462 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK. 



here; also a bank and two enterprising newspapers. 

 The population of the township was nearly three thou- 

 sand. At Sidney, which is a military post, I stopped 

 at the Railroad Hotel. Sheep-farming is a leading 

 industry of Sidney and its vicinity. My last stopping- 

 place in Nebraska was at Evans Ranche, Antelope, a 

 ifmall village on the Elk Horn River. 



Crossing the boundary into Wyoming Territory and 

 reaching Cheyenne, I made my entrance into this most 

 interesting region — a great plateau of nearly 100,000 

 square miles, its lowest level 3,543 feet, its highest alti- 

 tude more than 13,000 feet above the sea. Some one 

 has said that it seems "a highway, laid out by the 

 'Great Intelligence,' in the latitude most favorable, at 

 all seasons, for great migrations to the shores of the 

 Pacific/' 



Shales bearing petroleum, iron, limestone, soda, sul- 

 phur, mica, copper, lead, silver and gold, are all there 

 for the taking. 



There, volcanoes are still at work. 



There, great mountains, great canyons, and great 

 cataracts make the face of Nature sublime. 



There, in past centuries, "at some period anterior 

 to the history of existing aboriginal races,'* lived a 

 mysterious, to us unknown people, traces of whom we 

 still find in neatly finished stratite vessels, " knives, 

 scrapers, and sinkers for fish lines made of volcaniy 

 sandstone or of green- veined marble. Such is the 

 ^ract of territory called Wyoming.'' 



Beginning at the south-east corner of this tract, we 

 encounter, not far from the boundary, a semi-circular 

 range, about 2,000 feet above the general level, 

 known as Laramie Hills. The north branch of the 



