404 BUFFALO LAND. 



logs sat listening to the beautiful language that 

 told how the faith of which Christianity was born 

 was cradled in a land as primitive and desolate as 

 that which we were traversing. There, the wild Arab 

 hordes hovered over the deserts ; here, America's 

 savage tribes do the same over the plains. 



Our priest stood near one of Nature's grandest 

 altar pieces, " Waconda Da." Reverence from the 

 most irreverent is secured among such scenes and 

 solitudes. Away from his fellows, man's soul in- 

 stinctively looks upward, and yearns for some power 

 mightier than himself to which to cling. The brittle 

 straw of Atheism snaps when called upon for sup- 

 port under these circumstances, and the blasphemy 

 which was bold and loud among the haunts of men, 

 here is hushed into silence, or even awed into rever- 

 ential fear. 



The Professor improved the opportunity to deliver 

 an excellent discourse upon the wonderful evidences 

 of God's power which geology is daily revealing. 

 His peroration was quite flowery, and in a strain 

 very much as follows : 



"Science is yet in its infancy, and many things 

 which seem dark to us will be clear to our de- 

 scendants. Future generations will doubtless won- 

 der at our boiler explosions, and our railroad acci- 

 dents. Lightning expresses will be used only for 

 freight, while machines navigating the air, at one 

 hundred miles an hour, will carry the passengers. 

 Steam, electricity, and the magnetic needle have all 

 been open to man's appropriative genius ever since 



