up to it, and then 

 followed it round, you would find I don't know 

 how many miles of it enclosing thousands of 

 acres of grazing -land, the pioneer's principal 

 wealth. By-and-by that may be as valuable as 

 land at home ; at present it is only good to 

 graze the bands of cayouses which belong to the 

 station. The house itself is mostly devoted to 

 the purposes of a store, in which the boys or 

 their mother will serve you or the Indians with 

 sugar, blankets, or anything else you want. 

 Outside, at the moment at which our train 

 comes up, three of the boys (one about eighteen, 



