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FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER.

Fathers of Waters—"Rich Lands lie Flat"—The Misery River—Council Bluffs—A "Live" town, sir—Two murders: a contrast—Omaha—The immorality of "writing up"—On the prairies—The modesty of "Wish-ton-Wish"—The antelope's tower of refuge—Out of Nebraska into Colorado—Man-eating Tiger.

FROM Chicago to Omaha by the Chicago and "Northwestern" route is not an exhilarating journey. When Nature begins to make anything out here in America she never seems to know when to stop. She can never make a few of anything. For instance, it might have been thought that one or two hundred miles of perfectly flat land was enough at a time. But Nature, having once commenced flattening out the land, cannot leave off. So all the way from Chicago to Omaha there is the one same pattern of country, a wilderness of maize-stubble and virgin land, broken only for the first half of the way by occasional patches of water-oak, and for the second half of willows.

Just on the frontier-line of these two vegetable divisions of the country lies a tract of bright turf-land. What a magician this same turf is! It is Wendell Holmes, I think, who says that Anglo-Saxons emigrate only "in the line of turf."

The better half of the journey passed on Sunday, and the people were all out in loitering, well-dressed groups "to see the train pass," and at the stations where we stopped, to see the passengers, too. Where they came from it was not easy to tell, for the homesteads in sight were very few and far between. Yet there they were, happy, healthy, well-to-do contented-looking families, enjoying the Day of Rest—the one dissipation of the hard-worked week. What a comfortable connecting link with the outer world the railway must be to these scattered dwellers on this prairie-land!

So through Illinois to the Mississippi. How wonderfully it resembles the Indus where it flows past Lower Sind. A minaret or two, a blue-tiled cupola and a clump of palms would make the resemblance of the Mississippi at Clinton to the Indus below Rohri complete. And both rivers claim to be "the Father of Waters." I would not undertake to decide between them. In modern annals, of course, the American must take pre-eminence; but what can surpass the historic grandeur that dignifies the Indian stream?

And so into Iowa, just as flat, and as rich, and as monotonous as Illinois, and with just the same leagues of maize-stubble, unbroken soil, water-oaks and willows. And then, in the deepening twilight, to Cedar Rapids, with the pleasant sound of rushing water and all the townsfolk waiting "to see the train" on their way from church, standing in groups, with their prayer-books and Bibles in their hands.

By the way, what an admirable significance there is in he care with which these young townships discharge their duties to their religion and the dead. The church or prayer-house seems to be always one of the first and finest buildings. With only half-a-dozen homesteads in sight in some places, there is the church and while all the rest are of the humblest class of frame houses, the church is of brick. The cemeteries again. Before even the plots round the living are set in order, "God's acre" (often the best site in the neighbourhood) is neatly fenced and laid out.

And I thought it somehow a beautiful touch of national character, this reverent providence for the dead that are to come. And just before I went to sleep, I saw out in the moonlit country a cemetery, and on the crest of the rising ground stood one solitary tombstone, the pioneer of the many—the first dead settler's grave. In this new country the living are as yet in the majority!

Awakening, find myself still in Iowa, and Iowa still as flat as ever. Not spirit enough in all these hundred miles of land to firk up even a hillock, a mound, a pimple. But to make a new proverb, "Rich lands lie flat;" and Iowa; in time, will be able to feed the world—aye, and to clothe it too.

In the mean time we are approaching the Missouri, through levels in which the jack-rabbit abounds, and every farmer, therefore, seems to keep a greyhound for coursing the long-eared aborigines. The willows, conscious of secret resources of water, are already in leaf, and overhead the wild ducks and geese are passing to their feeding-grounds. Here I saw "blue" grass for the first time, and I must say I am glad that grass is usually green. Elsewhere in the States, English grass is called "blue grass;" but in some parts, as here in this part of Iowa, there is a native grass which is literally blue. And it is not an improvement, so far as the effect on the landscape goes, upon the old fashioned colour for grass. And then the Missouri, a muddy, shapeless, dissipated stream. The people on its banks call it "treacherous," and pronounce its name "Misery." It is certainly a most unprepossessing river, with its ill-gotten banks of ugly sand, and its lazy brown waters gurgling along in an overgrown, self-satisfied way. It is a bullying stream; gives nobody peace that lives near it; and is perpetually trying in an underhanded sort of way to "scour" out the foundations of the hollow columns on which the bridges across it are built. But the abundance of water-fowl upon its banks and side-waters is a redeeming feature for all who care to carry a gun, and I confess I should like to have had a day's leisure at Council Bluffs to go out and have a shot. The inhabitants of the place, however, do not seem to be goose-eaters, for, close season or not, I cannot imagine their permitting flocks of these eminently edible birds to fly circling about over their houses, within forty yards of the ground. The wild-goose is proverbially a wary fowl, but here at Council Bluffs they have apparently become from long immunity as impertinent and careless as sparrows.

Council Bluffs, as the pow-wow place of the Red Men in the days when Iowa was rolling prairie and bison used to browse where horses plough, has many a quaint legend of the past; and in spite of the frame houses that are clustered below them and the superb cobweb bridge—it has few rivals in the world—that here spans the Missouri, the Bluffs, as the rendezvous of Sagamore and Sachem, stand out from the interminable plains eloquent of a very picturesque antiquity. And so to Omaha.

"But I guess, sir, Om'a's a live town. Yes, sir, a live town."

My experiences of Omaha were too brief for me to be just, too disagreeable for me to be impartial. Before breakfast I saw a murder and suicide, and between breakfast and luncheon a fire and several dog-fights. Perhaps I might have seen something more. But a terrible dust-storm raged in the streets all day. Besides, I went away.

I am beginning already to hate "live" towns.