THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
17 
United States is concerned,- the buffalo is practically extinct. There is, how¬ 
ever, a small herd in the National Park. Safe from the hunter’s deadly re¬ 
peater, they will probably multiply rapidly, as it may be supposed that they will 
soon know instinctively the limits within which they are unmolested. 
Miles City,-a few years ago the principal rendezvous of the hunter, is now 
the great resort of the grazier and cowboy, it being the metropolis of the stock 
interest of the Territory. 
The development of this interest within recent years has been as rapid as 
that of wheat raising in Dakota, and the economist who should turn to the 
United States census reports for 1880 for the present condition of any consid¬ 
erable section of the Northwest would be led seriously astray. 
In 1880, Montana contained 490,000 cattle and 520,000 sheep. According 
to a recent report of the Governor of the Territory, it contains, at the present 
time, 900,000 cattle, 1,200,000 sheep, and 120,000 horses. The grazing interests 
of the West are moving steadily toward Eastern Montana ; for, so rapidly do 
cattle thrive on the nutritious grasses of these northern valleys, that a yearling 
steer is worth $10 more in Montana than in Texas. 
Glendive, already mentioned as the point at which the railroad enters the 
Yellowstone valley, is second only to Miles City in importance as a shipping 
and distributing point. It is also a divisional terminus of the railroad. 
Two miles west of Miles City is Fort Keogh, one of the largest and most 
beautiful military posts in the United States. It was established in 1877 by 
Gen. Nelson A. Miles, as a means of holding in check the warlike Sioux. 
There are but few Indians to be seen now along the line of the railroad, and 
those.are engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits. The extinction of the 
buffalo has rendered the Indian much more amenable to the civilizing influ¬ 
ences brought to bear upon him than he formerly was, and very fair crops of 
grain are now being raised at the various agencies. At the Devil’s Lake 
Agency, 60,000 bushels of wheat were raised in 1885, and purchased by the 
United States Government at $1 per hundred pounds. The Crows, along the 
northern border of whose reservation—nearly as large as the State of Massa¬ 
chusetts—the road runs for two hundred miles, are said to be the richest 
nation in the world, in proportion to their numbers, their wealth aggregating 
-$3,5°° per head. This, however, is due to the natural increase of their live 
-stock, chiefly ponies, rather than to their own industry and thrift. 
Out amid the solitudes of the far Northwest—for it must not be supposed 
that the entire country is a succession of settlements—it is wonderful with 
what interest the traveler regards that trivial event of daily occurrence, the meet¬ 
ing of the east-bound train. But, as he peers through the car window, or 
stands out on the platform, in critical survey of its passengers, it probably does 
not occur to him that he is as much an object of curiosity to them as they are, 
each of them, to him. He represents the far East of this great continent, they 
the far West. He, perchance, is making his first trip to the Pacific slope, they 
theirs to the Great Lakes or the Atlantic coast. Among them, however, may 
2 
