THE FIRST DAY 



"Who hath smelled wood smoke at twiHght; who hath 



heard the birch log burning. 

 Who is quick to read the noises of the night. 

 O, let him follow after, for the young men's feet 



are turning 

 To the camps of proved desire and known delight." 



This day, Sunday, September 13, 1914, aboard the Overland 

 Limited of the Union Pacific Railroad, some time after ten o'clock 

 in the morning, and west of Columbus, Neb., the last place whose 

 name the writer caught, begins this chronicle of the adventurers 

 into the land of the Red Gods, whose faring forth commenced 

 on the 12th. 



It will be a journal, a running comment, a narrative, or a 

 series of paragraphic digressions, all according to the way the 

 writer feels, and the exigencies of travel and camp life let him, in the 

 course of which he is apt to shift from the first to the third person, 

 from the impersonally narrative to the personally meditative by 

 turns, as the spirit moves him, regardless of the academic demands 

 of literary unity. 



The three men primarily 

 concerned are thus identified: 



WiUiam E. Wroe (Bill) 

 of Chicago; Arthur L. Pratt 

 (Art) of Kalamazoo, Mich., 

 makers of papers and fish 

 and some other stories alike 

 of an exceeding wonderful- 

 ness; and James Blomfield 

 (Jim), the guest of the said 

 Bill, Englishman, artist, in- 

 diter and limner hereof, and 

 a resident of Chicago, but 

 otherwise not convicted of 

 any crime. 



On the edge of evening, 

 the day before this present. 



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