CHAPTER 1 THE FRONTIER Last spring, 1846, was a busy season in the city of St. Louis. Not only were the emigrants from every part of the country preparing for the journey to Oregon and California, but an unusual number of traders were making ready their wagons and outfits for Santa Fe. Many of the emigrants, especially of those bound for California, were persons of wealth and standing. The hotels were crowded, and the gunsmiths and saddlers were kept constantly at work in providing arms and equipment for the different parties of travelers. Almost every day, steamboats were leaving the levee and passing up the Missouri, crowded with passengers on their way to the frontier. In one of these, the radnor, since snagged and lost, my friend and relative, Quincie Shaw and myself, left St. Louis on the 28th of April on a tour of curiosity and amusement to the Rocky Mountains. The boat was loaded until the water broke alternately over her guards. Her upper deck was covered with large weapons of peculiar form for the Santa Fe trade, and her hold was crammed with goods for the same destination. There were also the equipments and provisions of a party of Oregon emigrants, a band of mules and horses, piles of saddles and harness, and a multitude of nondescript articles indispensable on the prairies. Almost hidden in this medley one might have seen a small French cart of the sort very appropriately called a mule-killer beyond the frontiers, and not far distant to tent, together with miscellaneous assortment of boxes and barrels. The whole equipage was far from prepossessing in its appearance, yet such as it was, it was destined to a long and arduous journey on which the persevering reader will accompany it. The passengers on board the radnor corresponded with her freight. In her cabin were Santa Fe traders, gamblers, speculators, and adventurers of various descriptions, and her steerage was crowded with Oregon emigrants, mountain men, negroes, and a party of Kansas Indians who had been on a visit to St. Louis. Thus laden the boat struggled upward for seven or eight days against the rapid current of the Missouri, raiding upon snags and hanging for two or three hours at a time upon sandbars. We entered the mouth of the Missouri in a drizzling rain, but the weather soon became clear and showed distinctly the broad and turbid river with its eddies, its sandbars, its ragged islands, and forest-covered shores. The Missouri is constantly changing its course, wearing away its banks on one side while it forms new ones on the other. Its channel is shifting continually. Mountains are formed and then washed away, and while the old forests on one side are undermined and swept off, a young growth springs up from the new soil upon the other. With all of these changes the water is so charged with mud and sand that it is perfectly opaque, and in a few minutes deposits a sediment an inch thick on the bottom of a tumbler. The river was now high, but when we descended in the autumn it was fallen very low, and all the secrets of its treacherous shallows were exposed to view. It was frightful to see the dead in broken trees, thick-set as a military abotus, firmly embedded in the sand, and all pointing downstream, ready to impale any unhappy steamboat that at high water should pass over that dangerous ground. In five or six days we began to see signs of the great western movement that was then taking place. Hundreds of emigrants with their tents and wagons would be encamped on open spots near the bank, on their way to the common rendezvous at independence. On a rainy day near sunset we reached the landing of this place, which is situated some miles from the river on the extreme frontier of Missouri. The scene was characteristic, for here were represented at one view the most remarkable features of this wild and enterprising region. On the muddy shore stood some thirty or forty dark, slavish-looking Spaniards, gazing stupidly out from beneath their broad hats. They were attached to one of the Santa Fe companies whose wagons were crowded together on the banks above. In the midst of these, crouching over a smoldering fire was a group of Indians, belonging to a remote Mexican tribe. One or two French hunters from the mountains with their long hair and buckskin dresses were looking at the boat, and seated on a log close at hand were three men with rifles lying across their knees. The foremost of these, a tall, strong figure with a clear blue eye and an open, intelligent face, might very well represent that race of restless and intrepid pioneers whose axes and rifles have opened a path from the Alleghenies to the Western prairies. He was on his way to Oregon, probably a more congenial field to him than any that now remained on this side the Great Plains. Early on the next morning we reached Kansas, about five hundred miles from the mouth of the Missouri. Here we landed, and leaving our equipment in charge of my good friend Colonel Chick, whose log house was the substitute for a tavern, we set out in a wagon for Westport, where we hoped to procure mules and horses for the journey. It was a remarkably fresh and beautiful May morning. The rich and luxuriant woods through which the miserable road conducted us were lighted by the bright sunshine and enlivened by a multitude of birds. We overtook on the way our late fellow travelers, the Kansas Indians, who adorned with all their finery, were proceeding homeward at a round pace, and whatever they might have seemed on board the boat they made a very striking and picturesque feature in the forest landscape.  As I stood at the door of the tavern I saw a remarkable looking person coming up the street. He had a ruddy face, garnished with the stumps of a bristly red beard and mustache. On one side of his head was a round cap with a knob at the top, such as Scottish laborers sometimes wear. His coat was of a nondescript form and made of a gray scotch plaid with the fringes hanging all about it.  In this curious attire I recognized Captain C. of the British Army, who with his brother and Mr. R., an English gentleman, was bound on a hunting expedition across the continent. I had seen the captain and his companions at St. Louis. They had now been for some time at Westport making preparations for their departure and waiting for a reinforcement, since they were too few a number to attempt it alone. They might it is true have joined some of the parties of immigrants who were on the point of setting out for Oregon and California, but they professed great disinclination to have any connection with the Kentucky Fellows. The captain now urged it upon us that we should join forces and proceed to the mountains and company. Feeling no greater partiality for the society of the immigrants than they did, we thought the arrangement an advantageous one and consented to it. Our future fellow travelers had installed themselves in a little log-house where we found them all surrounded by saddles, harness, guns, pistols, telescopes, knives, and in short, their complete appointments for the prairie. R., who professed a taste for natural history, sat at a table stuffing a woodpecker. The brother of the captain, who was an Irishman, was splicing a trail-rope on the floor as he had been an amateur sailor. The captain pointed out with much complacency the different articles of their outfit. "'You see,' said he, that we are all old travelers, I am convinced that no party ever went upon the prairie better provided.' The hunter whom they had employed, a surly-looking Canadian named Sorrell, and their mule-tear, an American from St. Louis, were lounging about the building. In a little log-stable close at hand were their horses and mules selected by the captain, who was an excellent judge. The alliance entered in two. We left them to complete their arrangements, while we pushed our own to all convenient speed. The emigrants for whom our friends professed such contempt were encamped on the prairie about eight or ten miles distant, to the number of a thousand or more, and new parties were constantly passing out from independence to join them. They were in great confusion, holding meetings, passing resolutions and drawing up regulations, but unable to unite in the choice of leaders to conduct them across the prairie. Being at leisure one day, I rode over to independence. The town was crowded. A multitude of shops had sprung up to furnish the emigrants and Santa Fe traders with necessaries for their journey, and there was an incessant hammering and banging from a dozen blacksmiths sheds, where the heavy wagons were being repaired and the horses and oxen shod. The streets were thronged with men, horses, and mules. While I was in the town, a train of emigrant wagons from Illinois passed through to join the camp on the prairie and stopped in the principal street. A multitude of healthy children's faces were peeping out from under the covers of the wagons. Here and there a buxom damsel was seated on horseback, holding over her sunburnt face an old umbrella or a parasol, once gaudy enough, but now miserably faded. The men, very sober-looking countrymen, stood about their oxen, and as I passed I noticed three old fellows who, with their long whips in their hands, were zealously discussing the doctrine of regeneration. The emigrants, however, are not all of this stamp. Among them are some of the vilest outcasts in the country. I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration, but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition in life or a desire of shaking off restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey and after they have reached the land of promise are happy enough to escape from it. In the course of seven or eight days we had brought our preparations near a close. Meanwhile our friends had completed theirs, and becoming tired of Westport they told us that they would set out in advance and wait at the crossing of the Kansas till we should come up. Accordingly, R. and the Mule-a-Tiers went forward with the wagon and tent, while the captain and his brother, together with Sorel and a trapper named Boa Verde, who had joined them, followed with a band of horses. The commencement of the journey was ominous, for the captain was scarcely a mile from Westport, riding along in state at the head of his party, leading his intended buffalo horse by a rope, when a tremendous thunderstorm came on and drenched them all to the skin. They hurried on to reach the place about seven miles off, where our was to have had the camp and readiness to receive them, but this prudent person, when he saw the storm approaching, had selected a sheltered glade in the woods, where he pitched his tent and was sipping a comfortable cup of coffee while the captain galloped for miles beyond through the rain to look for him. At length the storm cleared away, and the sharp-eyed trapper succeeded in discovering his tent. R. had by this time finished his coffee and was seated on a buffalo robe smoking his pipe. The captain was one of the most easy-tempered men in existence, so he bore his ill luck with great composure, shared the dregs of the coffee with his brother, and laid down to sleep in his wet clothes. We ourselves had our share of the deluge. We were leading a pair of mules to Kansas when the storm broke. Such sharp and incessant flashes of lightning, such stunning and continuous thunder, I have never known before. The woods were completely obscured by the diagonal sheets of rain that fell with a heavy roar and rose in spray from the ground, and the streams rose so rapidly that we could hardly ford them. At length, looming through the rain, we saw the log-house of Colonel Chick, who received us with his usual bland hospitality, while his wife, who, though a little soured and stiffened by two frequent attendants on camp meetings, was not behind him in hospitable feeling, supplied us with the means of repairing our drenched and bedraggled condition. The storm, clearing away at about sunset, opened a noble prospect from the porch of the Colonel's house, which stands upon a high hill. The sun streamed from the breaking clouds upon the swift and angry Missouri, and on the immense expanse of luxuriant forests that stretched from its banks back to the distant bluffs. Returning on the next day to Westport, we received a message from the captain, who had written back to deliver it in person, without finding that we were in Kansas, had entrusted it with an acquaintance of his named Vogel, who kept a small grocery and liquor-shop. Whiskey, by the way, circulates more freely in Westport than is altogether safe, in a place where every man carries a loaded pistol in his pocket. As we passed this establishment, we saw Vogel's broad German face and navish-looking eyes thrust from his door. He said he had something to tell us, and invited us to take a dram. Neither his liquor nor his message was very palatable. The captain had returned to give us notice that our, who assumed the direction of his party, had determined upon another route from that agreed upon between us, and instead of taking the course of the traders, to pass northward by Fort Leavenworth and follow the path marked out by the dragoons in their expedition of last summer. To adopt such a plan without consulting us, we looked upon as a very high-handed proceeding, but suppressing our dissatisfaction as well as we could, we made up our minds to join them at Fort Leavenworth, where they were to wait for us. Accordingly, our preparation being now complete, we attempted one fine morning to commence our journey. The first step was an unfortunate one. No sooner were our animals put in harness than the shaft mule reared and plunged, burst ropes and straps, and nearly flung the cart into the Missouri. Finding her wholly uncontrollable, we exchanged her for another, with which we were furnished by our friend Mr. Boone of Westport, a grandson of Daniel Boone, the pioneer. This foretaste of prairie experience was very soon followed by another. Westport was scarcely out of sight when we encountered a deep, muddy gully of a species that afterward became but too familiar to us, and here, for the space of an hour or more, the car stuck fast. Both Shaw and myself were tolerably enured to the vicissitudes of traveling. We had experienced them under various forms, and a birch canoe was as familiar to us as a steamboat. The restlessness, the love of wilds and hatred of cities, natural perhaps in early years to every unperverted son of Adam, was not our only motive for undertaking the present journey. My companion hoped to shake off the effects of a disorder that had impaired a constitution originally hardy and robust, and I was as anxious to pursue some inquiries relative to the character and usages of the remote Indian nations, being already familiar with many of the border tribes. Emerging from the mudhole where we last took leave of the reader, we pursued our way for some time along the narrow track in the checkered sunshine and shadow of the woods, till at length, issuing forth into the broad light, we left behind us the farthest outskirts of that great forest that once spread unbroken from the western plains to the shore of the Atlantic. Looking over an intervening belt of shrubbery, we saw the green ocean-like expanse of prairies stretching swell over swell to the horizon. It was a mild, calm spring day, a day when one is more disposed to musing and reverie than to action, and the softest part of his nature is apt to gain the ascendancy. I rode in advance of the party as we passed through the shrubbery, and as a nook of green grass offered a strong temptation, I dismounted and lay down there. All the trees and saplings were in flower, or budding into fresh leaf, the red clusters of the maple blossoms and the rich flowers of the Indian apple were there in profusion, and I was half inclined to regret leaving behind the land of gardens for the rude and stern scenes of the prairie and the mountains. While the party came in sight from out of the bushes, foremost rode Henry Shadilon, our guide and hunter, a fine athletic figure mounted on a hardy gray Wyandotte pony. He wore a white blanket coat, a broad hat of felt, moccasins and pantaloons of deerskin, ornamented along the seams with rows of long fringes. His knife was stuck in his belt, his bullet-pouch and powder-hoar hung at his side, and his rifle lay before him, racing against the high pommel of his saddle, which, like all his equipments, had seen hard service and was much the worse for wear. Shaw followed close, mounted on a little sorrow horse, and leading a larger animal by a rope. His outfit, which resembled mine, had been provided with a view to use rather than ornament. It consisted of a plain black Spanish saddle with holsters of heavy pistols, a blanket rolled up behind it, and the trail-rope attached to his horse's neck hanging coiled in front. He carried a double-barreled smoothbore, while I boasted a rifle of some fifteen pounds' weight. At that time our attire, though far from elegant, bore some marks of civilization, and offered a very favorable contrast to the inimitable shabbiness of our appearance on the return journey. A red flannel shirt, belted around the waist like a frock, then constituted our upper garment. Moccasins had supplanted our failing boots, and the remaining essential portion of our attire consisted of an extraordinary article manufactured by a squaw out of smoked buckskin. Our mulleteer, DeLaurier, brought up the rear with his cart, waddling ankle-deep in the mud, alternately puffing at his pipe, and ejaculating in his prairie patois, La Cray Infante Garce, as one of the mules would seem to recoil before some abyss of unusual profundity. The cart was of the kind that one may see by scores around the marketplace in Montreal, and had a white covering to protect the articles within. These were our provisions, and a tent with ammunition, blankets, and presents for the Indians. We were in all four men with eight animals, for beside the spare horses led by Shaw and myself, and additional mule was driven along with us as a reserve in case of accident. After this summing up of our forces, it may not be amiss to glance at the characters of the two men who accompanied us. DeLaurier was a Canadian, with all the characteristics of the true Jean-Baptiste.  In fact, the prairie was his congenial element. Henry Châtellon was of a different stamp. When we were at St. Louis, several gentlemen of the fur company had kindly offered to procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our purposes. And on coming one afternoon to the office, we found there a tall and exceedingly well-dressed man with a face so open and frank that it attracted our notice at once. We were surprised at being told that it was he who wished to guide us to the mountains. He was born in a little French town near St. Louis, and from the age of 15 years had been constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed for the most part by the company to supply their forts with buffalo meat. As a hunter he had but one rival in the whole region, a man named Simonot, with whom, to the honor of both of them, he was on terms of the closest friendship. He had arrived at St. Louis the day before from the mountains, where he had remained for four years. And he now only asked to go and spend a day with his mother before setting out on another expedition. His age was about 30. He was six feet high and very powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school. He could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and delicacy of mind such as is rarely found even in women. His manly face was a perfect mirror of uprightness, simplicity, and kindness of heart. He had, moreover, a keen perception of character and attack that would preserve him from flagrant error in any society. Henry had not the restless energy of an Anglo-American. He was content to take things as he found them, and his chief fault arose from an excess of easy generosity, impelling him to give away too profusely ever to thrive in the world. Yet it was commonly remarked of him that whatever he might choose to do with what belonged to himself, the property of others was always safe in his hands. His bravery was as much celebrated in the mountains as his skill in hunting. But it is characteristic of him that in a country where the rifle is the chief arbiter between man and man, Henry was very seldom involved in quarrels. Once or twice, indeed, his quiet good nature had been mistaken and presumed upon, but the consequences of the error were so formidable that no one was ever known to repeat it. No better evidence of the intrepidity of his temper could be wished than the common report that he had killed more than thirty grizzly bears. He was a proof of what unaided nature will sometimes do. I have never, in the city or in the wilderness, met a better man than my noble and true-hearted friend, Henry Shatalon. We were soon free of the woods and bushes and fairly upon the broad prairie.  But noon we stopped to rest not far from a little creek replete with frogs and young turtles. There had been an Indian encampment at the place, and the framework of their lodges still remained, enabling us very easily to gain a shelter from the sun by merely spreading one or two blankets over them. Thus shaded we sat upon our saddles, and Shaw, for the first time, lighted his favorite Indian pipe. While DeLaurier was squatted over a hot bed of coals, meeting his eyes with one hand and holding a little stick in the other, with which he regulated the hissing contents of the frying pan. The horses were turned to feed among the scattered bushes of a low, oozy meadow. A drowsy, spring-like sultriness pervaded the air, and the voices of ten thousand young frogs and insects just awakened into life rose in varied chorus from the creek and the meadows. Scarcely were we seated when a visitor approached. This was an old Kansas Indian, a man of distinction if one might judge from his dress. His head was shaved and painted red, and from the tuft of hair remaining on the crown dangled several eagles' feathers and the tails of two or three rattlesnakes. His cheeks, too, were dogged with vermilion, his ears were adorned with green-glass pendants, a collar of grizzly bear's claws surrounded his neck, and several large necklaces of wampum hung on his breast. He had shaken us by the hand with a cordial grunt of salutation. The old man, dropping his red blanket from his shoulders, sat down cross-legged on the ground. In the absence of liquor we offered him a cup of sweetened water, at which he ejaculated, good, and was beginning to tell us how great a man he was and how many ponies he had killed when suddenly a motley concourse appeared waiting across the creek toward us. They filed past in rapid succession men, women, and children, some were on horseback, some on foot, but all were alike squalid and wretched. Old squaws mounted a stride of shaggy meager little ponies with perhaps one or two snake-eyed children seated behind them, clinging to their tattered blankets, tall, lank young men on foot with bows and arrows in their hands, and girls whose native ugliness, not all the charms of glass beads and scarlet cloth could disguise, made up the procession. Although here and there was a man who, like our visitor, seemed to hold some rank in this respectable community, they were the dregs of the Kansas nation, who, while their betters were gone to hunt buffalo, had left the village on a begging expedition to Westport. When this ragamuffin hoard had passed, we caught our horses, saddled, harnessed, and resumed our journey. Forting the creek, the low roofs of a number of rude buildings appeared, rising from a cluster of groves and woods on the left, and, riding up through a long lane amid a profusion of wild roses and early spring flowers, we found the log church and schoolhouses belonging to the Methodist shawano mission. The Indians were on the point of gathering to a religious meeting. Some scores of them, tall men in half-civilized dress, were seated on wooden benches under the trees, while their horses were tied to the sheds and fences. Their chief, Parks, a remarkably large and athletic man, was just arrived from Westport, where he owns a trading establishment. Beside this he has a fine farm and a considerable number of slaves. Indeed, the shawanos have made greater progress in agriculture than any other tribe on the Missouri frontier, and both in appearance and in character form a marked contrast to our late acquaintance, the Kansas. A few hours ride brought us to the banks of the River Kansas. Traversing the woods that lined it and plowing through the deep sand, we encamped not far from the bank at the lower Delaware crossing. Our tent was erected for the first time on a meadow close to the woods, and the camp preparations being complete we began to think of supper. An old Delaware woman of some 300 pounds weight sat in the porch of a little log house close to the water, and a very pretty half-breed girl was engaged under her superintendents in feeding a large flock of turkeys that were fluttering and gobbling about the door. But no offers of money or even of tobacco could induce her to part with one of her favorites, so I took my rifle to see if the woods or the river could furnish us anything. A multitude of quails were plaintively whistling in the woods and meadows, but nothing appropriate to the rifle was to be seen, except three buzzards seated on the spectral limbs of an old dead sycamore that thrust itself out over the river from the dense sunny wall of fresh foliage. Their ugly heads were drawn down between their shoulders, and they seemed to luxuriate in the soft sunshine that was pouring from the west. As they offered no epicurean temptations, I refrained from disturbing their enjoyment, but contented myself with admiring the calm beauty of the sunset. Over the river, eddying swiftly in deep purple shadows between the impending woods, formed a wild but tranquilizing scene. When I returned to the camp, I found Shaw and an old Indian seated on the ground in close conference, passing the pipe between them. The old man was explaining that he loved the whites, and had a special partiality for tobacco. The laurel was arranging upon the ground our service of tin cups and plates, and as other vians were not to be had, he set before us a repast of biscuit and bacon and a large pot of coffee. Unsheathing our knives, we attacked it, disposed of the greater part, and tossed the residue to the Indian. Meanwhile, our horses now hobbled for the first time, stood among the trees with their forelegs tied together in great disgust and astonishment. They seemed by no means to relish this foretaste of what was before them. Mine in particular had conceived a moral aversion to the prairie life. One of them, Chris and Hendrick, an animal whose strength and hardy-hood were his only merits, and who yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward us with an indignant countenance as if he meditated avenging his wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian lineage, stood with his head drooping, and his mane hanging about his eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a liberally boy sent off to school. Poor Pontiac, his forebodings were but too just, for when I last heard from him he was under the lash of an Ogallala brave on a war-party against the crows. As it grew dark and the voices of the whipper-wills succeeded the whistle of the quails, we removed our saddles to the tent to serve as pillows, spread our blankets upon the ground, and prepared to bivouac for the first time that season. Each man selected the place in the tent which he was to occupy for the journey. To Deloria, however, was assigned the cart, into which he could creep in wet weather, and find a much better shelter than his bourgeois enjoyed in the tent. The river Kansas at this point forms the boundary line between the country of the showanos and that of the Delaware's. We crossed it on the following day, rafting over our horses in equippage with much difficulty, and unloading our cart in order to make our way up the steep ascent on the farther bank. It was a Sunday morning, warm tranquil and bright, and a perfect stillness reigned over the rough enclosures and neglected fields of the Delaware's, except the ceaseless hum and chirruping of myriads of insects. Now and then an Indian road passed on his way to the meeting-house, or through the dilapidated entrance of some shattered log-house an old woman might be discerned, enjoying all the luxury of idleness. There was no village bell, for the Delaware's have none, and yet upon that forlorn and rude settlement was the same spirit of sabbath repose and tranquility as in some little New England village among the mountains of New Hampshire, or the Vermont Woods. Having at present no leisure for such reflections we pursued our journey. A military road led from this point to Fort Leavenworth, and for many miles the farms and cabins of the Delaware's were scattered at short intervals on either hand. The little rude structures of logs erected usually on the borders of attractive woods made a picturesque feature in the landscape, but the scenery needed no foreign aid, nature had done enough for it, and the alteration of rich green prairies and groves that stood in clusters or lined the banks of the numerous little streams had all the softened and polished beauty of a region that has been for centuries under the hand of man. At that early season, too, it was the height of its freshness and luxuriance. The woods were flushed with the red buds of the maple, there were frequent flowering shrubs unknown in the east, and the green swells of the prairies were thickly studded with blossoms. And camping near a spring by the side of a hill, we resumed our journey in the morning, and early in the afternoon had arrived within a few miles of Fort Leavenworth. The road crossed a stream densely bordered with trees and running on the bottom of a deep woody hollow. We were about to descend into it when a wild and confused procession appeared passing through the water below and coming up the steep ascent toward us. We stopped to let them pass. They were Delaware's just returned from a hunting expedition. All, both men and women, were mounted on horseback and drove along with them a considerable number of pack mules laden with the furs they had taken, together with the buffalo robes, kettles, and other articles of their traveling equipment, which, as well as their clothing and their weapons, had a worn and dingy aspect, as if they had seen hard service of late. At the rear of the party was an old man who, as he came up, stopped his horse to speak to us. He rode a little tough shaggy pony with mane and tail well knotted with burrs and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of reins, was attached a string of rawhide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form with a piece of grizzly bear's skin laid over it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of a girth, a thong of hide passing around the horse's belly. The rider's dark features and keen, snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which, like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened by grease and long service, and an old handkerchief was tied around his head. Resting on the saddle before him lay his rifle, a weapon in the use of which the Delaware's are skillful, though from its weight the distant prairie Indians are too lazy to carry it. Who's your chief, he immediately inquired? Henry Shadilon pointed to us. The old Delaware fixed his eyes intently upon us for a moment and then sententiously remarked, no good, too young. With this flattering comment, he left us and rode after his people. This tribe, the Delaware's, once the peaceful allies of William Penn, the tributaries of the conquering Iroquois, are now the most adventurous and dreaded warriors upon the prairies. They make war upon remote tribes, the very names of which were unknown to their fathers in their ancient seats in Pennsylvania, and they push these new quarrels with true Indian ranker, sending out their little war parties as far as the Rocky Mountains and into the Mexican territories. Their neighbors and former Confederates, the Chihuahuanos, who were tolerable farmers, are in a prosperous condition, but the Delaware's dwindle every year from the number of men lost in their war-like expeditions. Soon after leaving this party, we saw, stretching on the right, the forests that follow the course of the Missouri, and the deep woody channel through which at this point it runs. At a distance in front were the white barracks of Fort Leavenworth, just visible through the trees upon an eminence above a bend of the river. A wide green meadow, as level as a lake, lay between us and the Missouri, and upon this, close to a line of trees that bordered a little brook, stood the tent of the captain and his companions, with their horses feeding around it, but they themselves were invisible. Right, their mulleteer was there, seated on the tongue of the wagon, repairing his harness. Boivere stood cleaning his rifle at the door of the tent, and Sorrell lounged idly about. On closer examination, however, we discovered the captain's brother, Jack, sitting in the tent at his old occupation of splicing trail ropes. He welcomed us in his broad Irish brogue, and said that his brother was fishing on the river, and are gone to the garrison. They returned before sunset. Meanwhile, we erected our own tent not far off, and after supper a council was held in which it was resolved to remain one day at Fort Leavenworth, and on the next to bid a final adieu to the frontier, or in the phrase theology of the region, to jump off. Our deliberations were conducted by the ruddy light from a distant swell of the prairie, where the long, dry grass of last summer was on fire. CHAPTER III On the next morning we rode to Fort Leavenworth. Colonel, now General Carney, to whom I had had the honor of an introduction when at St. Louis, was just arrived, and received us at his headquarters with the hybrid courtesy habitual to him. Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort being without defensive works except two blockhouses. No rumors of war had as yet disturbed its tranquility. In the square grassy area, surrounded by barracks and the quarters of the officers, the men were passing and repassing, or lounging among the trees, although not many weeks afterward it presented a different scene. For here the very off-scowerings of the frontier were congregated to be marshaled for the expedition against Santa Fe. Passing through the garrison we rode toward the Kickapoo village five or six miles beyond. The path, a rather dubious and uncertain one, let us along the ridge of high bluffs that bordered the Missouri, and by looking to the right or to the left we could enjoy a strange contrast of opposite scenery. On the left stretched the prairie, rising into swells and undulations, thickly sprinkled with groves, or gracefully expanding into wide grassy basins of miles in extent. While its curvatures swelling against the horizon were often surmounted by lines of sunny woods, a scene to which the freshness of the season and the peculiar mellowness of the atmosphere gave additional softness. Below us, on the right, was a tract of ragged and broken woods. We could look down on the summits of the trees, some living and some dead, some erect, others leaning at every angle and others still piled in masses together by the passage of a hurricane. Beyond their extreme verge the turbid waters of the Missouri were discernible through the boughs, rolling powerfully along at the foot of the woody declivities of its farther bank. The path soon after led inland, and as we crossed an open meadow, we saw a cluster of buildings on a rising ground before us, with a crowd of people surrounding them. They were the storehouse, cottage, and stables of the Kikapu traders' establishment. Just at that moment, as a chance, he was beset with half the Indians of the settlement. They had tied their wretched, neglected little ponies by dozens along the fences and outhouses, and were either lounging about the place or crowding into the trading-house. Here were faces of various colors. Red, green, white, and black curiously intermingled and disposed over the visage in a variety of patterns. Calico shirts, red and blue blankets, brass earrings, wampum necklaces appeared in profusion. The trader was a blue-eyed, open-faced man who neither in his manners nor his appearance betrayed any of the roughness of the frontier, though just at present he was obliged to keep a link's eye on his suspicious customers, who, men and women, were climbing on his counter and seating themselves among his boxes and bails. The village itself was not far off, and sufficiently illustrated the condition of its unfortunate and self-abandoned occupants. Fancy to yourself a little swift stream, working its devious way down a woody valley, sometimes wholly hidden under logs and fallen trees, sometimes issuing forth and spreading into a broad, clear pool, and on its banks in little nooks cleared away among the trees, miniature log houses in utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of narrow, obstructed paths connected these habitations one with another.  Further on, in place of the log-huts of the Kikapus, we found the Puquilages of their neighbors, the Potawatamis, whose conditions seemed no better than theirs. Growing tired at last, and exhausted by the excessive heat and sultriness of the day, we returned to our friend the trader. By this time the crowd around him had dispersed and left him at leisure. He invited us to his cottage, a little white and green building in the style of the old French settlements, and ushered us into a neat, well-furnished room. The blinds were closed, and the heat and glare of the sun excluded. The room was as cool as a cavern. It was neatly carpeted, too, and furnished in a manner that we hardly expected on the frontier. The sofas, chairs, tables, and a well-filled bookcase would not have disgraced an eastern city, though there were one or two little tokens that indicated the rather questionable civilization of the region. A pistol loaded and capped lay on the mantelpiece, and through the glass of the bookcase, peeping above the works of John Milton, glittered the handle of a very mischievous looking knife. Our host went out and returned with iced water, glasses, and a bottle of excellent claret, a refreshment most welcome in the extreme heat of the day, and soon after appeared a merry laughing woman, who must have been a year or two before, a very rich and luxuriant specimen of Creole beauty. She came to say that lunch was ready in the next room. Our hostess evidently lived on the sunny side of life and troubled herself with none of its cares. She sat down and entertained us while we were at table with anecdotes of fishing parties, frolics, and the officers at the fort. Taking leave at length of the hospital trader and his friend, we rode back to the garrison. Shaw passed on to the camp while I remained to call upon Colonel Carney. I found him still at table. There sat our friend, the captain, in the same remarkable habiliments in which we saw him at Westport, the black pipe, however, being for the present late aside. He dangled his little cap in his hand and talked of steeple chases, touching occasionally upon his anticipated exploits in buffalo hunting. There, too, was our, somewhat more elegantly attired. For the last time we tasted the luxuries of civilization and drank adieu's to it in wine good enough to make us almost regret the leave-taking. Then, mounting, we rode together to the camp where everything was in readiness for departure on the morrow. CHAPTER IV The reader need not be told that John Bull never leaves home without encumbering himself with the greatest possible load of luggage. Our companions were no exception to the rule. They had a wagon drawn by six mules and crammed with provisions for six months, besides ammunition enough for a regiment, spare rifles and fouling pieces, ropes and harness, personal baggage, and a miscellaneous assortment of articles which produced infinite embarrassment on the journey. They had also decorated their persons with telescopes and portable compasses, and carried English double-barreled rifles of sixteen to the pound caliber slung to their saddles in dragoon fashion. By sunrise on the 23rd of May we had breakfasted, the tents were leveled, the animals saddled and harnessed, and always prepared.  Right, our friend's mule tear, after some swearing and lashing, got his insubordinate train in motion, and then the whole party filed from the ground. Thus we battled long adieu to bed and board and the principles of Blackstone's commentaries. The day was a most auspicious one, and yet Shaw and I felt certain misgivings which in the sequel proved but too well founded. We had just learned that though our had taken it upon him to adopt this course without consulting us, not a single man in the party was acquainted with it, and the absurdity of our friend's high-handed measure very soon became manifest. His plan was to strike the trail of several companies of dragoons, who last summer had made an expedition under Colonel Carney to Fort Laramie, and by this means to reach the grand trail of the Oregon emigrants up the plat. We rode for an hour or two when a familiar cluster of buildings appeared on a little hill. Hello! shouted the Kickapoo trader from over his fence. Where are you going? A few rather emphatic exclamations might have been heard among us when we found that we had gone miles out of our way and were not advanced an inch toward the Rocky Mountains. So we turned in the direction the trader indicated, and with the sun for a guide began to trace a beeline across the prairies. We struggled through copes and lines of wood. We waded brooks and pools of water. We traversed prairies as green as Nemerald, expanding before us for mile after mile, wider and more wild than the wastes Mazeppa rode over. None nor brute nor dint of hoof nor print of foot lay in the wild luxuriant soil. No sign of travel, none of toil, the very air was mute. Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains. We looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or more, and far in the rear against the horizon the white wagons creeping slowly along. Here we are at last, shouted the captain. And in truth, we had struck upon the traces of a large body of horse. We turned joyfully and followed this new course with temper somewhat improved, and towards sunset and camped on a high swell of the prairie at the foot of which a lazy stream soaked along through clumps of ranked grass. It was getting dark. We turned the horses loose to feed. Drive down the tent pickets hard, said Henry Shadilon. It is going to blow. We did so, and secured the tent as well as we could, for the sky had changed totally, and a fresh damp smell in the wind warned us that a stormy night was likely to succeed the hot, clear day. The prairie also wore a new aspect, and its vast swells had grown black and somber under the shadow of the clouds. The thunders soon began to growl at a distance. Picketing and hobbling the horses among the rich grass at the foot of the slope where we encamped, we gained a shelter just as the rain began to fall, and sat at the opening of the tent, watching the proceedings of the captain. In defiance of the rain, he was stalking among the horses, wrapped in an old scotch plaid. An extreme solicitude tormented him, lest some of his favorites should escape, or some accident should befall them, and he cast an anxious eye toward three wolves who were sneaking along over the dreary surface of the plain, as if he dreaded some hostile demonstration on their part. On the next morning we had gone but a mile or two when we came to an extensive belt of woods, through the midst of which ran a stream, wide, deep, and of an appearance particularly muddy and treacherous. The laurel was in advance with his cart. He jerked his pipe from his mouth, lashed his mules, and poured forth a volley of Canadian ejaculations. Then plunged the cart, but midway it stuck fast. The laurel leaped out knee-deep in water, and by dint of sacré and a vigorous application of the whip he urged the mules out of the slough. Then approached the long-team and heavy wagon of our friends, but it paused on the brink. Now my advice is, began the captain, who had been anxiously contemplating the muddy gulf, Drive on, cried R. But right the mule-tear apparently had not as yet decided the point in his own mind, and he sat still in his seat on one of the shaft mules, whistling in low, contemplative strain to himself. My advice is, resumed the captain, that we unload, for I'll bet any man five pounds that if we try to go through we shall stick fast. By the powers we shall stick fast, echoed Jack, the captain's brother, shaking his large head with an air of firm conviction. Drive on, drive on, cried R, petulantly. Well observed the captain, turning to us as we sat looking on, much edified by this play-by-play among our confederates. I can only give my advice, and if people won't be reasonable, why they won't, that's all. Meanwhile, right had apparently made up his mind, for he suddenly began to shout forth a volley of oaths and curses that, compared with the French implications of Deloria, sounded like the roaring of heavy cannon after the popping and sputtering of a bunch of Chinese crackers. At the same time, he discharged a shower of blows upon his mules, who hastily dived into the mud and drew the wagon lumbering after them. For a moment the issue was dubious. Right writhed about in his saddle and swore and lashed like a madman, but who can count on a team of half broken mules? At the most critical point, when all should have been harmony and combined effort, the perverse brutes fell into lamentable disorder and huddled together in confusion on the Father Bank. There was the wagon up to the hub in mud, and visibly settling every instant. There was nothing for it but to unload, then to dig away the mud from before the wheels were the spade, and lay a causeway of bushes and branches. This agreeable labor accomplished, the wagon at last emerged. But if I mention that some interruption of this sort occurred at least four or five times a day for a fortnight, the reader will understand that our progress toward the plat was not without its obstacles. We traveled six or seven miles farther and nooned near a brook. On the point of resuming our journey when the horses were all driven down to water, my homesick charger Pontiac made a sudden leap across, and set off at a round trot for the settlements. I mounted my remaining horse and started in pursuit. Making a circuit, I headed the runaway hoping to drive him back to camp, but he instantly broke into a gallop, made a wide tour on the prairie, and got past me again. I tried this plan repeatedly with the same result. Pontiac was evidently disgusted with the prairie, so I abandoned it and tried another, trotting along gently behind him in hopes that I might quietly get near enough to seize the trail-rope, which was fastened to his neck and dragged about a dozen feet behind him. The chase grew interesting. For mile after mile I followed the rascal, with the utmost care not to alarm him, and gradually got nearer until at length old Hendrick's nose was fairly brushed by the whisking tail of the unsuspecting Pontiac. Without drawing rain I slid softly to the ground, but my long heavy rifle encumbered me, and the low sound it made in striking the horn of the saddle startled him. He pricked up his ears and sprang off at a run. My friend thought I, remounting, do that again, and I will shoot you. Fort Leavenworth was about forty miles distant, and thither I determined to follow him. I made up my mind to spend a solitary and supperless night, and then set out again in the morning. One hope, however, remained. The creek where the wagon had stuck was just before us. Pontiac might be thirsty with his run and stop there to drink. I kept as near to him as possible, taking every precaution not to alarm him again, and the result proved as I had hoped, for he walked deliberately among the trees and stooped down to the water. I alighted, dragged old Hendrick through the mud, and with a feeling of infinite satisfaction picked up the slimy trail rope and twisted it three times round my hand. Now let me see you get away again, I thought, as I remounted. But Pontiac was exceedingly reluctant to turn back. Hendrick, too, who had evidently flattered himself with vain hopes, showed the utmost repugnance, and grumbled in a manner peculiar to himself at being compelled to face about. A smart cut of the whip restored his cheerfulness, and dragging the recovered truant behind, I set out in search of the camp. An hour or two elapsed when, near sunset, I saw the tents standing on a rich swell of the prairie beyond a line of woods, while the bands of horses were feeding in a low meadow close at hand. There sat Jack C. cross-legged in the sun, splicing a trail rope, and the rest were lying on the grass, smoking and telling stories. That night we enjoyed a serenade from the wolves, more lively than any with which they had yet favored us. And in the morning one of the musicians appeared not many rods from the tents, quietly seated among the horses, looking at us with a pair of large gray eyes. But perceiving a rifle leveled at him, he leaped up and made off in hot haste. I passed by the following day or two of our journey, for nothing occurred worthy of record. Should any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the root of the plat, the best perhaps that can be adopted, I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. A dreary, preliminary, protracted crossing of the threshold awaits him before he finds himself fairly upon the verge of the great American desert, those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where the very shadow of civilization lies 100 leagues behind him. The intervening country, the wide and fertile belt that extends for several hundred miles beyond the extreme frontier, will probably answer tolerably well to his preconceived ideas of the prairie, for this it is from which picturesque tourists, painters, poets, and novelists who have seldom penetrated farther have derived their conceptions in the whole region. If he has a painter's eye he may find his period of probation not wholly void of interest. The scenery, though tame, is graceful and pleasing. Here are level plains, too wide for the eye to measure green undulations like motionless swells of the ocean. Abundance of streams followed through all their windings by lines of woods and scattered groves. But let him be as enthusiastic as he may, he will find enough to damp his ardor. His wagons will stick in the mud. His horses will break loose. Harness will give way, and axle trees prove unsound. His bed will be a soft one consisting often of black mud, of the richest consistency. As for food, he must content himself with biscuit and salt provisions, for strange as it may seem, this tract of country produces very little game. As he advances, indeed he will see, moldering in the grass by his path, the vast antlers of the elk, and father on the whitened skulls of the buffalo, once swarming over this now deserted region. Perhaps like us he may journey for a fortnight and see not so much as the hoofprint of a deer, in the spring not even a prairie hen is to be had. Yet to compensate him for this unlooked-for deficiency of game, he will find himself beset with varmints innumerable. The wolves will entertain him with a concierto at night, and skulk around him by day, just beyond rifle shot. His horse will step into badger holes. From every marsh and mud puddle will arise the bellowing croaking and trilling of legions of frogs, infinitely various in color, shape, and dimensions. A profusion of snakes will glide away from under his horse's feet, or quietly visit him in his tent at night. While the pertinacious humming of unnumbered mosquitoes will banish sleep from his eyelids. When thirsty with a long ride in the scorching sun over some boundless reach of prairie, he comes at length to a pool of water and lights to drink, he discovers a troop of young tadpoles sporting in the bottom of his cup. Add to this that all the morning the hot sun beats upon him with sultry, penetrating heat, and that with provoking regularity at about four o'clock in the afternoon a thunderstorm rises and drenches him to the skin. Such being the charms of this favored region, the reader will easily conceive the extent of our gratification at learning that for a week we had been journeying on the wrong track, how this agreeable discovery was made, I will presently explain. One day, after a protracted morning's ride, we stopped to rest at noon upon the open prairie. No trees were in sight, but close at hand a little dribbling brook was twisting from side to side through a hollow, now forming holes of stagnant water, and now gliding over the mud in a scarcely perceptible current among a growth of sickly bushes and great clumps of tall, ranked grass. The day was excessively hot and oppressive. The horses and mules were rolling on the prairie to refresh themselves, or feeding among the bushes in the hollow. We had dined, and DeLaurier, puffing at his pipe, knelt on the grass, scrubbing our service of tin plate. Shaw lay in the shade under the cart to rest for a while before the word should be given to catch up. Henry Shadilon, before lying down, was looking about for signs of snakes, the only living things that he feared, and uttering various ejaculations of disgust at finding several suspicious-looking holes close to the cart. I sat leaning against the wheel in a scanty strip of shade, making a pair of hobbles to replace those which my contumaceous steed Pontiac had broken the night before. The camp of our friends, a rod or two distant, presented the same scene of lazy tranquility. "'Hello,' cried Henry, looking up from his inspection of the snake-holes. "'Here comes the old captain.' The captain approached, and stood for a moment, contemplating us in silence. I say, Parkman,' he began, look at Shaw there asleep under the cart, with the tar dripping off the hub of the wheel on his shoulder. At this Shaw got up, with his eyes half opened, and feeling the part indicated he found his hand glued fast to his red flannel shirt. He'll look well when he gets among the squaws, won't he? observed the captain with a grin. He then crawled under the cart, and began to tell stories of which his stock was inexhaustible, yet every moment he would glance nervously at the horses. At last he jumped up in great excitement. See that horse? There? That fellow just walking over the hill?  It's your big horse, Shaw. No, it isn't. It's Jack's. Jack, Jack. Hello, Jack!' Jack, thus invoked, jumped up, and stared vaguely at us. "'Go and catch your horse, if you don't want to lose him,' roared the captain. Jack instantly set off at a run through the grass, his broad pantaloons flapping about his feet. The captain gazed anxiously till he saw that the horse was caught. Then he sat down with a countenance of thoughtfulness and care. "'I tell you what it is,' he said. "'This will never do at all. We shall lose every horse in the band some day or other, and then a pretty plight we should be in. Now I am convinced that the only way for us is to have every man in the camp stand horse-guard in rotation whenever we stop. Having a hundred ponies should jump up out of that ravine or yelling and flapping their buffalo robes in the way they do, why in two minutes not a hoof would be in sight. We reminded the captain that a hundred ponies would probably demolish the horse-guard if he were to resist their depredations. At any rate pursued the captain, evading the point. Our whole system is wrong. I am convinced of it. It is totally unmilitary why the way we travel strung out over the prairie for a mile, an enemy might attack the foremost men and cut them off before the rest could come up. "'We are not in an enemy's country yet,' said Shaw. "'When we are, we'll travel together.' "'Then,' said the captain, we might be attacked in camp. We have no sentinels. We camp in disorder. No precautions at all to guard against surprise. My own convictions are that we ought to camp in a hollow square with the fires in the center and have sentinels and a regular pass where it appointed for every night. Besides there should be vedettes riding in advance to find a place for the camp and give warning of an enemy. These are my convictions. I don't want to dictate to any man. I give advice to the best of my judgment. That's all. And then let people do as they please.' We intimated that perhaps it would be as well to postpone such burdensome precautions until there should be some actual need of them.  The captain's sense of military propriety had been severely shocked by what he considered the irregular proceedings of the party, and this was not the first time he had expressed himself upon the subject. But his convictions seldom produced any practical results. In the present case he contented himself, as usual, with enlarging on the importance of his suggestions and wondering that they were not adopted. But his plan of sending out vedettes seemed particularly dear to him, and as no one else was disposed to second his views on this point, he took it into his head to ride forward that afternoon himself. Come, Parkman, said he, will you go with me? We set out together and rode a mile or two in advance. The captain in the course of twenty years' service in the British Army had seen something of life. One extensive side of it, at least, he had enjoyed the best opportunities for studying, and being naturally a pleasant fellow, he was a very entertaining companion. He cracked jokes and told stories for an hour or two, until looking back, we saw the prairie behind us stretching away to the horizon without a horseman or a wagon in sight. Now, said the captain, I think the vedettes had better stop till the main body comes up. I was of the same opinion. There was a thick growth of woods just before us with a stream running through them. During cross this we found on the other side a fine level meadow half encircled by the trees, and fastening our horses to some bushes we sat down on the grass. While with an old stump of a tree for a target I began to display the superiority of the renowned rifle of the backwoods over the foreign innovation borne by the captain. At length voices could be heard in the distance behind the trees. There they come, said the captain, let's go and see how they get through the creek. We mounted and rode to the bank of the stream where the trail crossed it. It ran in a deep hollow full of trees. As we looked down we saw a confused crowd of horsemen riding through the water, and among the dingy habiliment of our party glittered the uniforms of four dragoons. Shaw came whipping his horse up the back in advance of the rest with a somewhat indignant countenance. The first word he spoke was a blessing fervently invoked on the head of R who was riding with a crestfallen air in the rear. Thanks to the ingenious devices of the gentlemen we had missed the track entirely and wandered not toward the plat, but to the village of the Iowa Indians. This we learned from the dragoons who had lately deserted from Fort Leavenworth. They told us that our best plan now was to keep to the northward until we should strike the trail formed by several parties of Oregon immigrants, who had that season set out from St. Joseph's in Missouri. In extremely bad temper we encamped on this ill-starred spot while the deserters, whose case admitted of no delay, rode rapidly forward. On the day following striking the St. Joseph's trail we turned our horses' heads toward Fort Laramie, then about seven hundred miles to the westward. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of the Oregon Trail This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman, Jr. Chapter 5 The Big Blue The great medley of Oregon and California immigrants at their camps around independence had heard reports that several additional parties were on the point of setting out from St. Joseph's farther to the northward. The prevailing impression was that these were Mormons twenty-three hundred in number, and a great alarm was excited in consequence. The people of Illinois and Missouri, who composed by far the greater part of the immigrants, have never been on the best terms with the latter-day Saints, and it is notorious throughout the country how much blood has been spilled in their feuds even far within the limits of the settlements. No one could predict what would be the result when large armed bodies of these fanatics should encounter the most impetuous and reckless of their old enemies on the broad prairie far beyond the reach of law or military force. The women and children at independence raised a great outcry. The men themselves were seriously alarmed, and, as I learned, they sent to Colonel Carney, requesting an escort of dragoons as far as the plat. This was refused, and as the sequel proved there was no occasion for it. The St. Joseph's immigrants were as good Christians and as zealous Mormon haters as the rest, and the very few families of the Saints, who passed out the season by the root of the plat, remained behind until the great tide of emigration had gone by, standing in quite as much awe of the Gentiles as the latter did of them. We were now, as I before mentioned upon this St. Joseph's trail. It was evident by the traces that large parties were a few days in advance of us, and as we, too, supposed them to be Mormons, we had some apprehension of interruption. The journey was somewhat monotonous. One day we rode on for hours without seeing a tree or a bush. Before, behind, and on either side stretched the vast expanse rolling in a succession of graceful swells, covered with the unbroken carpet of fresh green grass. Here and there a crow or a raven or a turkey buzzard relieved the uniformity. What shall we do tonight for wood and water, we began to ask of each other, for the sun was within an hour of setting. At length a dark green speck appeared far off on the right. It was the top of a tree, peering over a swell of the prairie, and leaving the trail, we made all haste toward it. It proved to be the vanguard of a cluster of bushes and low trees that surrounded some pools of water in an extensive hollow, so we encamped on the rising ground near it. Shaw and I were sitting in the tent when Deloria thrust his brown face an old felt hat into the opening, and dilating his eyes to their utmost extent, announced supper. There were the tin cups and the iron spoons arranged in military order on the grass, and the coffee pot predominant in the midst. The meal was soon dispatched, but Henry Châtelon still sat cross-legged, dallying with the remnant of his coffee, the beverage in universal use upon the prairie, and in a special favorite with him. He preferred it in its virgin flavor, unimpaired by sugar or cream, and on the present occasion it met his entire approval, being exceedingly strong, or as he expressed it, right black. It was a rich and gorgeous sunset, an American sunset, and the ruddy glow of the sky was reflected from some extensive pools of water among the shadowy copes in the meadow below. I must have a bath tonight, said Shaw. How is it, Deloria, any chance for a swim down here? Ah, I cannot tell, just as you please, monsieur, replied Deloria, shrugging his shoulders, perplexed by his ignorance of English, and extremely anxious to conform in all respects to the opinion and wishes of his bourgeois. Look at his moccasin, said I. It has evidently been lately immersed in a profound abyss of black mud. Come, said Shaw, at any rate we can see for ourselves. We set out together, and as we approached the bushes, which were at some distance, we found the ground becoming rather treacherous. We could only get along by stepping upon large clumps of tall ranked grass with fathomless gulfs between, like innumerable little quaking islands in an ocean of mud, where a false step would have involved our boots in a catastrophe like that which had befallen Deloria's moccasins. The thing looked desperate. We separated, so as to search in different directions, Shaw going off to the right while I kept straight forward. At last I came to the edge of the bushes. They were young water willows covered with their caterpillar-like blossoms, but intervening between them in the last grass clump was a black and deep slough over which by a vigorous exertion I contrived to jump. Then I shouldered my way through the willows, tramping them down by main forest till I came through a wide stream of water three inches deep, languidly creeping along over a bottom of sleek mud. My arrival produced a great commotion. A huge green bullfrog uttered an indignant croak and jumped off the bank with a loud splash. His webbed feet twinkled above the surface as he jerked them energetically upward, and I could see him ensconcing himself in the unresisting slime at the bottom when several large air bubbles struggled lazily to the top. Some little spotted frogs instantly followed the patriarch's example, and then three turtles not larger than a dollar tumbled themselves off a broad lily-pad where they had been reposing.  Any chance for a bath where you are? called out Shaw from a distance. The answer was not encouraging. I retreated through the willows, and rejoining my companion we proceeded to push our researches in company. Not far on the right, a rising ground covered with trees and bushes seemed to sink down abruptly to the water, and give hope of better success. So toward this we directed our steps. When we reached the place we found it no easy matter to get along between the hill and the water, impeded as we were by a growth of stiff, obstinate young birch trees laced together by grapevines. In the twilight we now and then, to support ourselves, snatched at the touch-me-not stem of some ancient sweetbriar. Shaw, who was in advance, suddenly uttered a somewhat emphatic monosyllable, and looking up I saw him with one hand grasping a sapling, and one foot immersed in the water from which he had forgotten to withdraw it, his whole attention being engaged in contemplating the movements of a water snake, about five feet long, curiously checkered with black and green, who was deliberately swimming across the pool. There being no stick or stone at hand to pelt him with, we looked at him for a time in silent disguise, and then pushed forward. Our perseverance was at last rewarded. For several rods farther on we emerged upon a little level grassy nook among the brushwood, and by an extraordinary dispensation of fortune the weeds and floating sticks, which elsewhere covered the pool, seemed to have drawn apart, and left a few yards of clear water just in front of this favored spot. We sounded it with a stick. It was four feet deep. We lifted a specimen in our cupped hands. It seemed reasonably transparent, so we decided that the time for action was arrived. But our ablutions were suddenly interrupted by ten thousand punctures like poisoned needles, and the humming of myriads of overgrown mosquitoes rising in all directions from their native mud and slime and swarming to feast. We were feigned to beat a retreat with all possible speed. We made toward the tents, much refreshed by the bath which the heat of the weather joined to our prejudices had rendered very desirable. What's the matter with the captain? Look at him, said Shaw. The captain stood alone on the prairie, swinging his hat violently around his head, and lifting first one foot and then the other, without moving from the spot. First he looked down to the ground with an air of supreme abhorrence, then he gazed upward with a perplexed and indignant countenance as if trying to trace the flight of an unseen enemy. We called to know what was the matter, but he replied only by execrations directed against some unknown object. We approached, when our ears were saluted by a droning sound as if twenty beehives had been overturned at once. The air above was full of large black insects in a state of great commotion, and multitudes were flying about just above the tops of the grass blades. Don't be afraid, called the captain, observing us recoil. The brutes won't sting. At this I knocked one down with my hat and discovered him to be no other than a doorbug, and looking closer we found the ground thickly perforated with their holes. We took a hasty leave of this flourishing colony and, walking up the rising ground to the tents, found Deloria's fire still glowing brightly. We sat down around it, and Shaw began to expatiate on the admirable facilities for bathing that we had discovered, and recommended the captain, by all means, to go down there before breakfast in the morning. The captain was in the act of remarking that he couldn't have believed it possible, when he suddenly interrupted himself and clapped his hand to his cheek, exclaiming that, those infernal humbugs were at him again. In fact, we began to hear sounds as if bullets were humming over our heads. In a moment something wrapped me sharply on the forehead, then upon the neck, and immediately I felt an indefinite number of sharp wiry claws in active motion as if their owner were bent on pushing his explorations farther. I seized him and dropped him into the fire. Our party speedily broke up, and we adjourned to our respective tents, where, closing the opening fast, we hoped to be exempt from invasion. But all precaution was fruitless. The doorbugs hummed through the tent and marched over our faces until daylight. When opening our blankets, we found several dozen clinging there with the utmost tenacity. The first object that met our eyes in the morning was Deloria, who seemed to be apostrophizing his frying pan which he held by the handle at arm's length. It appeared that he had left it at night by the fire, and the bottom was now covered with doorbugs firmly embedded. Multitudes beside curiously parched and shriveled lay scattered among the ashes. The horses and mules were turned loose to feed. We had just taken our seats at breakfast, or rather reclined in the classic mode, when an exclamation from Henry Châtalon and a shout of alarm from the captain gave warning of some casualty. And looking up, we saw the whole band of animals, twenty-three in number, filing off for the settlements, the incorrigible Pontiac at their head, jumping along with hobbled feet at a gate much more rapid than graceful. Three or four of us ran to cut them off, dashing as best we might through the tall grass which was glittering with myriads of dew drops. After a race of a mile or more, Shaw caught a horse. Tying the trail rope by way of bridle round the animal's jaw and leaping upon his back, he got in advance of the remaining fugitives, while we, soon bringing them together, drove them in a crowd up to the tents, where each man caught and saddled his own. Then we heard lamentations and curses, for half the horses had broke their hobbles, and many were seriously galled by attempting to run in fetters. It was late that morning before we were on the march, and early in the afternoon we were compelled to camp, for a thunder-gust came up and suddenly enveloped us in whirling sheets of rain. With much adieu we pitched our tents amid the tempest, and all night long the thunder bellowed and growled over our heads. In the morning, light, peaceful showers succeeded the cataracts of rain that had been drenching us through the canvas of our tents. About noon, when there were some treacherous indications of fair weather, we got in motion again. Not a breath of air stirred over the free and open prairie. The clouds were like light piles of cotton, and where the blue sky was visible it wore a hazy and languid aspect. The sun beat down upon us with a sultry penetrating heat almost insupportable, and as our party crept slowly along over the interminable level, the horses hung their heads as they waded fetlock deep through the mud, and the men slouched into the easiest position upon the saddle. At last toward evening the old familiar black heads of thunder-clouds rose fast above the horizon, and the same deep muttering of distant thunder that had become the ordinary accompaniment of our afternoon's journey began to roll hoarsely over the prairie. Only a few minutes elapsed before the whole sky was densely shrouded, and the prairie and some clusters of woods in front assumed a purple hue beneath the inky shadows. Suddenly, from the densest fold of the cloud, the flash leaped out, quivering again and again down to the edge of the prairie, and at the same instant came the sharp burst and the long rolling peel of the thunder.  Come on, we must ride for it, shouted Shaw, rushing past at full speed, his lead horse snorting at his side. The whole party broke into full gallop and made for the trees in front. Passing these we found beyond the memento which they half-enclosed. We rode pel-mel upon the ground, leaped from horseback, tore off our saddles, and in a moment each man was kneeling at his horse's feet. The hobbles were adjusted, and the animals turned loose. Then, as the wagons came wheeling rapidly to the spot, we seized upon the tent poles, and just as the storm broke, we were prepared to receive it. It came upon us almost with the darkness of night. The trees which were close at hand were completely shrouded by the roaring torrents of rain. We were sitting in the tent, when DeLaurier, with his broad-felt hat hanging about his ears and his shoulders glistening with rain, thrust in his head. I can make a fire, soo-la-sharet, I believe so, I try. Never mind, supper man, come in out of the rain. DeLaurier accordingly crouched in the entrance, for modesty would not permit him to intrude farther. Our tent was none of the best defense against such a cataract. The rain could not enter bodily, but it beat through the canvas in a fine drizzle that wedded us just as effectively. We sat upon our saddles with faces of the utmost surliness, while the water dropped from the visors of our caps and trickled down our cheeks.  But what most concerned us was the sight of several puddles of water rapidly accumulating. One in particular that was gathering around the tent pole threatened to overspread the whole area within the tent, holding forth but an indifferent promise of a comfortable night's rest. Toward sunset, however, the storm ceased as suddenly as it began. A bright streak of clear red sky appeared above the western verge of the prairie. The horizontal rays of the sinking sun streamed through it and glittered in a thousand prismatic colors upon the dripping groves and the prostrate grass. The pools in the tent dwindled and sunk into the saturated soil. But all our hopes were delusive. Scarcely had night set in when the tumult broke forth anew. The thunder here is not like the tame thunder of the Atlantic coast. Bursting with a terrific crash directly above our heads, it roared over the boundless waste of prairie, seeming to roll around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful reverberation.  It did not disturb us much. Now and then a peel awakened us and made us conscious of the electric battle that was raging and of the floods that dashed upon the stanch canvas over our heads. We lay upon India rubber cloths placed between our blankets in the soil. For a while they excluded the water to admiration. But when at length it accumulated and began to run over the edges, they served equally well to retain it, so that toward the end of the night we were unconsciously reposing in small pools of rain. On finally awaking in the morning the prospect was not a cheerful one. The rain no longer poured in torrents, but it padded with a quiet pertinacity upon the strained and saturated canvas. We disengaged ourselves from our blankets, every fiber of which glistened with little bead-like drops of water, and looked out in vain hope of discovering some token of fair weather. The clouds in lead-colored volumes rested upon the dismal verge of the prairie or hung sluggishly overhead, while the earth wore an aspect no more attractive than the heavens, exhibiting nothing but pools of water, grass beaten down, and mud well trampled by our mules and horses. Our companions' tent, with an air of forlorn and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner drenched in woe-begon stood not far off. The captain was just returning from his morning's inspection of the horses. He stalked through the mist and rain with his plaid around his shoulders, his little pipe, dingy as nant-aquarian relic projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother Jack at his heels. Good morning, Captain. Good morning to your honors, said the captain, affecting the hibernian accent, but at that instant as he stooped to enter the tent, he tripped upon the cords at the entrance and pitched forward against the guns which were strapped around the pole in the center.  Then he sat down upon Henry's chattel on saddle. We tossed a piece of buffalo robe to Jack, who was looking about in some embarrassment. He spread it on the ground and took a seat with the stolid countenance at his brother's side. Exhilarating weather, Captain. Oh, delightful, delightful, replied the captain. I knew it would be so, so much for starting yesterday at noon. I knew how it would turn out, and I said so at the time. You said just the contrary to us. We were in no hurry and only moved because you insisted on it. Gentlemen, said the captain, taking his pipe from his mouth with an air of extreme gravity. It was no plan of mine. There is a man among us who is determined to have everything his own way. You may express your opinion, but don't expect him to listen. You may be as reasonable as you like. Oh, it all goes for nothing. That man is resolved to rule the roost, and he'll set his face against any plan that he didn't think of himself. The captain puffed for a while at his pipe, as if meditating upon his grievances. Then he began again. For twenty years I have been in the British army, and in all that time I never had half so much dissension and quarreling and nonsense as since I have been on this cursed prairie. He's the most uncomfortable man I ever met. Yes, said Jack.  He pretends to know everything resumed the captain. Nobody must give orders but he. It's oh, we must do this, and oh, we must do that, and the tent must be pitched here, and the horses must be picketed there, for nobody knows as well as he does. We were a little surprised at this disclosure of domestic dissensions among our allies, for though we knew of their existence, we were not aware of their extent. The persecuted captain seeming wholly at a loss as to the course of conduct that he should pursue. We recommended him to adopt prompt and energetic measures, but all his military experience had failed to teach him the indispensable lesson to be hard when the emergency requires it. For twenty years, he repeated, I have been in the British army, and in that time I have been intimately acquainted with some two hundred officers young and old, and I never yet quarreled with any man. Oh, anything for a quiet life, that's my maxim. We intimated that the prairie was hardly the place to enjoy a quiet life, but that in the present circumstances the best thing he could do toward securing his wish for tranquility was immediately to put a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the captain's easy good nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him. He preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of grumbling about them. Oh, anything for a quiet life, he said again, circling back to his favorite maxim. But to glance at the previous history of our transatlantic Confederates, the captain had sold his commission and was living in bachelor ease and dignity in his paternal halls near Dublin. He hunted, fished, rode steeple chases, ran races, and talked of his former exploits. He was surrounded with the trophies of his rod and gun. The walls were plentifully garnished, he told us, with moose horns and deer horns, bear skins and fox tails, for the captain's double-barreled rifle had seen service in Canada and Jamaica. He had killed Salmon in Nova Scotia and trout by his own account in all the streams of the three kingdoms. But in an evil hour a seductive stranger came from London, no less a person than R, who, among other multitudinous wanderings, had once been upon the Western prairies, and naturally enough was anxious to visit them again. The captain's imagination was inflamed by the pictures of a hunter's paradise that his guest held forth. He conceived an ambition to add to his other trophies the horns of a buffalo and the claws of a grizzly bear. So he and R struck a lead to travel in company. Jack followed his brother as a matter of course. Two weeks on board the Atlantic steamer brought them to Boston. In two weeks more of hard traveling they reached St. Louis, from which a ride of six days carried them to the frontier, and here we found them in full tide of preparation for their journey. We had been throughout on terms of intimacy with the captain, but R, the mode of power of our companion's branch of the expedition, was scarcely known to us. His voice indeed might be heard incessantly, but at camp he remained chiefly within the tent, and on the road he either rode by himself or else remained in close conversation with his friend Wright, the mulleteer. As the captain left the tent that morning I observed R standing by the fire, and having nothing else to do I determined to ascertain, if possible, what manner of man he was. He had a book under his arm, but just at present he was engrossed in actively superintending the operations of Sorel, the hunter, who was cooking some cornbread over the coals for breakfast. R was a well-formed and rather good-looking man, some thirty years old, considerably younger than the captain. He wore a beard and mustache of the oakum complexion, and his attire was altogether more elegant than one ordinarily sees on the prairie. He wore his cap on one side of his head. His checked shirt, open in front, was in very neat order, considering the circumstances, and his blue pantaloons of the John Bullcut might once have figured in Bond Street. "'Turn over that cake, man. Turn it over quick. Don't you see it burning?' "'It ain't half done,' growled Sorel, in the amiable tone of a whipped bulldog. "'It is. Turn it over, I tell you.' Sorel, a strong, sullen-looking Canadian, who, from having spent his life among the wildest and most remote of the Indian tribes, had imbibed much of their dark, vindictive spirit, looked ferociously up, as if he longed to leap upon his bourgeois and throttle him. But he obeyed the order, coming from so experienced an artist. "'It was a good idea of yours,' said I, seating myself on the tongue of a wagon, to bring Indian meal with you. "'Yes, yes, it are. It's good bread for the prairie, good bread for the prairie. I tell you, that's burning again!' Here he stooped down, and unsheathing the silver-mounted hunting-knife in his belt began to perform the part of Cook himself, at the same time requesting me to hold for a moment the book under his arm, which interfered with the exercise of these important functions. I opened it. It was Macaulay's and I made some remark expressing my admiration of the work. "'Yes, yes, a pretty good thing. Macaulay can do better than that, though. I know him very well. I have traveled with him. Where was it we first met at Damascus? No, no, it was in Italy.' "'So,' said I, you have been over the same ground with your countrymen, the author of Aothen. There has been some discussion in America as to who he is. I have heard Milne's name mentioned. Milne's? Oh, no, no, no, not at all. It was King Lake. King Lake's the man. I know him very well. That is, I have seen him.' Here Jack C., who stood by, interposed to remark, a thing not common with him, observing that he thought the weather would become fair before twelve o'clock. "'It's going to rain all day,' said R., and clear up in the middle of the night. Just then the clouds began to dissipate in a very unequivocal manner. But Jack, not caring to defend his point against so authoritative a declaration, walked away whistling, and we resumed our conversation. Borrow, the author of the Bible in Spain? I presume you know him, too. Oh, certainly I know all those men. By the way, they told me that one of your American writers, Judge Story, had died lately. I edited some of his works in London. Not without faults, though. Here followed an erudite commentary on certain points of law, in which he particularly animadverted on the errors into which he considered that the judge had been betrayed. At length, having touched successively on an infinite variety of topics, I found that I had the happiness of discovering a man equally competent to enlighten me upon them all. Equally an authority on matters of science or literature, philosophy, or fashion. The part I bore in the conversation was by no means a prominent one. It was only necessary to set him going, and when he had run long enough upon one topic, to divert him to another and lead him on to pour out his heaps of treasure and succession. What has that fellow been saying to you, said Shaw, as I returned to the tent? I have heard nothing but his talking for the last half hour. Arr had none of the peculiar traits of the ordinary British snob. His absurdities were all his own, belonging to no particular nation or clime. He was possessed with an active devil that had driven him over land and sea to no great purpose, as it seemed, for although he had the usual compliment of eyes and ears, the avenues between these organs and his brain appeared remarkably narrow and untrodden. His energy was much more conspicuous than his wisdom, but his predominant characteristic was a magnanimous ambition to exercise on all occasions an awful rule and supremacy, and this propensity equally displayed itself, as the reader will have observed, whether the matter in question was the baking of a hoecake or a point of international law. When such diverse elements as he and the easy-tempered captain came in contact, no wonder some commotion ensued. Arr rode roughshod from morning till night over his military ally. At noon the sky was clear, and we set out, trailing through mud and slime six inches deep. That night we were spared the customary inflection of the shower-bath. On the next afternoon we were moving slowly along, not far from a patch of woods which lay on the right. Jack C. rode a little in advance. The live long day he had not spoke, when suddenly he faced about, pointed to the woods and roared out to his brother, oh, Bill, here's a cow. The captain instantly galloped forward, and he and Jack made a vain attempt to capture the prize, but the cow, with a well-grounded distrust of their intentions, took refuge among the trees. Arr joined them, and they soon drove her out. We watched their evolutions as they galloped around here, trying in vain to noose her with their trail-ropes, which they had converted into larriettes for the occasion. At length they resorted to milder measures, and the cow was driven along with the party. Soon after the usual thunderstorm came up, the wind blowing with such fury that the streams of rain flew almost horizontally along the prairie, roaring like a cataract. The horses turned tail to the storm, and stood hanging their heads, bearing the inflection with an air of meekness and resignation. While we drew our heads between our shoulders, and crouched forward so as to make our backs serve as a penthouse for the rest of our persons, meanwhile the cow, taking advantage of the tumult, ran off to the great discomforture of the captain, who seemed to consider her as his own a special prize, since she had been discovered by Jack. In defiance of the storm, he pulled his cap tight over his brows, jerked a huge buffalo pistol from his holster, and set out at full speed after her. This was the last we saw of them for some time, the mist and rain making an impenetrable veil. But at length we heard the captain shout, and saw him looming through the tempest, the picture of a hibernian cavalier with his cocked pistol held aloft for safety's sake, and a countenance of anxiety and excitement. The cow trotted before him, but exhibited evident signs of an intention to run off again, and the captain was roaring to us to head her. But the rain had got in behind our coat collars, and was traveling over our necks in numerous little streamlets, and being afraid to move our heads for fear of admitting more, we sat stiff and immovable, looking at the captain ascans, and laughing at his frantic movements. At last the cow made a sudden plunge and ran off. The captain grasped his pistol firmly, spurred his horse and galloped after, with evident designs of mischief. In a moment we heard the faint report, deadened by the rain, and then the conqueror and his victim reappeared. The latter shot through the body and quite helpless. Not long after the storm moderated, and we advanced again. The cow walked painfully along under the charge of Jack, to whom the captain had committed her, while he himself rode forward in his old capacity of vedette. We were approaching a long line of trees that followed a stream stretching across our path far in front, when we beheld the vedette galloping toward us, apparently much excited, but with a broad grin on his face. Let that cow drop behind, he shouted to us, here's her owners! And in fact, as we approached the line of trees, a large white object like a tent was visible behind them.  The cow, therefore, resumed her place in our procession. She walked on until we encamped, when R, firmly approaching with his enormous English double-barreled rifle, calmly and deliberately took aim at her heart, and discharged into it first one bullet and then the other. She was then butchered on the most approved principles of woodcraft, and furnished a very welcome item to our somewhat limited bill of fare. In a day or two more, we reached the river called the Big Blue. By titles equally elegant, almost all the streams of this region are designated. We had struggled through ditches and little brooks all that morning, but on traversing the dense woods that lined the banks of the blue, we found more formidable difficulties awaited us, for the stream swollen by the rains was wide, deep, and rapid. No sooner were we on the spot than R had flung off his clothes and was swimming across, or splashing through the shallows, with the end of a rope between his teeth. We all looked on in admiration, wondering what might be the design of this energetic preparation. But soon we heard him shouting, Give that rope a turn round that stomp. You, Sorel, do you hear? Look sharp now, bov'ere. Come over to this side, some of you, and help me. The men to whom these orders were directed paid not the least attention to them, though they were poured out without pause or intermission. Henry Châtellon directed the work, and it proceeded quietly and rapidly. Ar's sharp, rattling voice might have been heard incessantly, and he was leaping about with the utmost activity, multiplying himself after the manner of great commanders, as if his universal presence and supervision were of the last necessity. His commands were rather amusingly inconsistent, for when he saw that the men would not do as he told them, he wisely accommodated himself to circumstances, and with the utmost vehemence ordered them to do precisely that which they were at the time engaged upon, no doubt recollecting the story of Muhammad and the refractory mountain. Shaw smiled significantly, Ar observed it, and approaching with a countenance of lofty indignation began to vapor a little, but was instantly reduced to silence. The raft was at length complete.  Sorrel Boisvert right into Laurier took their stations at the four corners to hold it together and swim across with it, and in a moment more all our earthly possessions were floating on the turbid waters of the big blue. We sat on the bank anxiously watching the result until we saw the raft safe landed in a little cove far down on the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across, and then each man mounting a horse we rode through the stream, the stray animals following of their own accord.