river it follows, more or less closely, for 340 miles.
The valley, from five to ten miles in width, is inclosed by high bluffs of clay and sandstone, their curious formations occasionally reminding the traveler of the Bad Lands, though they have but little variety of color.
If the Red River of the North may justly be regarded as the true Arimaspes, the Yellowstone may, with equal propriety, be designated the modern Amphrysus. It is upon its banks and those of its tributaries that there has been developed, since the opening of the Northern Pacific Railroad, that vast grazing interest which has given Montana as great a reputation for its stock as Dakota has for its wheat.
For many years—up to and including the winter of 1881–82—this was the finest buffalo hunting country on the continent. But the slaughter that season was enormous, 250,000 hides being shipped East, principally from Miles City. Few have been seen since that time. There are hunters who believe that small herds might still be found north of the international boundary; but, so far as the United States is concerned, the buffalo is practically extinct. There is, however, a small herd in the National Park. Safe from the hunter's deadly repeater, they will probably multiply rapidly, as it may be supposed that they will soon know instinctively the limits within which they are unmolested.
Miles City, a few years ago the principal rendezvous of the hunter, is now the great resort of the grazier and cowboy, it being the metropolis of the stock interest of the Territory.
The development of this interest within recent years has been as rapid as that of wheat raising in Dakota, and the economist who should turn to the United States census reports for 1880 for the present condition of any considerable section of the Northwest would be led seriously astray.
In 1880, Montana contained 490,000 cattle and 520,000 sheep. According to a recent report of the Governor of the Territory, it contains, at the present time, 900,000 cattle, 1,200,000 sheep, and 120,000 horses. The grazing interests of the West are moving steadily toward Eastern Montana; for, so rapidly do cattle thrive on the nutritious grasses of these northern valleys, that a yearling steer is worth $10 more in Montana than in Texas.
Glendive, already mentioned as the point at which the railroad enters the Yellowstone valley, is second only to Miles City in importance as a shipping and distributing point. It is also a divisional terminus of the railroad.
Two miles west of Miles City is Fort Keogh, one of the largest and most beautiful military posts in the United States. It was established in 1877 by Gen. Nelson A. Miles, as a means of holding in check the warlike Sioux. There are but few Indians to be seen now along the line of the railroad, and those are engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits. The extinction of the buffalo has rendered the Indian much more amenable to the civilizing influences brought to bear upon him than he formerly was, and very fair crops of grain are now being raised at the various agencies. At the Devil's Lake Agency, 60,000 bushels of wheat were raised in 1885, and purchased by the United States Government at $1 per hundred pounds. The Crows, along the northern border of whose reservation—nearly as large as the State of Massachusetts—the road runs for two hundred miles, are said to be the richest nation in the world, in proportion to their numbers, their wealth aggregating $3,500 per head. This, however, is due to the natural increase of their live stock, chiefly ponies, rather than to their own industry and thrift.
Out amid the solitudes of the far Northwest—for it must not be supposed that the entire country is a succession of settlements—it is wonderful with what interest the traveler regards that trivial event of daily occurrence, the meeting of the east-bound train. But, as he peers through the car window, or stands out on the platform, in critical survey of its passengers, it probably does not occur to him that he is as much an object of curiosity to them as they are, each of them, to him. He represents the far East of this great continent, they the far West. He, perchance, is making his first trip to the Pacific slope, they theirs to the Great Lakes or the Atlantic coast. Among them, however, may be distinguished merry groups of returning tourists, while, reclining in a luxurious Pullman car, or tempting dyspepsia with the rich and varied dainties of the dining car, may be seen one of the early settlers of California, a weather-beaten pioneer, who reached the Pacific slope by way of the Horn, twenty years ahead of the first transcontinental railway, and now goes east, by the Wonderland route, to revisit the scenes of his childhood.
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