My advice to parents situated similarly to myself is never to give an unlimited supply of money to start with. Allow your son just so much as will keep him from starvation, and let him work out his luxuries for himself. Let him rough it for three or four years at least; by that time he will have discovered how far his boyish dreams have been realized by experience, and he will have shown the stuff he is made of. He will either have succumbed and gone home, or broken down in some more disastrous way, or he will have gained experience which may justify his starting in business with some hope of his being able to take care of himself and his money, and to pull through. My son had gained experience at my expense, and now I decided that he should gain a little more at his own cost. I thought it better that he should rough it for himself, and this he had made up his mind to do. [Illustration] [Illustration] LETTER No. III. A hundred and twenty miles' walk—Axe, pick-axe, and shovel—A four-hundred-feet roll down the mountain—Rough living—An Indian scare—Deadly fumes—Working round a smelter—Fishing in Lake "Abundance"—Disturbed by a grizzly. _London, August, 1885._ I propose now to occupy a few pages with extracts from Frank's letters, which will give a fair notion of his progress up to the time of my sailing, and from that point I purpose to give you an account of my own adventures. In his next letter, which is dated Cook's City, July 6, 1883, he says:— "I started out from Minnesota, as there was nothing for me to do there that would pay me so well.... We walked from Bozeman, 120 miles through the Rockies, with a promise of work, but the roads and creeks, or rather mountain torrents, which we had to cross are so bad at present that the smelter cannot be got up here yet, and so we are employing ourselves in building a log cabin for the winter for ourselves. The trouble is that winter will soon be here ... and as I paid all S.'s expenses as well as my own, besides lending him 100 dollars, I am afraid I shall not have much left.... We are now 120 miles from the nearest neighbourhood, right in the heart of the Rockies, so that letters are scarce and far between. From Bozeman (where Mrs. Blackmore was buried) the carrier comes once a week, but in winter, I suppose, once a fortnight. "The scenery here is magnificent; we are now in a gulch, with a range of mountains on each side of us; a small camp composed of log cabins, at present about fifty people, but a boom is expected, and we shall share it. We have already taken up a lot, which costs nothing, and are building a log cabin, which in two weeks we hope to finish.... We hope in winter to save by getting an elk or two, of which there are plenty, also bears, mountain lions, &c. The air is very fine and rare here, and happens to agree with us both."