a fine common school open to every child in the place. This is the one universal characteristic of these towns and villages; almost the first thing they do is to build a famous big school. The member of Congress for the place and one or two other notables came down to see us after tea, and smoked a cigar with us in our saloon car before we started. The talk was, of course, on the wonders of the West, and the chances of Dubuque to be a big city in a year or two. Then we turned in and ran all night to Fort Dodge, from which the first line of this letter was written, a village with the same characteristics as the towns, except that the only building not of wood was the station, which, strange to say, was built of gypsum, found in great quantities here, and the only sort of stone they have. The president of the line--a shrewd, honest, Western man named Douglas, one of our party--guessed that in another five years they would have to pull the station down and manure the land with it. From this place we ran right up into the wild prairies, and at the highest point between the Mississippi and Missouri, at Storm Lake, I wrote you the hasty note which, I hope, you have received from those unknown parts. It is about the largest settlement in the 180 miles, consisting of perhaps twelve or fourteen wooden houses, one of which was a billiard saloon kept by an old Cornish man. He said that quite a number of Cornish miners are over in this district, some at lead and coal mines of a very primitive kind, others farming. On the whole, the people seemed a good, steady, independent lot, and the children looked wonderfully healthy, running about barefooted on the shore of the little lake or amongst the prairie grass. We made acquaintance with prairie chicken and the little earth squirrel, a jolly little dog, with a prettily marked back, who frisks into his hole instead of up a tree like ours. Then we dropped down, still through wild prairie, over which the single line of rail runs with no protection at all, till we came to Sioux City on the Missouri, and the biggest town on the river for 2000 miles from its source. There are 12,000 inhabitants, and precisely the same features as at Dubuque, except that it is a far more rowdy place, being still almost under the dominion of Judge Lynch. Only the day before we arrived, a border ruffian had been swaggering about the town, pistol in hand, and defying arrest. However, they did take him at last, and he was safe in prison. A fortnight earlier a rascal, who confessed to nine murders, had been taken and hung on the other side of the river. There are sixty-three saloons, at most of which gambling goes on regularly every night. The editor of the _Sioux Tribune_, an Irish Yankee of queer morals and extraordinary “go,” took us into one, stood drinks round, and expounded the ingenious games by which the settlers and officers of the Indian fort up the stream are cleared of their money.