The White Goat and his Country 



mid-air, saiHng along their wire to the mill; 

 little new staring shanties appear daily; some- 

 body having trouble in a saloon upsets a lamp, 

 and half the town goes to ashes, while the 

 colonels and Hurry Up Eds carouse over the 

 fireworks till morning. In a short while there 

 are more little shanties than ever, and the 

 burnt district is forgotten. All this is going 

 on not far from the mountain goat, but it 

 is a forlorn distance from the railroad; and 

 except for the stage line which the recent 

 mining towns have necessitated, my route 

 to the goat country might have been too 

 prolonged and uncertain to attempt. 



I stepped down one evening from the stage, 

 the last public conveyance I vv^as to see, after 

 a journey that certainly has one good side. 

 It is completely odious; and the breed of 

 sportsmen that takes into camp every luxury 

 excepting, perhaps, cracked ice, will not be 

 tempted to infest the region until civilization 

 has smoothed its path. The path, to be sure, 

 does not roughen until one has gone along it 

 for twenty-eight hundred miles. You may 

 leave New York in the afternoon, and arrive 

 very early indeed on the fifth day at Spokane. 



27 



