The bees and the butterflies were calling him.

The lone environment, the solitude of the prairies, are enough to try the intellects of mature people, and there is graver danger for the young. Out of the high tablelands, the mirage makes everything seem so unreal. Lakes where lakes are not, trees where the trees have never grown, inverted cities on the sky, mountains lifting themselves suddenly from the plain, to sink back again at one's approach.

No wonder lone herdsmen and lonely settlers became insane ; no wonder they build small habitations on the summits of hills or mountains where the "desert devils" find it difficult to reach ; no wonder that many of the herdsmen on reaching frontier-towns stand about and count the people, the vehicles, the trees, and watch the wheels go around ; or else take to drink, for the queer things of drunkenness are more substantial than desert things.

A "touch of the prairie," is madness incipient, and unless relief comes in some exciting diversion, or in the rush of tears, the victim will perish in the wilderness, or come wandering into the edges of civilization in a sort of driviling lunacy that may be permanent.

The writer remembers well his own experiences in Goshe's Holes, now called Goshen Park, where the goblins of the desert led him from place to place, without food or water, until he felt almost as etherial and wisplike as the most immaterial of them. Whether it was by accident or otherwise, Joe Wilde, the well known veteran of Fort Laramie, found me, and piloted me. to the safety of his home.