The fondest hopes are never told—
They are the heart's most cherished gold."
They were like a voice directly from the pleasant days of last summer, when the author with his family was breathing mountain air at DuBois City, Pa., when we exchanged poems of our own versing, and Mrs. L. added her beautiful children's stories.
He had sent them to me last Christmas time, just after composing them, and now I find them in print away on the very frontier of civilization. How little writers know how far the words they pen for the public to read, will reach out! Were they prophetic for our colonists?
Tuesday, 15th of May, dawned without a cloud, and how bright everything looks when the clouds have rolled away. Why, the poor backward buds look as though they would smile right open. What a change from that of yesterday! Reader, I wish I could tell you all about my May day, but the story is a long one—too long for the pages of my little book.
And now Mrs. Ross and the girls are ready with baskets to go with me to gather what we can find in the way of flowers and leaves along the hillside and valley of the Keya Paha. For flowers we gather blossoms of the wild plum, cherry, and currant, a flower they call buffalo beans, and one little violet. But the leaves were not forgotten, and twigs were gathered of every different tree and bush then in leaf. They were of the box elder, wild gooseberry, and buck bush or snow berry. Visited the spring where Mr. Kuhn's family obtained their water; a beautiful place, with moss and overhanging trees and bushes, and altogether quite homelike. Then to the river where we gathered pebbles of almost every color from the sandy shore. We threw, and threw, to cast a stone on the Dakota side, and when this childish play was crowned with success, after we had made many a splash in the water, we returned to the house where Mr. J. Newell waited for us with a spring wagon, and in which, Lizzie, Laura and I took seats, and were off to visit the Stone Butte, twelve miles west.
Up on the table-land we drove, then down into the valley; and now close to the river, and now up and down over the spurrs of the bluff; past the colonists' tent, and now Mr. N. has invited a Miss Sibolt and Miss Minn to join our maying party.
The bottom land shows a luxuriant growth of grass of last year's growing, and acres of wild plum and choke cherry bushes, now white with blossoms, and so mingled that I cannot tell them apart. If they bear as they blossom, there will be an abundance of both. A few scattered trees, mostly burr or scrub oak and elms are left standing in the valley; but not a tree on the table-land over which the road ran most of the way. The Stone Butte is an abrupt hill, or mound, which stands alone on a slightly undulating prairie. It covers a space of about 20 acres at the base; is 300 feet from base to the broad top; it is covered with white stones that at a distance give it the appearance of a snow capped mountain, and can be seen for many miles. Some say they are a limestone, and when burnt, make a good quality of lime; others that they are only a sand-stone. They leave a chalky mark with the touch, and to me are a curious formation, and look as though they had been boiled up and stirred over from some great mush pot, and fell in a shower of confusion just here, as there are no others to be seen but those on the butte. Oh! what a story they could tell to geologists; tell of ages past when these strange features of this wonderful country were formed! But they are all silent to me, and I can only look and wonder, and turn over and look under for some poor Indian's hidden treasure, but all we found were pieces of petrified wood and bone, a moss agate, and a little Indian dart. Lizzie found a species of dandelion, the only flower found on the butte, and gave it to me, for I felt quite lost without a dear old dandelion in my hand on my May day, and which never failed me before. I have termed them "Earth's Stars," for they will peep through the grassy sod whenever the clouds will allow. It is the same in color, but single, and the leaves different.
We called and hallooed, ah echo coming back to us from, we did not know where; surely not from Raymond's buttes, which we can see quite distinctly, though they are thirty-five miles away. Maybe 'twas a war whoop from a Sioux brave hid among the bluffs, almost four miles to the north, and we took it for an echo to our own voice. The view obtained from this elevated point was grand.
A wide stretch of rolling prairie, with the Keya Paha river to the north. Though the river is but two and one-half miles away, yet the water is lost to view, and we look beyond to the great range of bluffs extending far east and west along its northern banks, and which belong to the Sioux Indian reservation, they are covered with grass, but without shrubbery of any kind, yet on their sides a few gray stones or rocks can be seen even from here. South of the butte a short distance is a small stream called Holt Creek. Near it we can see two "claim takers" preparing their homes; aside from these but two other houses, a plowman, and some cattle are the only signs of life. Mr. N. tells me the butte is on the claim taken by Mr. Tiffiny, and Messrs. Fuller's and Wood's and others of the colony are near. After all the sight-seeing and gathering is done, I sit me down on a rock all alone, to have a quiet think all to myself. Do you wonder, reader, that I feel lonely and homesick, amid scenes so strange and new? Wonder will our many friends of the years agone think of me and keep the day for me in places where, with them, I have gathered the wild flowers and leaves of spring?