We are now in the territory which for so many years was the scene of frequent Indian wars. Fort Custer is to the south of us, and to the east Fort Keogh. At Custer station an officer entered the train on his way to Fort Keogh. Like most officers of the United States army, he was agreeable and full of conversation. He had had fifteen years’ experience of the country, and consequently had many anecdotes to tell of the wars. He showed us a rusty revolver which, a few days previously, he had picked up from the field where Custer’s whole command was destroyed in the last successful effort of the Red man on a large scale. We can recollect the extraordinary excitement the news caused on this continent. I must frankly say that, making all allowance for Custer’s known gallantry, my sympathies have always been with the men who rode after him, rather than with their leader. Custer himself, it is true, paid the penalty of his rashness. The record is simple. He, with his command, some six hundred sabres, rode up the valley of the Rosebud. Not one returned to tell the tale of their extermination. The criticism of the day was not favorable to Custer’s generalship. He had turned into an attack what was intended as a reconnaisance. His critics accuse him of endeavoring to attract public attention by some bold dashing movement, the one justification of which would have been its success. Every reader of the Indian wars knows that the strategy of the Red man is that of surprise and ambuscade, and that failure in observing caution in an advance, incurs the danger of defeat and loss. The snare into which Custer fell is one of the most remarkable in its results that not a man escaped. Its parallel in misfortune, however, was not long after witnessed at Isandula, when not one man of the two hundred in the ranks of the Imperial second 24th regiment survived the Zulu attack on the unfortified camp. During the night we left the Yellowstone at Glendive. We have passed over the _Mauvaise Terre_ which I had wished to see; but it was not possible, as it was dark when we came through it. Our restaurant car no longer accompanies us. The fact is brought to our mind by a bad and expensive breakfast at Richardson, in Dacota. Between Glendive and Bismarck the soil is good; the grass, however, is brown, but of better growth than to the West. At Sims, coal mining has been commenced with some success. This place is scarcely a year old, but it contains a number of brick buildings. The site of the town is on an eminence, and altogether it looks more promising than any spot we have seen since we left Portland. We are now in the hundred and second meridian of longitude. Improvement advances as we proceed easterly; the towns are more numerous and better built, and are marked by more bustle. The land is of a higher character and better cultivated, and we see a superior class of station buildings.