Will had hardly gone when two young men named June and Hugh Goodrich came to our camp; and finding that we were on our way to California, and that we wanted company, they made application, and we concluded to go together. They were brothers, and were then on their way from Missouri to Oregon. We were in camp together but a few days until we found that though they were _inexperienced_, they were nevertheless good, honest boys; and we were proud of our new companions. We now started for the notorious Black Hills that lay along both sides of the line between Wyoming and Dakota, and one hundred miles to the north. There was a wagon-road leading from Cheyenne directly to the hills, and taking this we crossed over the Platte River. In a few days we were in sight of the hills. They are high, rugged, and perfectly barren, and the surface is so dark as to have the appearance of burnt prairie. Hence, the name Black Hills. We pushed on up to Camp Bradley, and then visited some of the mines. The miners say that this is undoubtedly the richest mining-district in the West; but for mining there is much water needed, and this they lack. The artesian experiment is being tried, but thus far with poor success. But should this eventually succeed, mining-stock in the Black Hills will be at a premium. Work is going on, however, but the pannings are light. The Indians have been a reigning terror to the miners here, and whole outfits have been murdered on the way, while men were every day shot down with picks in their hands by the hidden foe. The little camps that stick here and there among the hills are made up of men who care not for man or devil; and a rougher set I never saw. They beat cow-boys badly. There is a saloon and gambling-house in every camp; and could the hills but speak, they would tell of crimes as black as the sands upon their slopes. The hills can be seen from one or two points on the Union Pacific Railroad. There is a branch railroad being now built from the Union Pacific a little west of Cheyenne to the hills. We now came down the north fork of the Cheyenne, then over on the Powder, and then down the Platte to the Union Pacific Railroad again, and started west. We soon came to Rawlings, a place spoken of in connection with the White River agency massacre as where the troops left the railroad to go to the scene. We now opened into a dry, sandy desert, and were compelled to make forty and fifty mile drives, with the wheels rolling deep in the soft surface, to reach water.