Father Bierens is an authority on bird life in the Red River Valley, and operates a U. S. Biological Survey BIRD BANDING STATION (1937), one of the few in the State. Since he began the work in 1928 he has banded more than 10,000 birds, never less than 1,000 a year, and as many as 70 species in one season, not including field and shore or water birds. In April 1935 he banded the first European starling caught in North Dakota. At the F. P. Nelson store in Fairmount is a COLLECTION (_open by arrangement_) of Indian artifacts and of firearms, including a Chinese gun made in 1526. Right from Fairmount on ND 11, a graveled road, is HANKINSON, =11 m.= (1,068 alt., 1,400 pop.), named for R. H. Hankinson, town site owner. Here are the CONVENT AND ACADEMY OF THE SISTERS OF ST. FRANCIS, the mother house of the order in the United States. This order was established in Germany in 1241. The convent and academy, founded in 1927-29, are housed in a three-story Renaissance-style building of tapestry brick trimmed in Indiana limestone. In a niche over the entrance is a statue of St. Francis, carved in Danube limestone by the Joseph Mueller Art Institute of Munich, Germany, and donated to the order. South of Fairmount the distant Coteau des Prairies is visible (R). Back in these hills, which form part of the watershed between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, live the Sioux Indians of the Sisseton Reservation, a triangular section of which juts into the State from South Dakota. At =256.5 m.= US 81 crosses the North Dakota Line, 106 m. N. of Watertown, S. Dak. (_see S. Dak. Tour 10_). SIDE TOUR 1A Junction US 81--Mayville--Portland--Hatton. ND 7 & 18. Junction with US 81 to Hatton, 27 m. G. N. Ry. branch line parallels route between Mayville and Hatton. Graveled roadbed entire route. Accommodations in principal towns. This short route traversing a fertile farming area twice crosses the Goose River, which the French Canadians who first explored it called Rivière Aux Outardes (_River of the Geese_), because of the great number of wild geese that nested on its banks. The route proceeds along the western edge of glacial Lake Agassiz. The rich, black soil--a sandless, clayey silt, peculiar to western States and locally known as gumbo--becomes a muggy, sticky mass when wet. Before the era of graveled highways, travel was virtually impossible after even the lightest rainfall, as wagon or automobile wheels became clogged with the heavy, gummy earth; even today this is true on unimproved roads. ND 7 branches W. from US 81 (_see Tour 1_) 5 m. S. of Cummings.