The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-08-18

Horse-shoeing So; setting tires the same.
Doctors visits So; office prescriptions 50.
Not church, school or Sunday school in
the town; there is occasional "tenderfoot'
preaching. There are comparatively few
children in these new y-made towns We
saw, however, a few cherubs choicelv kept
Gagged by chairs before the door from the hot
sands and burning sun. The noon and early
afternoon temperature is ninety to a hundred
degrees; the nights are very cold. owing to
the great radiation of heat from tine ground
at night, due to the almost total absence of
moisture in the atmosphere.
There are two daily papers the Enterprise
and Tribune. They are four-page sheets, full
of snap and vigor. neatly printed, at $40
year. Mr.. J. E. Hendry showed us
through the Office two small
rooms serve all the purposes of
newspaper and job-prnting Office. This"
said Mr. Hendry, very frankly, lis my bust
ness place; the next house. which, you see, is
quite as large and fine, is 'Lizzies place; she
has over one hundred competitors, and all
seem to be doing thriving trade
did not see in the entire place farmers
team or load of produce, and saw few agri-
cultural implements.
Trout are abundant in the river; they
weigh from one to three pounds and sell for
20 cents pound.
The saloons are as thickly sprinkled as on
East Washington street. The inmates at
o'clock in the afternoon were numerous and
well-behaved; they were gambling and listen
ing to the music of violin and piano; the
free-lunch is passed to the gamblers so as not
TO interfere with the little game. Straight
"Old Crow" is 25 cents, plain drinks
two for quarter; cigars the same. In the
better saloons and liquor-stores can be pro-
cured as great variety of rare and imported
liquors as can be found in st. Paul or New
York. There is no saloon license Bismarck,
on the contrary, in Dakota has sixteen sa-
looms, each paying $500 to the city treasury.
To drink is considered no disgrace in this
region. There is little drunkenness,
however. The sots and bloats who
lie about the sums and low sa-
looms of Eastern cities. living on
free lunch and cheap whisky and beer are
not needed, wanted or found in this region.
The mere fact of getting 1000 miles west
and, once there, making living, is in itself
a great sorting process, and only the men
that mean business can survive.
Most of the people along the line of the
Northern Pacific are young and energetic
They have left the old, the manned and halt,
the weak-spirited and feeble, behind them.
Whisky, in ordinary quantities, doe not
seem to produce the effect here that il does
in the East, and is taken more as the people
of Indiana take quinine and coffee-that is
as tonic and stimulant, and as the most
convenient promoter of acquaintance and
sociability As Mark Twain says in his notes
on st. Paul (Life on the Mississippi): West
NdTu IIe JOY Oh empire taxes It's way. HOW
solemn the thought that the earliest pioneer
of civilization is never the steamboat, never
the railroad, never the Sabbath-SchoOl, never
the mlsslonary-but always whisky The
missionary comes after the whisky mean
he arrives after the whisky arrives; next
the poor Immigrant with ak, hoe and
rhe; next the trader; next the mis-.
cellaneous rush; next the gambler
the desperate, the highwayman, and all
their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next
the smart chap who has bought up an old
grant that covers all the land; this brings
the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee
brings the undertaken.
All these interests bring the newspaper;
all hands turn to and build church and
jail-and behold civilization is established
forever in the land" Livingston has the jlil,
but not as yet the church.
THE YELLOWSTONE VALLEY.
To an Eastern eye the Yellowstone sug-
gests the Ohio more than any other Western
stream Its waters are bright and clear,
running through gravelly and we'll defined
chan nels, and navigable in high water from
its junction with the muddy Missouri at
Fort Buford up to the Big Horn river by
steamboats, of 200 tons Beyond Glen
dive it receives the inky waters
of Powder river from the south,
and also those of the Tongue and Rosebud
Its greatest stream is the Big-horn, draining
the whole eastern slope of the Rockies from
the Yellowstone to the Platte. The Clark's
fork of the Yellowstone, on which the silver
mines are situated, is often confounded with
the lar more important Clarks fork of the
Columbia, which flows to the Pacific. The
Yellowstone wends from side to side Of The
| valley, which, throu yhoutit length, scarcely
exceeds three miles in width, occasionally
narrowing to two miles and widening in
| places to seven At the heads OF the lateral
| valleys that enter the main valley are fine
sites for stock ranches. Only in Nav and
June is the valley vivid green. By July the
whole valley and the adjacent mountain
sides are covered with russell. and In the
| sunlight even golden garment. The bunch,
or buffalo, grass cured by the sun is the best
of grazing grasses, and cattle turned out in
autumn are fattened on it by spring. They
| require no shelter, The snow blows
from the side hills into the gulches
leaving the nutritious grasses ex-
posed. Only OCCASIONALLY, as in 1873,
when the snow is covered with sleet and
freezes hard is it a severe winter for stock.
Beef is sweet and good and sells along the
railroad at from ten to twenty cents, accord
ing to cut.
The Indian ponies which we rode through
the park-150 miles-never see oats, and can
easily make forty miles in a day and keep
fat on the mountain grasses.
To-day, Aug, IA, our train has met two
trains of young cattle going westward to
grow up with the country in the Yellow
stone valley.
LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION.
The first exploration Of the Yellowstone
valley was made by Captains William Clark
and Merwether Lewis, who fitted out in 1904,
and were authorized by President jefferson
to explore the great Louisiana purchase"
coded by Bonaparte to the United States in
1903.
These heroic explorers with thirty men,
left st. Louis May a. 1904, went up the Mis-
souri, 1850 miles, struck across the Rockies
and reached the mouth of the Columbia on