And I thought it somehow a beautiful touch of national character, this reverent providence for the dead that are to come. And just before I went to sleep, I saw out in the moonlit country a cemetery, and on the crest of the rising ground stood one solitary tombstone, the pioneer of the many—the first dead settler's grave. In this new country the living are as yet in the majority!
Awakening, find myself still in Iowa, and Iowa still as flat as ever. Not spirit enough in all these hundred miles of land to firk up even a hillock, a mound, a pimple. But to make a new proverb, "Rich lands lie flat;" and Iowa; in time, will be able to feed the world—aye, and to clothe it too.
In the mean time we are approaching the Missouri, through levels in which the jack-rabbit abounds, and every farmer, therefore, seems to keep a greyhound for coursing the long-eared aborigines. The willows, conscious of secret resources of water, are already in leaf, and overhead the wild ducks and geese are passing to their feeding-grounds. Here I saw "blue" grass for the first time, and I must say I am glad that grass is usually green. Elsewhere in the States, English grass is called "blue grass;" but in some parts, as here in this part of Iowa, there is a native grass which is literally blue. And it is not an improvement, so far as the effect on the landscape goes, upon the old fashioned colour for grass. And then the Missouri, a muddy, shapeless, dissipated stream. The people on its banks call it "treacherous," and pronounce its name "Misery." It is certainly a most unprepossessing river, with its ill-gotten banks of ugly sand, and its lazy brown waters gurgling along in an overgrown, self-satisfied way. It is a bullying stream; gives nobody peace that lives near it; and is perpetually trying in an underhanded sort of way to "scour" out the foundations of the hollow columns on which the bridges across it are built. But the abundance of water-fowl upon its banks and side-waters is a redeeming feature for all who care to carry a gun, and I confess I should like to have had a day's leisure at Council Bluffs to go out and have a shot. The inhabitants of the place, however, do not seem to be goose-eaters, for, close season or not, I cannot imagine their permitting flocks of these eminently edible birds to fly circling about over their houses, within forty yards of the ground. The wild-goose is proverbially a wary fowl, but here at Council Bluffs they have apparently become from long immunity as impertinent and careless as sparrows.
Council Bluffs, as the pow-wow place of the Red Men in the days when Iowa was rolling prairie and bison used to browse where horses plough, has many a quaint legend of the past; and in spite of the frame houses that are clustered below them and the superb cobweb bridge—it has few rivals in the world—that here spans the Missouri, the Bluffs, as the rendezvous of Sagamore and Sachem, stand out from the interminable plains eloquent of a very picturesque antiquity. And so to Omaha.
"But I guess, sir, Om'a's a live town. Yes, sir, a live town."
My experiences of Omaha were too brief for me to be just, too disagreeable for me to be impartial. Before breakfast I saw a murder and suicide, and between breakfast and luncheon a fire and several dog-fights. Perhaps I might have seen something more. But a terrible dust-storm raged in the streets all day. Besides, I went away.
I am beginning already to hate "live" towns.
I.
It was during the Afghan War. I had just ridden back from General Roberts' camp in the Thull Valley, on the frontiers of Afghanistan, and found myself stopped on my return at the Kohat Pass. "It is the orders of Government," said the sentry: "the Pass is unsafe for travellers."
But I had to get through the Pass whether it was "safe" or not, for through it lay the only road to General Browne's camp, to which I was attached. So I dismounted, and after a great deal of palaver, partly of bribes, partly of untruths, I not only got past the native sentries, but got a guide to escort me, through the thirty miles of wild Afridi defiles that lay before me. The scenery is, I think, among the finest in the world, while, added to all is the strange fascination of the knowledge that the people who live in the Pass have cherished from generation to generation the most vindictive blood feuds. The villages are surrounded by high walls, loopholed along the top, and the huts in the inside are built against the wall, so that the roofs of them can be used by the men of the village as lounges during the day, and as ramparts for sentries during the night. Within these sullen squares each clan lives in perpetual siege. The women and children are at all times permitted to go to and fro; but for the men, woe to him who happens to stray within reach of the jezails that lie all ready loaded in the loopholes of the next village. The crops are sown and reaped by men with guns slung on their backs, and in the middle of every field stands a martello-tower, in which the peasants can take shelter if neighbours sally out to attack them while at work. Rope-ladders hang from a doorway half-way up the tower, and up this, like lizards, the men scramble, one after the other, as soon as danger threatens, draw in the ladder, and through the loop-holes overlook their menaced crops.