52 CANADIAN NIGHTS 



be off at once to the fort. Accordingly I and my 

 companion boarded a Western-bound train on the 



comfortable assurance that General , a man 



of his word, had promised to do all he could to 

 help me. 



It would be useless to enter into any descrip- 

 tion of the journey. The comfort of the Pullman 

 cars, the discomfort of the heat and dust, the occa- 

 sional bands of buifalo, the herds of antelope, the 

 prairie dogs, the vast droves of Texan cattle and 

 the picturesque cattle-boys that drive them, the 

 long dreary stretches of prairie where the melan- 

 choly solitude is broken only by occasional little 

 stations at which the train stops — are all familiar 

 to everybody who has crossed the plains, and have 

 been written about ad nauseam. Very curious are 

 these small settlements, some of them consisting 

 only of two or three mud, or rather adobe, houses, 

 or of a few wooden shanties and a pumping-engine 

 to supply water ; others being large villages or 

 small towns. They look as if Providence had been 

 carrying a box of toy houses, and had dropped the 

 lid and spilt out the contents on the earth. The 

 houses have all come down right end uppermost, 

 it is true, but otherwise they show no evidence of 

 design : they are scattered about in every conceiv- 



