Travelling the same road, and keeping us company, are Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Fuller, of Rochester, and Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and Mr. and Miss Wheaton, of Northfield, Minn. They have a prairie wagon with a covered top, drawn by two horses, in which is packed a tent, with pots, kettles, pans, dishes, flour, pork, beans, canned fruit, hams, butter, bed and bedding. They have saddle-horses for excursions, and carry rifles, shot-guns, and fishing-tackle. Pulpit, people and parsonage, hoop-skirts, stove-pipe hats, work and care, are left behind. The women can handle the fishing-rod or rifle. It may seem to ladies unaccustomed to country life as a great letting down of dignity on the part of these women of the West to enter upon such an expedition, but they are in search of health. They are not aiming to be Amazons. A few weeks upon the prairies, and they will return well browned, but healthful and rugged, and as attractive and charming as the fair Maud who raked hay and dreamed of what might have been. Our first night is spent at "Camp Thunder," and why it is so named will presently be apparent. It is nearly night when we leave St. Cloud for a four-mile ride to our quarters. We can see in the rays of the setting sun, as we ride over the prairie, our village of white tents pitched by the roadside, and our wagons parked near by. It is an exhilarating scene, bringing to remembrance the many tented fields during the war, and those soul-stirring days when the armies of the Republic marched under their great leader to victory. The sun goes down through a blood-colored haze, throwing its departing beams upon a bank of leaden clouds that lie along the horizon. Old salts say that such sunsets in the tropics are followed by storms. Through the evening, while sitting in the doors of our tents and talking of camp-life and its pleasant experiences, we can see faint flashes of lightning along the horizon. The leaden clouds grow darker, and rise slowly up the sky. Through the deepening haze we catch faint glimpses of celestial architecture,--castles, towers, massive walls, and "Looming bastions fringed with fire." Far away rolls the heavy thunder,--so far that it seems the diapason of a distant organ. We lose sight of the gorgeous palaces, temples, and cathedrals of the upper air, or we see them only when the bright flashes of lightning illume the sky. It is past midnight,--we have been asleep, and are wakened by the sudden bursting of the storm. The canvas roof and walls of our house flap suddenly in the wind. The cords are drawn taut against the tent-pins. The roof rises, settles, surges up and down, to and fro, the walls belly in and then out against the swaying frame. The rain comes in great drops, in small drops, in drifting spray, rattling upon the canvas like a hundred thousand muskets,--just as they rattled and rolled on that awful day at the Wilderness when the two greatest armies ever gathered on this continent met in deadly conflict.