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Indians are dancing! Indians are coming! They can wipe us out. Governors, Congressmen, and newspapers are besieged and urged to help. Troops, troops, more troops! they cry. The Governor sends Militia or Volunteers. The United States finally sends to the panicky place a few companies of regulars. Money comes and trade is quickened. Men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by such rows, get congenial employment and the means often for a renewal of dissipated lives.

"But this does not make war!" Yes, it does. Poor ranchmen, far and near, get frightened at the rumours and rush with their families. to the nearest settlement. The Indians get the rumours ten times exaggerated, and the wild become wilder, and women and children are often blinded by terror. Young, ambitious fellows among them catch a special inspiration, rush off, perhaps, in small parties, kill cattle, take horses, murder mining prospectors, and individual travellers. They then return with their booty and the scalps to be the lions of the tribe. Every peace council is now overborne, and war is upon us with all its supreme outrage and horror. So in all Indian wars, and so it has been in this.

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Indian agents have a hard and trying position. gigantic in ability and character to control at such times. We must not blame them too much. Some are not suited at all to such work. Some are not wise governors; but I have found among them very competent men. But no one man can quench the fire of a blazing house after it has passed the first stage of ignition.

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A journal, speaking of this outbreak, well remarks that the Indian tests practically the agent put in charge of him. If he finds him a man of good qualities, firm, true to his word, fearless, yet generous and kind, he makes of him a friend. An agent who has established such relations with the Indians can exercise over them almost unlimited control. But an agent who has incurred suspicion or dislike may discharge his duties with fidelity and still be only a cause of constant irritation. . An agent whom he trusts can do more with the Indian in peace or war than an army with banners. It is by the influence of such men that treaties have been concluded when the whole power of the Government could not have secured the assent of a score of Indians.

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influence that conflict has been avoided in numberless cases. this individual way of dealing with the Indians is the only way that has ever met with the slightest success."

Doubtless the agents at the five centres before-named in the great Sioux nation have done what they could, but under the excitement of the Messiah craze they would have been more than human to have maintained the peace without army help. Again, the army should not be blamed. In this, as in every Indian war, troops have been made a last resort. They go and labour at the engines to quench a great prairie fire, after it has been long ablaze. The killing of Sitting Bull and the attending combat, the rushing of the wild ones to the famous “bad lands,” the calls from neighbouring villages and hamlets for arms and for soldiers, the killing here and there of individual white men, and then of one or two Indians; these stories came over the wires like successive waves from the ocean. But yet the troops had been quickly called, abundantly furnished, and promptly transported to different points around and upon the great reservation. They soon occupied the agencies. They were gradually drawing nearer to the hostile camps; the wise policy of segregating the friendly bands and individuals appeared to succeed. When the 7th Cavalry, attempting to disarm Big Foot's tribe near Wounded Knee, was suddenly—perhaps by the treachery of a single Indian, the hostility of some, and the fears of others-brought into a terrible conflict, twenty-five of our men were killed and thirty-eight wounded; some 150 Indians were slain, and many others wounded. Captain Wallace then fell in death, and several other officers received severe wounds. The worthy priest (Father Crafts), who hastened from New York to use his extensive influence with the Indians, in the hope of restoring peace, fell desperately wounded among the soldiers. Since then Lieutenant Casey, a most worthy and promising officer, who was with me a few years ago at the military academy as an instructor of cadets, and who distinguished himself in command of Indian scouts, bringing them to instruction and discipline, was shot and killed by a treacherous Brule Indian, while reconnoitring in front of the hostile camp.

The horrors of an Indian war are always terrible, often revolting. As this time the conflict has been an unusual one, has taken

place against the ordinary experience, and contrary to all predictions, and in view of the whole world, may we not hope that our people may be more than usually impressed by it, and that it will be the last? Surely, now, such large, strong, effective measures will be taken as will for ever prevent a repetition of these scenes.

OLIVER O. HOWARD, Major-General U.S. Army.

CYCLING: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

TH

HE history of the cycle may be traced back for more than a hundred years; but it may be said that Gavin Dalzell, a cooper, of Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, constructed and rode the first practical bicycle in 1836—that is, the first machine with two wheels arranged tandem fashion; in fact, the dandy-horse with cranks and pedals attached by levers to the rear wheel, driven forward by pressure on them, and managed as the cycle is to-day. The dandyhorse was similar in outline and construction to the present low or safety bicycle with two equal-sized wheels, but it was propelled by the rider partially sitting astride and partially running, pushing on the ground with his feet, by which means a certain amount of speed could be got up. Machines of this sort, it is well known, have existed for an indefinite period, as they may be found in multitudes of old prints and drawings.

In the book on Cycling, in the Badminton Series, it is stated in one place that about 1866 a Parisian firm, MM. Michaux et Cie., sent to England a perfected bicycle, and again, a little further on, that as far back as 1865 James Starley had made a velocipede with suspension wheels. These statements imply that the French machine had a large front wheel and a small back one, and that the other had two equal-sized wheels; but all this is very confusing. The developments which converted the bicycle into a practical vehicle were the introduction of the rubber tire in place of the iron or steel one, the suspension wheel, and, most important, the placing of the rider over his work and not behind it. The latter idea, to a certain extent, had been worked out by Dalzell and then dropped. Who is to be credited with these inventions-the real making of the cycle-is not positively known. But to James Starley

has been universally given in England credit for the invention of the ordinary or high bicycle of to-day, while Pierre Lallemant, in America, claims to have been the first to drive a wheel by a crank. Mr. Starley, who was a born inventor, was employed by the Coventry Machinists' Company, then manufacturing sewing machines, and from an order for bicycles, placed with this firm in those early days, resulted the vast industry which has transformed into flourishing cities some of the decayed towns of the Midlands, most notably Coventry.

The tall bicycle, with one large front and one very small hind wheel, seems, at a cursory glance, to have changed but little; but while the original form has been retained, improvements have been continually made and are really countless. Ball bearings have been fitted to all frictional parts, the managen.ent and steering of the machine have been improved, the weight has been reduced onehalf, springs have been invented to deaden the vibration, and the machine has been made as a dwarf to secure safety from tumbles over the front. But this last problem, the most difficult of all, has been fairly well solved by keeping the very large front wheel, and simply increasing the size of the back wheel, when the bicycle is called a rational. In this form, though the mounting requires a certain amount of agility, though a spill is by no means an impossibility, and though very much luggage cannot be carried, it is probably the most perfect cycle extant. The man who knows how to ride it makes it a part of himself. On level ground he steers it automatically, with no more thought than if he were walking; he does not use his hands at all. As he goes down hill he puts his legs over the handles and as nearly experiences the sensation of flying as is possible. Up hill he fairly seems to lift himself and the machine. And then he meets a stick the size of a lead-pencil-and what a fall! The constant danger of headers, or croppers, and the vibration from the small back wheel are the sole but insurmountable drawbacks to this most graceful and delightful piece of mechanism. Some riders, as they grow older, feel that its delights are counterbalanced by the uncertainty as to whether they are to come home on the machine or in an ambulance. Nevertheless, the longest and most notorious cycling feats have been performed on the

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