If a settlement becomes permanent and prosperous, whether through commerce, mining, or agriculture, the first settlers sell out as soon as they can get cash in hand, and seek new domains. There are men who have passed their manhood in taking out claims, building ranches, and "realizing" for better or for worse, on a journey from Texas to Montana, sometimes taking in California by the way. Very often the wife, children, and stock of the pilgrim accompany him. Often a cabin is put up and inhabited by a family, with a retinue of cattle, horses, pigs, and poultry in the barn, only to be deserted the next year on the mere report of some better claim to be found further on. There never seems to be any real misery among these shiftless people. Their children grow up sturdy and ignorant, their stock and chickens multiply as they journey on. It may be a new stage-route which gives them a year's sustenance, such as it is, by their squatting on good enough grass-land to be able to fill a hay contract. Or they may go to a point near which some new military post is about to be built, where they can raise some vegetables to sell to the troops before the company gardens become productive. Or they may take out a claim on some really good spot, where permanent settlers speedily follow them. But as soon as they can see flour, bacon, and tobacco, and find a little in the pocket for whiskey and clothes, sufficient to last for a year ahead, off they go again,--not so much like gypsies, who will often revisit the same spot, as like the Wandering Jew, pursued by an avenging angel, driving them from contact with steady and methodical people. Their household stuff is packed in their "prairie schooners," as their wagons are called, and on they move by easy stages, seldom taking the trouble to pitch a tent at night, the women sleeping in the wagons and the men on the ground beneath them. There is plenty of grass for the stock, and the weather is pleasant. There is no especial hurry or worry: it is only necessary to reach somewhere, in time to put up a log hut and a shed for the stock, for the winter's shelter. The little army of the United States, spread over a country as large as the Roman Empire, does its duty so well that there is only occasional danger from Indians roaming away from their reservations, and the military telegraphs are now so far extended that timely warning is usually given if war parties are out. So on they go, day after day, while at night comes an encampment which perhaps may be best described in these humorous words of Captain Derby, in "Phoenixiana," during a criticism upon a supposititious performance of an opera called "The Plains":--