In the mean time we are approaching the Missouri, through levels in which the jack-rabbit abounds, and every farmer, therefore, seems to keep a greyhound for coursing the long-eared aborigines. The willows, conscious of secret resources of water, are already in leaf, and overhead the wild ducks and geese are passing to their feeding-grounds. Here I saw "blue" grass for the first time, and I must say I am glad that grass is usually green. Elsewhere in the States, English grass is called "blue grass;" but in some parts, as here in this part of Iowa, there is a native grass which is literally blue. And it is not an improvement, so far as the effect on the landscape goes, upon the old fashioned colour for grass. And then the Missouri, a muddy, shapeless, dissipated stream. The people on its banks call it "treacherous," and pronounce its name "Misery." It is certainly a most unprepossessing river, with its ill-gotten banks of ugly sand, and its lazy brown waters gurgling along in an overgrown, self-satisfied way. It is a bullying stream; gives nobody peace that lives near it; and is perpetually trying in an underhanded sort of way to "scour" out the foundations of the hollow columns on which the bridges across it are built. But the abundance of water-fowl upon its banks and side-waters is a redeeming feature for all who care to carry a gun, and I confess I should like to have had a day's leisure at Council Bluffs to go out and have a shot. The inhabitants of the place, however, do not seem to be goose-eaters, for, close season or not, I cannot imagine their permitting flocks of these eminently edible birds to fly circling about over their houses, within forty yards of the ground. The wild-goose is proverbially a wary fowl, but here at Council Bluffs they have apparently become from long immunity as impertinent and careless as sparrows. Council Bluffs, as the pow-wow place of the Red Men in the days when Iowa was rolling prairie and bison used to browse where horses plough, has many a quaint legend of the past; and in spite of the frame houses that are clustered below them and the superb cobweb bridge--it has few rivals in the world--that here spans the Missouri, the Bluffs, as the rendezvous of Sagamore and Sachem, stand out from the interminable plains eloquent of a very picturesque antiquity. And so to Omaha. "But I guess, sir, Om'a's a live town. Yes, sir, a live town." My experiences of Omaha were too brief for me to be just, too disagreeable for me to be impartial. Before breakfast I saw a murder and suicide, and between breakfast and luncheon a fire and several dog-fights. Perhaps I might have seen something more. But a terrible dust-storm raged in the streets all day. Besides, I went away. I am beginning already to hate "live" towns. I.