teeming with life, radiant with gayest flowers, varied with sylvan
groves, bright with prairie sweeps and brimming lakes and streams. In
foreground, offing, and distant hills that change at every step, we find
some proof that Nature squandered here the riches that in other lands
she used as sparingly as gold, with colourful sky above and colourful
land below, and the distance blocked by sculptured buttes that are built
of precious stones and ores, and tinged as by a lasting and unspeakable
sunset. And yet, for all this ten tunes gorgeous wonderland enchanted,
blind man has found no better name than one which says, _the road to it
is hard_.

[Illustration]

The little hollow west of Chimney Butte was freshly grassed. The
dangerous-looking Spanish bayonets, that through the bygone winter
had waged war with all things, now sent out their contribution to the
peaceful triumph of the spring, in flowers that have stirred even the
chilly scientists to name them _Gloriosa_; and the cactus, poisonous,
most reptilian of herbs, surprised the world with a splendid bloom as
little like itself as the pearl is like its mother shell-fish. The sage
and the greasewood lent their gold, and the sand-anemone tinged the
Badland hills like bluish snow; and in the air and earth and hills on
every hand was felt the fecund promise of the spring. This was the end
of the winter famine, the beginning of the summer feast, and this I
was the time by the All-mother, ordained when first the little Coyotes
should see the light of day.

A mother does not have to learn to love her helpless, squirming brood.
They bring the love with them--not much or little, not measurable, but
perfect love. And in that dimly lighted warm abode she fondled them and