there is a raise just ahead all the time; and where it looks level as a floor there are often great gulches which can not be seen until coming almost upon their very banks. Sometimes you will come into several miles of very soft sand, with hardly a spire of _grass_ upon it. Now, persons who _understand_ this country know just where the waters lie, and _prepare_ for the trip; and very often where another person would _perish_ they could find water in a few hundred yards under a rock at the foot of a hill. There is much _mirage_ upon the plains, and it is much worse some days than others. It looks as though there were a pretty, _rolling river_, or sometimes a _large lake_, but a mile or so off. Nothing is _plainer_; and the imitation is so complete that old plainers are sometimes deceived in a country they do not know. It is caused from an unequal refraction of the lower stratums of the atmosphere; and when _animals_ are in it they are loomed up to twice their _natural_ height. An _antelope_ is often taken for a _buffalo_, and sometimes a bone or a buffalo-chip looks like an animal. Objects often appear inverted. To a tender-foot the deception is often so complete that many a poor, perishing person, in whose eyes were fast gathering the shades of death, exhausted his last efforts in trying to reach the _imaginary river_, and his last breaths were drawn in the belief that he was dying within sight of the cool, flowing waters. I had read many stirring stories of this country, and had often heard of the strange peculiarities to be witnessed and experienced here; but, though my _imaginings_ were _extensive_, I had never indulged in delusion sufficient to think of the country in anything near its reality. Ah! many a skeleton lies bleaching upon the hill-side, with no tomb-stone to tell its name or age nor any one to tell the secret of his death. I have often thought that if the Angel of Death would read to the world his _prairie record_ some of the accounts would swell the heart of the most calloused desperado and wring a tear from the wickedest eye.