get me. I say yon Grayson, get out your sighting iron and see if you

can find old Sellers' town. Blame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it

if twilight had held on a little longer. Oh! Sterling, Brierly, get up

and see the city. There's a steamboat just coming round the bend." And

Jeff roared with laughter. "The mayor'll be round here to breakfast."

The fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes, and stared about

them. They were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a

crooked, sluggish stream, that was some five rods wide in the present

good stage of water. Before them were a dozen log cabins, with stick and

mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well

defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and, after

straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an

uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to

reach its destination. Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered

and assisted by a guide-board, upon which was the legend "10 Mils to

Hawkeye."

The road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this

season--the rainy June--it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil, and

of fathomless mud-holes. In the principal street of the city, it had

received more attention; for hogs; great and small, rooted about in it

and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could

only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there.

About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mart of

181

The Gilded Age