EARLY DAY STORIES. 195 



tremely rough lands, the patches of timber and brush along 

 the streams, and the tracts of half swampy land that occurred 

 in some places and that were covered with big grass, rushes, 

 reeds and patches of willow brush. The places avoided by 

 the antelope were just the very places that afforded a home 

 for the white tail deer, excepting the very rough land which 

 they did not often visit. Where the land was the roughest 

 and most broken into canyons and deep ravines, there the 

 black tail deer were at home. They were also plentiful in 

 the great sand hill country, wherever it was found in the 

 counties named above, and also in the sand hill country far- 

 ther west. The elk were at home anywhere and everywhere, 

 roaming at will throughout all the territory mentioned above. 

 There were also as late as 1873, a few straggling buffalo 

 left in that country. It was not my good luck to find any 

 of them, but I did see their tracks, and their beds where they 

 had lain in the grass on two or three occasions. It surely 

 was a great game country where one could take his choice 

 as to whether he would hunt antelope or either kind of deer, 

 and where he was liable any day to run across a band of elk. 

 Besides it was so near to our own home in Antelope county 

 that it could easily be reached by team, and if game should 

 not be found in the near vicinity of home, it was never more 

 than one or two days' drive away. 



Our camp was made up of seven men, four of whom 

 were surveyors, two teamsters and camp helpers, and one a 

 cook. There were two tents, one a large one, in which the 

 surveyors and teamsters slept, and where the meals were 

 served, and a smaller one used as a kitchen, and which was 

 occupied by Sam, the negro cook. In fine weather the table 

 was set, and the meals eaten frequently out of doors in front 

 of the big tent. That fall, 1873, we were finishing up the 

 examination and platting of the B. & M. R. R. lands. The 

 outfit was in charge of J. N. Livingston of Lincoln, Neb., 

 and all the men were from the south Platte country except- 



