Years ago an Indian chief who lived in a dog tent and caught rattlesnakes for a side show, had a daughter, a beautiful maiden, about the color and odor of smoked bacon, and she wore a red blanket cut biased, and a tilter, under a polonaise made over from her last year’s striped silk.  She was the belliest squaw in the hills, and took the premium at all the county fairs, and she could shoot a deer equal to any buck Indian.  Her name was Hiawasamantha, and she had two lovers, a Frenchman and a young Indian.  In figuring up the returns there was some doubt as to who was elected, so the father of the girl decided to go behind the returns, and settle it by a commission.  There was an eagle’s nest half way up the rocks, with young eagles in it, and the old chief said that the one that got there first and brought him a young eagle, should have the squaw.  The Frenchman climbed up the back stairs and got there ahead of the Indian, when the young Indian drew from his trousers leg a bar of railroad iron and drove it to the hilt in the breast of the Frenchman, not, however, till the Frenchman had drawn from his pistol pocket a 300 ton Krupp gun and sent a solid shot weighing 280 pounds crashing into the skull of the Indian, and both rolled to the bottom of the bluff, dead.  Dr. Hall, of Baraboo, was called, and he probed for the ball, but could not find it, and neither could he get the bar of railroad iron out of the Frenchman, and so they were buried on the spot where now stands the Cliff House.  The squaw looked around for another fellow, but they all had other engagements, the excursion train having arrived from La Crosse, and so she went up on a crag and said, “Big Injun me,” and jumped off and was dashed into 1,347 pieces, and the wedding was broke up.  Pieces of the squaw can now be found among the rocks, petrified, but retaining the odor of the ancient tribe.  I got a piece of her, evidently a piece broken off her ear, which retains its shade perfectly, and will long be a reminder of my visit to Devil’s Lake. (P.S.—­Disreputable parties are selling pieces of stuff purporting to be genuine remains of this beauteous maiden, but they are base imitations.  None genuine unless the trade mark is stamped on them.)

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

The Geological Survey is being prosecuted as well as could be expected with the limited means at the hands of the searchers in the bowels of the earth.  They have already found, I am informed, that the earth on which we live, and move, and have a being, is composed largely of dirt.  The discovery of this fact is alone worth the price of admission.  This great discovery, which will be of such value to the future historian, has only cost the state the insignificant sum of $8,280.  Rather than remain in ignorance of this astonishing fact, I would willingly pay the money myself—­out of the public treasury.  It is rumored that parties employed by the State to