Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

TO COUNCIL BLUFFS
resent the offer. As for him and me, we had en-
joyed a very pleasant conversation ; he, in particular,
had found much pleasure in my society ; I was a
stranger ; this was exactly one of those rare conjunc-
tures. . . . Without being very clear-seeing, I can
still perceive the sun at noonday ; and the coloured
gentleman deftly pocketed a quarter. ^
Wednesday. — A httle after midnight I convoyed
my widow and orphans on board the train ; and
morning found us far into Ohio. This had early
been a favourite home of my imagination ; I have
played at being in Ohio by the week, and enjoyed
some capital sport there with a dummy gun, my
person being still unbreeched. My preference was
founded on a work which appeared in CasselVs
Family Paper, and was read aloud to me by
my nurse. It narrated the doings of one Custa-
loga, an Indian brave, who, in the last chapter,
very obligingly washed the paint off his face and
became Sir Reginald Somebody-or-other ; a trick I
never forgave him. The idea of a man being an
Indian brave, and then giving that up to be a
baronet, was one which my mind rejected. It
offended verisimilitude, like the pretended anxiety
of Robinson Crusoe and others to escape from un-
inhabited islands.
But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured it.
We wer^ now on those great plains which stretch
unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The country
was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All
through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as
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