county town in the West may be the capital of a region rather more than one-third larger in area than the whole State of Pennsylvania. It may be, and usually is, a lively, bustling and eminently successful little town. There are skilled artisans of almost every handicraft, in addition to a fair allowance of merchants, lawyers in abundance and physicians. Some of the stores will be found to contain, in great variety of course, every staple of merchandise purchasable in Eastern cities, besides countless articles of mere luxury. Prices are quite reasonable considering the cost and difficulties of transportation. Such a town town rapidly growing, is usually regarded as destined in time to justify its name of "city." The place, notwithstanding that it may derive its support thus far mostly from its proximity to a vast rich region not yet developed, may contain in its list of industrial enterprises, carpenters, blacksmiths, painters, dining-halls and saloons of every grade, excellent drug stores, depots of fancy notions, a free school, a courthouse, a jail, and every comfortable thing in fact requisite to maintain a town on an independent footing, as well as a firstclass hotel suitable for the accommodation of tourists and business men temporarily sojourning there. Moreover, it may well be an orderly place in which riotous demonstrations are promptly and inflexibly repressed. Often the presentation of a pistol in a threatening manner subjects the offender to a heavy fine, and even the wanton discharge of firearms in the streets is a punishable offence. For the frontier settlement is apt to rapidly assert itself as a type of a better civilization, despite the primeval and savage associations which still attach to it like the touch of a bloody finger.

Around a nucleus like this may lie the splendid stock-raising plains in which the famous Montana cattle thrive, finding pasture the year round.. For sheep raising also the advantages are equally great. Agriculture on any important scale is perhaps as yet almost an untried experiment, but the natural fertility of the soil, the general moisture of the atmosphere, and the comparative ease of artificial irrigation, if needed, have long indicated that the Yellowstone Valley is likely in the future to compete in productiveness with any section in the United States. The climate is on an average about the same as that of the northwestern part of New York State-the extreme ranges of the mercury being greater in Montana, but owing to the purity and dryness of the atmosphere not much more appreciable as a cause of discomfort to animal or plant. This matter of atmosphere is something that must be experienced to be appreciated. To invalids it is especially grateful. The predominance of ozone renders it

exhilarating to sound lungs, and invigorating to weak ones if not too far gone in disease.

The north shore of the Yellowstone is only inferior to the south shore in the fact of its possessing fewer water courses than the latter. It is probable that artificial irrigation will be necessary in many places, but it will not be universally or generally required, and there is everywhere an abundance of water for the purpose. In some seasons crops are raised throughout the valley which astonish the farmers themselves. Sometimes

4,000 bushels of oats are produced on less than a hundred acres of land. In the Yellowstone Valley the productiveness of the soil was at first untested and the surface was only tickled in a desultory way. Wherever any experiments are made in real agriculture the result is unqualified success. The soil in the valley is an alluvial deposit of rich, black and somewhat heavy earth on the bottoms near the stream, and a warm sandy loam on the bench lands which rise in terraces further back, and which are generally recognized as the lands capable of the widest range of production.

The region alluded to, taken as an example of far western growth, is one that the writer has himself marched over and camped upon in campaigns that are described in this volume. A few years ago it was so remote as to be almost inaccessible, and so wild as to be quite unknown. The Dakotas owned it in apparent perpetuity, and gave it up at last with great reluctance.

It was so within memory, with all the vast domain west of the Missouri. All that we now call the "West" has practically become ours only since our energies were turned in that direction after the close of the great war. The unorganized march of our ex-soldiers passed westward against an opposition that was stubborn and almost ceaseless, but they were aided always on their front by the officers and soldiers whose campaigns, so far as I have personally known them, are described in these chapters.

The six years of campaigning I have alluded to were not all that were consumed in the struggle that peradventure is not even yet entirely ended. They were merely the most active and fruitful ones, opening almost at once the enormous area I have alluded to on previous pages. Wherever the struggle has ceased there has at once come the change I have described as local to the great valley of the Yellowstone in far Dakota.

The picture is not an ideal or an imaginary one, and I have in my mind the very scenes described. Looking backward but a few years, I, myself having witnessed all the processes intervening between the tepee and the town, am astonished at the change. In the weariness of the march, the loneliness of the camp and the excitement of the fight, the soldier of the western campaigns was not aware of the flood of energy behind him, whose barriers he was breaking, and which followed instantly when he led the way. As I have said before, the Indian the Indian was never destined to remain in the position of barring the way of a mighty civilization. The wrongs he has suffered are inexcusable, and his destiny is one of the saddest in human history. He might have yielded most that he has lost and still have been treated fairly, still have had the promises made him fulfilled. But between him and all broken contracts and all changing policies, the soldier of the little army of the United States has been required to stand. That stand is now a matter of history. The result alone is seen a result before which we stand surprised, while old-world statesmen discredit and even deny.

Yet all that is here stated is but a discussion of mere beginnings. It was once prophesied that these United States would yet hold a hundred

millions of free men living under the laws of Alfred. To those who have watched the growth of the mighty West for a quarter of a century, the estimate seems to fall far short. That multitude, and more, are destined to live beyond the Mississippi, undivided from their brethren, and still under the code, the spirit, the customs and the faith that had their origin among the fathers of the race.

It may seem pertinent to this chapter to devote a little space to the social life and amusements of our army on the frontier, and a brief outline of some of the social features of that life may be of interest. The officers and their families at these posts, sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest railroad, without churches, libraries, art galleries, clubs or theaters, deprived even of the daily paper, and rarely seeing new faces, are forced to find in themselves and in each other something to replace the multifarious forms. of social and intellectual activity usual in all civilized communities.

Not having the various outside interests, which in a city often keep apart the nearest neighbors, intercourse is free and informal, and the closest and most enduring friendships are often formed. As the deadliest enmity is sometimes found between those whom Nature has the most closely united, so it sometimes happens that bitter animosities and feuds are engendered in these little clusters of humanity, so dependent on each other for companionship. These cases are fortunately exceptional, the prevailing tone being that of simple cordiality and kindness, even where no great congeniality exists.

Fort Keogh, Montana, where I was in command for several years, might be considered a typical frontier post from the date of its establishment in 1876 until the completion to that point of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1882. During the first year the post was known simply as the Tongue River Cantonment, the command being quartered in rude shelters constructed in quite a primitive manner. This cantonment was situated at the mouth of the Tongue River, on the south bank of the Yellowstone; Bismarck, North Dakota, distant three hundred miles, being the nearest available railroad station. When all the postal connections were closely made, mail from St. Paul or Chicago was received in about six days; but in winter this time was sometimes increased to several weeks.

During the summer of 1877 the comparatively commodious quarters of Fort Keogh were built near the cantonment, and the garrison moved into them in November. The social circle was enlarged by the arrival of officers' families; the upper story of a large storehouse was turned into a hall for entertainments, pianos and comfortable furniture appeared, the