with the firing of the first shot in the conflict between the North and the South, brought thousands of adventurers from all parts of the Union and introduced millions of capital.  Some of the mines turned out phenomenally successful, and although there were the usual heart-burnings on account of failures, the average of success was very great.  The State’s gold mines have yielded fabulous sums, and more recently steps have been taken to extract from the quartz and rock a full measure of wealth that is to be found there.

Montana is a Northwestern State in fact as well as name.  It is situated on the high plateau between the Continental Divide and the Bitter Root Range.  Fully one-fifth of its area lies beyond the Rocky Mountains, and its northern boundary is the snow-covered region of Canada and British Columbia.  The eastern portion of the State, bordering upon the Dakotas, is for the most part prairie land, rising rapidly in the direction of the west, and forming the approach to the mighty Rockies.  The western portion, bordering upon Idaho, is much more mountainous in character.  Some 50,000 square miles of hilly country are to be seen here, many of the peaks rising to heights exceeding 10,000 feet.  The State alone is larger in area than the entire British Islands, and it is infinitely larger than the whole of New England.  That it is a country of magnificent distances, is shown from the fact that the northern frontier equals in length the distance between the great seat of learning and culture in Massachusetts and the capital city of the short-lived Confederacy.

Although most of Montana is rich in either agriculture or mineral, a considerable area is occupied by the notorious Bad Lands.  General Sully described these lands very accurately, or at least aptly, when he said that they reminded him of “the other place with the fires out.”  So many descriptions of the Bad Lands have been given, that we need scarcely refer to them at great length.  The clay, rock and peculiar dust which lies all around this territory becomes, on the slightest provocation, the nastiest kind of quicksand.  Nothing can thrive or prosper in the Bad Lands which, however, are full of evidences of prehistoric life and which, perhaps, at one time were the scenes of activity and even prosperity.

In exact contrast to the Bad Lands is the Gallatin Valley, about four hundred square miles in extent.  It is stated to be one of the most fertile spots in the world, and by common consent it has been called the Egypt of Montana.  A portion of it has been cultivated, and its yield per acre has been found to be prodigious.  At no great distance from this fertile spot, two of America’s most remarkable rivers have their rise.  The greatest of these is the Missouri, which, measured from its source to final entrance into the Gulf of Mexico along the bed of the Mississippi River, is really the longest river in the world.  Away up here in the mountains, the Missouri, which subsequently becomes one of the most treacherous and destructive rivers in the universe, runs through picturesque canons and over great gorges of rock, finally leaving the State a great river, though still insignificant in comparison with the volume it is to assume, and the drainage work it is to accomplish farther away from the mighty hills among which it had its source.