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Show THROUGH THE BLACK HILLS. 33 and from the side of the hill gushed out a large spring of delicious water of a temperature requiring no ice to cool it. The next morning we commenced the hilly part of our journey, and these hills, like the whole mountainous region beyond, possess much interest to the geologist. We crossed the range in one day's march, the entire road being of ascents and descents until we passed over into Laramie Plain on the West. In one of the depressions where the road was bad, and the column was halted to assist in getting the wagons along, I found the trees covered with the names of travellers who had probably stopped for a similar pur pose. A foolish way of seeking fame, if to such the parties who inscribed their names there aspired ! Along the eastern slope of the highest of these hills, and by the way I can't understand why they are not called a mountain range. The definition of hills and mountains as given in the geographies of my school- boy days left the scholar to make a very capricious distinction between them, and what I might, upon their authority, after a journey over the plains, call a mountain, an old hunter fresh from Long's Peak or Fremont's might upon the same authority call a hill. But I was about to write, when I digressed, that upon these eminences, banks of snow were still remaining when we crossed in the middle of June. Making snow- balls at that season was rather a novel employment for me. When we reached the summit of the most westerly of the range, there opened out before us the grandest landscape view of my life. Without any knowledge of that topo graphy of the country I was approaching, I rode leisurely ahead of the column, and upon ascending to the brow of a hill, as suddenly as a panoramic painting is brought to the view after the withdrawal of the curtain, so suddenly appear ed this natural panorama, more sublime than was ever de - picted upon canvass. My pen is inadequate to a just description of its grandeur and beauty, and I can convey to the reader but a faint idea of the scene that then lay before me. I doubt if the editor of the ADVOCATE when he |