Yellow Banks. Picking up my valise, and bidding the people of that place adieu, I started on my journey on foot. The winter of '77 had been an unusually mild one in Canada, and I was glad to find it had been the same here, and as I left Wisner that memorable morning on the 16th of March, the sun was shining its brightest, and birds on every side were caroling forth their songs of glee at the approaching spring. The Meadow Larks and great flocks of Prairie Chickens, along with the beautiful fields of green wheat I saw, as I wended my way along the Elkhorn Valley was a sight that looked good to me, and I thought the Lord had set me down in the Garden of Eden. Farmers were busy sowing their oats, and some were coming up. The winter being an open one, a great deal of wheat had been sown the first of February.

As I tramped on and on, I began to think as the Irishman did and said, "It was funny I never met a team going the same way I was." In all that distance I saw just one team and that turned on the first side road, so I missed that ride. Along about noon I began to feel pretty hungry and was still a long way from Norfolk, but kept plodding on and reached there about three o'clock. I found they had one store, a small grist mill kept by John Olney and the one-house grocery which was Carl Asmus'. It was there I got my first meal since leaving Wisner. There was also a small bank and a few dwelling houses. This composed the town of Norfolk.

In those days distance counted nothing to me, and after refreshing myself, I continued on my way to the Yellow Banks. As you must know I was following the old Black Hills trail which did not follow up the valley as the road does now, but wound in and out of the hills so as to miss all bad places such as alkali spots, for there was considerable heavy freighting to the Black Hills at that time.

Now why was the Yellow Banks my destination? Well, Israel Hutchins, a distant relative of mine kept store and postoffice there, and it was through corresponding with him that I got the western fever.

It was getting dusk as I began to climb the first bank, and as I neared the top, I began to look for the town, being as green as most any other Canadian would have been, I naturally thought where there was a postoffice there would certainly be a town, and I traveled all over those hills, but never found the town, nor have I to this day. I finally spied a glimmering light through a plum thicket, and says I, "There's the town." Making my way to the light through the brambles and bushes, needless to say, I was pretty tired by this time, I was again mistaken in the light being the town, but came upon my cousin Israel and a neighbor out on the slough with a jack, spearing fish. I yelled asking where the Yellow Banks postoffice was. They yelled back, "Right on up the road about sixty rods," and it was the longest sixty rods, I think I ever walked. I had no idea to whom I had been talking in the boat until I reached the house and was talking to Israel's wife. Although I was pretty well all in, it was in the small hours

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