Cramped with cold and inaction--at 6 A.M. the thermometer showed only

56° F. in the sun--hungry, thirsty, and by no means in the mildest of

humors, we hear with a gush of joy, at 3 15 A.M., the savage Yep! yep!

yep! with which the driver announces our approach. The plank lodgings

soon appear; we spring out of the ambulance; a qualm comes over us;

all is dark and silent as the grave; nothing is prepared for us; the

wretches are all asleep. A heavy kick opens the door of the soon-found

restaurant, when a pheesy, drowsy voice from an inner room asks us, in

German-English--so strong is the causality, the crapulousness of why

and wherefore in this “divided, erudite race”--“And how ze komen in?”

Without attempting to gratify his intellectual cravings, we ordered him

out of bed, and began to talk of supper, refreshment, and repose. But

the “critter” had waxed surly after securing for himself a compound

epithet, of which “hunds--” is the first syllable, and his every

negative answer concluded with a faint murmur of “petampt.” I tried to

get his bed for Mrs. Dana, who was suffering severely from fatigue. He

grumbled out that his “lady and bebbé” were occupying it. At length I

hit upon the plan of placing the cushions and cloaks upon the table,

when the door opened for a second dog-Teuton, who objected to that

article of furniture being used otherwise than for his morning meal.

_Excédés_, and mastering with pain our desire to give these villain

“sausage-eaters” “particular fits,” we sat down, stared at the fire,

and awaited the vile food. For a breakfast cooked in the usual manner,

coffee boiled down to tannin (ever the first operation), meat subjected

to half sod, half stew, and, lastly, bread raised with sour milk

corrected with soda, and so baked that the taste of the flour is ever

prominent, we paid these German rascals 75 cents, a little dearer than

at the Trois Frères.

At the Upper Crossing of the South Fork there are usually tender

adieux, the wenders toward Mormonland bidding farewell to those bound

for the perilous gold regions of Denver City and Pike’s Peak. If

“fresh,” they take leave of one another with sincere commiseration for

one another’s dooms, each deeming, of course, his own the brighter.

The wagons were unloaded, thus giving us the opportunity of procuring

changes of raiment and fresh caps--our felts had long disappeared under

the influence of sleeping on the perch. By some means we retained our

old ambulance, which, after five days and nights, we had learned to

look upon as a home; the Judiciary, however, had to exchange theirs

for one much lighter and far less comfortable. Presently those bound

to Denver City set out upon their journey. Conspicuous among them

was a fair woman who had made her first appearance at Cotton-wood

Creek--fit place for the _lune de mélasse_--with an individual,

apparently a well-to-do drover, whom she called “Tom” and “husband.”

She had forgotten her “fixins,” which, according to a mischievous and

scandalous driver, consisted of a reticule containing a “bishop,” a

comb, and a pomatum-pot, a pinchbeck watch, and a flask of “Bawme”--not

of Meccah. Being a fine young person of Scotch descent, she had, till

dire suspicions presented themselves, attracted the attentions of her

fellow-travelers, who pronounced her to be “all sorts of a gal.” But

virtue is rabid in these lands, and the purity of the ermine must not

be soiled. It was fortunate for Mr. and Mrs. Mann--the names were _noms

de voyage_--that they left us so soon. In a certain Southern city I

heard of a high official who, during a trip upon one of the floating

palaces of the Mississippi, had to repeat “deprendi miserum est;” the

fond, frail pair was summarily ejected with bag and baggage to furnish

itself with a down-stream passage on board a lumber raft.

[THE “PADOUCA.”]

We crossed the “Padouca” at 6 30 A.M., having placed our luggage and

the mails for security in an ox cart. The South Fork is here 600 to 700

yards broad; the current is swift, but the deepest water not exceeding

250 feet, the teams are not compelled to cross diagonally. The channel

was broken with sand-banks and islets; the bed was dark and gravelly;

the water, though dark as hotel coffee, was clear, not, as described

by Captain Stansbury, “perfectly opaque with thick yellow mud,” and

the earth-banks, which rise to five feet, are never inundated. The

half-broken mules often halted, and seemed inclined to lie down; a

youth waded on the lower side of the team, shouting and swinging his

arms to keep them from turning their heads down stream; the instinct

of animals to find an easy ford ended with a few desperate struggles

up the black oozy mire. Having reloaded on the left bank, and cast one

last look of hatred upon the scene of our late disappointment, we set

out at 7 A.M. to cross the divide separating the Northern and Southern

Forks of the Platte.

We had now entered upon the outskirts of the American wilderness,

which has not one feature in common with the deserts of the Old World.

In Arabia and Africa there is majesty in its monotony: those awful

wastes so brightly sunburnished that the air above them appears by

contrast black; one vast and burning floor, variegated only by the

mirage-reek, with nothing below the firmament to relieve or correct

the eye. Here it is a brown smooth space, insensibly curving out of

sight, wholly wanting “second distance,” and scarcely suggesting the

idea of immensity; we seem, in fact, to be traveling for twenty miles

over a convex, treeless hill-top. The air became sultry, white clouds

shut in the sky, and presently arose the high south wind, which at this

season blows a gale between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. The ground, bleached

where sandy, was thinly scattered here and there with wiry grass, dun

and withered, and with coarse and sunburnt shrubs, among which the

“leadplant” (_Amorphe canescens_) was the characteristic. A dwarf

aloetic vegetation became abundant; vegetation was fast going the way

of all grass; after rain, however, it is doubtless fresh and copious.

The buffalo grass sought the shade of the wild sage. A small euphorbia,

the cotton-weed, a thistle haunted by the Cynthia cardua, that

butterfly common to the eastern and western hemispheres, and a bright

putoria, mingled with mushrooms like huge bulbs. The cactus was of two

kinds: the flat-leaved species is used by white men to filter water,

and by the savages, who peel and toast it, as provaunt:[39] there is

another globular variety (an _echinocactus_) lying stalkless, like a

half melon, with its brilliant flowers guarded by a panoply of spines.

We pursued a sandy tract, broken by beds of nullahs and fiumaras,

between two ridges of hillocks, draining to the right into a low bottom

denoted by a lively green, with bays and bends of lush, reed-like

grass. This is the well-known Lodge-Pole Creek or Fork, a mere ditch,

the longest and narrowest of its kind, rising from a mountain lakelet

near the “New Bayou” or “Park,” in the Black Hills, and falling

into the South Fork of the Platte, about seventy miles west of the

bifurcation. By following up this water along the Cherokee trail to its

head in the Cheyenne Pass of the Rocky Mountains, instead of describing

the arc _viâ_ Fort Laramie, the mail would gain 61 miles; emigrants,

indeed, often prefer the short cut. Moreover, from the Cheyenne Pass to

Great Salt Lake City, there is, according to accounts, a practicable

road south of the present line, which, as it would also save time and

labor, has been preferred for the mail line.

[39] There is another kind of cactus called by the whites

“whisky-root,” and by the Indian “peioke,” used like the intoxicating

mushroom of Siberia. “It grows in Southern Texas, in the range of

sand-hills bordering on the Rio Grande, and in gravelly, sandy

soil. The Indians eat it for its exhilarating effect on the system,

producing precisely the same excitement as alcoholic drinks. It

is sliced as you would a cucumber; the small piece is chewed and

swallowed, and in about the same time as comfortably tight cocktails

would ‘stir the divinity within’ you, this indicates itself; only

its effects are what I might term a little _k-a-v-o-r-t-i-n-g_,

giving rather a wilder scope to the imagination and actions.”--(A

Correspondent of the _New Orleans Picayune_, quoted by Mr. Bartlett.)

In the American Sahara animal life began to appear. The coyote turned

and stared at us as though we were trespassing upon his property.

This is the jackal of the Western world, the small prairie-wolf, the

_Canis latrans_, and the old Mexican coyotl, best depicted by the

old traveler, Abbé Clavigero, in these words: “It is a wild beast,

voracious like the wolf, cunning like the fox, in form like the dog,

and in some qualities like the jackal.” The animal has so often been

described that there is little new to say about it. The mountain men

are all agreed upon one thing, namely, that the meat is by no means

bad; most of them have tried “wolf-mutton” in hard times, and may

expect to do so again. The civilizee shudders at the idea of eating

wolf from a food-prejudice, whose consideration forms a curious

chapter in human history. It is not very easy, says Dr. Johnson, to

fix the principles upon which mankind have agreed to eat some animals

and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, so it is not

uniform. Originally invented for hygienic purposes, dietetic laws

soon became tenets of religion, and passed far beyond their original

intention: thus pork, for instance, injurious in Syria, would not be

eaten by a Jew in Russia. An extreme arbitrariness marks the modern

systems of civilized people: the Englishman, for instance, eats

oysters, periwinkles, shrimps, and frogs, while he is nauseated by the

snails, robins, and crows which the Frenchman uses; the Italian will

devour a hawk, while he considers a rabbit impure, and has refused to

touch potatoes even in a famine; and all delight in that foul feeder,

the duck, while they reject the meat of the cleanly ass. The Mosaic law

seems still to influence the European world, causing men to throw away

much valuable provision because unaccustomed to eat it or to hear of

its being eaten. The systems of China and Japan are far more sensible

for densely populated countries, and the hippophagists have shown, at

least, that one animal has been greatly wasted. The terrible famines,

followed by the equally fearful pestilences, which have scourged

mankind, are mainly owing to the prevalence of these food-prejudices,

which, as might be expected, are the most deeply rooted in the poorer

classes, who can least afford them.

[THE PRAIRIE-DOG VILLAGE.]

I saw to-day, for the first time, a prairie-dog village. The little

beast, hardly as large as a Guinea-pig, belongs to the family of

squirrels and the group of marmots--in point of manner it somewhat

resembles the monkey. “Wish-ton-Wish”[40]--an Indian onomatoplasm--was

at home, sitting posted like a sentinel upon the roof, and sunning

himself in the midday glow. It is not easy to shoot him; he is out of

doors all day; but, timid and alert, at the least suspicion of danger

he plunges with a jerking of the tail, and a somersault, quicker than

a shy young rabbit’s, into the nearest hole, peeping from the ground,

and keeping up a feeble little cry (wish! ton! wish!), more like the

note of a bird than a bark. If not killed outright, he will manage

to wriggle into his home. The villages are generally on the brow of

a hill, near a creek or pond, thus securing water without danger of

drowning. The earth burrowed out while making the habitations is

thrown up in heaps, which serve as sitting-places in the wet season,

and give a look-out upon the adjacent country; it is more dangerous

to ride over them than to charge a field of East Indian “T’hur,” and

many a broken leg and collar-bone have been the result. The holes,

which descend in a spiral form, must be deep, and they are connected

by long galleries, with sharp angles, ascents and descents, to puzzle

the pursuer. Lieutenant Pike had 140 kettles of water poured into one

without dislodging the occupant. The village is always cleared of

grass, probably by the necessities of the tenants, who, though they

enjoy insects, are mainly graminivorous, and rarely venture half a

mile from home. The limits are sometimes three miles square, and the

population must be dense, as a burrow will occur every few paces. The

_Cynomys Ludovicianus_ prepares for winter by stopping the mouth of

its burrow, and constructing a deeper cell, in which it hibernates

till spring appears. It is a graceful little animal, dark brown above

and white below, with teeth and nails, head and tail somewhat like

the gray sciurus of the States. The Indians and trappers eat this

American marmot, declaring its flesh to be fatter and better than

that of the squirrel. Some travelers advise exposing the meat for a

night or two to the frost, by which means the rankness of subterranean

flavor is corrected. It is undoubted that the rattlesnake--both of the

yellow and black species--and the small white burrowing-owl (_Strix

cunicularia_) are often found in the same warren with this rodent, a

curious happy family of reptile, bird, and beast, and in some places

he has been seen to associate with tortoises, rattlesnakes, and horned

frogs (_Phrynosoma_). According to some naturalists, however, the

fraternal harmony is not so perfect as it might be: the owl is accused

of occasionally gratifying his carnivorous lusts by laying open the

skull of Wish-ton-Wish with a smart stroke of the beak. We sighted,

not far from the prairie-dog village, an animal which I took to be a

lynx; but the driver, who had often seen the beast in Minnesota and Old

“Ouisconsinc,” declared that they are not to be found here.

[40] The name will recall to mind one of Mr. Fennimore Cooper’s

admirable fictions, the “Wept of Wish-ton-Wish,” which was, however,

a bird, the “Whip-poor-will,” or American night-hawk.

At 12 45 P.M., traveling over the uneven barren, and in a burning

sirocco, we reached Lodge-Pole Station, where we made our “noonin.” The

hovel fronting the creek was built like an Irish shanty, or a Beloch

hut, against a hill side, to save one wall, and it presented a fresh

phase of squalor and wretchedness. The mud walls were partly papered

with “Harper’s Magazine,” “Frank Leslie,” and the “New York Illustrated

News;” the ceiling was a fine festoon-work of soot, and the floor was

much like the ground outside, only not nearly so clean. In a corner

stood the usual “bunk,”[41] a mass of mingled rags and buffalo robes;

the centre of the room was occupied by a rickety table, and boxes,

turned up on their long sides, acted as chairs. The unescapable stove

was there, filling the interior with the aroma of meat. As usual, the

materials for ablution, a “dipper” or cup, a dingy tin skillet of

scanty size, a bit of coarse gritty soap, and a public towel, like a

rag of gunny bag, were deposited upon a rickety settle outside.

[41] American writers derive this word from the Anglo-Saxon _benc_,

whence the modern English “bench.” It means a wooden case used in

country taverns and in offices, and serving alike for a seat during

the day and a bed at night. In towns it is applied to the tiers of

standing bed peculiar to the lowest class of lodging-houses. In the

West, it is a frame-work, in size and shape like a berth on board

ship, sometimes single, sometimes double or treble.

[THE ANTELOPE.]

There being no “lady” at the station on Lodge-Pole Creek, milk was

unprocurable. Here, however, began a course of antelope venison, which

soon told upon us with damaging effect. I well knew the consequences

of this heating and bilious diet in Asia and Africa; but thinking it

safe to do at Rome as the Romans do, I followed in the wake of my

companions, and suffered with them. Like other wild meats, bear, deer,

elk, and even buffalo, antelope will disagree with a stranger; it is,

however, juicy, fat, and well-flavored, especially when compared with

the hard, dry, stringy stuff which the East affords; and the hunter and

trapper, like the Indian, are loud in its praise.

The habitat of the prong-horn antelope (_Antelocapra Americana_, called

“le cabris” by the Canadian, and “the goat” by the unpoetic mountain

man) extends from the plains west of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean;

it is also abundant on Minnesota and on the banks of the Red River;

its southern limit is Northern Mexico, whence it ranges to 53° N. lat.

on the Saskatchewan. It is about the size of a small deer, the male

weighing 65 lbs. in good condition. The coat is coarse and wiry, yellow

dun on the back, with dull white under the belly, and the tanned skin

is worth three dollars. It is at once the fleetest and the wariest

animal on the prairies, and its sense of hearing as acute as its power

of smell. The best time for “still hunting” (_i.e._, stalking) is at

early dawn, when the little herds of four or five are busy grazing.

They disappear during the midday heats of summer, and in the evening,

as in India and Arabia, they are wild and wary. They assemble in

larger bodies near the Rocky Mountains, where pasturage--not sage,

which taints the meat--abounds, and the Indian savages kill them by

surrounds, especially in winter, when the flesh is fattest. White men

usually stalk them. During the migration season few are seen near the

road; at other times they are often sighted. They are gifted, like

the hippopotamus, with a truly feminine curiosity; they will stand

for minutes to stare at a red wagon-bed, and, despite their extreme

wariness, they will often approach, within shot, a scarlet kerchief

tied to a stick, or any similar decoy. In manner they much resemble

the Eastern gazelle. When the herd is disturbed, the most timid moves

off first, followed by the rest; the walk gradually increases from a

slow trot to a bounding gallop. At times they halt, one by one, and

turn to gaze, but they presently resume flight, till they reach some

prominent place where their keen vision can command the surrounding

country. When well roused, they are thoroughly on the alert; the hunter

will often find that, though he has moved toward them silently, up the

wind and under cover, they have suspected sinister intentions and have

shifted ground.

Besides the antelope, there are three species of deer in the regions

east of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps the most common is the red

deer of the Eastern States (_Cervus Virginianus_; _le chevreuil_):

it extends almost throughout the length of the continent, and is

seemingly independent of altitude as of latitude. The venison is not

considered equal to that of the antelope; travelers, however, kill off

the deer to save butchers’ bills, so that it is now seldom “glimpsed”

from the line of route. The black-tailed or long-eared deer (_Cervus

macrotis_) is confined to the higher ground; it has similar habits

to the red variety, and is hunted in the same way. The long-tailed,

or jumping deer (_Cervus leucrurus_, vulgarly called the roebuck),

affects, like the black-tailed, the Rocky Mountains. The elk (_Cervus

Canadensis_) is found in parts of Utah Territory and forty miles north

of the mail-road, near the Wind-River Mountains--a perfect paradise

for sportsmen. It is noble shooting, but poor eating as the Indian

sambar.[42] The moose (_Cervus Alces_), the giant of the deer kind,

sometimes rising seventeen hands high, and weighing 1200 lbs., is an

inhabitant of higher latitudes--Nova Scotia, Canada, Maine, and other

parts of New England.

[42] The elk is being domesticated in the State of New York; it is

still, however, doubtful whether the animals will fatten well or

supply milk, or serve for other than ornamental purposes.

At Lodge-Pole Station, the mules, as might be expected from animals

allowed to run wild every day in the week except one, were like

newly-caught mustangs.[43] The herdsman--each station boasts of this

official--mounted a nag barebacked, and, jingling a bell, drove the

cattle into the corral, a square of twenty yards, formed by a wall

of loose stones, four to five feet high. He wasted three quarters of

an hour in this operation, which a well-trained shepherd’s dog would

have performed in a few minutes. Then two men entering with lassos

or lariats, thongs of flexible plaited or twisted hide, and provided

with an iron ring at one end to form the noose--the best are made of

hemp, Russian, not Manilla--proceeded, in a great “muss” on a small

scale, to secure their victims. The lasso[44] in their hands was by no

means the “unerring necklace” which the Mexican _vaquéro_ has taught

it to be: they often missed their aim, or caught the wrong animal.

The effect, however, was magical: a single haul at the noose made the

most stiff-necked mule tame as a costermonger’s ass. The team took,

as usual, a good hour to trap and hitch up: the latter was a delicate

operation, for the beasts were comically clever with their hoofs.

[43] The mustang is the Spanish mesteño. The animal was introduced

by the first colonists, and allowed to run at large. Its great

variety of coat proves the mustang’s degeneracy from the tame horse;

according to travelers, cream-color, skewbald, and piebald being not

uncommon. “Sparing in diet, a stranger to grain, easily satisfied

whether on growing or dead grass, inured to all weathers, and capable

of great labor,” the mustang-pony is a treasure to the prairie-man.

[44] According to Mr. Bartlett, the lasso (Span., “lazo”) is

synonymous with “lariat” (Span. “lariata”). In common use, however,

the first word is confined to the rope with which buffaloes,

mustangs, or mules are caught; the second, which in the West is

popularly pronounced “lariet,” or “lariette,” more generally means

the article with which animals are picketed. Many authors, however,

have made “lariat” the equivalent of “lasso.” The Texans use, instead

of the hide lasso, a hair rope called “caberes,” from the Spanish

“cabestro,” a halter.

[CLOUDS OF GRASSHOPPERS.]

At 3 P.M., after a preliminary ringing, intended to soothe the fears of

Madame, we set out _au grand galop_, with a team that had never worked

together before. They dashed down the cahues with a violence that

tossed us as in a blanket, and nothing could induce them, while fresh,

to keep the path. The yawing of the vehicle was ominous: fortunately,

however, the road, though self-made, was excellent; the sides were

smooth, and the whole country fit to be driven over. At first the view

was sadly monotonous. It was a fair specimen of the rolling prairie,

in nowise differing from any other land except in the absence of

trees. According to some travelers, there is in several places an

apparently progressive decay of the timber, showing that formerly it

was more extensive than it is now. Others attribute the phenomenon

to the destruction of forests in a former era by fires or by the

aborigines. It is more satisfactory to account for it by a complication

of causes--a want of proper constituents, an insufficiency of rain,

the depth of the water below the surface, the severity of the eight

months of winter snow, the fierce winds--the hardiest growths that

present their heads above the level of the prairies have dead tops--the

shortness of the summers, and last, but not least, the clouds of

grasshoppers. According to Lieutenant Warren, whose graphic description

is here borrowed, these insects are “nearly the same as the locusts of

Egypt; and no one who has not traveled on the prairie, and seen for

himself, can appreciate the magnitude of the swarms. Often they fill

the air for many miles of extent, so that an inexperienced eye can

scarcely distinguish their appearance from that of a shower of rain or

the smoke of a prairie fire. The height of their flight may be somewhat

appreciated, as Mr. E. James saw them above his head, as far as their

size would render them visible, while standing on the top of a peak of

the Rocky Mountains, 8500 feet above the plain, and an elevation of

14,500 above that of the sea, in the region where the snow lies all the

year. To a person standing in one of these swarms as they pass over and

around him, the air becomes sensibly darkened, and the sound produced

by their wings resembles that of the passage of a train of cars on a

railroad when standing two or three hundred yards from the track. The

Mormon settlements have suffered more from the ravages of these insects

than probably all other causes combined. They destroyed nearly all the

vegetables cultivated last year at Fort Randall, and extended their

ravages east as far as Iowa.”

As we advanced, the horizon, every where within musket-shot--a

wearying sight!--widened out, and the face of the country notably

changed. A scrap of blue distance and high hills--the “Court-house”

and others--appeared to the northwest. The long, curved lines, the

gentle slopes, and the broad hollows of the divide facing the South

Fork changed into an abrupt and precipitous descent, “gullied” like the

broken ground of sub-ranges attached to a mountain chain. Deep ravines

were parted by long narrow ridges, sharp-crested and water-washed,

exposing ribs and backbones of sandstone and silicious lime, like the

vertebræ of some huge saurian: scatters of kunker, with a detritus of

quartz and granite, clothed the ground, and, after passing Lodge-Pole

Creek, which bears away to the west, the rocky steps required the

perpetual application of the brake. Presently we saw a dwarf cliff

inclosing in an elliptical sweep a green amphitheatre, the valley of

our old friend the Platte. On the far bank of its northern fork lay a

forty-mile stretch of sandy, barren, glaring, heat-reeking ground, not

unlike that which the overland traveler looking southward from Suez

sees.[45] We left far to the right a noted spot, Ash Hollow, situated

at the mouth of the creek of the same prenomen. It is described as a

pretty bit in a barren land, about twenty acres, surrounded by high

bluffs, well timbered with ash and cedar, and rich in clematis and

other wild flowers. Here, in 1855, the doughty General Harney, with

700 to 800 men, “gave Jessie” to a large war-party of Brûlé Sioux

under their chief Little Thunder, of whom more anon, killing 150, and

capturing 60 squaws and children, with but seven or eight casualties in

his own force.

[45] According to Lieutenant Warren, the tract called the Sand-hills

occupies an area, north of the Platte, not less than 20,000 square

miles: from between the Niobrara and White Rivers to the north,

probably beyond the Arkansas in the south.

[AN IMPROMPTU BEDROOM.]

Descending into the bed of a broad “arroyo,”[46] at this season bone

dry, we reached, at 5 45 P.M., Mud-Spring Station, which takes its

name from a little run of clear water in a black miry hollow. A kind

of cress grows in it abundantly, and the banks are bright with the

“morning-glory” or convolvulus. The station-house was not unlike an

Egyptian fellah’s hut. The material was sod, half peat with vegetable

matter; it is taken up in large flakes after being furrowed with the

plow, and is cut to proper lengths with a short-handled spade. Cedar

timber,[47] brought from the neighboring hills, formed the roof. The

only accommodation was an open shed, with a sort of doorless dormitory

by its side. We dined in the shed, and amused ourselves with feeding

the little brown-speckled swamp-blackbirds that hopped about us tame

and “peert” as wrens, and when night drew near we sought shelter

from the furious southern gale, and heard tales of Mormon suffering

which made us think lightly of our little hardships.[48] Dreading

the dormitory--if it be true that the sultan of fleas inhabits Jaffa

and his vizier Grand Cairo, it is certain that his vermin officials

have settled _pro tem._ on Emigration Road--I cast about for a

quieter retreat. Fortune favored me by pointing out the body of a

dismantled wagon, an article--like the Tyrian keels which suggested

the magalia--often used as a habitation in the Far West, and not

unfrequently honored by being converted into a bridal-chamber after the

short and sharp courtship of the “Perraries.” The host, who was a kind,

intelligent, and civil man, lent me a “buffalo” by way of bedding; the

water-proof completed my outfit, provided with which I bade adieu for

a while to this weary world. The thermometer sank before dawn to 62°

(F.). After five nights more or less in the cramping wagon, it might be

supposed that we should have enjoyed the unusual rest; on the contrary,

we had become inured to the exercise; we could have kept it up for a

month, and we now grumbled only at the loss of time.

[46] The Arabo-Spanish “arroyo,” a word almost naturalized by the

Anglo-Americans, exactly corresponds with the Italian “fiumara” and

the Indian nullah.

[47] The word “cedar,” in the United States, is applied to various

genera of the pine family. The red cedar (_J. Virginiana_) is a

juniper. The “white cedar” of the Southern swamps is a cypress.

[48] The Mormon emigrants usually start from Council Bluffs, on

the left bank of the Missouri River, in N. lat, 41° 18′ 50″,

opposite Kanesville, otherwise called Winter Quarters. According

to the “Overland Guide,” Council Bluffs is the natural crossing of

the Missouri River, on the route destined by Nature for the great

thoroughfare to the Pacific. This was the road selected by “Nature’s

civil engineers,” the buffalo and the elk, for their western travel.

The Indians followed them in the same trail; then the travelers; next

the settlers came. After ninety-four miles’ marching, the Mormons

are ferried across Loup Fork, a stream thirteen rods wide, full of

bars, with banks and a bottom all quicksand. Another 150 miles takes

them to the Platte River, where they find good camping-places, with

plenty of water, buffalo-chips, and grass. Eighty-two miles beyond

that point (a total of 306), they arrive at “Last Timber,” a station

so called because, for the next 300 miles on the north side of the

Platte, the only sign of vegetation is “Lone Tree.” Many emigrants

avoid this dreary “spell” by crossing the Platte opposite Ash Hollow.

Others pass it at Platte-River Ferry, a short distance below the

mouth of Laramie River, while others keep the old road to the north.

_Past the Court-house and Scott’s Bluffs. August 13th._

At 8 A.M., after breaking our fast upon a tough antelope steak, and

dawdling while the herdsman was riding wildly about in search of his

runaway mules--an operation now to become of daily occurrence--we

dashed over the Sandy Creek with an _élan_ calculated to make timid

passengers look “skeery,” and began to finish the rolling divide

between the two forks. We crossed several arroyos and “criks” heading

in the line of clay highlands to our left, a dwarf sierra which

stretches from the northern to the southern branch of the Platte. The

principal are Omaha Creek, more generally known as “Little Punkin,”[49]

and Lawrence Fork.[50] The latter is a pretty bubbling stream,

running over sand and stones washed down from the Court-house Ridge;

it bifurcates above the ford, runs to the northeast through a prairie

four to five miles broad, and swells the waters of old Father Platte:

it derives its name from a Frenchman slaughtered by the Indians,

murder being here, as in Central Africa, ever the principal source of

nomenclature. The heads of both streams afford quantities of currants,

red, black, and yellow, and cherry-sticks which are used for spears and

pipe-stems.

[49] Punkin (_i.e._, pumpkin) and corn (_i.e._, zea maize) are, and

were from time immemorial, the great staples of native American

agriculture.

[50] According to Webster, “forks” (in the plural)--the point where

a river divides, or rather where two rivers meet and unite in one

stream. Each branch is called a “fork.” The word might be useful to

English travelers.

After twelve miles’ drive we fronted the Court-house, the remarkable

portal of a new region, and this new region teeming with wonders

will now extend about 100 miles. It is the _mauvaises terres_, or

Bad lands, a tract about 60 miles wide and 150 long, stretching in a

direction from the northeast to the southwest, or from the Mankizitah

(White-Earth) River, over the Niobrara (_Eau qui court_) and Loup

Fork to the south banks of the Platte: its eastern limit is the mouth

of the Keya Paha. The term is generally applied by the trader to any

section of the prairie country where the roads are difficult, and

by dint of an ill name the Bad lands have come to be spoken of as a

Golgotha, white with the bones of man and beast. American travelers,

on the contrary, declare that near parts of the White River “some as

beautiful valleys are to be found as any where in the Far West,” and

that many places “abound in the most lovely and varied forms in endless

variety, giving the most striking and pleasing effects of light and

shade.” The formation is the pliocene and miocene tertiary, uncommonly

rich in vertebrate remains: the _mauvaises terres_ are composed of

nearly horizontal strata, and “though diversified by the effects of

denuding agencies, and presenting in different portions striking

characteristics, yet they are, as a whole, a great uniform surface,

gradually rising toward the mountains, at the base of which they attain

an elevation varying between 3000 and 5500 feet above the level of the

sea.”

The Court-house, which had lately suffered from heavy rain, resembled

any thing more than a court-house; that it did so in former days we

may gather from the tales of many travelers, old Canadian voyageurs,

who unanimously accounted it a fit place for Indian spooks, ghosts,

and hobgoblins to meet in powwow, and to “count their coups” delivered

in the flesh. The Court-house lies about eight miles from the river,

and three from the road; in circumference it may be half a mile, and

in height 300 feet; it is, however, gradually degrading, and the rains

and snows of not many years will lay it level with the ground. The

material is a rough conglomerate of hard marl; the mass is apparently

the flank or shoulder of a range forming the southern buttress of the

Platte, and which, being composed of softer stuff, has gradually

melted away, leaving this remnant to rise in solitary grandeur above

the plain. In books it is described as resembling a gigantic ruin, with

a huge rotunda in front, windows in the sides, and remains of roofs

and stages in its flanks: verily potent is the eye of imagination! To

me it appeared in the shape of an irregular pyramid, whose courses

were inclined at an ascendable angle of 35°, with a detached outwork

composed of a perpendicular mass based upon a slope of 45°; in fact,

it resembled the rugged earthworks of Sakkara, only it was far more

rugged. According to the driver, the summit is a plane upon which a

wagon can turn. My military companion remarked that it would make a

fine natural fortress against Indians, and perhaps, in the old days

of romance and Colonel Bonneville, it has served as a refuge for the

harried fur-hunter. I saw it when set off by weather to advantage. A

blazing sun rained fire upon its cream-colored surface--at 11 A.M.

the glass showed 95° in the wagon--and it stood boldly out against

a purple-black nimbus which overspread the southern skies, growling

distant thunders, and flashing red threads of “chained lightning.”

[THE COMPATRIOT.]

I had finished a hasty sketch, when suddenly appeared to us a most

interesting sight--a neat ambulance,[51] followed by a fourgon and

mounted soldiers, from which issued an officer in uniform, who

advanced to greet Lieutenant Dana. The traveler was Captain, or rather

Major Marcy, who was proceeding westward on leave of absence. After

introduction, he remembered that his vehicle contained a compatriot

of mine. The compatriot, whose length of facial hair at once told his

race--for

“The larger the whisker, the greater the Tory”--

was a Mr. A----, British vice-consul at * * *’s, Minnesota. Having

lately tried his maiden hand upon buffalo, he naturally concluded that

I could have no other but the same object. Pleasant estimate, forsooth,

of a man’s brain, that it can find nothing in America worthy of its

notice but bison-shooting! However, the supposition had a _couleur

locale_. Every week the New York papers convey to the New World the

interesting information that some distinguished Britisher has crossed

the Atlantic and half crossed the States to enjoy the society of the

“monarch of our prairies.” Americans consequently have learned to look

upon this Albionic eccentricity as “the thing.” That unruly member the

tongue was upon the point of putting in a something about the earnest,

settled purpose of shooting a prairie-dog, when the reflection that it

was hardly fair so far from home to “chaff” a compatriot evidently big

with the paternity of a great exploit, with bit and bridle curbed it

fast.

[51] The price of the strong light traveling wagon called an

ambulance in the West is about $250; in the East it is much cheaper.

With four mules it will vary from $750 to $900; when resold,

however, it rarely fetches half that sum. A journey between St.

Joseph and Great Salt Lake City can easily be accomplished in an

ambulance within forty days. Officers and sportsmen prefer it,

because they have their time to themselves, and they can carry stores

and necessaries. On the other hand, “strikers”--soldier-helps--or

Canadian _engagés_ are necessary; and the pleasure of traveling is by

no means enhanced by the nightly fear that the stock will “bolt,” not

to be recovered for a week, if then.

[Illustration: CHIMNEY ROCK.]

Shortly after “liquoring up” and shaking hands, we found ourselves once

more in the valley of the Platte, where a lively green relieved eyes

which still retained retina-pictures of the barren, Sindh-like divide.

The road, as usual along the river-side, was rough and broken, and

puffs of simoom raised the sand and dust in ponderous clouds. At 12

30 P.M. we nooned for an hour at a little hovel called a ranch, with

the normal corral; and I took occasion to sketch the far-famed Chimney

Rock. The name is not, as is that of the Court-house, a misnomer: one

might almost expect to see smoke or steam jetting from the summit. Like

most of these queer malformations, it was once the knuckle-end of the

main chain which bounded the Platte Valley; the softer adjacent strata

of marl and earthy limestone were disintegrated by wind and weather,

and the harder material, better resisting the action of air and water,

has gradually assumed its present form. Chimney Rock lies two and a

half miles from the south bank of the Platte. It is composed of a

friable yellowish marl, yielding readily to the knife. The shape is a

thin shaft, perpendicular and quasi conical. Viewed from the southeast

it is not unlike a giant jack-boot based upon a high pyramidal mound,

which, disposed in the natural slope, rests upon the plain. The neck of

sandstone connecting it with the adjacent hills has been distributed

by the floods around the base, leaving an ever-widening gap between.

This “Pharos of the prairie sea” towered in former days 150 to 200

feet above the apex of its foundation,[52] and was a landmark visible

for 40 to 50 miles: it is now barely 35 feet in height. It has often

been struck by lightning; _imber edax_ has gnawed much away, and the

beginning of the end is already at hand. It is easy to ascend the

pyramid; but, while Pompey’s Pillar, Peter Botte, and Ararat have all

felt the Anglo-Scandinavian foot, no venturous scion of the race has

yet trampled upon the top of Chimney Rock. Around the waist of the base

runs a white band which sets off its height and relieves the uniform

tint. The old sketches of this curious needle now necessarily appear

exaggerated; moreover, those best known represent it as a column rising

from a confused heap of boulders, thus conveying a completely false

idea. Again the weather served us: nothing could be more picturesque

than this lone pillar of pale rock lying against a huge black cloud,

with the forked lightning playing over its devoted head.

[52] According to M. Preuss, who accompanied Colonel Frémont’s

expedition, “travelers who visited it some years since placed its

height at upward of 500 feet,” though in his day (1842) it had

diminished to 200 feet above the river.

[ROBIDOUX’ FORT.]

After a frugal dinner of biscuit and cheese we remounted and pursued

our way through airy fire, which presently changed from our usual

pest--a light dust-laden breeze--into a Punjaubian dust-storm, up the

valley of the Platte. We passed a ranch called “Robidoux’ Fort,” from

the well-known Indian trader of that name;[53] it is now occupied by

a Canadian or a French Creole, who, as usual with his race in these

regions, has taken to himself a wife in the shape of a Sioux squaw,

and has garnished his quiver with a multitude of whitey-reds. The

driver pointed out the grave of a New Yorker who had vainly visited

the prairies in search of a cure for consumption. As we advanced the

storm increased to a tornado of north wind, blinding our cattle till

it drove them off the road. The gale howled through the pass with all

the violence of a khamsin, and it was followed by lightning and a few

heavy drops of rain. The threatening weather caused a large party of

emigrants to “fort themselves” in a corral near the base of Scott’s

Bluffs.

The corral, a Spanish and Portuguese word, which, corrupted to “kraal,”

has found its way through Southern Africa, signifies primarily a square

or circular pen for cattle, which may be made of tree-trunks, stones,

or any other convenient material. The corral of wagons is thus formed.

The two foremost are brought near and parallel to each other, and are

followed by the rest, disposed aslant, so that the near fore wheel of

the hinder touches the off hind wheel of that preceding it, and _vice

versâ_ on the other side. The “tongues,” or poles, are turned outward,

for convenience of yoking, when an attack is not expected, otherwise

they are made to point inward, and the gaps are closed by ropes and

yoke and spare chains. Thus a large oval is formed with a single

opening fifteen to twenty yards across; some find it more convenient

to leave an exit at both ends. In dangerous places the passages are

secured at night either by cords or by wheeling round the near wagons;

the cattle are driven in before sundown, especially when the area of

the oval is large enough to enable them to graze, and the men sleep

under their vehicles. In safer travel the tents are pitched outside the

corral with their doors outward, and in front of these the camp-fires

are lighted. The favorite spots with teamsters for corraling are the

re-entering angles of deep streams, especially where these have high

and precipitous banks, or the crests of abrupt hills and bluffs--the

position for nighting usually chosen by the Australian traveler--where

one or more sides of the encampment is safe from attack, and the others

can be protected by a cross fire. As a rule Indians avoid attacking

strong places; this, however, must not always be relied upon; in 1844

the Utah Indians attacked Uintah Fort, a trading-post belonging to

M. A. Robidoux, then at St. Louis, slaughtered the men, and carried

off the women. The corral is especially useful for two purposes: it

enables the wagoners to yoke up with ease, and it secures them from the

prairie traveler’s prime dread--the stampede. The Western savages are

perfectly acquainted with the habits of animals, and in their marauding

expeditions they instinctively adopt the system of the Bedouins, the

Gallas, and the Somal. Providing themselves with rattles and other

implements for making startling noises, they ride stealthily up close

to the cattle, and then rush by like the whirlwind with a volley of

horrid whoops and screams. When the “cavallard” flies in panic fear,

the plunderers divide their party; some drive on the plunder, while the

others form a rear-guard to keep off pursuers. The prairie-men provide

for the danger by keeping their fleetest horses saddled, bridled,

and ready to be mounted at a moment’s notice. When the animals have

stampeded, the owners follow them, scatter the Indians, and drive,

if possible, the madriña, or bell-mare, to the front of the herd,

gradually turning her toward the camp, and slacking speed as the

familiar objects come in sight. Horses and mules appear peculiarly

timorous upon the prairies. A band of buffalo, a wolf, or even a deer,

will sometimes stampede them; they run to great distances, and not

unfrequently their owners fail to recover them.

[53] From the _St. Joseph_ (Mo.) _Gazette_: “Obituary.--Departed

this life, at his residence in this city, on Wednesday, the 29th

day of August, 1860, after a long illness, Antoine Robidoux, in

the sixty-sixth year of his age. Mr. Robidoux was born in the city

of St. Louis, in the year 1794. He was one of the brothers of Mr.

Joseph Robidoux, founder of the city of St. Joseph. He was possessed

of a sprightly intellect and a spirit of adventure. When not more

than twenty-two years of age he accompanied Gen. Atkinson to the

then very wild and distant region of the Yellow Stone. At the age of

twenty-eight he went to Mexico, and lived there fifteen years. He

then married a very interesting Mexican lady, who returned with him

to the States. For many years he traded extensively with the Navajoes

and Apaches. In 1840 he came to this city with his family, and has

resided here ever since. In 1845 he went out to the mountains on a

trading expedition, and was caught by the most terrible storms, which

caused the death of one or two hundred of his horses, and stopped his

progress. His brother Joseph, the respectable founder of this city,

sent to his relief and had him brought in, or he would have perished.

He was found in a most deplorable condition, and saved. In 1846 he

accompanied Gen. Kearney, as interpreter and guide, to Mexico. In

a battle with the Mexicans he was lanced severely in three places,

but he survived his wounds, and returned to St. Joseph in 1849. Soon

after that he went to California, and remained until 1854. In 1855

he removed to New Mexico with his family, and in 1856 he went to

Washington, and remained there a year, arranging some business with

the government. He then returned to St. Joseph, and has remained here

ever since. Mr. Robidoux was a very remarkable man. Tall, slender,

athletic, and agile, he possessed the most graceful and pleasing

manners, and an intellect of a superior order. In every company he

was affable, graceful, and highly pleasing. His conversation was

always interesting and instructive, and he possessed many of those

qualities which, if he remained in the States, would have raised him

to positions of distinction. He suffered for several years before

his death with a terrible soreness of the eyes, which defied the

curative skill of the doctors; and for the past ten years he has been

afflicted with dropsy. A week or two ago he was taken with a violent

hemorrhage of the lungs, which completely prostrated him, and from

the effects of which he never recovered. He was attended by the best

medical skill, and his wife and many friends were with him to the

hour of his dissolution, which occurred on Monday morning, at four

o’clock, at his residence in this city. He will be long remembered as

a courteous, cultivated, agreeable gentleman, whose life was one of

great activity and public usefulness, and whose death will be long

lamented.”

[Illustration: SCOTT’S BLUFFS.]

[SCOTT’S BLUFFS.]

“Scott’s Bluffs,” situated 285 miles from Fort Kearney and 51 from Fort

Laramie, was the last of the great marl formations which we saw on this

line, and was of all by far the most curious. In the dull uniformity

of the prairies, it is a striking and attractive object, far excelling

the castled crag of Drachenfels or any of the beauties of romantic

Rhine. From a distance of a day’s march it appears in the shape of

a large blue mound, distinguished only by its dimensions from the

detached fragments of hill around. As you approach within four or five

miles, a massive medieval city gradually defines itself, clustering,

with a wonderful fullness of detail, round a colossal fortress, and

crowned with a royal castle. Buttress and barbican, bastion, demilune,

and guard-house, tower, turret, and donjon-keep, all are there: in

one place parapets and battlements still stand upon the crumbling

wall of a fortalice like the giant ruins of Château Gaillard, the

“Beautiful Castle on the Rock;” and, that nothing may be wanting to the

resemblance, the dashing rains and angry winds have cut the old line of

road at its base into a regular moat with a semicircular sweep, which

the mirage fills with a mimic river. Quaint figures develop themselves;

guards and sentinels in dark armor keep watch and ward upon the slopes,

the lion of Bastia crouches unmistakably overlooking the road; and as

the shades of an artificial evening, caused by the dust-storm, close

in, so weird is its aspect that one might almost expect to see some

spectral horseman, with lance and pennant, go his rounds about the

deserted streets, ruined buildings, and broken walls. At a nearer

aspect again, the quaint illusion vanishes; the lines of masonry become

yellow layers of boulder and pebble imbedded in a mass of stiff,

tamped, bald marly clay; the curtains and angles change to the gashings

of the rains of ages, and the warriors are metamorphosed into dwarf

cedars and dense shrubs, scattered singly over the surface. Travelers

have compared this glory of the _mauvaises terres_ to Gibraltar, to the

Capitol at Washington, to Stirling Castle. I could think of nothing in

its presence but the Arabs’ “City of Brass,” that mysterious abode of

bewitched infidels, which often appears at a distance to the wayfarer

toiling under the burning sun, but ever eludes his nearer search.

Scott’s Bluffs derive their name from an unfortunate fur-trader there

put on shore in the olden time by his boat’s crew, who had a grudge

against him: the wretch, in mortal sickness, crawled up the mound to

die. The politer guide-books call them “Capitol Hills:” methinks the

first name, with its dark associations, must be better pleasing to

the _genius loci_. They are divided into three distinct masses. The

largest, which may be 800 feet high, is on the right, or nearest the

river. To its left lies an outwork, a huge, detached cylinder whose

capping changes aspect from every direction; and still farther to the

left is a second castle, now divided from, but once connected with the

others. The whole affair is a spur springing from the main range, and

closing upon the Platte so as to leave no room for a road.

[METEOROLOGICAL PHENONMENON.]

After gratifying our curiosity we resumed our way. The route lay

between the right-hand fortress and the outwork, through a degraded

bed of softer marl, once doubtless part of the range. The sharp,

sudden torrents which pour from the heights on both sides, and the

draughty winds--Scott’s Bluffs are the permanent head-quarters of

hurricanes--have cut up the ground into a labyrinth of jagged gulches

steeply walled in. We dashed down the drains and pitch-holes with

a violence which shook the nave-bands from our sturdy wheels.[54]

Ascending, the driver showed a place where the skeleton of an

“elephant” had been lately discovered. On the summit he pointed out,

far over many a treeless hill and barren plain, the famous Black Hills

and Laramie Peak, which has been compared to Ben Lomond, towering at

a distance of eighty miles. The descent was abrupt, with sudden turns

round the head of earth-cracks deepened to ravines by snow and rain;

and one place showed the remains of a wagon and team which had lately

come to grief. After galloping down a long slope of twelve miles, with

ridgelets of sand and gravel somewhat raised above the bottom, which

they cross on their way to the river, we found ourselves, at 5 30 P.M.,

once more in the valley of the Platte. I had intended to sketch the

Bluffs more carefully from the station, but the western view proved

to be disappointingly inferior to the eastern. After the usual hour’s

delay we resumed our drive through alternate puffs of hot and cold

wind, the contrast of which was not easy to explain. The sensation was

as if Indians had been firing the prairies--an impossibility at this

season, when whatever herbage there is is still green. It may here be

mentioned that, although the meteorology of the earlier savans, namely,

that the peculiar condition of the atmosphere known as the Indian

summer[55] might be produced by the burning of the plain-vegetation,

was not thought worthy of comment, their hypothesis is no longer

considered trivial. The smoky canopy must produce a sensible effect

upon the temperature of the season. “During a still night, when a

cloud of this kind is overhead, no dew is produced; the heat which is

radiated from the earth is reflected or absorbed, and radiated back

again by the particles of soot, and the coating of the earth necessary

to prevent the deposition of water in the form of dew or hoar-frost is

prevented.” According to Professor Henry, of Washington, “it is highly

probable that a portion of the smoke or fog-cloud produced by the

burning of one of the Western prairies is carried entirely across the

eastern portion of the continent to the ocean.”

[54] The dry heat of the prairies in summer causes the wood to warp

by the percolation of water, which the driver restores by placing the

wheels for a night to stand in some stream. Paint or varnish is of

little use. Moisture may be drawn out even through a nail-hole, and

exhaust the whole interior of the wood-work.

[55] These remarks are borrowed from a paper by Professor Joseph

Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, entitled

“Meteorology in its Connection with Agriculture.”

The Indian summer is synonymous with our St. Martin’s or Allhallows

summer, so called from the festival held on the 11th of November.

“The Indians avail themselves of this delightful time for harvesting

their corn; and the tradition is that they were accustomed to say they

always had a second summer of nine days before the winter set in. It

is a bland and genial time, in which the birds, insects, and plants

feel a new creation, and enjoy a short-lived summer ere they shrink

finally from the rigor of the winter’s blast. The sky, in the mean

time, is generally filled with a haze of orange and gold, intercepting

the direct rays of the sun, yet possessing enough of light and heat to

prevent sensations of gloom or chill, while the nights grow sharp and

frosty, and the necessary fires give cheerful forecast of the social

winter evenings near at hand.”--The _National Intelligencer_, Nov.

26th, 1857, quoted by Mr. Bartlett.

Presently we dashed over the Little Kiowa Creek, forded the Horse

Creek, and, enveloped in a cloud of villainous musquetoes, entered

at 8 30 P.M. the station in which we were to pass the night. It was

tenanted by one Reynal, a French Creole--the son of an old soldier of

the Grand Armée, who had settled at St. Louis--a companionable man,

but an extortionate: he charged us a florin for every “drink” of his

well-watered whisky. The house boasted of the usual squaw, a wrinkled

old dame, who at once began to prepare supper, when we discreetly

left the room. These hard-working but sorely ill-favored beings are

accused of various horrors in cookery, such as grinding their pinole,

or parched corn, in the impurest manner, kneading dough upon the

floor, using their knives for any purpose whatever, and employing

the same pot, unwashed, for boiling tea and tripe. In fact, they are

about as clean as those Eastern pariah servants who make the knowing

Anglo-Indian hold it an abomination to sit at meat with a new arrival

or with an officer of a “home regiment.” The daughter was an unusually

fascinating half-breed, with a pale face and Franco-American features.

How comes it that here, as in Hindostan, the French half-caste is

pretty, graceful, amiable, coquettish, while the Anglo-Saxon is

plain, coarse, gauche, and ill-tempered? The beauty was married to

a long, lean down-Easter, who appeared most jealously attentive to

her, occasionally hinting at a return to the curtained bed, where she

could escape the admiring glances of strangers. Like her mother, she

was able to speak English, but she could not be persuaded to open her

mouth. This is a truly Indian prejudice, probably arising from the

savage, childish sensitiveness which dreads to excite a laugh; even a

squaw married to a white man, after uttering a few words in a moment of

_épanchement_, will hide her face under the blanket.

The half-breed has a bad name in the land. Like the negro, the Indian

belongs to a species, sub-species, or variety--whichever the reader

pleases--that has diverged widely enough from the Indo-European

type to cause degeneracy, physical as well as moral, and often,

too, sterility in the offspring. These half-breeds are, therefore,

like the mulatto, quasi-mules. The men combine the features of both

races; the skin soon becomes coarse and wrinkled, and the eye is

black, snaky, and glittering like the Indian’s. The mongrels are

short-lived, peculiarly subject to infectious diseases, untrustworthy,

and disposed to every villainy. The half-breed women, in early youth,

are sometimes attractive enough, uniting the figure of the mother

to the more delicate American face; a few years, however, deprive

them of all litheness, grace, and agility. They are often married by

whites, who hold them to be more modest and humble, less capricious

and less exacting, than those of the higher type: they make good wives

and affectionate mothers, and, like the Quadroons, they are more

“ambitious”--that is to say, of warmer temperaments--than either of the

races from which they are derived. The so-called red is a higher ethnic

type than the black man; so, in the United States, where all admixture

of African blood is deemed impure, the aboriginal American entails no

disgrace--some of the noblest of the land are descended from “Indian

princesses.” The half-breed girls resemble their mothers in point of

industry, and they barter their embroidered robes and moccasins, and

mats and baskets, made of bark and bulrush, in exchange for blankets,

calicoes, glass beads--an indispensable article of dress--mirrors,

needles, rings, vermilion, and other luxuries. The children, with their

large black eyes, wide mouths, and glittering teeth, flattened heads,

and remarkable agility of motion, suggest the idea of little serpents.

The day had been fatiguing, and our eyes ached with the wind and dust.

We lost no time in spreading on the floor the buffalo robes borrowed

from the house, and in defying the smaller tenants of the ranch. Our

host, M. Reynal, was a study, but we deferred the lesson till the next

morning.

_To Fort Laramie. 14th August._

[M. REYNAL.]

M. Reynal had been an Indian trader in his youth. Of this race there

were in his day two varieties: the regular trader and the _coureur

des bois_, or unlicensed peddler, who was subject to certain pains

and penalties. The former had some regard for his future; he had a

permanent interest in the Indians, and looked to the horses, arms, and

accoutrements of his _protégés_, so that hunting might not flag. The

_bois brûlé_ peddler, having--like an English advertising firm--no hope

of dealing twice with the same person, got all he could for what he

could. These men soon sapped the foundation of the Indian’s discipline.

One of them, for instance, would take protection with the chief, pay

presents, and by increasing the wealth, enhance the importance of

his protector. Another would place himself under the charge of some

ambitious aspirant to power, who was thus raised to a position of

direct rivalry. A split would ensue; the weaker would secede with his

family and friends, and declare independence; a murder or two would

be the result, and a blood-feud would be bequeathed from generation

to generation. The licensed traders have ever strenuously opposed the

introduction of alcohol, a keg of which will purchase from the Indian

every thing that is his, his arms, lodge, horses, children, and wives.

In olden times, however, the Maine Liquor Law was not, as now, in force

through the territories. The _coureur des bois_, therefore, entered

the country through various avenues, from the United States and from

Mexico, without other stock in trade but some kegs of whisky, which he

retailed at the modest price of $36 per gallon. He usually mixed one

part of fire with five of pure water, and then sold a pint-canful for

a buffalo robe. “Indian liquor” became a proverbial term. According

to some travelers, a barrel of “pure Cincinnati,” even after running

the gauntlet of railroad and lake travel, has afforded a hundred

barrels of “good Indian liquor.” A small bucketful is poured into

a wash-tub of water; a large quantity of “dog-leg” tobacco and red

pepper is then added, next a bitter root common in the country is cut

up into it, and finally it is colored with burnt sugar--a nice recipe

for a morning’s headache! The only drawback to this traffic is its

danger. The Indian, when intoxicated, is ready for any outrageous act

of violence or cruelty; vinosity brings out the destructiveness and

the utter barbarity of his character; it makes him thirst tiger-like

for blood. The _coureur des bois_, therefore, who in those days was

highly respected, was placed in the Trader’s Lodge, a kind of public

house, like the Iwanza of Central Africa, and the village chief took

care to station at the door a guard of sober youths, sometimes habited

like Europeans, ready to check the unauthorized attempts of ambitious

clansmen upon the whisky-vendor’s scalp. The Western men, who will

frequently be alluded to in these pages, may be divided, like the

traders, into two classes. The first is the true mountaineer, whom the

platitude and tame monotony of civilized republican life has in early

youth driven, often from an honored and wealthy family, to the wilds

and wolds, to become the forlorn hope in the march of civilization. The

second is the offscouring and refuse of the Eastern cities, compelled

by want, fatuity, or crime to exile himself from all he most loves. The

former, after passing through the preliminary stage greenhorn, is a man

in every sense of the term: to more than Indian bravery and fortitude,

he unites the softness of woman, and a child-like simplicity, which is

the very essence of a chivalrous character; you can read his nature in

his clear blue eyes, his sun-tanned countenance, his merry smile, and

his frank, fearless manner. The latter is a knave or a fool; it would

make “bad blood,” as the Frenchman says, to describe him.

M. Reynal’s history had to be received with many grains of salt. The

Western man has been worked by climate and its consequences, by the

huge magnificence of nature and the violent contrasts of scenery, into

a remarkable resemblance to the wild Indian. He hates labor--which poet

and divine combine to deify in the settled states--as the dire effect

of a primeval curse; “loaf” he must and will; to him one hour out of

the twenty-four spent in honest industry is _satis superque_. His

imagination is inflamed by scenery and climate, difficulty and danger;

he is as superstitious as an old man-o’-war’s-man of the olden school;

and he is a transcendental liar, like his prototype the aborigine, who

in this point yields nothing to the African negro. I have heard of a

man riding eighty miles--forty into camp and forty out--in order to

enjoy the sweet delights of a lie. His yarns and stories about the land

he lives in have become a proverbial ridicule; he will tell you that

the sun rises north of what it did _se puero_; he has seen mountains

of diamonds and gold nuggets scattered like rocks over the surface of

our general mother. I have been gravely told of a herd of bison which

arrested the course of the Platte River, causing its waters, like those

of the Red Sea, to stand up, wall fashion, while the animals were

crossing. Of this Western order is the well-known account of a ride on

a buffalo’s horns, delivered for the benefit of a gaping world by a

popular author of the yellow-binding category. In this age, however,

the Western man has become sensitive to the operation of “smoking.”

A popular Joe Miller anent him is this: A traveler, informed of what

he might educe by “querying,” asked an old mountaineer, who shall be

nameless, what difference he observed in the country since he had first

settled in it.

“Wal, stranger, not much!” was the reply; “only when I fust come here,

that ’ere mountain,” pointing to the tall Uinta range, “was a hole!”

Disembarrassing M. Reynal’s recital of its mask of improbabilities and

impossibilities, remained obvious the naked fact that he had led the

life of a confirmed _coureur des bois_. The French Canadian and Creole

both, like the true Français de France, is loth to stir beyond the

devil-dispelling sound of his chapel-bell; once torn from his _chez

lui_, he apparently cares little to return, and, like the Englishman,

to die at home in his own land. The adventurous Canadians--in whom

extremes meet--have wandered through the length and breadth of the

continent; they have left their mark even upon the rocks in Utah

Territory. M. Reynal had quitted St. Louis at an early age as trader,

trapper, every thing in short, provided with a little outfit of powder,

ball, and whisky. At first he was unfortunate. In a war between the

Sioux and the Pawnees, he was taken prisoner by the latter, and with

much ado preserved, by the good aid of his squaw, that useful article

his scalp. Then fickle fortune turned in his favor. He married several

wives, identified himself with the braves, and became a little brother

of the tribe, while his whisky brought him in an abundance of furs

and peltries. After many years, waxing weary of a wandering life, he

settled down into the somewhat prosaic position in which we had the

pleasure of finding him. He was garrulous as a veteran soldier upon the

subject of his old friends the trappers, that gallant advance guard

who, sixty years ago, unconsciously fought the fight of civilization

for the pure love of fighting; who battled with the Indian in his own

way, surpassing him in tracking, surprising, ambuscading, and shooting,

and never failing to raise the enemy’s hair. They are well-nigh

extinct, those old pioneers, wild, reckless, and brave as the British

tar of a century past; they live but in story; their place knows them

no longer; it is now filled by the “prospector.” Civilization and the

silk hat have exterminated them. How many deeds of stern fight and

heroic endurance have been ignored by this world, which knows nothing

of its greatest men, _carent quia vale sacro_! We talk of Thermopylæ

and ignore Texas; we have all thrilled at the account of the Mameluke

Bey’s leap; but how many of us have heard of Major Macculloch’s spring

from the cliff?

Our breakfast was prepared in the usual prairie style. First the

coffee--three parts burnt beans, which had been duly ground to a

fine powder and exposed to the air, lest the aroma should prove too

strong for us--was placed on the stove to simmer till every noxious

principle was duly extracted from it. Then the rusty bacon, cut into

thick slices, was thrown into the fry-pan: here the gridiron is

unknown, and if known would be little appreciated, because it wastes

the “drippings,” which form with the staff of life a luxurious sop.

Thirdly, antelope steak, cut off a corpse suspended for the benefit

of flies outside, was placed to stew within influence of the bacon’s

aroma. Lastly came the bread, which of course should have been “cooked”

first. The meal is kneaded with water and a pinch of salt; the raising

is done by means of a little sour milk, or more generally by the

deleterious yeast-powders of the trade. The carbonic acid gas evolved

by the addition of water must be corrected, and the dough must be

expanded by saleratus or prepared carbonate of soda or alkali, and

other vile stuff, which communicates to the food the green-yellow

tinge, and suggests many of the properties of poison. A hundred-fold

better, the unpretending chapati, flapjack, scone, or, as the Mexicans

prettily called it, “tortilla!” The dough, after being sufficiently

manipulated upon a long, narrow, smooth board, is divided into

“biscuits” and “dough-nuts,”[56] and finally it is placed to be half

cooked under the immediate influence of the rusty bacon and graveolent

antelope. “Uncle Sam’s stove,” be it said with every reverence for

the honored name it bears, is a triumph of convenience, cheapness,

unwholesomeness, and nastiness--excuse the word, nice reader. This

travelers’ bane has exterminated the spit and gridiron, and makes

every thing taste like its neighbor: by virtue of it, mutton borrows

the flavor of salmon trout, tomatoes resolve themselves into greens. I

shall lose my temper if the subject is not dropped.

[56] The Western “biscuit” is English roll; “cracker” is English

biscuit. The “dough-nut” is, properly speaking, a “small roundish

cake, made of flour, eggs, and sugar, moistened with milk and

boiled in lard” (Webster). On the prairies, where so many different

materials are unprocurable, it is simply a diminutive loaf, like the

hot roll of the English passenger steamer.

[LARAMIE PEAK.]

We set out at 6 A.M. over a sandy bottom, from which the musquetoes

rose in swarms. After a twelve-mile stretch the driver pointed out

on the right of the road, which here runs between high earth-banks,

a spot still infamous in local story. At this place, in 1854, five

Indians, concealing themselves in the bed of a dwarf arroyo, fired

upon the mail-wagon, killing two drivers and one passenger, and then

plundered it of 20,000 dollars. “Long-chin,” the leader, and the other

murderers, when given up by the tribe, were carried to Washington,

D. C., where--with the ultra-philanthropy which has of modern days

distinguished the “Great Father’s” government of his “Poor Children

of the Plains”--the villains were liberally rewarded and restored to

their homes.[57] To cut off a bend of the Platte we once more left

the valley, ascended sundry slopes of sand and clay deeply cut by dry

creeks, and from the summit enjoyed a pretty view. A little to the left

rose the aerial blue cone of that noble landmark, Laramie Peak, based

like a mass of solidified air upon a dark wall, the Black Hills, and

lit up with the roseate hues of the morning. The distance was about

sixty miles; you would have guessed twenty. On the right lay a broad

valley, bounded by brown rocks and a plain-colored distance, with the

stream winding through it like a thread of quicksilver; in places it

was hidden from sight by thickets of red willow, cypress clumps, and

dense cool cotton-woods. All was not still life; close below us rose

the white lodges of the Ogalala tribe.

[57] A United States official, fresh from Columbia, informed me that

the Indians there think twice before they murder a King George’s

man (Briton), while they hardly hesitate to kill a Boston man or

American citizen. He attributed this peculiarity principally to the

over lenity of his own government, and its want of persistency in

ferreting out and punishing the criminal. Under these circumstances,

it is hardly to be wondered at if the trader and traveler in Indian

countries take the law in their own hands. This excessive clemency

has acted evilly in “either Ind.” We may hope that its day is now

gone by.

[INDIAN VILLAGES.]

These Indian villages are very picturesque from afar when dimly seen

dotting the verdure of the valleys, and when their tall white cones,

half hidden by willow clumps, lie against a blue background. The river

side is the savages’ favorite site; next to it the hill foot, where

little groups of three or four tents are often seen from the road,

clustering mysteriously near a spring. Almost every prairie-band has

its own way of constructing lodges, encamping and building fires, and

the experienced mountaineer easily distinguishes them.

The Osages make their lodges in the shape of a wagon-tilt, somewhat

like our gipsies’ tents, with a frame-work of bent willow rods planted

in the ground, and supporting their blankets, skins, or tree-basts.

The Kickapoos build dwarf hay-stack huts, like some tribes of Africans,

setting poles in the earth, binding them over and lashing them together

at the top; they are generally covered with clothes or bark.

The Witchetaws, Wakoes, Towakamis, and Tonkowas are described by the

“Prairie Traveler” as erecting their hunting lodges of sticks put up in

the form of the frustrum of a cone, and bushed over like “boweries.”

All these tribes leave the frame-work of their lodges standing when

they shift ground, and thus the particular band is readily recognized.

The Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Menomenes build lodges in the form

of an ellipse, some of them 30-40 feet long, by 14-15 wide, and large

enough to shelter twenty people permanently, and sixty temporarily.[58]

The covering is of plaited rush-mats bound to the poles, and a small

aperture in the lodge acts as chimney.

[58] The wigwams, huts, or cabins of the Eastern American tribes

were like these, large, solid, and well roofed with skins. The word

“lodge” is usually applied to the smaller and less comfortable

habitations of the Prairie Indians.

The Delawares and Shawnees, Cherokees and Choctaws, prefer the Indian

pal, a canvas covering thrown like a _tente d’abri_ over a stick

supported by two forked poles.

The Sioux, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, Utahs, Snakes, Blackfeet, and Kiowas

use the Comanche lodge covered with bison skins, which by dressing

become flexible as canvas. They are usually of a shining white, save

where smoke-stained near the top; the lodges of great chiefs are

sometimes decorated with horizontal stripes of alternate black and

white, and ornamented with figures human and bestial, crosses, circles,

and arabesques. The lodge is made of eight to twenty-four straight

peeled poles or saplings of ash, pine, cedar, or other wood, hard and

elastic if possible, about 20 feet long; the largest marquees are 30

feet in diameter by 35 feet high, and are comprised of 26-30 buffalo

skins; and they are sometimes planted round a “basement” or circular

excavation two or three feet deep. When pitching, three poles lashed

to one another with a long line, somewhat below the thinner points,

are raised perpendicularly, and the thicker ends are spread out in

a tripod to the perimeter of the circle which is to form the lodge

floor; the rest of the poles are then propped against the three first,

and disposed regularly and equidistantly to make a steady and secure

conical frame-work. The long line attached to the tripod is then

wound several times round the point where the poles touch, and the

lower end is made fast to the base of the lodge, thus securing the

props in position. The covering of dressed, hairless, and water-proof

cow-buffalo hide--traders prefer osnaburg--cut and sewn to fit the

frame like an envelope, and sometimes pinned together with skewers,

is either raised at first with the tripod, or afterward hoisted with

a perch and spread round the complete structure. It is pinned to the

ground with wooden pegs, and a narrow space forms a doorway, which

may be closed with a blanket suspended from above and spread out

with two small sticks. The apex is left open with a triangular wing

or flap, like a lateen sail, and is prevented from closing by a pole

inserted into a pocket at the end. The aperture points to windward

when ventilation is required, and, drawing like a wind-sail, it keeps

the interior cool and comfortable; when smoke is to be carried off,

it is turned to leeward, thus giving draught to the fire, and making

the abode warm in the severest weather; while in lodges of other

forms, you must lie down on the ground to prevent being asphyxiated.

By raising the lower part so as freely to admit the breeze, it is

kept perfectly free from musquetoes, which are unable to resist the

strong draught. The squaws are always the tent-pitchers, and they equal

Orientals in dexterity and judgment. Before the lodge of each warrior

stands his light spear, planted Bedouin-fashion in the ground, near

or upon a tripod of thin, cleanly-scraped, wands, seven to eight feet

long, which support his spotless white buffalo-skin targe, sometimes

decorated with his “totem”--we translate the word “crest”--and guarded

by the usual prophylactic, a buckskin sack containing medicine.

Readers of “Ivanhoe”--they are now more numerous in the New than in

the Old Country--ever feel “a passing impulse to touch one of these

spotless shields with the muzzle of the gun, expecting a grim warrior

to start from the lodge and resent the challenge.” The fire, as in the

old Hebridean huts, is built in the centre of the hard dirt floor; a

strong stick planted at the requisite angle supports the kettle, and

around the walls are berths divided by matted screens; the extremest

uncleanliness, however, is a feature never absent. In a quiet country

these villages have a simple and patriarchal appearance. The tents,

which number from fifteen to fifty, are disposed round a circular

central space, where animals can be tethered. Some have attached to

them corrals of wattled canes, and a few boast of fields where corn and

pumpkins are raised.

[THE “SIBLEY TENT.”]

The Comanche lodge is the favorite tenement of the Canadian and

Creole voyageurs, on account of its coolness or warmth when wanted,

its security against violent winds, and its freedom from musquetoes.

While traveling in an Indian country they will use no other. It has

been simplified by Major H. H. Sibley, of the United States Army, who

has changed the pole frame-work for a single central upright, resting

upon an iron tripod, with hooks for suspending cooking utensils over

the fire; when folded up, the tripod admits the upright between its

legs, thereby reducing the length to one half--a portable size. The

“Sibley tent” was the only shelter of the United States Army at Fort

Scott, in Utah Territory, during the hard winter of 1857-8, and gave

universal satisfaction. The officers still keep to the old wall-tent.

This will, however, eventually be superseded by the new form, which can

accommodate comfortably twelve, but not seventeen, the usual number

allotted to it. Captain Marcy is of opinion that of the tents used in

the different armies of Europe, “none in point of convenience, comfort,

and economy will compare with the ‘Sibley tent’ for campaigning in cold

weather.” In summer, however, it has, like all conical tents, many

disadvantages: there is always a loss of room; and for comfortably

disposing kit--chair, table, and camp couch--there is nothing equal to

the wall-tent. The price of a “Sibley,” when made of good material,

is from $40 to $50 (£8-£10), and it can be procured from Baltimore,

Philadelphia, and New York.

At 10 20 A.M. we halted to change mules at Badeau’s Ranch, or, as it is

more grandiloquently called, “Laramie City.” The “city,” like many a

Western “town,” still appertains to the category of things about to be;

it is at present represented by a single large “store,” with out-houses

full of small half-breeds. The principal articles of traffic are

liquors and groceries for the whites, and ornaments for the Indians,

which are bartered for stock (i. e., animals) and peltries. The prices

asked for the skips were from $1-$1 30 for a fox or a coyote, $3 for

wolf, bear, or deer, $6-$7 for an elk, $5 for a common buffalo, and

from $8 to $35 for the same painted, pictographed, and embroidered.

Some of the party purchased moccasins, for which they paid $1-$2; the

best articles are made by the Snakes, and when embroidered by white

women rise as high as $25. I bought, for an old friend who is insane

upon the subject of pipes, one of the fine marble-like sandstone bowls

brought from the celebrated Côteau (slope) des Prairies, at the head of

Sioux River--

“On the mountains of the Prairie,

On the Great Red Pipe-stone Quarry.”

This instrument is originally the gift of Gitchie Manitou, who,

standing on the precipice of the Red Pipe-stone Rock, broke off a

fragment and moulded it into a pipe, which, finished with a reed, he

smoked over his children to the north, south, east, and west. It is

of queer shape, not unlike the clay and steatite articles used by the

Abyssinians and the Turi or Sinaitic Bedouins. The length of the stick

is 23 inches, of the stem 9·50, and of the bowl 5 inches; the latter

stands at a right angle upon the former; both are circular; but the

2·75 inches of stem, which project beyond the bowl, are beveled off so

as to form an edge at the end. The peculiarity of the form is in the

part where the tobacco is inserted; the hole is not more than half an

inch broad, and descends straight without a bulge, while the aperture

in the stem is exactly similar. The red color soon mottles and the bowl

clogs if smoked with tobacco; in fact, it is fit for nothing but the

“kinnikinik” of the Indians. To prepare this hard material with the

rude tools of a savage must be a work of time and difficulty; also the

bowls are expensive and highly valued: for mine I paid $5, and farther

West I could have exchanged it for an Indian pony.

[THE BRULÉS AND GENERAL HARNEY.]

Having finished our _emplettes_ at M. Badeau’s, we set out at 11

30 P.M. over a barren and reeking bit of sandy soil. Close to the

station, and a little to the right of the road, we passed the barrow

which contains the remains of Lieutenant Grattan and his thirty men.

A young second lieutenant of Irish origin and fiery temper, he was

marching westward with an interpreter, a small body of men, and two

howitzers, when a dispute arose, it is said, about a cow, between his

party and the Brûlés or Burnt-Thigh Indians. The latter were encamped

in a village of 450 to 500 lodges, which, reckoning five to each,

gives a total of 2200 to 2500 souls. A fight took place; the whites

imprudently discharged both their cannon, overshooting the tents of the

enemy; their muskets, however, did more execution, killing Matriya,

“the Scattering Bear,” who had been made chief of all the Sioux by

Colonel Mitchell of the Indian Bureau. The savages, seeing the fall of

Ursa Major, set to in real earnest; about 1200 charged the soldiers

before they could reload; the little detachment broke, and not a man

survived to tell the tale. The whites in the neighborhood narrowly

preserved their scalps--M. Badeau owned that he owed his to his Sioux

squaw--and among other acts of violence was the murder and highway

robbery which has already been recounted. Both these events occurred in

1854. As has been said, in 1855, General W. S. Harney, who, whatever

may be his faults as a diplomatist, is the most dreaded “Minahaska”[59]

in the Indian country, punished the Brûlés severely at Ash Hollow. They

were led by their chosen chief Little Thunder, who, not liking the

prospect, wanted to palaver; the general replied by a charge, which,

as usual, scattered the “chivalry of the prairies” to the four winds.

“Little Thunder” was solemnly deposed, and Mato Chigukesa, “Bear’s

Rib,” was ordered to reign in his stead; moreover, in 1856, a treaty

was concluded, giving to whites, among other things, the privilege

of making roads along the Platte and White-Earth Rivers (Mankisita

Wakpa--Smoking-earth Water) to Forts Pierre and Laramie, and to pass up

and down the Missouri in boats. Since that time, with the exception of

plundering an English sportsman, Sir G---- G----, opposing Lieutenant

Warren’s expedition to the Black Hills, and slaughtering a few traders

and obscure travelers, the Brûlés have behaved tolerably to their

pale-face rivals.

[59] “Longknife.” The whites have enjoyed this title since 1758, when

Captain Gibson cut off with his sabre the head of Little Eagle, the

great Mingo or Chief, and won the title of Big-Knife Warrior. Savages

in America as well as Africa who ignore the sword always look upon

that weapon with horror. The Sioux call the Americans Wasichi, or bad

men.

As we advanced the land became more barren; it sadly wanted rain: it

suffers from drought almost every year, and what vegetable matter the

soil will produce the grasshopper will devour. Dead cattle cumbered

the way-side; the flesh had disappeared; the bones were scattered over

the ground; but the skins, mummified, as it were, by the dry heat, lay

life-like and shapeless, as in the Libyan Desert, upon the ground. This

phenomenon will last till we enter the humid regions between the Sierra

Nevada and the Pacific Ocean, and men tell wonderful tales of the time

during which meat can be kept. The road was a succession of steep

ascents and jumps down sandy ground. A Sioux “buck,” mounted upon a

neat nag, and wrapped up, despite sun and glare, as if it had been the

depth of winter, passed us, sedulously averting his eyes. The driver

declared that he recognized the horse, and grumbled certain Western

facetiæ concerning “hearty-chokes and caper sauce.”

In these lands the horse-thief is the great enemy of mankind; for him

there is no pity, no mercy; Lynch-law is held almost too good for him;

to shoot him _in flagrante delicto_ is like slaying a man-eating Bengal

royal tiger--it entitles you to the respect and gratitude of your

species. I asked our conductor whether dandiness was at the bottom of

the “buck’s” heavy dress. “’Guess,” was the reply, “what keeps cold

out, keeps heat out tew!”

At 12 15 P.M., crossing Laramie’s Fork, a fine clear stream about forty

yards broad, we reached Fort Laramie--another “fort” by courtesy, or

rather by order--where we hoped to recruit our exhausted stores.

The straggling cantonment requires no description: it has the usual

big flag, barracks, store-houses, officers’ quarters, guard-houses,

sutlers’ stores, and groceries, which doubtless make a good thing by

selling deleterious “strychnine” to passing trains who can afford to

pay $6 per gallon.

Fort Laramie, called Fort John in the days of the American Fur Company,

was used by them as a store-house for the bear and buffalo skins,

which they collected in thousands. The old adobe _enceinte_, sketched

and described by Frémont and Stansbury, soon disappeared after the

place was sold to the United States government. Its former rival was

Fort Platte, belonging in 1842--when the pale face first opened this

road--to Messrs. Sybille, Adams, and Co., and situated immediately on

the point of land at the junction of Laramie Fort with the Platte. The

climate here is arid and parching in summer, but in winter tolerably

mild, considering the altitude--4470 feet--and the proximity of the

Black Hills; yet it has seen hard frost in September. It is also well

defended from the warm, moist, and light winds, which, coming from the

Mexican Gulf, cause “calentures” on the lower course of the river. The

soil around the settlement is gravelly and sterile, the rocks are sand,

lime, and clay, and there is a solitary, desolate look upon every thing

but the bright little stream that bubbles from the dark heights. The

course is from S.W. to N.E.: about half way it bifurcates, with a right

fork to the west and main fork east, and near Laramie it receives its

main affluent, the Chugwater.

My companion kindly introduced me to the officer commanding the fort,

Colonel B. Alexander, 10th Infantry, and we were at once made at home.

The amiable mistress of the house must find charitable work enough to

do in providing for the wants of way-worn friends who pass through

Laramie from east to west. We rested and dined in the cool comfortable

quarters, with only one qualm at heart--we were so soon to leave them.

On these occasions the driver seems to know by instinct that you are

enjoying yourself, while he, as an outsider, is not. He becomes,

therefore, unusually impatient to start; perhaps, also, time runs more

rapidly than it is wont. At any rate, after a short two hours, we were

compelled to shake hands with our kind and considerate hosts, and to

return to limbo--the mail-wagon.

From Fort Laramie westward the geological formation changes; the great

limestone deposits disappear, and are succeeded by a great variety of

sandstones, some red, argillaceous, and compact; others gray or yellow,

ferruginous, and coarse. Pudding-stones or conglomerates also abound,

and the main chain of the Laramie Mountains is supposed to be chiefly

composed of this rock.

Beyond the fort there are two roads. The longer leads to the right,

near the Platte River. It was formerly, and perhaps is still, a

favorite with emigrants. We preferred the left, which, crossing the

edges of the Black Hills, is rough and uneven, but is “some shorter,”

as the guide-book says, than the other. The weather began to be

unusually disagreeable with heat and rain-drops from a heavy nimbus,

that forced us to curtain up the rattling vehicle; perhaps, too, we

were a little cross, contrasting the present with the past--civilized

society, a shady bungalow, and wonderfully good butter. At 4 P.M.,

following the Platte Valley, after two hours’ drive we halted to change

mules at Ward’s Station, _alias_ the “Central Star,” where several

whites were killed by the Sioux in 1855, among them M. Montalan, a

Parisian.

[HORSESHOE STATION.]

Again we started for another twenty-five miles at 4 P.M. The road was

rough, and the driver had a curious proclivity for losing the way. I

have often found this to be the case after passing through a station.

There was little to remark, except that the country was poor and bad,

that there was clear water in a ravine to the right, and that we were

very tired and surly. But as sorrow comes to an end as well as joy, so,

at 9 30 P.M., we drove in, somewhat consoled, to Horseshoe Station--the

old _Fer à Cheval_--where one of the road agents, Mr. Slade, lived, and

where we anticipated superior comfort.

We were _entichés_ by the aspect of the buildings, which were on an

extensive scale--in fact, got up regardless of expense. An ominous

silence, however, reigned around. At last, by hard knocking, we were

admitted into a house with the Floridian style of veranda previously

described, and by the pretensions of the room we at once divined our

misfortune--we were threatened with a “lady.” The “lady” will, alas!

follow us to the Pacific; even in hymns we read,

“Now let the Prophet’s heart rejoice,

His noble lady’s too.”

[“LADIES.”]

Our mishap was really worse than we expected--we were exposed to two

“ladies,” and of these one was a Bloomer. It is only fair to state that

it was the only hermaphrodite of the kind that ever met my eyes in the

United States; the great founder of the order has long since subsided

into her original obscurity, and her acolytes have relapsed into the

weakness of petticoats. The Bloomer was an uncouth being; her hair, cut

level with her eyes, depended with the graceful curl of a drake’s tail

around a flat Turanian countenance, whose only expression was sullen

insolence. The body-dress, glazed brown calico, fitted her somewhat

like a soldier’s tunic, developing haunches which would be admired only

in venison; and--curious _inconséquence_ of woman’s nature!--all this

sacrifice of appearance upon the shrine of comfort did not prevent her

wearing that kind of crinoline depicted by Mr. _Punch_ upon “our Mary

Hanne.” The pantalettes of glazed brown calico, like the vest, tunic,

blouse, shirt, or whatever they may call it, were in peg-top style,

admirably setting off a pair of thin-soled Frenchified patent-leather

bottines, with elastic sides, which contained feet large, broad, and

flat as a negro’s in Unyamwezi. The dear creature had a husband: it was

hardly safe to look at her, and as for sketching her, I avoided it, as

men are bidden by the poet to avoid the way of Slick of Tennessee. The

other “lady,” though more decently attired, was like women in this wild

part of the world generally--cold and disagreeable in manner, full of

“proper pride,” with a touch-me-not air, which reminded me of a certain

“Miss Baxter,

Who refused a man before he axed her.”

Her husband was the renowned Slade:

“Of gougers fierce, the eyes that pierce, the fiercest gouger he.”

His was a noted name for “deadly strife;” he had the reputation of

having killed his three men; and a few days afterward the grave that

concealed one of his murders was pointed out to me. This pleasant

individual “for an evening party” wore the revolver and bowie-knife

here, there, and every where. He had lately, indeed, had a strong

hint not to forget his weapon. One M. Jules, a French trader, after

a quarrel which took place at dinner, walked up to him and fired a

pistol, wounding him in the breast. As he rose to run away Jules

discharged a second, which took effect upon his back, and then, without

giving him time to arm, fetched a gun and favored him with a dose

of slugs somewhat larger than revolver bullets. The fiery Frenchman

had two narrow escapes from Lynch-lawyers: twice he was hung between

wagons, and as often he was cut down. At last he disappeared in the

farther West, and took to lodge and squaw. The avenger of blood

threatens to follow him up, but as yet he has taken no steps.

[Illustration: INDIANS.

The Western Swell.

The Sioux.

The old Shoshonee.

The Arapaho.

Jake the Shoshonee.

The Crow.]

It at once became evident that the station was conducted upon the

principle of the Western hotel-keeper of the last generation, and

of Continental Europe about A.D. 1500--the innkeeper of “Anne of

Geierstein”--that is to say, for his own convenience; the public there

was the last thing thought of. One of our party who had ventured

into the kitchen was fiercely ejected by the “ladies.” In asking about

dormitories we were informed that “lady travelers” were admitted into

the house, but that the ruder sex must sleep where it could--or not

sleep at all if it preferred. We found a barn outside: it was hardly

fit for a decently brought-up pig; the floor was damp and knotty; there

was not even a door to keep out the night breeze, now becoming raw, and

several drunken fellows lay in different parts of it. Two were in one

bunk, embracing maudlingly, and freely calling for drinks of water.

Into this disreputable hole we were all thrust for the night: among

us, it must be remembered, was a federal judge, who had officiated for

years as minister at a European court. His position, poor man! procured

him nothing but a broken-down pallet. It was his first trip to the Far

West, and yet, so easily are Americans satisfied, and so accustomed are

they to obey the ridiculous jack-in-office who claims to be one of the

powers that be, he scarcely uttered a complaint. I, for one, grumbled

myself to sleep. May gracious Heaven keep us safe from all “ladies” in

future! better a hundred times the squaw, with her uncleanliness and

civility.

We are now about to leave the land of that great and dangerous people,

the Sioux, and before bidding adieu to them it will be advisable to

devote a few pages to their ethnology.