100 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



magic shouted words, ^ ' Gee — Haw, Buck. ' ' This 

 past September one could see the ox teams slowly 

 wending their way toward Swift Current from the 

 Mennonite Reserve seventeen miles away, and 

 teams of four oxen disking in the unfenced fields. 

 One was told that it was with these faithful crea- 

 tures that some of the settlers along the Saskatch- 

 ewan came to market, making the one hundred 

 miles and more in about eight days. The ox like 

 the crow is no symbol of mechanical speed, but 

 rather of the slow, patient processes that alone can 

 conquer the desert and forest for the needs of 

 man. 



Bes Moines, October 21, 1906. 

 Last night the atmosphere was sultry and there 

 were considerable flashes of lightning in the dis- 

 tance. This morning a few sprinkles of rain fell, 

 promise perhaps that the period of drouth may 

 soon end. The rivers are very low. The channel 

 of the Coon shows mainly an exposed bed of silt, 

 and over the Locust Street dam of the Des Moines 

 the shallow water passes at one side leaving the 

 other side dry. A number of fishermen were try- 

 ing their luck in this neighborhood, some angling 

 from the dam itself, some from the shores, while 

 a negro in a dark flat-bottomed boat was pulling 

 in a row of lines attached to a swaying cable fixed 

 to the bank at one end. Fishermen in a fair-sized 

 town are in a way even more picturesque than 



