and salt,--something like Hamburg beef; but seasoned with hunger, and with the appetite sharpened by the cold and frost of these high regions, the hung buffalo proved useful and nutritious.
For several hundred miles, our track lay across the prairie--monotonous, and comparatively uninteresting now, in its covering of white--but in early summer clad in lively green and carpeted with flowers. I read that this fine cultivable well-watered country extends seven hundred miles north and south, along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, with an average width of two hundred miles. It is said to be amongst the finest grazing land in the world, with pasturage for millions of cattle and sheep.
Shortly after passing Antelope Station, the track skirts the "Prairie Dog City," which I knew at once by its singular appearance. It consists of hundreds of little mounds of soil, raised about a foot and a half from the ground. There were, however, no dogs about at the time. The biting cold had doubtless sent them within doors. Indeed, I saw no wild animals on my journey across the continent, excepting only some black antelopes with white faces, that I saw on the plains near this Prairie Dog City.
For a distance of more than five hundred miles--from leaving Cheyenne until our arrival in Omaha--the railway held along the left bank of the Lodge Pole Creek, then along the South Fork or Platte river, and finally along the main Platte river down to near its junction with the Missouri. When I went to sleep on the night of the 11th of February--my fourth night in the railway train--we were travelling through the level prairie; and when I woke up on the following morning, I found we were on the prairie still.
At seven in the morning, we halted at the station of Grand Island--so called from the largest island in the Platte river, near at hand. Here I had breakfast, and a good wash in ice-cold water. Although the snow is heavier than ever, the climate seems already milder. Yet it is very different indeed from the sweltering heat of Honolulu only some twelve days ago. At about 10 A.M., we bid adieu to the uninhabited prairie--though doubtless before many years are over, it will be covered with farms and homesteads--and approached the fringe of the settled country; patches of cultivated land and the log huts of the settlers beginning to show themselves here and there alongside the track.
Some eighty miles from Omaha, we cross the north fork of the Platte river over one of the usual long timber bridges on piles,--and continue to skirt the north bank of the Great Platte,--certainly a very remarkable river, being in some places three-quarters of a mile broad, with an average depth of only six inches! At length, on the afternoon of the fifth day, the engine gives a low whistle, and we find ourselves gliding into the station at Omaha.