ng to bring him to justice. Hence, both are the resort of
desperadoes. In the early settlement of the West, the borders were
infested with desperadoes flying from justice, suspected or convicted
felons escaped from the grasp of the law, who sought safety. The
counterfeiter and the robber there found a secure retreat or a new
theater for crime."

The foregoing words were written in 1855 by a historian to whom the West
of the trans-Missouri remained still a sealed book; but they cover very
fitly the appeal of a wild and unknown land to a bold, a criminal, or
an adventurous population. Of the trans-Missouri as we of to-day think
of it, no one can write more accurately and understandingly than
Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, who thus describes
the land he knew and loved.[A]

[Footnote A: "The Wilderness Hunters." G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and
London.]

"Some distance beyond the Mississippi, stretching from Texas to
North Dakota, and westward to the Rocky mountains, lies the plains
country. This is a region of light rainfall, where the ground is
clad with short grass, while cottonwood trees fringe the courses of
the winding plains streams; streams that are alternately turbid
torrents and mere dwindling threads of water. The great stretches
of natural pasture are broken by gray sage-brush plains, and tracts
of strangely shaped and colored Bad Lands; sun-scorched wastes in
summer, and in winter arctic in their iron desolation. Beyond the
plains rise the Rocky mountains, their flanks covered with
coniferous woods; but the trees are small, and do not ordinarily
grow very close together. Toward the north the forest becomes
denser, and the peaks higher; and glaciers creep down toward the
valleys from the fields of everlasting snow. The brooks are
brawling, trout-filled torrents; the swift rivers roam over rapid
and cataract, on their way to one or other of the two great oceans.

"Southwest of the Rockies evil and terrible deserts stretch for
leagues and leagues, mere waterless wastes of sandy plain and
barren mountain, broken here and there by narrow strips of fertile
ground. Rain rarely falls, and there are no clouds to dim the
brazen sun. The rivers run in deep canyons, or are swallowed by the
burning sand; the smaller watercourses are dry throughout the
greater part of the year.