Thinking that perhaps this part has been _sufficiently_ described, I will refer the reader to the letters which close this work for _unmentioned_ particulars, and again turn our faces toward the west. We had not traveled many days, however, until settlements had dwindled to lonely domicils upon the wide prairie; the dark, rich soil began to fade to a lighter and more sandy, and great herds of cattle tramped the unbroken surface. A few weeks more and all vegetation had faded away, and we were upon the Fremont desert. The grass, instead of being long, slender _prairie-grass_, was short, thickly-set buffalo-grass. The soil was dry and scarcely ever knew a rain; and then it was that we found ourselves upon the great western plains. The surface is usually smooth, and perfectly delightful to travel over, and we could sometimes see for many miles around us. But the _danger_ of traveling in this dry, barren wilderness, where scarcely any one lives, and of which we had been _warned_, we now began to realize. True, there were old, deeply-worn _emigrant_ roads, one via Kansas City, and one via Omaha and Cheyenne, which we could have traveled with comparatively little danger or difficulty; but it was our purpose to see and experience something _new_, and accordingly we chose the wild prairie. We had purchased a _barrel_ at Lincoln, Nebraska, which we always filled when leaving water, and with no guide but the compass we boldly sped onward, not knowing what each day would bring forth. The scene, however, was materially the same--one broad, open plain, stretching out like an ocean as far as the eye could reach. Our camp at night was truly a lonely one, with no company but the shy antelope that sniffed the air at a distance, and nothing to break the deep, death-like stillness that reigned around us but the howl of the _grey wolf_, whose keen eye was upon our every move. Stretching ourselves upon a blanket, with nothing but the starry heavens above us, we lay dreaming of killing buffaloes, scalping Sitting Bull, and other adventures too numerous to mention.