Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1888-10-05

nesu. not knowing where they were.
Next day they procured horses from a
peasant who had son in the company
of the officer who had fled with Won
Trenck, and they reached Austrian
territory. The Governor Of Dantzig,
however, delivered him up to the tyrant,
Frederick. This time Frederick threw
him into narrow cell, damp and insult
ficiently lighted, and kept him chained
to the wall. Once he tried to regain
his liberty, but in vain. At length he
was set free and made his way to
France, where, it is said, he persisted by
the guillotine at the revolution.
THE STEPPES OF THE IRTISM.
Under the above title George KEENAN,
contributes to the Century some of his
experiences in Siberia just previous to
his first meeting with political exiles.
1t is with q feeling of intense pleasure
and relief that one leaves such a village
and rides out upon. the, wide, clean,
breezy steppe where the air is filed with
the fragrance of clover and the singing
OF birds, and where the eye is constantly
delighted with great sweeps of smooth,
velvety turf, or vast undulating expanses
of high steppe grass sprinkled in the
foreground with millions Of wild roses,
white n:arguerites, delicate fye-angled
llarebells, and dark red tiger-lilies.
Between the villages of Krutaya and
Kalmakova, on Friday, we rode across
steppe which was literally great
ocean Of flowers. One could pick twenty
different species and a hundred speci-
mems within the area of single square
yard. Here and there We deserted the
miry road and drove for miles across the
smooth, grassy plain, crushing flowers
by the score at every revolution of our
carriage wheels. In the middle of the
steppe had our driver stop and wait
for me while alighted and walked
away into the fowerv solitude to enjoy
the stiffness, the perfumed air, and the
sea of verdure through which ran the
long, sinuous black line of the muddy
highway. On my left, beyond the road,
was wide, shallow depression six or
eight miles across, rising on the oppp-
site side in long, gradual sweep to "a
dark blue line of birch forest which
formed the horizon. This depression
was one smooth expanse of close green
turf dotted with grazing cattle and
sheep, and broken here and there by a
silvery pool or lake. Around ME, upon
the higher ground, the steppe was, car.
peted with flowers, among which I
noticed splendid orange asters two
inches in diameter, spotted tiger-lilies
with strongly refexed petals, white
clover, daisies, harebells, spirea, astrag-
alus, melliotus, and a peculiar flower
growing in long, slender, curved spikes
which suggested flights of miniature
carmine sky-rockets sent up by the
fairies of the steppe. The air was still
and warm, and had a strange, sweet
fragrance which I can liken only to the
taste of wild honey. There were no
sounds to break the stiffness of the great
plain except the drowsy hum of bees,
the regular measured "Kate-did-Kate.
did" of few katydids in the grass near
me, and the wailing cry of a steppe
hawk lowering over the nest of some
field-mice. 1t was delight simply to
lie on the grass amidst the flowers and
see, hear, and breathe.