“Beginning at a break in the Big Sioux River, on the south bank, opposite the town, at first the Dells present the appearance of a rivulet flowing out of the main body of water, taking a circuitous direction to re-unite with the parent stream some two and one-half miles further along its eccentric course. Yet only in the highest stages of its waters does the Sioux overflow the dam across the aperture between itself and the Dells, and it becomes instantly apparent that it is not from the river that this peculiar branch, which is not a branch, obtains its water supply. Investigation determines that the Dells are fed by invisible springs, indefinite in number and indefinable in volume, which maintain in the bed of this curious stream an average depth of about eleven feet, although a much greater depth is found in various places. As you progress along the banks of the Dells, you notice increasing accumulations of the well-known Big Sioux quartzite, in its dull red and leaden colors; the banks grow more and more precipitous; the rocks are heaped strata upon strata in immeasurable quantities, and take on fantastic shapes and unusual formations; the Dells deepen into a gorge, far down into the bottom of which the waters taking their hues from the sky above them, creep along in almost imperceptible ripples. Overhead, pile on pile, hangs the rugged quartzite, shelving out over the liquid blue beneath; in the sides of the rocky banks innumerable swallows build their nests, while above them shrubbery clings and cacti grow, seemingly nurtured in a soil of adamant. Perhaps the highest perpendicular point, from the summits of the overhanging rocks to the waters below, is very nearly forty-five feet; but so precipitous is the descent, and so grotesquely wild the aspect, that it is no wonder the majority of tourists report the height much greater. Descending a fissure, gazing down which descent seemed impossible, the writer pushed off in a rude canoe and paddled for some distance under the overshadowing banks. Here, indeed, looking upward, the impression was intensified, for upheavals had torn these banks apart and given to them, with whimsical violence, their strangely weird formations.” Beyond Sioux City the country is monotonously level until, far in Nebraska, the road rushes into Elkhorn Cañon and passes for a considerable distance between walls sometimes vertical, but never very high, and which lack the grandeur and coloring that characterize those of mountain streams. Emerging from Elkhorn Cañon, the road runs for a long distance through the Niobrara Valley, though never close to that stream, until it crosses the river at Valentine. The southern line of South Dakota lies only a few miles north, and from Valentine west the road approaches to within twenty-five miles of the Rose-Bud and Pine Ridge Reservations, and of Wounded Knee, the scene of the last Indian insurrection, and of Pine Ridge Agency, where Sitting Bull was killed. Crossing White River at Dakota Junction, the road turns due north, and passing out of the plains of Nebraska enters the mountainous country known as the Black Hills, at Buffalo Gap. On the east are the _Mauvais Terres_, or Bad Lands of South Dakota, which extend west to the South Fork of Cheyenne River, while towards the west is the rugous, rough and riotous district known as the Black Hills. At Buffalo Gap connection is made with a narrow-gauge spur of the main line of road, which runs southwesterly a distance of fifteen miles and terminates at the Minnekahta, or Hot Springs. In making this run we pass through a mighty gorge whose age-swept and vertical walls climb up, stratum upon stratum, to a height of several hundred feet, and then break into spear-pointed peaks, called the “Needles.” This is Fall River Cañon, noted for its spires, parti-colored walls, and beautiful waterfalls that leap from a hundred brinks into the arms of the rushing river. That this is a land of gold is not better proved by the fact that the Black Hills were purchased of the Sioux by the Government in 1876, at the enormous price of $70,000,000 and support of the Indians for seven generations, than that the output of the several gold and silver mines of the district exceeds $100,000,000; verily, a richer land than Ophir.