and just as dawn began to streak the dense low-lying clouds towards the east we were once more in motion.  Still for a couple of hours more the rain came down in drenching torrents and the lightning flashed with angry fury over the long corn-like grass beaten flat by the rain-torrent.  What a dreary prospect lay stretched around us when the light grew strong enough to show it! rain and cloud lying low upon the dank prairie.

Soaked through and through, cold, shivering, and sleepy, glad indeed was I when a house appeared in view and we drew up at the door of a shanty for Food and fire.  The house belonged to a Prussian subject of the name of Probsfeld, a terribly self-opinionated North German, with all the bumptious proclivities of that thriving nation most fully developed.’  Herr Probsfeld appeared to be a man who regretted that men in general should be persons of a very inferior order of intellect, but who accepted the fact as a thing not to be avoided under the existing arrangements of limitation regarding Prussia in general and Probsfelds in particular.  While the Herr was thus engaged in illuminating our minds, the Frau was much more agreeably employed in preparing something for our bodily comfort.  I noticed with pleasure that there appeared some hope for the future of the human race, in the fact that the generation of the Probsfelds seemed to be progressing satisfactorily.  Many youthful Probsfelds were visible around, and matters appeared to promise a continuation of the line, so that the State of Minnesota and that portion of Dakota lying adjacent to it may still look confidently to the future.  It is more than probable that Herr Probsfeld realized the fact, that just at that moment, when the sun was breaking out through the eastern clouds over the distant outline of the Leaf Hills, 700,000 of his countrymen were moving hastily toward the French frontier for the special furtherance of those ideas so dear to his mind-it is most probable, I say, that his self-laudation and cock-like conceit would have been in no ways lessened.

Our arrival at Georgetown had been delayed by the night storm on the prairie, and it was midday on the 18th when we reached the Hudson Bay Company Post which stood at the confluence of the Buffalo and Red Rivers.  Food and fresh horses were all we required, and after these requisites had been obtained the journey was prosecuted with renewed vigour.  Forty miles had yet to be traversed before the point at which the Steamboat lay could be reached, and for that distance the track ran on the left or Dakota side of the Red River.  As we journeyed along the Dakota prairies the last hour of daylight overtook us, bringing with it a Scene of magical beauty.  The sun resting on the rim of the prairie cast over the vast expanse of grass a flood of light.  On the east lay the darker green of the trees of the Red River.  The whole western sky was full of wild-looking thunder-clouds, through which the rays of sunlight shot upward in