Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one of the great “dirt-storms” of the plains. About 5 P.M. I saw a little white cloud growing into a column, which in half an hour turned black as night, and possessed itself of half the skies. We then saw what seemed to be a waterspout; and, though no rain reached us, I think it was one. When the storm burst on us we took it for rain, and halting, drew down our canvas and held it against the hurricane. We soon found that our eyes and mouths were full of dust; and when I put out my hand I felt that it was dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a few minutes it was pitch dark, and after the fall had continued for some time, there began a series of flashes of blinding lightning, in the very center and midst of which we seemed to be. Notwithstanding this, there was no sound of thunder. The “norther” lasted some three or four hours, and when it ceased, it left us total darkness, and a wind which froze our marrow as we again started on our way. When Fremont explored this route, he reported that the high ridge between the Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the Indians for its tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet lightning without thunder accompanies dust-storms in all great continents; it is as common in the Punjab as in Australia, in South as in North America. On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got beyond the Indians, and into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of something, for we got milk from the station cow, and preserved fruits that had come round through Denver from Ohio and Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however, could we get dinner, and as I missed the only antelope that came within reach, our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast. Rolling through the Arrapahoe country, where it is proposed to make a reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight o‘clock on Saturday morning we caught sight of the glittering snows of Pike‘s Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and all the day we were galloping toward it, through a country swarming with rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening, when we were drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came on a white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of us, and continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed only to show that he had never seen man before; this might well be the case, if he came from the south, near the upper forks of the Arkansas.