The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

Of all the annual exhibitions at Earl's Court representing, with or without their consent, foreign nationalities, none has promised so well to be a decided success than the International Horticultural Exhibition, which opened its doors on Saturday. I responded to a most hospitable form of invitation to witness the opening ceremony, more as a matter of courtesy than otherwise, and therefore was the more delighted by the surprise that was in store for all of us who drove down "far West" to hear the Duke of Connaught open the exhibition with an address that was inaudible to us all owing to the riotous conduct of a number of Royalty-hunting ladies from the immediate neighbourhood. The inaugural luncheon was presided over by the Bishop of Exeter, who, in poetical language, expressed his appreciation of an exhibition calculated to bring home to the people the beauties of Nature.

As to the Show itself I have no space to say all I should like to say, so I must content myself with the general assertion that it is worth many a visit to Earl's Court, and is far, far beyond anything of the kind ever seen in this country, and untold relief after the exhibitions with which that particular site has of late been associated.

An interesting personality in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is John Nelson, who carelessly sits on the top of the Deadwood Coach and fires on the attacking Indians. This quiet-looking old man has not only led one of the most adventurous lives of any on the Western frontier—and few romances are more exciting than "Fifty Years on the Plains," the little book in which the story of his life is told—but he has played an important part in the history of the American Continent. He it was who guided Brigham Young and the first detachment of the Mormon colony across the plains to Utah. Driven from Illinois, the apostle and his followers were making their way as best they could towards the Promised Land, which he vaguely assured them lay somewhere in the West among the mountains, when one day a strange figure rode into their camp, whom they hardly knew whether to receive as friend or foe. This was Nelson, who had been living for some years with a tribe of the Sioux, and had come to visit this extraordinary caravan.

Young, in despair of finding the Promised Land at all, enlisted his services as guide. How successful those services were is now matter of history. Nelson's matrimonial experiences among the Indians were rather courious. He fell readily in with the rough and ready system of marriage and divorce, but having once been nursed through an illness by his latest spouse and a parson, he was persuaded by the latter to tie the knot in the fashion of the white man, a proceeding to which the lady afterwards took great exception when she discovered the permanent nature of the tie.