Crossing White River at Dakota Junction, the road turns due north, and passing out of the plains of Nebraska enters the mountainous country known as the Black Hills, at Buffalo Gap. On the east are the _Mauvais Terres_, or Bad Lands of South Dakota, which extend west to the South Fork of Cheyenne River, while towards the west is the rugous, rough and riotous district known as the Black Hills. At Buffalo Gap connection is made with a narrow-gauge spur of the main line of road, which runs southwesterly a distance of fifteen miles and terminates at the Minnekahta, or Hot Springs. In making this run we pass through a mighty gorge whose age-swept and vertical walls climb up, stratum upon stratum, to a height of several hundred feet, and then break into spear-pointed peaks, called the “Needles.” This is Fall River Cañon, noted for its spires, parti-colored walls, and beautiful waterfalls that leap from a hundred brinks into the arms of the rushing river. That this is a land of gold is not better proved by the fact that the Black Hills were purchased of the Sioux by the Government in 1876, at the enormous price of $70,000,000 and support of the Indians for seven generations, than that the output of the several gold and silver mines of the district exceeds $100,000,000; verily, a richer land than Ophir. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: SIGNAL ROCK, ELKHORN CAÑON.—The wild turbulence of nature that distinguishes the scenery in the Black Hills district of Dakota is handsomely represented in this photograph. In Elkhorn Cañon the walls are some distance apart and only occasionally vertical, but there is rugged, tumultuous chaos in the cañon that interposed great difficulties to the engineers who built the railroad through it. The bluff on the left of the picture rises to so great a height that from its summit Indians could signal, by means of fire, a distance of nearly one hundred miles, whence its name. ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: CABINET GORGE, DELLS OF THE SIOUX RIVER.]