"The view from our window looks out across a valley to the Rocky Mountains, and down the valley for a distance of fifty miles; the scenery is magnificent; the mountains are capped with snow. On Monday we start for a place called Clark's Forks, 120 miles S.W., just north of 'The National Park.' We stage it for sixty miles, and either walk or take ponies the rest, up to a height of 7,000 feet above sea level, to work on some fencing at two and a half dollars a day. There are lots of ways of making a living there, and I hope of saving money. The town here is full of Indian scouts, and every man carries a revolver; in fact, as you may suppose, it is a rough place, and we shall have to look sharp after ourselves with our revolvers. Bears (grizzlies) are thick in the district we are going to, also antelope, deer, and Indians.... We are in the roughest of countries, but I am determined to fight my way through, and in the end I hope to come out successful.... "My motive in coming here is simply to work hard and save money. If any thing should happen to either of us you will hear from one of us; we go with our lives in our hands. "As we are green hands just yet, we only get two dollars, but after a little while we are to get three dollars a day. "I have now just money enough to get to our destination." Notwithstanding the fact that this boy had been losing my money all the time, I did not feel altogether disheartened; for I had found him as candid about his failures as he had been sanguine about his successes, and he always gave me sufficiently clear accounts as to _how_ the money had gone. I was pleased with the pluck he had shown under difficulties from which many a young fellow would have shrunk. I had found out by this time that I had acted very unwisely in supplying an inexperienced youth, however energetic and right principled, with capital to start farming in a new country without any practical knowledge whatever. Hundreds of youths go out to America and the Colonies every year under circumstances very like those of my son. Indulgent parents supply them with money at once to start them in life in an occupation to which they bring nothing but conceit and ignorance combined, and their money is as certain to be lost as if it were thrown into the sea.