A Pacific Coast Vacation

by Mrs. James Edwin Morris

Now and then a fine covey of quails or prairie chickens flies up and away. How glad they would make a sportsman’s heart!

With our glasses we see easily two hundred miles in this rarefied atmosphere. I discovered several coyotes running along a ledge in the Bad Lands that I could not see at all with my naked eye. The Sweet Grass mountains, sixty miles away on the Canadian line, loom up so plainly that they appear to be only two miles distant. With the aid of the glasses we could see the vegetation and rocks on the sides of the mountains quite plainly.

The United States geological survey reports Montana the best watered state in the Union. It has more large rivers than all of the states west of the Mississippi combined. Milk river is five hundred miles long. This valley is one of the finest in Montana. Here irrigation is a perfect success.

Here one sees the cowboy in all his picturesqueness. The saddle is your true seat of empire. Montana cattle bring a big price in the Chicago market. The top price paid in 1897 was five dollars per hundredweight, and was paid to George Draggs for a shipment from Valley county. I would almost be willing to live in the Bad Lands if I might always have my table supplied with the juicy mountain beef which we have been eating since we arrived at St. Paul.

This is a fine sheep as well as cattle country.

Montana is not all sage brush, coyotes and rattlesnakes.

Montana has according to the report of the secretary of the interior seventy million acres of untillable lands. A great portion of this land can be reclaimed by irrigation.

We passed the Little Rockies sixty miles to the north (the distance looked to be only about two miles). The Bear Paw mountains are west of these. The Indians are very superstitious about the mountains. The great spirit, Manitou, they tell us, broke a hole through the floor of heaven with a rock and on the spot where it fell he threw down more rocks, snow and ice until the pile was so high that he could step from the summit into heaven.

After the mountains were completed, Manitou by running his hands over their rugged sides, forced up the forests. Then he plucked some leaves, blew his breath upon them and gave them a toss in the air and lo they sailed away in the breezy blue birds. His staff he turned into beasts and fishes. The earth became so beautiful he decided to live on it and starting a fire in Mt. Shasta he burned it out for a wigwam.

An interesting part of life on the plains is the prairie dog and his town, the streets of which were not laid out by an engineer. Each dog selects the site of his home to suit his taste. The houses are about the size of a wagon wheel, almost perfectly round. As the train whirls by they sit on top of their houses looking much like soldiers standing guard. The dogs are three times as large as a gopher and of a pale straw color. As one walks toward them, down they go through the door, but they are very curious and presently back they come for another look. They are agile and graceful in movement. One handsome fellow lay on the projecting sill of a house basking in the sun. We approached very near before he saw us. The flies were annoying him. He shook his head and blinked his eyes at the flies, paying little attention to us.