A broad, sweeping curve to the left, a wide bend, and then an equally broad and sweeping curve to the right opened up a long vista with low, dry, rounded hills at the end of it. With a quick catch of breath I recognized the telegraph poles of the Great Northern Railway and the scattering buildings of Fort Buford--both _beyond the Missouri_. A swift run under a crumbling cut-bank on the left carried me past an out-reaching tongue of yellow clay and into a quiet, sluggish, dark-stained current that came meandering along from the west. I have mentioned the quieter, calmer current in which I had been drifting below Glendive. So it had seemed after the tumultuous mountain torrent which I had run from Livingston to Billings; yet in comparison with this decorous bride from the west the Yellowstone came to its marriage bed like a raging lion. Or, to borrow an animal from the next cage in the zoo, the Missouri, in coming down to meet and mingle with the Yellowstone, fared much like the lady who went out to ride on the tiger. If I may paraphrase: "I finished my ride with the Lady inside, And the smile on the face of the Tiger," meaning the Yellowstone. Without even pausing to crouch for a spring, the tawny, impetuous feline on whose back I had ridden all the way down from the Rockies, simply rushed out upon the muddy lamb from the western plains and gobbled it up. Seven or eight weeks later I saw the latter do the same thing to the Mississippi--crowd it right over against the Illinois shore and gulp it down. And along toward the end of October I remember thinking how like the blonde beast of the Yellowstone was a ropy coil of tawny current I found undermining a levee in Louisiana. According to the maps I had been travelling for upwards of three thousand miles on the Missouri and Mississippi, but in fancy it was the tawny tiger of the Yellowstone that had carried me all the way from the borders of Wyoming to the tide-waters of the Gulf of Mexico. THE END Transcriber's Note: * Spelling errors repaired: pg. 31: saffon =====> saffron pg. 64 grevious =====> grievous pg. 77: capenter =====> carpenter pg. 84: setting =====> sitting pg. 92: Bozeban =====> Bozeman pg. 135: transporation =====> transportation pg. 159: slighty =====> slightly pg. 171: he =====> be pg. 186: imparing =====> impairing pg. 186: side-urge =====> side-surge pg. 192: about =====> above pg. 196: by =====> my pg. 215: an =====> a pg. 239 Glendives =====> Glendive pg. 244: servicable =====> serviceable pg. 279: particulary =====> particularly * Other changes: