Sachem, who dreaded these lectures almost as much as he did crinoline, interposed with some of his usual badinage; but among irreverent classes of Sophomores and Freshmen, the Professor had learnt to answer only such questions as were relevant, and to pass all others by unheeded. For this reason such interruptions never broke the thread of his discourse, and but temporarily checked its unwinding. In a few minutes, however, the wagons started, and our expedition began crawling up the slope of the Professor's metaphorical roof, and thereupon our worthy leader's discourse was brought to a graceful conclusion. For four days we continued our westward journey, the soft grass carpet beneath us ever stretching away to the horizon in its tiresome sameness, its figures of buffalo and antelope, big antlered elk and skulking wolves woven more beautifully upon its brown ground than in the rug-work of the looms. How I loved to sit upon such rugs, when a child, and gaze at the strange figures, as they were lit up by the flashing fire-light! Memory recalled one very impracticable reindeer, which used to lie just in front of a maiden aunt's chair, representing a Brussels manufacturer's idea of the animal. His horns were longer than his head, body and tail combined, and the spring he was making, when transfixed by the loom, brought his nose so close to the ground, that my older boyhood calculated the immense antlers would certainly have tipped him over had he not been held back by the threads. But to return to the plains. We examined highlands and lowlands for poor soil, but found none. What we had once expected to see a bed of sand, if ever we saw it at all, turned up under the spade a rich dark loam, in depth and character fully equal to an Illinois prairie. Together with those other legends, localized drought and grasshoppers, the American desert, when revealed by the head-light of civilization, had taken to itself the wings of a myth, and fled away. There was a great sameness in the climate, as well as the scenery. Day followed day, with its sunshine and its winds, the latter being decidedly the most disagreeable feature of the entire trip. Various episodes marked our journey from Silver Creek to Sheridan. A few only of the more noteworthy incidents can be transferred to these pages. They will suffice, however, as specimens of our adventures, and help the reader, I trust, to a better acquaintance with the free, wild life of the West.