TWO PAPERS.—­1.

The United States is the only country in the world that has its frontier in the middle.  The Great American Desert, stretching from the Canadas to the Gulf in a belt nearly a thousand miles in breadth, is now the true divide between the East and the West; and as if that were not enough, it is backed by the long ranges of the Rockies, which, though they flatten out and break down here and there, have yet quite enough of “sassy country” to make a very respectable barrier.  A century ago the Alleghanies were the boundaries—­now we look upon them as molehills; then the vast prairies lay in the way, like an endless sea; then the Mississippi, like Jordan, rolled between.  But all this is now as nothing.  We have jumped the old claim of the Alleghanies, we have crossed the prairies, we have spanned the Mississippi with a dozen splendid bridges, and now the great lines of railroad make but a mouthful of the desert, and digest the Rockies as easily as an ostrich his pebbles and tenpennies.  The old fables of magic cars, in which magicians could annihilate space and time, are now dull and tame.  Like a dream the desert glides by while a sunrise, a sunset, lights up the measureless waste; we pass some low hills, and the Rockies that loomed before us are circumvented and flanked; we whirl through a wild canon, and they are left behind.  Have we seen the desert, the mountains?  No.  It is but a glimpse—­a flat space blackened with prairie-fires, a distant view of purple peaks.  Few become intimate with this our wonderful frontier, and most people scorn it as an empty, useless, monotonous space, barren as the sea.

We left Cheyenne early in July, under the care of a paymaster of the U.S.A., to visit with him some of the forts and Indian agencies of Wyoming Territory and beyond.  Our party consisted of twelve persons, including six ladies and three children.  There were two ambulances for us, and three wagons containing all the comforts necessary in camping out for some weeks.  It was promised that we should see wonders, and should go where no white women had ever been before.  At 6.45 on a beautiful morning, with a fresh breeze blowing over the desert, the party set forth, looking forward with delight to a continuous picnic a month long.  Soon every vestige of human habitation disappeared, and we were alone in the midst of one of the loneliest lands in the world.  Sahara itself, that bugbear of childhood, could not be much more desert than this.  Fort Laramie, distant nearly one hundred miles, two long days’ journey toward the north, was our first point of destination.  Over ridge after ridge of the vast rolling plains, clothed with thin brown grass, we rode:  no other vegetation was visible but the prickly pear, white thistle and yucca, or Spanish bayonet—­stiff, gray, stern plants, suited to the stony, arid soil.  The road was good, the vehicle comfortable, the air sweet and cool:  along the many ruts in the sand grew long rows of sunflowers,