CONCLUSION. 



311 



of the trouble between them and the whites, whether as settlers 

 or emigrants. On our school maps the great bulk of the land 

 was marked desert or mountain, and a journey amid its savagery 

 and that of the two and four-footed animals which roamed 

 over it could not fail to interest an observant traveler. 



Then game was abundant. The buffalo in countless num- 

 bers traveled north and south, as the seasons came and went 

 and pasturage invited them to g;reener and richer fields, and 

 deer and other animals were in plenty. Now, except in the 

 National Park, the bison is unseen and other game is rarely 

 met. Their Indian hunters, then untrammeled by reserva- 

 tions, in war-paint and fully armed, roamed free, and trading- 

 posts were scattered over what are now farm lands and mining 

 camps. Such is the country I traveled over, and whose 

 description I have tried to make interesting to my readers. 



In a foot-note I alluded to the valley extending from San 

 Bernardino towards the coast, then a lonely mountain-walled 

 plain, where patches of chaparral alternated with semi-desert 

 and rich prairie, so sparsely inhabited that in forty-five miles 

 I saw but two ranches, but now traversed by a railroad 

 and dotted with towns, whose people are crazy over specula- 

 tion in town lots. I will add two other changes: one is the 

 passing of the land along the forks of the Platte from apparent 

 sterility to productive farm land; the other, the transformation 

 of the south branch of the river, from its appearance as shown 

 on page 59, to a bed of sand and stagnant pools in summer. 

 Of course, during the melting of the mountain snows the river 

 is as wild as ever, but at the same time of year that we crossed 

 it the change is as stated. This is caused by the irrigating 

 ditches leading from it to water the ranches on the flats above. 

 To think of the river we splashed through, sometimes up to 

 our waists, in 1858, capable of being crossed dry-shod in thirty 

 years seems unreal. There are other changes less striking 

 which I will pass over. 



