Frank is now about twenty-six years of age. He has had four years of hard and varied experience, and although fortune has not yet smiled upon him, he does not seem inclined, so far as I am able to form an opinion from his correspondence, to succumb. I gather from his letters, by which alone I can at present judge, that he is still prepared to rough it. He has youth, health, and strength on his side, and I imagine there are few young fellows who have been brought up amidst the comforts and pleasures of a city life who would willingly have gone through so many hardships. Circumstances make it desirable for me to visit New York and the other Eastern cities. I have, therefore, resolved to journey so far as the Rockies, in order to see for myself, and thus to form a clear opinion of what he is doing and what his chances of success really are. I propose, therefore, to follow up the foregoing sketch of Frank's four years' struggles by sending occasional letters, giving you an account of whatever may turn up on my long journey, and to describe what I may see of his location and surroundings. I am also not without hope of finding opportunities for some further piscatorial exploits in the lakes and streams of Montana. If I meet with any adventures in this way, I shall not fail to record them. END OF PART I. [Illustration] PART II. LETTER No. VII. On board the "Cunardia"—Small troubles—The Romance of a rickety old chair—Arrival at New York—First acquaintance with katydids. _New York, Sept., 1885._ "In travelling by land," says Washington Irving, "there is a continuity of scene and a connected succession of persons and incidents that lessen the effect of absence and separation.... But a wide sea-voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes—a gulf subject to tempest and fear and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious!" That is just what I felt and thought, but could not find words to express so eloquently, "as I saw the last blue line of my native land fade away like a cloud in the horizon." Notwithstanding the fact that the broad Atlantic is now bridged over by seven-days' steamers, and linked to its Eastern and Western shores by submarine cables, as it was not in the Knickerbocker days, the solution of continuity seemed to me as real when I saw the last bit of rock as ever it was in that bygone time.