March 26, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
489 
Sylvan Springs 
By WILLIAM BAKER NICKERSON 
for passengers. When breakfast was ready Mrs. 
Smith yelled them in from the bunk house in 
true Western style. They could not eat, much 
to the disgust of the landlady, to whom they 
apologized by saying: ‘No, thank you, we have 
had two dead men for breakfast this morning 
and are not hungry.’ 
“You must have noticed the natural, fort-like 
embankment on the river at the beginning of 
the Scott’s Bluff formation, west of Mitchell’s 
Pass. Well, that was the site of Fort Mitchell, 
one of the military outposts of Fort Laramie, 
for the better protection of the old trail. Camp 
Clark further below on the river was another 
detached military outpost. Fort Robinson, the 
old fort, stood just across the river from Fort 
Mitchell. The present Fort Robinson is at the 
forks of White Clay and Running Water creeks 
on the Black Hills trail and is now abandoned 
(Crawford, Neb., the town that was named in 
honor of gallant Capt. Emmet Crawford, who 
died on the firing line, in the mountains of old 
Mexico, on the trail of Geronimo, in the mid 
’Tis only simple souls that understand 
The brook that twitters like the April birds, 
Too wild and eager to make plain their words; 
And Nature hath a childlike, gypsy band, 
Round-eyed and brusque and free, tousled and tanned. 
Poets they are; in their simplicity 
A field is a world, a guide may be a bee, 
They follow, idly dreaming, hand in hand. 
The gold dust of the skies, the first lark’s song, 
The dew, the wood-path, prairies rich and long. 
The sunset’s red, the twilight calm and still, 
The night, the georgics of the whippoorwill. 
—Agnes E. Mitchell. 
T HE railway guide would tell you only of 
three or four meaningless names of Iowa 
stations, nor would you dream that a 
vision realized lay within your grasp in the back 
pastures of Iowa. 
days. Foxes and skunks and woodchucks and 
all manner of wild things lurk in the caves and 
rocks in this land of forests and crags. 
Just now it is winter, and the yellow road of 
summer days leaves a trail of drifted snow, 
while over the shadowed eastern hills rises the 
February moon at its full tide of radiance, cast¬ 
ing shadows of naked trees across the rabbit 
paths. 
Over the hills the north wind sings and the 
little river lies shrouded in snow, sheet upon 
sheet, with the murmur of the water all but 
silenced beneath. Snow lies deep over field and 
forest slopes, so deep the farmers have left the 
wood uncut and unhauled. And it has been cold; 
so- cold that the homely house with the big 
chimney and the little windows has seemed very 
COURT HOUSE ROCK, 
A FAMOUS LANDMARK. 
WALLS OF INDURATED CLAY. 
From photographs by H. B. Blair. THE COURT HOUSE AND THE JAIL. 
eighties). There was also a pony express that 
passed in sight of the ranch.” 
There is a magnificent spring south of the 
ranch house. Captain Bonneville camped on 
Greenwood near this spring. He says: “After 
so many days of weary traveling through an 
arid, monotonous and silent country it was de¬ 
lightful once more to hear the song of the 
birds and to behold the verdure of the grove.” 
In the old days Greenwood was an oasis on 
the overland trail. I, too, experienced the feel¬ 
ing which moved the old captain; heard the 
birds sing and wandered delighted in the ver¬ 
dure of the grove. From Charley Nelson’s ranch 
I rode across the valley of the Greenwood and 
over sharply rolling plains where several springs 
unite to form Cedar Creek on the North Platte 
River, the location in the old days of one of the 
O. S. O. outfits. 
Rather worthless land it is held to be about 
what I would name “Sylvan Springs” were I a 
promoter, or desired to make it a popular resort. 
Always had I cherished the vision of an idyllic 
land, where among the hills crystal springs 
gushed forth to feed a crystal stream, babbling- 
free over a pebbled.bed. 
There are perhaps five hundred rugged hills 
and twice that number of sheltered, sinuous hol¬ 
lows among which this vision of a happy hunt¬ 
ing ground is realized in a thousand varied 
forms of seasonal play and topographic uncon¬ 
ventionalities. Unfrequented and forgotten yel¬ 
low roads wind circuitously about through the 
hollows and over the hills, going from no place 
to nowhere, and always there is the drip and 
murmur of water and the smell of wood things. 
In the August days cloud shadows play over 
the hills and the morning mists bring j jweled 
snug indeed when the snow drifted and the wind 
howled. 
It has been an old-fashioned winter where 
zero weather and big snowfalls brought no suf¬ 
fering and found no half-starved or ill-housed 
folk to drive to crime or death; where through 
the frosty windows you see the ruddy sun rising 
between the hills, golden shafts of light through 
an intricacy of frosted branches like sunshine 
through a loved one’s golden hair. It has been 
a winter of comparative leisure wherein one 
could spare a moment from life’s reckoning for 
the blue-shadowed and the rose-tinted hills of 
the evening and the morning. And it must be 
admitted that a little leisure is a thing to be 
desired. 
There are no monotones in this idyllic land. 
There are no gray days that are all colorless. 
Soon there may be another story to tell. Per- 
