ower over the Anglo-Saxon always. The
strange savage land was splendid even in its silent level sweep of
distance. When I was a boy I used to think that the big cottonwood
beyond the West Draw was the limit of human exploration. It marked the
world's western bound for me. Here were miles on miles of landscape
opening wide to more stretches of leagues and leagues of far boundless
plains, and all of it was weird, unconquerable, and very beautiful. The
earth was spread with a carpet of gold splashed with bronze and scarlet
and purple, with here and there a shimmer of green showing through the
yellow, or streaking the shallow waterways. Far and wide there was not a
tree to give the eye a point of attachment; neither orchard nor forest
nor lonely sentinel to show that Nature had ever cherished the land for
the white man's home and joy. The buffalo herd paid little heed to our
brave company marching out like the true knights of old to defend the
weak and oppressed. The gray wolf skulked along in the shadows of the
draws behind us and at night the coyotes barked harshly at the invading
band. But there was no mark of civilized habitation, no friendly hint
that aught but the unknown and unconquerable lay before us.

I was learning quickly in those days of marching and nights of dreamless
sleep under sweet, health-giving skies. After all, Harvard had done me
much service; for the university training, no less than the boyhood on
the Territorial border, had its part in giving me mental discipline for
my duties now. Camp life came easy to me, and I fell into the soldier
way of thinking, more readily than I had ever hoped to do.

On we went, northward to the Saline Valley, and beyond that to where the
Solomon River winds down through a region of summer splendor, its
rippling waves of sod a-tint with all the green and gold and russet and
crimson hues of the virgin Plains, while overhead there arched the sky,
tenderly blue in the morning, brazen at noonday, and pink and gray and
purple in the evening lights. But we found no Indians, though we
followed trail on trail. Beyond the Solomon we turned to the southwest,
and the early days of September found us resting briefly at Fort
Wallace, near the western bound of Kansas.

The real power that subdues the wilderness may be, nay, is, the spirit
of the missionary, but the mark of military occupation is a tremendous
convincer of truth. The shotgun and the Bible worked side by side in the
co