the order. The poets were wanted by the miners and prospectors for company in their lonely mining shacks.

I made many trips over the State and elsewhere, some days driving a whole day for forty miles between houses, and now I frequently find myself wondering how I happened to escape dire disaster in storms encountered. I had often to stop for the night at homesteaders' cabins where the food was only corn bread and sorghum molasses, with parched corn coffee or hickory bark tea. I noticed one thing which seemed rather peculiar; where there was the least to eat there were more fervent thanks for the bounties spread before us. Often too the meal did not seem worth that price.

I went once with a two-horse covered sleigh with a load of county supplies. This trip lasted two whole months, all the time on runners. I went through all the southern part of Iowa, crossing the Missouri River on the ice into Nebraska City, driving on the river and crossing back and forth on the ice all the way up to Sioux City.

Returning, I passed through Shelby county. There was only one house at the county seat, Harlan. I went on to the home of County Judge Tarkington, three miles farther. The Judge was a superannuated Methodist preacher, about seventy-five years old. I was given a bed and being tired slept the sleep of the righteous. The next morning before breakfast, the Judge, taking up the big family bible, said: "Mr. Mills, I am almost blind, won't you please read for me?" I assented, of course, Then we went down on our marrowbones and for awhile silence prevailed. I looked around, and saw that he and all in the house were looking right at me. I suppose they thought I was wrestling with the spirit and having a hard time. I nodded at the Judge who was still looking over his spectacles at me, but he was too blind to see, and as he was deaf as well as blind, I called out at the top of my voice, "Go ahead, Judge," and he did. I presume he had not had an audience from the outside world for some time and he made a wonderful effort. He took me right to headquarters, prayed for me fervently, and asked that I might be spared long in the good work I was doing, and

that I might go on my way securely and safely over the slippery roads, that there might be no accident to myself or team, and that I might have a successful trip, to which I silently added a fervent "Amen." After breakfast, the old gentleman and I talked business, which resulted in an order for something over two thousand dollars for county supplies. It was the quickest answer to prayer in my experience. Only a night or two before, I had accompanied Judge Whiting of Monona County to a dance at Onawa City given to raise money to fence in the graveyard. It was a festive time for a grave purpose, and I danced my best.

No one who did not go about in the early days can have an adequate idea of the discomforts and hardships. The houses were either cabins or shacks built of the native cottonwood lumber, in which the festive bedbug was incubated, and often sleep was impossible in the summer time. Houses were often, in fact generally in the country, of but one room, and when strangers or company came, three or four had to occupy one bed. The feeling of hospitality which was prevalent then did not allow the settler to refuse food and lodging to any one who came along. The houses were too far apart to justify sending the wayfarer to the next house.

I slept more than once in a one-room house where there were fifteen or twenty of us and only two beds. One night when I was on my way to see Judge Morris, who was then county judge of Carroll County, night came on when I was still miles away from my destination. I came to a little cabin where there were four or five rough-looking men about the shed stable, and was allowed to stop for the night. I had over six hundred dollars with me which I had collected, and I was a little nervous. Not long after supper, the old granddad, a veteran of seventy-five or eighty years, got down on his knees, said his "Now I lay me," and rolled to the back of the bed which I was also to occupy. When he got on his knees, my fears vanished.

The man of the house with his wife and four of the children at the foot, took the only other bedstead. A shake-down was made on the floor where four of the men were accommodated.

Boosting in the fifties was altogether another thing from that of the present day. Now it is principally done in the newspapers or speeches, in town meetings and commercial clubs, or somebody goes out with a subscription list. Then we just went out and did things ourselves. It was hard, every-day, constant work. It was work, not words alone. I will present an instance:

About 1868 or 1869 there was a great exodus from the states east of us of land seekers passing through Iowa for homesteads, with "Kansas (or Nebraska) or bust," painted on many of the wagon covers. I thought it a shame they should pass through fair Iowa to so much worse things beyond. We sent one of our Iowa State Register force out to the Sioux City land office to make a map of all the vacant land of that land district, and to give a full write-up of every county in the northwest. We published the map and the county write-ups in the Register, daily and weekly, and in a pamphlet under the title of "Free Homes in Iowa” and scattered them broadcast. We turned the tide of immigration and before the season was over nearly every quarter section in northwestern Iowa was covered with homesteaders living in cabins or shacks, in tents or wagons. We got the credit of settling up that section, but two or three seasons later when they experienced the great grasshopper raid the settlers anathematized us as much as they had before praised us. Those who could get away did so, but many could not go, and stuck it out, and were well rewarded for remaining. You cannot in all that country now buy a farm for less than from $150 to $250 per acre.

When I came to Des Moines the real pioneers were still here, Judge Casady, David Bush, Tom McMullin, Ed Clapp, Wiley Burton, the Lynns, Busicks, the Griffiths, the Doctors Grimmel, and that quartette of Christian pioneer evangelists, Ezra Rathbun, John A. Nash, Thompson Bird and Dr. Peet, followed soon after by Father Brazil and Dr. Frisbie, the latter still with us. This city owes more for the morality and solid character of its people to these six sainted men than to almost every other interest combined.

"OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE," BY DR. WILLIAM TEMPLE HORNADAY.

BY HON. JOHN F. LACEY.

Dr. Hornaday has recently published a very important work on "Our Vanishing Wild Life."

Dr. Hornaday, though born in Indiana, spent his early life in Iowa and is fully identified with the history of his adopted State. He is today one of the world's foremost naturalists, and his latest work comes with authority from a man of his research and experience.

In 1886 he conducted an expedition to investigate the extermination of the buffalo, and his report of that journey is one of the saddest chapters in the history of the wild life of the world. The buffalo was the greatest of the surviving mammals of the new world and existed in such numbers that had they been properly conserved upon the plains there would have been no "high cost of meat" problem for the present generation. In ages they had become adapted to the surroundings of the arid plains. Had the Government asserted title to these herds of millions and regulated their use and slaughter they would have remained a great and permanent asset in the nation's wealth. The complete extinction of the species was narrowly averted and, perhaps, there are today 2,500 to 3,000 successors to those mighty herds. They are scattered in small herds in different parts of the country, under suitable protection, and the complete extinction of the species has been prevented..

Through the awakening of the public conscience by the published report of Dr. Hornaday much of the legislation in behalf of wild life has been accomplished.

It was the good fortune of the writer to have been enabled to secure the enactment of the first national law to protect the remaining wild life in the United States, under which a large