"As I rode into the grounds, after fording and recrossing the river where Custer failed, the first object to greet my sight was a small inclosure, with large mound and headstone, which marked the spot where Lieutenant Crittenden fell. At one corner, and outside of it, stood the regulation marble slab which marks the place where each body on the field was found. This one stated that there Lieutenant Calhoun was killed. At numbers of places down the western slope, but near the ravines, the surface is dotted with the little gravestones. In some places, far down the descent, and far from where Custer, Van Reilly, Tom Custer and others fell, they are seen singly; in other spots three or four, or half a dozen. At one point there are over thirty, well massed together. Down in this part of the field, in the ravine running towards the monument, is the stone marking where Dr. Lord's body was found, and with it are four others. "In the shallow coulee east of the ridge, and almost at the bottom of the slope, some distance northwest of where Calhoun and Crittenden were killed, and on the main ridge slope of it, is a large group of stones. Here is where Captain Miles Keogh and thirty-eight men gave up their lives. On this side of the ridge--the eastern side--between where Keogh and his men died and where Custer fell, there are numerous stones. On the opposite side of the Custer ridge--that which faces the river--and close to its crest, there are very few stones, and those are much scattered, and not in groups. At the northern extremity of the ridge is a slight elevation which overtops everything else, and slopes away in all directions, save where the ridge lies. Just below this knoll, or hillock--Custer Hill--facing southwest, is where Custer and the larger part of his men fell." On the right bank of the Missouri River--the Big Muddy--in North Dakota, almost within rifle shot of the town of Mandan, on the Northern Pacific Railroad, there existed in the '70s a military post named after the nation's great martyr President, Fort Abraham Lincoln. On the morning of the 17th of June, 1876, there went forth from here among others, with the pomp and ceremony for which they were distinguished, a cavalry regiment famed in the army for dash, bravery and endurance--the noted Seventh Cavalry. At the head of the Seventh Cavalry was a man who was unquestionably the most picturesque character for long years, and perhaps for all previous and present time, in the army. Entering the army in active service during the Civil War, his career was a continual round of successes and advances, and at its close, aside from the peerless Sheridan, no cavalryman had a greater reputation for magnificent dash than he. Transferred to the plains--the war over--his success as an Indian campaigner naturally followed, and at the time he moved out upon his latest and fated expedition, George Custer had a reputation as an Indian fighter second to none.