Through the kindness of the Davison family our stay at Milford was made very pleasant. Riding out in the evening to see the rich farming land of the valley, and in the morning a row on the river and ramble through the groves that have been a resting-place to so many weary travelers and a pleasure ground for many a picnic party. Indeed, Milford is the common resort for the Lincoln pleasure parties. It is twenty miles due west of the capital, on the B. & M.R.R., which was built in 1880. Mr. Davison told of how they had first located on Salt Creek, near where is now the city of Lincoln, but was then only wild, unbroken prairies. Finding the "Big Blue" was a better mill stream, he moved his stakes and drove them deep for a permanent home on its banks. He first built a log house, and soon a frame, hauling his lumber from Plattsmouth. A saw-mill was soon built on the "Blue," and lumber was plenty right at hand. The ford was abandoned for a bridge he built in '66, and to his flouring-mill came grain for a hundred miles away, as there was none other nearer than Ashland. This being the principal crossing-place of the Blue, all the vegetables they could raise were readily sold. Mrs. Culver told of selling thirty-five dollars' worth of vegetables from her little garden patch in one week, adding: "We children were competing to see who could make the most from our garden that week, and I came out only a few dollars ahead of the rest." Mrs. D. told of how with the aid of a large dog, and armed with a broom, she had defended a neighbor's daughter from being carried away captive by a band of Indians. The story of their pioneering days was very interesting, but space will not allow me to repeat it. In the morning I was taken through three very pretty groves. One lies high on a bluff, and is indeed a pretty spot, named "Shady Cliff." Then winding down canyon Seata, _little_ canyon, we crossed the River to the Harbor, an island which is covered with large cottonwood, elm, hickory, and ash, and woven among the branches are many grapevines--one we measured being sixteen inches in circumference--while a cottonwood measured eighteen feet in circumference. Surely it has been a harbor where many weary ones have cast anchor for a rest. Another grove, the Retreat, is even more thickly wooded and vined over, and we found its shade a very pleasant retreat on that bright sunny morning. But pleasanter still was the row of a mile down the river to the "Sparkling Springs." Reader, go ask Professor Aughey about the rocks over which this spring flows. All I can tell you is, it looks like a great mass of dark clay into which had been stirred an equal quantity of shells of all sizes, but which had decayed and left only their impression on the hardened rock.