Six days of severe travelling have brought us from the Camanchee
village to the North bank of the Canadian, where we are snugly encamped
on a beautiful plain, and in the midst of countless numbers of
buffaloes; and halting a few days to recruit our horses and men, and
dry meat to last us the remainder of our journey.
The plains around this, for many miles, seem actually speckled in
distance, and in every direction, with herds of grazing buffaloes; and
for several days, the officers and men have been indulged in a general
licence to gratify their sporting propensities; and a scene of bustle
and cruel slaughter it has been, to be sure! From morning till night,
the camp has been daily almost deserted; the men have dispersed in
little squads in all directions, and are dealing death to these poor
creatures to a most cruel and wanton extent, merely for the pleasure of
_destroying_, generally without stopping to cut out the meat. During
yesterday and this day, several hundreds have undoubtedly been killed,
and not so much as the flesh of half a dozen used. Such immense swarms
of them are spread over this tract of country; and so divided and
terrified have they become, finding their enemies in all directions
where they run, that the poor beasts seem completely bewildered—running
here and there, and as often as otherwise, come singly advancing to
the horsemen, as if to join them for their company, and are easily
shot down. In the turmoil and confusion, when their assailants have
been pushing them forward, they have galloped through our encampment,
jumping over our fires, upsetting pots and kettles, driving horses from
their fastenings, and throwing the whole encampment into the greatest
instant consternation and alarm. The hunting fever will be satiated in
a few days amongst the young men, who are well enough to take parts in
the chase; and the bilious fever, it is to be hoped, will be abated in
a short time, amongst those who are invalid, and meat enough will be
dried to last us to Fort Gibson, when we shall be on the march again,
and wending our way towards that garrison.
Many are now sick and unable to ride, and are carried on litters
between two horses. Nearly every tent belonging to the officers has
been converted to hospitals for the sick; and sighs and groaning are
heard in all directions. From the Camanchee village to this place, the
country has been entirely prairie; and most of the way high and dry
ground, without water, for which we sometimes suffered very much. From
day to day we have dragged along exposed to the hot and burning rays of
the sun, without a cloud to relieve its intensity, or a bush to shade
us, or anything to cast a shadow, except the bodies of our horses. The
grass for a great part of the way, was very much dried up, scarcely
affording a bite for our horses; and sometimes for the distance of
many miles, the only water we could find, was in stagnant pools, lying
on the highest ground, in which the buffaloes have been lying and
wallowing like hogs in a mud-puddle. We frequently came to these dirty
lavers, from which we drove the herds of wallowing buffaloes, and into
which our poor and almost dying horses, irresistibly ran and plunged
their noses, sucking up the dirty and poisonous draught, until, in some
instances, they fell dead in their tracks—the men also (and oftentimes
amongst the number, the writer of these lines) sprang from their
horses, and laded up and drank to almost fatal excess, the disgusting
and tepid draught, and with it filled their canteens, which were slung
to their sides, and from which they were sucking the bilious contents
during the day.
In our march we found many deep ravines, in the bottoms of which there
were the marks of wild and powerful streams; but in this season of
drought they were all dried up, except an occasional one, where we
found them dashing along in the coolest and clearest manner, and on
trial, to our great agony, so _salt_ that even our horses could not
drink from them; so we had occasionally the tantalizing pleasure of
hearing the roar of, and looking into, the clearest and most sparkling
streams; and after that the dire necessity of drinking from stagnant
pools which lay from month to month exposed to the rays of the sun,
till their waters become so poisonous and heavy, from the loss of their
vital principle, that they are neither diminished by absorption, or
taken into the atmosphere by evaporation.
This poisonous and indigestible water, with the intense rays of the
sun in the hottest part of the summer, is the cause of the unexampled
sickness of the horses and men. Both appear to be suffering and dying
with the same disease, a slow and distressing bilious fever, which
seems to terminate in a most frightful and fatal affection of the liver.
In these several cruel days’ march, I have suffered severely, having
had all the time (and having yet) a distracting fever on me. My real
friend, Joe, has constantly rode by my side, dismounting and filling my
canteen for me, and picking up minerals or fossils, which my jaundiced
eyes were able to discover as we were passing over them; or doing other
kind offices for me, when I was too weak to mount my horse without
aid. During this march over these dry and parched plains, we picked up
many curious things of the fossil and mineral kind, and besides them
a number of the horned frogs. In our portmanteaux we had a number of
tin boxes in which we had carried Seidlitz powders, in which we caged
a number of them safely, in hopes to carry them home alive. Several
remarkable specimens my friend Joe has secured of these, with the horns
of half and three-fourths of an inch in length, and very sharp at the
points.
These curious subjects have so often fallen under my eye while on the
Upper Missouri, that with me, they have lost their novelty in a great
degree; but they have amused and astonished my friend Chadwick so
much, that he declares he will take every one he can pick up, and make
a sensation with them when he gets home. In this way Joe’s fancy for
horned frogs has grown into a sort of _frog-mania_, and his eyes are
strained all day, and gazing amongst the grass and pebbles as he rides
along, for his precious little prizes, which he occasionally picks up
and consigns to his pockets.[11]
On one of these hard day’s march, and just at night, whilst we were
looking out for water, and a suitable place to encamp, Joe and I
galloped off a mile or two to the right of the regiment, to a point of
timber, to look for water, where we found a small and sunken stagnant
pool; and as our horses plunged their feet into it to drink, we saw
to our great surprise, a number of frogs hopping across its surface,
as our horses started them from the shore! Several of them stopped in
the middle of the pool, sitting quite “high and dry” on the surface of
the water; and when we approached them nearer, or jostled them, they
made a leap into the air, and coming down head foremost—went under the
water and secreted themselves at the bottom. Here was a subject for
Joe, in his own line! frogs with horns, and frogs with _webbed feet_,
that could hop about, and sit upon, the surface of the water! We rode
around the pool and drove a number of them into it, and fearing that
it would be useless to try to get one of them that evening; we rode
back to the encampment, exulting very much in the curious discovery
we had made for the naturalists; and by relating to some of the
officers what we had seen, got excessively laughed at for our wonderful
discovery! Nevertheless, Joe and I could not disbelieve what we had
seen so distinctly “with our own eyes;” and we took to ourselves (or
in other words, I acquiesced in Joe’s taking to _himself_, as it was
so peculiarly in his line) the most unequivocal satisfaction in the
curious and undoubted discovery of this new variety; and we made our
arrangements to ride back to the spot before “_bugle call_” in the
morning; and by a thorough effort, to obtain a specimen or two of the
web-footed frogs for Joe’s pocket, to be by him introduced to the
consideration of the knowing ones in the East. Well, our horses were
saddled at an early hour, and Joe and I were soon on the spot—and he
with a handkerchief at the end of a little pole, with which he had
made a sort of scoop-net, soon dipped one up as it was hopping along
on the surface of the water, and making unsuccessful efforts to dive
through its surface. On examining its feet, we found, to our very great
surprise, that we had taken a great deal of pains to entrap an old
and familiar little acquaintance of our boyhood; but, somewhat like
ourselves, unfortunately, from dire necessity, driven to a loathsome
pool, where the water was so foul and slimy, that it could hop and
dance about its surface with dry feet; and where it oftentimes found
difficulty in diving through the surface to hide itself at the bottom.
I laughed a great deal at poor Joe’s most cruel expense, and we amused
ourselves a few minutes about this filthy and curious pool, and rode
back to the encampment. We found by taking the water up in the hollow
of the hand, and dipping the finger in it, and drawing it over the
side, thus conducting a little of it out; it was so slimy that the
whole would run over the side of the hand in a moment!
We were joked and teased a great deal about our _web-footed frogs_; and
after this, poor Joe has had repeatedly to take out and exhibit his
little pets in his pockets, to convince our travelling companions that
_frogs sometimes actually have horns_.
Since writing the above, an express has arrived from the encampment,
which we left at the mouth of False Washita, with the melancholy
tidings of the death of General Leavenworth, Lieutenant M‘Clure, and
ten or fifteen of the men left at that place! This has cast a gloom
over our little encampment here, and seems to be received as a fatal
foreboding by those who are sick with the same disease; and many of
them, poor fellows, with scarce a hope left now for their recovery.
It seems that the General had moved on our trail a few days after we
left the Washita, to the “Cross Timbers,” a distance of fifty or sixty
miles, where his disease at last terminated his existence; and I am
inclined to think, as I before mentioned, in consequence of the injury
he sustained in a fall from his horse when running a buffalo calf. My
reason for believing this, is, that I rode and ate with him every day
after the hour of his fall; and from that moment I was quite sure that
I saw a different expression in his face, from that which he naturally
wore; and when riding by the side of him two or three days after his
fall, I observed to him, “General, you have a very bad cough”—“Yes,”
he replied, “I have killed myself in running that devilish calf; and
it was a very lucky thing, Catlin, that you painted the portrait of me
before we started, for it is all that my dear wife will ever see of me.”
We shall be on the move again in a few days; and I plainly see that
I shall be upon a litter, unless my horrid fever leaves me, which is
daily taking away my strength, and almost, at times, my senses. Adieu!
[11] Several months after this, when I visited my friend Joe’s room
in St. Louis, he shewed me his horned frogs in their little tin
boxes, in good flesh and good condition, where they had existed
several months, without food of any kind.
LETTER—No. 45.