Fort William, or Bent's Fort, on the north side of the Arkansas, eighty miles north by east from Taos in the Mexican dominions, and about one hundred and sixty miles from the mountains, was erected by gentlemen owners in 1832, for purposes of trade with the Spaniards of Santa FÉ and Taos, and the Eutaw, Cheyenne and Cumanche Indians. It is in the form of a parallelogram, the northern and southern sides of which are about a hundred and fifty feet, and the eastern and western a hundred feet in length. The walls are six or seven feet in thickness at the base, and seventeen or eighteen feet in height. The fort is entered through {174} a large gateway on the eastern side, in which swing a pair of immense plank doors. At the north-west and south-east corners stand two cylindrical bastions, about ten feet in diameter and thirty feet in height.

These are properly perforated for the use of cannon and small arms; and command the fort and the plains around it. The interior area is divided into two parts. The one and the larger of them occupies the north-eastern portion. It is nearly a square. A range of two-story houses, the well, and the blacksmith's shop are on the north side; on the west and south are ranges of one-story houses; on the east the blacksmith's shop, the gate and the outer wall. This is the place of business. Here the owners and their servants have their sleeping and cooking apartments, and here are the storehouses. In this area the Indians in the season of trade gather in large numbers and barter, and trade, and buy, under the guardianship of the carronades of the bastions loaded with grape, and looking upon them. From this area a passage leads between the eastern outer wall and the one-story houses, to the caral or cavy-yard, which occupies the remainder of the space within the walls. This is the {175} place for the horses, mules, &c., to repose in safety from Indian depredations at night. Beyond the caral to the west and adjoining the wall, is the waggon-house. It is strongly built, and large enough to shelter twelve or fifteen of those large vehicles which are used in conveying the peltries to St. Louis, and goods thence to the post. The long drought of summer renders it necessary to protect them from the sun.

The walls of the fort, its bastions and houses, are constructed of adobies or unburnt bricks, cemented together with a mortar of clay. The lower floors of the building are made of clay, a little moistened and beaten hard with large wooden mallets; the upper floors of the two-story houses and the roofs of all are made in the same way and of the same material, and are supported by heavy transverse timbers covered with brush. The tops of the houses being flat and gravelled, furnish a fine promenade in the moonlight evenings of that charming climate. The number of men employed in the business of this establishment is supposed to be about sixty. Fifteen or twenty of them in charge of one of the owners, are employed in taking to market the buffalo robes, &c., which are gathered at the fort, {176} and in bringing back with them new stocks of goods for future purchases. Another party is employed in hunting buffalo meat in the neighbouring plains; and another in guarding the animals while they cut their daily food on the banks of the river. Others, under command of an experienced trader, goes into some distant Indian camp to trade. One or more of the owners, and one or another of these parties which chances to be at the post, defend it and trade, keep the books of the company, &c. Each of these parties encounters dangers and hardships, from which persons within the borders of civilization would shrink.

The country in which the fort is situated is in a manner the common field of several tribes, unfriendly alike to one another and the whites. The Eutaws and Cheyennes[111] of the mountains near Santa FÉ, and the Pawnees of the great Platte, come to the Upper Arkansas to meet the buffalo in their annual migrations to the north; and on the trail of these animals follow up the Cumanches. And thus in the months of June, August, and September, there are in the neighbourhood of these traders from fifteen to twenty thousand savages ready and panting for {177} plunder and blood. If they engage in battling out old causes of contention among themselves, the Messrs. Bents feel comparatively safe in their solitary fortress. But if they spare each other's property and lives, they occasion great anxieties at Fort William; every hour of day and night is pregnant with danger. These untameable savages may drive beyond reach the buffalo on which the garrison subsists; may begirt the fort with their legions, and cut off supplies; may prevent them from feeding their animals upon the plains; may bring upon them starvation and the gnawing their own flesh at the door of death! All these are expectations, which as yet the ignorance alone of the Indians as to the weakness of the post, prevents from becoming realities. But at what moment some chieftain or white desperado may give them the requisite knowledge, is an uncertainty which occasions at Fort William many well-grounded fears for life and property.

Instances of the daring intrepidity of the Cumanches which occurred just before and after my arrival here, will serve to show the hazards and dangers of which I have spoken. About the middle of June, 1839, a band of sixty of them, under cover of {178} night, crossed the river, and concealed themselves among the bushes growing thickly on the bank near the place where the animals of the establishment feed during the day. No sentinel being on duty at the time, their presence was unobserved; and when morning came the Mexican horse-guard mounted his horse, and with the noise and shouting usual with that class of servants when so employed, drove his charge out of the fort, and riding rapidly from side to side of the rear of the band, urged them on, and soon had them nibbling the short dry grass in a little vale within grape-shot distance of the guns of the bastions. It is customary for a guard of animals about these trading-posts to take his station beyond his charge; and if they stray from each other, or attempt to stroll too far, to drive them together, and thus keep them in the best possible situation to be hurried hastily to the caral, should the Indians, or other evil persons, swoop down upon them. As there is constant danger of this, his horse is held by a long rope and grazes around him, that he may be mounted quickly, at the first alarm, for a retreat within the walls. The faithful guard at Bent's, on the morning of the disaster {179} I am relating, had dismounted after driving out his animals, and sat upon the ground, watching with the greatest fidelity for every call of duty, when these fifty or sixty Indians sprang from their hiding-places, ran upon the animals, yelling horribly, and attempted to drive them across the river. The guard, however, nothing daunted, mounted quickly, and drove his horse at full speed among them. The mules and horses hearing his voice amidst the frightening yells of the savages, immediately started at a lively pace for the fort; but the Indians were on all sides, and bewildered them. The guard still pressed them onward, and called for help; and on they rushed, despite the efforts of the Indians to the contrary. The battlements were covered with men. They shouted encouragement to the brave guard—"Onward! onward!" and the injunction was obeyed. He spurred his horse to his greatest speed from side to side, and whipped the hindermost of the band with his leading rope. He had saved every animal; he was within twenty yards of the open gate; he fell; three arrows from the bows of the Cumanches had cloven his heart. Relieved of him, the lords of the quiver gathered {180} their prey, and drove them to the borders of Texas, without injury to life or limb. I saw this faithful guard's grave. He had been buried a few days. The wolves had been digging into it. Thus forty or fifty mules and horses, and their best servant's life, were lost to the Messrs. Bents in a single day. I have been informed also that those horses and mules, which my company had taken great pleasure in recovering for them in the plains, were also stolen in a similar manner soon after my departure from the post; and that gentlemen owners were in hourly expectation of an attack upon the fort itself.

The same liability to the loss of life and property attends the trading expeditions to the encampments of the tribes.

An anecdote of this service was related to me. An old trapper was sent from this fort to the Eutaw camp, with a well-assorted stock of goods, and a body of men to guard it. After a tedious march among the snows and swollen streams and declivities of the mountain, he came in sight of the village. It was situated in a sunken valley, among the hideously dark cliffs of the Eutaw mountains; and so small was it, and so deep, that the overhanging heights {181} not only protected it from the blasts of approaching winter, but drew to their frozen embrace the falling snows, and left this valley its grasses and flowers, while their own awful heads were glittering with perpetual frosts.

The traders encamped upon a small swell of land that overlooked the smoking wigwams, and sent a deputation to the chiefs to parley for the privilege of opening a trade with the tribe. They were received with great haughtiness by those monarchs of the wilderness, and were asked "why they had dared to enter the Eutaw mountains without their permission." Being answered that they "had travelled from the fort to that place, in order to ask their highnesses' permission to trade with the Eutaws," the principal chief replied, that no permission had been given to them to come there, nor to remain. The interview ended, and the traders returned to their camp with no very pleasant anticipations as to the result of their expedition. Their baggage was placed about for breastworks; their animals drawn in nearer, and tied firmly to stakes; and a patrol guard stationed, as the evening shut in. Every preparation for the attack, which appeared determined upon on the part of the Indians, being {182} made, they waited for the first ray of day—a signal of dreadful havoc among all the tribes—with the determined anxiety which fills the bosom, sharpens the sight, nerves the arm, and opens the ear to the slightest rustle of a leaf, so remarkably, among the grave, self-possessed, and brave traders of the Great Prairie and Mountain Wilderness.

During the first part of the night the Indians hurrying to and fro through the village, their war speeches and war dances, and the painting their faces with red and black, in alternate stripes, and an occasional scout warily approaching the camp of the whites, indicated an appetite for a conflict that appeared to fix, with prophetic certainty, the fate of the traders. Eight hundred Indians to fifty whites, made fearful odds. The morning light streamed faintly up the east at last. The traders held their rifles with the grasp of dying men. Another and another beam kindled on the dark blue vault, and one by one quenched the stars. The silence of the tomb rested on the world. They breathed heavily, with teeth set in terrible resolution. The hour—the moment—had arrived! Behind a projecting ledge, the dusky forms of three or four hundred Eutaws undulated near the ground, like herds {183} of bears intent on their prey. They approached the ledge, and for an instant lay flat on their faces, and motionless. Two or three of them gently raised their heads high enough to look over upon the camp of the whites.

The day had broken over half the firmament; the rifles of the traders were levelled from behind the baggage, and glistened faintly; a crack—a whoop—a shout—a rout! The scalp of one of the peepers over the ledge had been bored by the whistling lead from one of the rifles—the chief warrior had fallen. The Indians retreated to their camp, and the whites retained their position, each watching the others movements. The position of the traders was such as could command the country within long rifle-shot on all sides; the Indians, therefore, declined an attack. The number of their foes, and perhaps some prudential consideration as to having an advantageous location, prevented the traders from making an assault. Well would it have been for them had they continued to be careful. About nine o'clock, the warlike appearance gave place to signs of peace. Thirty or forty unarmed Indians, denuded of clothing and of paint, came towards the {184} camp of the traders, singing and dancing, and bearing the Sacred Calumet, or Great Pipe of Peace. A chief bore it who had acted as lieutenant to the warrior that had been shot. Its red marble bowl, its stem broad and long, and carved into hieroglyphics of various colours and significations, and adorned with feathers of beautiful birds, was soon recognized by the traders, and secured the bearer and his attendants a reception into their camp. Both parties seated themselves in a great circle; the pipe was filled with tobacco and herbs from the venerated medicine bag; the well-kindled coal was reverently placed upon the bowl; its sacred stem was then turned towards the heavens, to invite the Great Spirit to the solemn assembly, and to implore his aid; it was then turned towards the earth, to avert the influence of malicious demons; it was then borne in a horizontal position, till it completed a circle, to call to their help in the great smoke, the beneficent invisible agents which live on the earth, in the waters, and the upper air; the chief took two whiffs, and blew the smoke first towards heaven, and then round upon the ground; and so did others, until all had inhaled the smoke—the breath of Indian {185} fidelity—and blown it to the earth and heaven, loaded with the pious vows that are supposed to mingle with it while it curls among the lungs near the heart. The chief then rose and said, in the Spanish language, which the Eutaws east of the mountains speak well, "that he was anxious that peace might be restored between the parties; that himself and people were desirous that the traders should remain with them; and that if presents were made to him to the small amount of £140, no objection would remain to the proposed proceedings of the whites; but on no account could they enter the Eutaw country without paying tribute in some form. They were in the Eutaw country, the tribute was due, they had killed a Eutaw chief, and the blood of a chief was due; but that the latter could be compromised by a prompt compliance with his proposition in regard to the presents."

The chief trader was explicit in his reply. "That he had come into the country to sell goods, not to give them away; that no tribute could be paid to him or to any other Eutaw; and that if fighting were a desideratum with the chief and his people, he would do his part to make {186} it sufficiently lively to be interesting." The council broke up tumultuously. The Indians carried back the wampum belts to their camp, held war councils, and whipt and danced around posts painted red, and recounted their deeds of valour, and showed high in air, as they leaped in the frenzy of mimic warfare, the store of scalps that garnished the doors of the family lodges; and around their camp-fires the following night were seen features distorted with the most ghastly wrath. Indeed, the savages appeared resolved to destroy the whites. And as they were able, by their superior numbers to do so, it was deemed advisable to get beyond their reach, with all practicable haste.

At midnight, therefore, when the fires had smouldered low, the traders saddled in silent haste, bound their bales upon their pack-mules, and departed while the wolves were howling the hour; and succeeded by the dawn of day in reaching a gorge where they had expected the Indians (if they had discovered their departure in season to reach it) would oppose their retreat. On reconnoitering, however, it was found clear; and with joy they entered the defile, and beheld from its eastern opening, the wide cold plains, and the sun rising, red and cheerful, {187} on the distant outline of the morning sky. A few days after, they reached the post—not a little glad that their flesh was not rotting with many who had been less successful than themselves, in escaping death at the hands of the Eutaws. For the insults, robberies, and murders, committed by this and other tribes, the traders Bents have sought opportunities to take well-measured vengeance: and liberally and bravely have they often dealt it out. But the consequence seems to have been the exciting of the bitterest enmity between the parties; which results in a little more inconvenience to the traders than to the Indians; for the latter, to gratify their propensity to steal, and their hatred to the former, make an annual levy upon the cavy-yard of the fortress, which, as it contains usually from eighty to one hundred horses, mules, &c., furnishes to the men of the tomahawk a very comfortable and satisfactory retribution for the inhibition of the owners of them upon their immemorial right to rob and murder, in manner and form as prescribed by the customs of their race.

The business within the walls of the post is done by clerks and traders. The former of these are more commonly young gentlemen {188} from the cities of the States; their duty is to keep the books of the establishment. The traders are generally selected from among those daring individuals who have traversed the Prairie and Mountain Wilderness with goods or traps, and understand the best mode of dealing with the Indians. Their duty is to weigh sugar, coffee, powder, &c., in a Connecticut pint-cup; and measure red baize, beads, &c., and speak the several Indian languages that have a name for beaver skins, buffalo robes, and money. They are as fine fellows as can anywhere be found.

Fort William is owned by three brothers, by the name of Bent, from St. Louis. Two of them were at the post when we arrived. They seemed to be thoroughly initiated into Indian life; dressed like chiefs—in moccasins thoroughly garnished with beads and porcupine quills; in trousers of deer skin, with long fringes of the same extending along the outer seam from the ankle to the hip; in the splendid hunting-shirt of the same material, with sleeves fringed on the elbow seam from the wrist to the shoulder, and ornamented with figures of porcupine quills of various colours, and leathern fringe around the lower edge of the body. And {189} chiefs they were in the authority exercised in their wild and lonely fortress.

A trading establishment to be known must be seen. A solitary abode of men, seeking wealth in the teeth of danger and hardship, rearing its towers over the uncultivated wastes of nature, like an old baronial castle that has withstood the wars and desolations of centuries; Indian women tripping around its battlements in their glittering moccasins and long deer skin wrappers; their children, with most perfect forms, and the carnation of the Saxon cheek struggling through the shading of the Indian, and chattering now Indian, and now Spanish or English; the grave owners and their clerks and traders, seated in the shade of the piazza, smoking the long native pipe, passing it from one to another, drawing the precious smoke into the lungs by short hysterical sucks till filled, and then ejecting it through the nostrils; or it may be, seated around their rude table, spread with coffee or tea, jerked buffalo meat, and bread made of unbolted wheaten meal from Taos; or, after eating, laid comfortably upon their pallets of straw and Spanish blankets, and dreaming to the sweet notes of a flute; the old trappers withered with {190} exposure to the rending elements, the half-tamed Indian, and half civilized Mexican servants, seated on the ground around a large tin pan of dry meat, and a tankard of water, their only rations, relating adventures about the shores of Hudson's Bay, on the rivers Columbia and Mackenzie, in the Great Prairie Wilderness, and among the snowy heights of the mountains; and delivering sage opinions about the destination of certain bands of buffalo; of the distance to the Blackfoot country, and whether my wounded man was hurt as badly as Bill the mule was, when the "meal party" was fired upon by the Cumanches—present a tolerable idea of every thing within its walls.

If we add, the opening of the gates on a winter's morning—the cautious sliding in and out of the Indians whose tents stand around the fort, till the whole area is filled six feet deep with their long hanging black locks, and dark watchful flashing eyes; and traders and clerks busy at their work; and the patrols walking the battlements with loaded muskets; and the guards in the bastions standing with burning matches by the carronades; and when the sun sets, the Indians retiring again to their camp outside, to talk over their newly purchased blankets {191} and beads, and to sing and drink and dance; and the night sentinel on the fort that treads his weary watch away; we shall present a tolerable view of this post in the season of business.

It was summer time with man and beast when I was there. The fine days spent in the enjoyment of its hospitalities were of great service to ourselves, and in recruiting our jaded animals. The man, too, who had been wounded on the Santa FÉ trade, recovered astonishingly.

The mutineers, on the 11th of July, started for Bent's Fort, on the Platte;[112] and myself, with three sound and good men, and one wounded and bad one, strode our animals and took trail again for the mountains and Oregon Territory. Five miles above Fort William, we came to Fort El Puebla. It is constructed of adobies, and consists of a series of one-story houses built around a quadrangle, in the general style of those at Fort William. It belongs to a company of American and Mexican trappers, who, wearied with the service, have retired to this spot to spend the remainder of their days in raising grain, vegetables, horses, mules, &c., for the various {192} trading establishments in these regions. And as the Arkansas, some four miles above the post, can be turned from its course over large tracts of rich land, these individuals might realize the happiest results from their industry;—for, as it is impossible, from the looseness of the soil and the scarcity of rain, to raise any thing thereabout without irrigation; and, as this is the only spot, for a long distance up and down the Arkansas, where any considerable tracts of land can be watered, they could supply the market with these articles without any fear of competition.[113]

But these, like the results of many honest intentions, are wholly crippled by want of capital and a superabundance of whisky. The proprietors are poor, and when the keg is on tap, dream away their existence under its dangerous fascinations. Hence it is that these men, destitute of the means to carry out their designs in regard to farming, have found themselves not wholly unemployed in drunkenness; a substitute which many other individuals have before been known to prefer. They have, however, a small stock; consisting of horses and mules, cattle, sheep, and goats; and still maintain their original intention of irrigating and cultivating {193} the land in the vicinity of their establishment.

We arrived here about four o'clock in the afternoon; and, being desirous of purchasing a horse for one of the men, and making some farther arrangements for my journey, I determined to stop for the night. At this place I found a number of independent trappers, who after the spring-hunt had come down from the mountains, taken rooms free of rent, stored their fur, and opened a trade for whisky. One skin, valued at four dollars, buys in that market one pint of whisky; no more, no less. Unless, indeed, some theorists in the vanity of their dogmas, may consider it less, when plentifully mollified with water; a process that increases in value, as the faucet falters in the energy of its action; for the seller knows, that if the pure liquid should so mollify the whisky, as to delay the hopes of merriment too long, another beaver-skin will be taken from the jolly trapper's pack, and another quantity of the joyful mixture obtained. Thus matters will proceed, until the stores of furs, the hardships of the hunt, the toils and exposures of trapping, the icy streams of the wilderness, the bloody fight, foot to foot, with the knife and tomahawk, {194} and the long days and nights of thirst and starvation are satisfactorily cancelled in the dreamy felicity which whisky, rum, gin, brandy and ipecacuanha, if properly administered, are accustomed to produce.

One of these trappers was from New Hampshire; he had been educated at Dartmouth College, and was altogether one of the most remarkable men I ever knew. A splendid gentleman, a finished scholar, a critic on English and Roman literature, a politician, a trapper, an Indian! His stature was something more than six feet; his shoulders and chest were broad, and his arms and lower limbs well formed, and very muscular. His forehead was high and expansive; Causality, Comparison, Eventuality, and all the perceptive organs, (to use a phrenological description), remarkably large. Locality was, however, larger than any other organ in the frontal region. Benevolence, Wonder, Ideality, Secretiveness, Destructiveness, and Adhesiveness, Combativeness, Self-Esteem and Hope were very high. The remaining organs were low. His head was clothed with hair as black as jet, two and a half feet in length, smoothly combed, and hanging down his back. He {195} was dressed in a deer-skin frock, leggings and moccasins; not a shred of cloth about his person. On my first interview with him, he addressed me with the stiff, cold formality of one conscious of his own importance; and, in a manner that he thought unobserved, scrutinized the movement of every muscle of my face, and every word which I uttered. When any thing was said of political events in the States or Europe, he gave silent and intense attention.

I left him without any very good impressions of his character; for I had induced him to open his compressed mouth but once, and then to make the no very agreeable inquiries, "When do you start?" and "What route do you take?" At my second interview, he was more familiar. Having ascertained that he was proud of his learning, I approached him through that medium. He seemed pleased at this compliment to his superiority over those around him, and at once became easy and talkative. His "Alma Mater" was described and redescribed; all the fields, and walks, and rivulets, the beautiful Connecticut, the evergreen primitive ridges lying along its banks, which, he said, "had smiled for a thousand ages on the march of decay;" were successive {196} themes of his vast imagination. His descriptions were minute and exquisite. He saw in every thing all that Science sees, together with all that his capacious intellect, instructed and imbued with the wild fancyings and legends of his race, could see. I inquired the reason of his leaving civilized life for a precarious livelihood in the wilderness. "For reasons found in the nature of my race," he replied. "The Indian's eye cannot be satisfied with a description of things, how beautiful soever may be the style, or the harmonies of verse in which it is conveyed. For neither the periods of burning eloquence, nor the mighty and beautiful creations of the imagination, can unbosom the treasures and realities as they live in their own native magnificence on the eternal mountains, and in the secret, untrodden vale.

"As soon as you thrust the ploughshare under the earth, it teems with worms and useless weeds. It increases population to an unnatural extent; creates the necessity of penal enactments, builds the jail, erects the gallows, spreads over the human face a mask of deception and selfishness, and substitutes villany, love of wealth and power, and the slaughter of millions for the gratification {197} of some individual instead of the single-minded honesty, the hospitality, the honour and the purity of the natural state. Hence, wherever Agriculture appears, the increase of moral and physical wretchedness induces the thousands of necessities, as they are termed, for abridging human liberty; for fettering down the mind to the principles of right, derived, not from nature, but from a restrained and forced condition of existence. And hence my race, with mental and physical habits as free as the waters which flow from the hills, become restive under the rules of civilized life; dwindle to their graves under the control of laws, customs, and forms, which have grown out of the endless vices, and the factitious virtue of another race. Red men often acquire and love the Sciences. But with the nature which the Great Spirit has given them, what are all their truths to them? Would an Indian ever measure the height of a mountain that he could climb? No, never. The legends of his tribe tell him nothing about quadrants, and base lines and angles. Their old braves, however, have for ages watched from the cliffs, the green life in the spring, and the yellow death in the autumn, of their holy forests. Why should he ever calculate an eclipse? He {198} always knew such occurrences to be the doings of the Great Spirit.

"Science, it is true, can tell the times and seasons of their coming; but the Indian, when they do occur, looks through nature, without the aid of science, up to its cause. Of what use is a Lunar to him? His swift canoe has the green embowered shores, and well-known headlands, to guide its course. In fine, what are the arts of peace, of war, of agriculture, or any thing civilized, to him? His nature and its elements, like the pine which shadows its wigwam, are too mighty, too grand, of too strong a fibre, to form a stock on which to engraft the rose or the violet of polished life. No. I must range the hills, I must always be able to out-travel my horses, I must always be able to strip my own wardrobe from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to feed upon their rich loins; I must always be able to punish my enemy with my own hand, or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am any thing else, I am a mere imitation of an ape."

The enthusiasm with which these sentiments were uttered impressed me with an awe I had never previously felt for the unborrowed dignity and independence of the genuine, original character {199} of the American Indians. Enfeebled, and reduced to a state of dependence by disease and the crowding hosts of civilized men, we find among them still, too much of their own, to adopt the character of another race, too much bravery to feel like a conquered people, and a preference of annihilation to the abandonment of that course of life, consecrated by a thousand generations of venerated ancestors.

This Indian has been trapping among the Rocky Mountains for seventeen years. During that time, he has been often employed as an express to carry news from one trading post to another, and from the mountains to Missouri. In these journeys he has been remarkable for the directness of his courses, and the exceedingly short space of time required to accomplish them. Mountains which neither Indian nor white man dared attempt to scale, if opposing his right-line track, he has crossed. Angry streams, heavy and cold from the snows, and plunging and roaring among the girding caverns of the hills, he has swum; he has met the tempest as it groaned over the plains, and hung upon the trembling towers of the everlasting hills; and without a horse, or even a dog, traversed often the terrible and boundless wastes of mountains, {200} and plains, and desert valleys, through which I am travelling; and the ruder the blast, the larger the bolts, and the louder the peals of the dreadful tempest, when the earth and the sky seem joined by a moving cataract of flood and flame driven by the wind, the more was it like himself, a free, unmarred manifestation of the sublime energies of nature. He says that he never intends again to visit the States, or any other part of the earth "which has been torn and spoiled by the slaves of agriculture." "I shall live," said he, "and die in the wilderness." And assuredly he should thus live and die. The music of the rushing waters should be his requiem, and the Great Wilderness his tomb.

Another of these peculiar men was an Iroquois from Canada; a stout, old man, with a flat nose, broad face, small twinkling black eyes, a swarthy, dirty complexion, a mouth that laughed from ear to ear. He was always relating some wonderful tale of a trapper's life, and was particularly fond of describing his escapes from the Sioux and Blackfeet, while in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. On one occasion he had separated from his fellow-trappers and travelled far up the Missouri {201} into a particularly beautiful valley. It was the very spot he had sought in all his wanderings, as a retreat for himself and his squaw to live in till they should die. It appeared to him like the gateway to the Isles of the Blest. The lower mountains were covered with tall pines, and above and around, except in the east, where the morning sun sent in his rays, the bright glittering ridges rose high against the sky, decked in the garniture of perpetual frosts. Along the valley lay a clear, pure lake, in the centre of which played a number of fountains, that threw their waters many feet above its surface, and sending tiny waves rippling away to the pebbly shores, made the mountains and groves that were reflected from its rich bosom seem to leap and clap their hands for joy, at the sacred quiet that reigned among them.

The old Indian pitched his skin tent on the shore, in a little copse of hemlock, and set his traps. Having done this, he explored carefully every part of the neighbouring mountains for ingress and egress, "signs," &c. His object in this was to ascertain if the valley were frequented by human beings; and if there were places of escape, should it be entered by hostile persons {202} through the pass that led himself to it. He found no other pass, except one for the waters of the lake through a deep chasm of the mountain; and this was such that no one could descend it alive to the lower valleys. For as he waded and swam by turns down its still waters, he soon found himself drawn by an increasing current, which sufficiently indicated to him the cause of the deep roar that resounded from the caverns beyond. He accordingly made the shore, and climbed along among the projecting rocks till he overlooked an abyss of fallen rocks, into which the stream poured and foamed and was lost in the mist. He returned to his camp satisfied. He had found an undiscovered valley, stored with beaver and trout, and grass for his horses, where he could trap and fish and dream awhile in safety. And every morning, for three delightful weeks, did he draw the beaver from the deep pools into which they had plunged when the quick trap had seized them, and stringing them two and two together over his pack-horse, bore them to his camp; and with his long side-knife stripped off the skins of fur, pinned them to the ground to dry, and in his camp kettle cooked the much-prized tails for his mid-day {203} repast. "Was it not a fine hunt that?" asked he; "beaver as thick as musquitoes, trout as plenty as water. But the ungodly Blackfeet!" The sun had thrown a few bright rays upon the rim of the eastern firmament, when the Blackfeet war-whoop rang around his tent—a direful "whoop-ah-hooh," ending with a yell, piercing harsh and shrill, through the clenched teeth. He had but one means of escape—the lake. Into it he plunged, beneath a shower of poisoned arrows—plunged deeply—and swam under while he could endure the absence of air; he rose, he was in the midst of his foes swimming and shouting around him; down again, up to breathe, and on he swam with long and powerful sweeps. The pursuit was long, but at last our man entered the chasm he had explored, plunged along the cascade as near as he dared, clung to a shrub that grew from the crevice of the rock, and lay under water for the approach of his pursuers. On they came, they passed, they shrieked and plunged for ever into the abyss of mist.

Another individual of these veteran trappers was my guide, Kelly, a blacksmith by trade, from Kentucky. He left his native State about twelve years ago, and entered {204} the service of the American Fur Company. Since that time, he has been in the States but once, and that for a few weeks only. In his opinion, every thing was so dull and tiresome that he was compelled to fly to the mountains again. The food, too, had well nigh killed him: "The villanous pies and cake, bacon and beef, and the nicknacks that one is obliged to eat among cousins, would destroy the constitution of an ostrich." And if he could eat such stuff, he said he had been so long away from civilization that he could never again enjoy it. As long as he could get good buffalo cows to eat, the fine water of the snowy hills to drink, and good buckskins to wear, he was satisfied. The mountaineers were free; he could go and come when he chose, with only his own will for law.

My intercourse with him, however, led me afterwards to assign another cause for his abandonment of home. There were times when we were encamped at night on the cold mountains about a blazing fire, that he related anecdotes of his younger days with an intensity of feeling which discovered that a deep fountain of emotion was still open in his bosom, never to be sealed till he slumber under the sands of the desert.

{205} We passed the night of the 11th of July at the Puebla. One of my companions who had, previously to the division of my company, used horses belonging to an individual who left us for Santa FÉ, and the excellent Mr. Blair, were without riding animals. It became, therefore, an object for them to purchase here; and the more so, as there would be no other opportunity to do so for some hundreds of miles. But these individuals had no money nor goods that the owners of the horses would receive in exchange. They wanted clothing or cash, and as I had a surplus quantity of linen, I began to bargain for one of the animals. The first price charged was enormous. A little bantering, however, brought the owner to his proper senses; and the articles of payment were overhauled. In doing this, my whole wardrobe was exposed, and the vendor of horses became extremely enamoured of my dress-coat, the only one remaining, not out at the elbows. This he determined to have. I assured him it was impossible for me to part with it; the only one I possessed. But he, with quite as much coolness, assured me that it would then be impossible for him to part with his horse. These two {206} impossibilities having met, all prospects of a trade were suspended, till one or the other of them should yield. After a little, the idea of walking cast such evident dissatisfaction over the countenances of my friends, that the coat was yielded, and then the pants and overcoat, and all my shirts save four, and various other articles to the value of three such animals in the States. The horse was then transferred to our keeping. And such a horse! The biography of her mischief, would fill a volume! and that of the vexations arising therefrom to us poor mortals? Would it not fill two volumes of "Pencillings by the Way," whose only deficiency would be the want of a love incident? Another horse was still necessary; but in this, as in the other case, a coat was a "sine qu non;" and there being no other article of the kind to dispose of among us, no bargain could be made. The night came on amidst these our little preparations. The owners of the horses and mules belonging to El Puebla, drove their animals into the court or quadrangle, around which their houses were built. We gathered our goods and chattels into a pile, in a corner of the most comfortable room we could obtain, and so {207} arranged our blankets and bodies, that it would be difficult for any one to make depredations upon them during the night, without awaking us. After conversing with my Dartmouth friend concerning the mountainous country through which we were to travel, and the incidents of feasting and battle which had befallen him during his trapping excursions, we retired to our couches.

At eight o'clock on the 12th, we were harnessed and on route again for the mountains. It was a fine mellow morning. The snowy peaks of the Wolfano mountains, one hundred and seventy miles to the south-west, rose high and clear in view.[114] The atmosphere was bland like that of the Indian summer in New England. Five miles' travel brought us to the encampment of Kelly's servant, who had been sent abroad the night before to find grass for his horses. Here another horse was purchased of a Mexican, who had followed us from Puebla. But on adjusting our baggage, it appeared that three animals were required for transporting it over the broken country which lay before us. Messrs. Blair and Wood would, therefore, still have but a single saddle horse for their joint use. {208} This was felt to be a great misfortune, both on account of the hardships of such a journey on foot, as well as the delay it would necessarily cause in the prosecution of it. But these men felt no such obstacle to be insurmountable, and declared, that while the plain and the mountains were before them, and they could walk, they would conquer every difficulty that lay between them and Oregon. After we had eaten, Kelly's horses were rigged, and we moved on four or five miles up the river, where we halted for the night. Our provisions consisted of a small quantity of wheat meal, a little salt and pepper, and a few pounds of sugar and coffee. For meat we depended on our rifles. But as no game appeared during the day, we spent the evening in attempting to take cat-fish from the Arkansas. One weighing a pound, after much practical angling, was caught—a small consolation surely to the keen appetites of seven men! But this, and porridge made of wheat meal and water, constituted our supper that night and breakfast next morning.

July 13th, fifteen miles along the banks of the Arkansas; the soil composed of sand slightly intermixed with clay, too loose to {209} retain moisture, and too little impregnated with the nutritive salts to produce any thing save a spare and stinted growth of bunch grass and sun-flowers. Occasional bluffs of sand and limestone bordered the valley of the stream. In the afternoon, the range of low mountains that lie at the eastern base of the Great Cordilleras and Long's ranges became visible; and even these, though pigmies in the mountain race, were, in midsummer, partially covered with snow. Pike's peak in the south-west, and James' peak in the north-west, at sunset showed their hoary heads above the clouds which hung around them.[115]

On the 14th, made twenty miles. Kelly relieved his servant by surrendering to him his riding horse for short distances; and others relieved Blair and Wood in a similar manner. The face of the plain became more broken as we approached the mountains. The waters descending from the lower hills, have cut what was once a plain into isolated bluffs three or four hundred feet in height, surmounted and surrounded with columnar and pyramidal rocks. In the distance they resemble immense fortresses, with towers and bastions as skilfully arranged as they could have been by the best suggestions of {210} art—embattlements raised by the commotions of warring elements—by the storms that have gathered and marshalled their armies on the heights in view, and poured their desolating power over these devoted plains!

The Arkansas, since we left Fort William, had preserved a medium width of a quarter of a mile, the waters still turbid; its general course east south-east; soil on either side as far as the eye could reach, light sand and clayey loam, almost destitute of vegetation.

On the 15th travelled about eighteen miles over a soil so light that our animals sunk over their fetlocks at every step. During the forenoon we kept along the bottom lands of the river. An occasional willow or cotton-wood tree, ragged and grey with age, or a willow bush trembling, it almost seemed, at the tale of desolation that the winds told in passing, were the only relieving features of the general dearth. The usual colour of the soil was a greyish blue. At twelve o'clock we stopped on a plat of low ground which the waters of the river moistened by filtration through the sand, and baited our horses. Here were forty or fifty decrepid old willows, so poor and shrivelled that one felt, after enjoying {211} their shade in the heat of that sultry day, like bestowing alms upon them. At twelve o'clock we mounted and struck out across the plain to avoid a southward bend in the river of twenty miles in length. Near the centre of this bend in the mouth of the river Fontequebouir, which the trappers who have traversed it for beaver say, rises in James' Peak eighty miles to the north-west by north.[116]

We came upon the banks of this stream at sunset. Kelly had informed us that we might expect to find deer in the groves which border its banks. And, like a true hunter, as soon as we halted at the place of encampment, he sought them before they should hear or scent us. He traversed the groves, however, in vain. The beautiful innocents had, as it afterwards appeared, been lately hunted by a party of Delaware trappers and in consideration of the ill usage received from these gentlemen in red, had forsaken their old retreat for a less desirable but safer one among the distant hills in the north. So that our expectations of game and meat subsided in a supper of 'tole'—plain water porridge. As our appetites were keen, we all relished it well, except the Mexican {212} servant, who declared upon his veracity that 'tole was no bueno.' Our guide was, if possible, as happy at our evening fire as some one else was when he "shouldered his crutch and told how fields were won;" and very much for the same reasons. For, during the afternoon's tramp, much of his old hunting ground had loomed in sight. Pike's and James' peaks showed their bald, cold, shining heads as the sun set; and the mountains on each side of the upper river began to show the irregularities of their surfaces. So that as we rode along gazing at these stupendous piles of rocks and earth and ice, he would often direct his attention to the outlines of chasms, faintly traced on the shadings of the cliffs, through which various streams on which he had trapped, tumbled into the plains. I was particularly interested by his account of Rio Wolfano, a branch of the Arkansas on the Mexican side, the mouth of which is twelve miles below that of the Fontequebouir. It has two principal branches. The one originates in Pike's peak, seventy or eighty miles in the south; the other rises far in the west among the Eutaw mountains, and has a course of about two hundred miles, nearly parallel with the Arkansas.[117]

{213} We travelled twenty-eight miles on the 16th over broken barren hills sparsely covered with shrub cedars and pines. The foliage of these trees is a very dark green. They cover, more or less, all the low hills that lie along the roots of the mountains from the Arkansas north to the Missouri. Hence the name "Black Hills" is given to that portion of them which lie between the Sweetwater and the mouth of the Little Missouri. The soil of our track to-day was a grey barren loam, gravel knolls and bluffs of sand and limestone.

About four o'clock, P. M., we met an unheard of annoyance. We were crossing a small plain of red sand, gazing at the mountains as they opened their outlines of rock and snow, when, in an instant, we were enveloped in a cloud of flying ants with greyish wings and dark bodies. They fixed upon our horses' heads, necks, and shoulders, in such numbers as to cover them as bees do the sides of a hive when about to swarm. They flew around our own heads too, and covered our hats and faces. Our eyes seemed special objects of their attention. We tried to wipe them off; but while the hand was passing from one side of the face to the other, the part that was left bare was {214} instantly covered as thickly as before with these creeping, hovering, nauseous insects. Our animals were so much annoyed by their pertinacity, that they stopped in their tracks; and finding it impossible to urge them along, guide them and keep our faces clear of the insects at the same time, we dismounted and led them. Having by this means the free use of our hands and feet, we were able in the course of half an hour to pass the infested sands, and once more see and breathe.

We dined at the mouth of Kelly's Creek, another stream that has its source in James' peak. Encamped at the mouth of Oakley's creek, another branch of the Arkansas.[118] It rises in the hills which lie thirty-five miles to the north. It is a clear, cool little brook, with a pebbly bottom, and banks clothed with shrub cedars and pines. We had a pleasant evening here, a cloudless sky, a cold breeze from the snow-clad mountains, a blazing cedar-wood fire, a song from our merry Joe, a dish of 'tole' and a fine couch of sand. Who wants more comforts than we enjoyed? My debilitated system had begun to thrive under the bracing influence of the mountain air; my companions were well and happy; our {215} horses and mules were grazing upon a plat of rich grass; we were almost within touch of those stupendous ridges of rock and snow which stay or send forth the tempest in its course, and gather in their rugged embrace the noblest rivers of the world.

July 17. We made twenty miles to-day among the deep gullies and natural fortresses of this great gateway to the mountains. All around gave evidence that the agents of nature have struggled here in their mightiest wrath, not the volcano, but the floods of ages. Ravines hundreds of feet in depth; vast insular mounds of earth towering in all directions, sometimes surmounted by fragments of mountains, at others, with stratified rocks, the whole range of vision was a flowerless, bladeless desolation! Our encampment for the night was at the mouth of Wood's creek, five miles from the debouchure of the Arkansas from the mountains.[119] The ridges on the south of the river, as viewed from this place, presented an embankment of congregated hills, piled one above another to the region of snow, and scored into deep and irregular chasms, frowning precipices, tottering rocks, and black glistening strata, whose recent fractures indicated that they were continually {216} sending upon the humble hills below weighty testimony of their own superior height and might. Nothing could be more perfectly wild. The summits were capped with ice. The ravines which radiated from their apices were filled with snow far down their course; and so utterly rough was the whole mass, that there did not appear to be a foot of plain surface upon it. Eternal, sublime confusion!

This range runs down the Arkansas, bearing a little south of a parallel with it, the distance of about fifty miles, and then turning southward, bears off to Taos and Santa FÉ. At the back of this ridge to the westward, and connected with it, is said to be a very extensive tract of mountains which embrace the sources of the Rio Bravo del Norte, the Wolfano, and other branches of the Arkansas; and a number of streams that fall into Rio Colorado of the West, and the Gulf of California.[120] Among these heights live the East and West bands of the Eutaws. The valleys in which they reside are said to be overlooked by mountains of shining glaciers, and in every other respect to resemble the valleys of Switzerland. They are a brave, treacherous race, and said to number about eight thousand souls. They {217} raise mules, horses, and sheep, and cultivate corn and beans, trap the beaver, manufacture woollen blankets with a darning-needle, and intermarry with the Mexican Spaniards.

Sixty miles east of these mountains, and fifty south of the Arkansas, stands (isolated on the plain), Pike's Peak, and the lesser ones that cluster around it.[121] This Peak is covered with perpetual snow and ice down one-third its height. The subordinate peaks rise near to the line of perpetual congelation, and stand out upon the sky like giant watchmen, as if to protect the vestal snows above them from the polluting tread of man. On the north side of the river a range of mountains, or hills, as they have been called by those who are in the habit of looking on the Great Main Ridges, rise about two thousand feet above the plain. They resemble, in their general characteristics, those on the south. Like them, they are dark and broken; like them, sparsely covered on their sides with shrub pines and cedars. They diverge also from the river as they descend: and after descending it forty miles, turn to the north, and lose themselves in the heights which congregate around James' Peak.

{218} On the morning of the 18th we rose early, made our simple repast of tole, and prepared to enter the mountains. A joyful occasion this. The storms, the mud, the swollen streams, the bleakness and barrenness of the Great Prairie Wilderness, in an hour's ride, would be behind us; and the deep, rich vales, the cool streams and breezes, and transparent atmosphere of the more elevated regions, were to be entered.

Wood's Creek, on which we had passed the night, is a cold, heavy torrent, from the northern hills. At the ford, it was about three feet deep, and seven yards wide. But the current was so strong as to bear away two of our saddle-horses. One of these was my Puebla animal. She entered the stream with all the caution necessary for the result. Stepping alternately back, forward, and sidewise, and examining the effect of every rolling stone upon the laws of her own gravity, she finally gathered her ugly form upon one of sufficient size and mobility to plunge herself and rider into the stream. She floated down a few yards, and, contrary to my most fervent desire, came upon her feet again, and made the land. By dint of wading, and partially drowning, and other like agreeable ablutions, we found ourselves at {219} last on the right side of the water: and having bestowed upon it sundry commendatory epithets of long and approved use under like circumstances, we remounted; and shivering in the freezing winds from the neighbouring snows, trotted on at a pace so merry and fast, that three-quarters of an hour brought us to the buttress of the cliffs, where the Arkansas leaps foaming from them.

This river runs two hundred miles among the mountains. The first half of the distance is among a series of charming valleys, stocked with an endless number of deer and elk, which, in the summer, live upon the nutritious wild grass of the vales, and in the winter, upon the buds, twigs, and bark of trees. The hundred miles of its course next below, is among perpendicular cliffs rising on both sides hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of feet in height. Through this dismal channel, with a rapid current down lofty precipices, and through compressed passes, it plunges and roars to this point, where it escapes nobly and gleefully, as if glad at having fled some fearful edict of nature, consigning it to perpetual imprisonment in those dismal caverns.[122]

Here we entered the Rocky Mountains {220} through a deep gorge at the right, formed by the waters of a little brook which comes down from the north.[123] It is a sweet stream. It babbles so delightfully upon the ear, like those that flowed by one's home, when youth was dreaming of the hopes of coming years in the shade of the hemlock by the family spring. On its banks grew the dandelion, the angelica, the elder, the alder and birch, and the mountain-flax. The pebbles, too, seemed old acquaintances, they were so like those which I had often gathered, with a lovely sister long since dead, who would teach me to select the prettiest and best. The very mountains were dark and mighty, and overhanging, and striped with the departing snows, like those that I viewed in the first years of remembrance, as I frolicked with my brothers on the mossy rocks.

We soon lost sight of the Arkansas among the small pines and cedars of the valley, and this we were sorry to do. The good old stream had given us many a fine cat-fish, and many a bumper of delicious water while we travelled wearily along its parched banks. It was like parting with an old companion that had ministered to our wants, and stood with us in anxious, dangerous times. It was, therefore, pleasant to hear its voice come {221} up from the caverns like a sacred farewell while we wound our way up the valley.

This gorge, or valley, runs about ten miles in a northwardly direction from the debouchure of the Arkansas, to the dividing ridge between the waters of that river and those of the southern head-waters of the south fork of the Great Platte.

About midway its length, the trail, or Indian track, divides: the one branch makes a circuit among the heights to the westward, terminates in the great valley of the south fork of the Platte, within the mountains, commonly called "Boyou Salade;" and the other and shorter leads northwardly up the gorge to the same point.[124] Our guide carefully examined both trails at the diverging point, and finding the more western one most travelled, and believing, for this reason, the eastward one the least likely to be occupied by the Indians, he led us up to the foot of the mountain which separates it from the vales beyond. We arrived at a little open spot at the base of the height about twelve o'clock. The steepest part of the trail up the declivity was a loose, moving surface of sand and pebbles, constantly falling under its own weight. Other portions were precipitous, lying along overhanging {222} cliffs and the brinks of deep ravines strewn with fallen rocks. To ascend it seemed impossible; but our old Kentuckian was of a different opinion.

In his hunting expeditions he had often ascended and descended worse steeps with packs of beaver, traps, &c. So, after a description of others of a much more difficult nature, which he had made with worse animals and heavier packs, through storms of hail and heaps of snow; and after the assurance that the Eutaw village of tents, and women, and children, had passed this not many moons ago, we felt nettled at our own ignorance of possibilities in these regions, and drove off to the task. Our worthy guide led the way with his saddle-horse following him; the pack animals, each under the encouraging guardianship of a vigorous goad, and the men and myself leading our riding animals, brought up the rear. Now for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull not all together, but each leg on its own account. Five or six rods of zigzag clambering, and slipping, and gathering, and tugging, advanced us one on the ascent; and then a halt for breath and strength for a new effort. The puffing and blowing over, a general shout, "go on, go on," started the cavalcade {223} again. The pack animals, with each one hundred and fifty pounds weight, struggled and floundered, as step after step gave way in the sliding sand; but they laboured madly, and advanced at intervals of a few yards, resting and then on again, till they arrived at the rocky surface, about midway the ascent. Here a short pause upon the declivity was interrupted by a call of "onward" from our guide; and again we climbed. The track wound around a beetling cliff, which crowded the animals upon the edge of a frightful precipice. In the most dangerous part of it, my Puebla mare ran her pack against a projecting rock, and for an instant reeled over an abyss three hundred feet in depth. But her fortune favoured her; she blundered away from her grave, and lived to make a deeper plunge farther along the journey.

The upper half, though less steep, proved to be the worst part of the ascent. It was a bed of rocks, at one place small and rolling, at another large and fixed, with deep openings between them; so that our animals were constantly falling, and tottering upon the brink of the cliffs, as they rose again and made their way among them. An hour and a half of this most dangerous and tiresome {224} clambering deposited us in a grove of yellow pines, near the summit. Our animals were covered with sweat and dirt, and trembled as if at that instant from the race track. Nor were their masters free from every ill of weariness. Our knees smote each other with fatigue, as Belshazzar's did with fear.

Many of the pines on this ridge were two feet in diameter, and a hundred feet high, with small clusters of limbs around the tops. Others were low, and clothed with strong limbs quite near the ground. Under a number of these latter, we had seated ourselves, holding the reins of our riding horses, when a storm arose with the rapidity of a whirlwind, and poured upon us hail, rain, and snow with all imaginable liberality. It was a most remarkable tempest. Unlike those whose monotonous groans are heard among the Green Mountains for days before they assemble their fury around you, it came in its strength at once, and rocked the stately pines to their most distant roots. Unlike those long "blows," which, generated in the frozen zone of the Atlantic seas, bring down the frosty blasts of Greenland upon the warmer climes of the States, it was the meeting {225} of different currents of the aËrial seas, lashed and torn by the live thunder, among the sounding mountains. One portion of it had gathered its electricity and mist around James' Peak in the east; another among the white heights north-west; and a third among the snowy pyramids of the Eutaws in the south-west; and, marshalling their hosts, met over this connecting ridge between the eastern and central ranges, as if by general battle to settle a vexed question as to the better right to the Pass; and it was sublimely fought. The opposing storms met nearly at the zenith, and fiercely rolled together their angry masses. As if to carry out the simile I have here attempted, at the moment of their junction, the electricity of each leaped upon its antagonist transversely across the heavens, and in some instances fell in immense bolts upon the trembling cliffs; and then instantly came a volley of hail as large as grape-shot, sufficient to whiten all the towers of this horrid war. It lasted an hour. I never before, not even on the plains, saw such a movement of the elements. If anything had been wanting to establish the theory, this exhibition sufficed to convince those who saw its {226} movements, and felt its power, that these mountains are the great laboratory of mist, wind, and electricity, which, formed into storms, are sent in such awful fury upon the great plains or prairies that stretch away from their bases to the States, and, that here alone may be witnessed the extreme power of the warring elements.

After the violence of the tempest had abated, we travelled up the remainder of the ascent, and halted a few minutes on the summit to view the scene around us.[125] Behind was the valley up which we had travelled, covered with evergreen shrubs. On the east of this, rose a precipitous wall of stratified rock, two thousand or three thousand feet high, stretching off towards the Arkansas, and dotted here and there with the small shrub pine, struggling from the crevices of the rocks. In the south-west the mountains, less precipitous, rose one above another in a distance, till their blue tops faded into the semblance of the sky. To the east of our position, there was nothing in sight but piles of mountains, whose dark and ragged masses increased in height and magnitude, till they towered in naked grandeur around James' Peak. From that frozen height ran off to the north {227} that secondary range of mountains that lie between the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte and the plains. This is a range of brown, barren, and broken ridges, destitute alike of earth and shrub, with an average height of three thousand feet above the plain. On the western side of it, and north of the place where we were viewing them, hills of a constantly decreasing height fall off for fifty miles to the north-west, till they sink in the beautiful valley of Boyou Salade, and then rising again, tower higher and higher in the west, until lost in the haze about the base of the Anahuac range; a vast waste of undusted rocks, without a flower or leaf to adorn it, save those that hide their sweetness from its eternal winters in the glens down which we were to travel.

The Anahuac ridge of the snowy range was visible for at least one hundred miles of latitude; and the nearest point was so far distant that the dip of the horizon concealed all that portion of it below the line of perpetual congelation. The whole mass was purely white. The principal irregularity perceptible was a slight undulation on the upper edge. There was, however, perceptible shading on the lower edge, produced, perhaps, by great lateral swells protruding {228} from the general outline. But the mass, at least ninety miles distant, as white as milk, the home of the frosts of all ages, stretching away to the north by west full a hundred miles, unscaled by any living thing, except perhaps by the bold bird of our national arms,

is an object of amazing grandeur, unequalled probably on the face of the globe.

We left this interesting panorama, and travelled down five miles to the side of a little stream running north, and encamped.[126] We were wet from head to foot, and shivering with cold. The day had indeed been one of much discomfort; yet we had been well repaid for all this by the absorbing freshness and sublimity that hung around us. The lightning bounding on the crags; the thunder breaking the slumber of the mountains; a cooler climate, and the noble pine again; a view of the Great Main snowy range of the "Rocky," "Stone," or "Shining" mountains, south of the Great Gap, from a height never before trodden by a civilized tourist, the sight of the endless assemblage of rocky peaks, among which {229} our weary feet were yet to tread along unexplored waters, were the delights which lay upon the track of the day, and made us happy at our evening fire. Our supper of water porridge being eaten, we tried to sleep. But the cold wind from the snow soon drove us from our blankets to our fire, where we turned ourselves like Christmas turkeys, till morning. The mountain flax grew around our encampment. Every stalk was stiffened by the frosts of the night; and the waters of the brooks were barred with ice. This is the birth-place of the Plattes. From these gorges its floods receive existence, among the sturdy, solemn pines and nursing tempests, twelve miles north of the Arkansas's debouchement from the mountains, and forty miles due west from James' Peak.

On the 19th we travelled in a northward course down the little streams bursting from the hills, and babbling among the bushes. We were upon an Indian trail, full of sharp gravel, that annoyed our animals exceedingly. The pines were often difficult to pass, so thick were they. But the right course was easily discovered among them, even when the soil was so hard as to have received no impression from previous {230} travelling, by small stones which the Eutaws had placed among the branches. About mid-day we saw scattering spears of the wild flax again, and a few small shrubs of the black birch near the water courses. The endless climbing and ascending of hills prevented our making much progress. At two o'clock we judged ourselves but ten miles from the last night's encampment. A cloud of hail then beginning to pelt and chill us, we took shelter in a small grove of pines. But as the hail had fallen two inches in depth, over the whole adjoining country, every movement of the atmosphere was like a blast of December. Too cold to sleep, we therefore built fires and dried our packs, &c., till the howl of the wolves gave notice of the approach of morning.

Tole for breakfast. It had been our only food for nine days. It seemed strange that we should have travelled one hundred and eighty miles, in a country like that we had passed through since leaving Fort William, without killing an animal. But it ceased to appear so, when our worthy guide informed us that no individual had ever come from the Arkansas, in the region of the Fort, to the mountains, with as little suffering as we had. "It is," said he, "a starving {231} country; never any game found in it. The buffalo come into these valleys from the north through the Bull Pen, and go out there when the storms of the autumn warn them to fly to the south for warm winter quarters. But that valley off there, (pointing to a low smooth spot in the horizon), looks mighty like Boyou Salade, my old stamping ground. If it should be, we will have meat before the sun is behind the snow."[127]

We were well pleased with this prospect. Our Mexican servant cried, at the top of his voice, "Esta muy bueno, SeÑor Kelly, si, muy bueno, este Boyou Salade; mucho carne por nosotros." And the poor fellow had some reasons for this expression of joy, for the tole regimen had been to him what the water gruel of the Mudfog workhouse was to Oliver Twist, except that its excellent flavour had never induced the Mexican "to ask for more." He had, on previous occasions, in company with Kelly, gnawed the ribs of many a fat cow in Boyou Salade; and the instincts of his stomach put him in such a frenzy at the recollection, that although he could only understand the words "Boyou Salade," these were sufficient to induce him to cross {232} himself from the fore-step to the abdomen, and to swear by Santa Gaudaloupe that tole was not food for a Christian mouth.

On the 20th we were early on our way. The small prairie wolf which had howled us to sleep every evening, and howled us awake every morning since we left Independence, was continually greeting us with an ill-natured growl, as we rode along among his hiding places. The streams that were mere rivulets twenty miles back, having received a thousand tributaries, were now heavy and deep torrents. The peaks and mountain swells were clad with hail and snow. Every thing, even ourselves, shivering in our blankets, gave evidence that we were traversing the realms of winter. Still many of the grasses and flowers which usually flourish in high latitudes and elevated places were growing along the radices of the hills, and aided much in giving the whole scene an unusually singular aspect. We were in fine spirits, and in the enjoyment of a voracious appetite. Our expectations of having a shot soon at a buffalo, were perhaps an accessory cause of this last. But be that as it may, we dodged along among the pines and spruce and hemlock and firs {233} about ten miles, and rose over a swell of land covered with small trees in full view of a quiet little band of buffalo. Ye deities who presided of old over the trencher and goblet, did not our palates leap for a tender loin? A halt—our famous old Kentuckian creeps away around a copse of wood—we hear the crack of his deadly rifle—witness the writhing of the buffalo! He lays himself gently down. All is now silent, intense anxiety to observe whether he will rise again and run, as buffalo often do under the smart of a wound, beyond our reach among the hills. No! he curls his tail as in the last agony; he choaks; he is ours! he is ours!

Our knives are quickly hauled from their sheaths—he is rolled upon his brisket—his hide is slit along the spine, and pealed down midrib; one side of it is cut off and spread upon the sand to receive the meat; the flesh on each side of the spine is pared off; the mouth is opened, and the tongue removed from his jaws; the axe is laid to his rib; the heart—the fat—the tender loins—the blood, are taken out—his legs are rifled of their generous marrow bones; all wrapped in the green hide, and loaded on animals, and off to camp in a charming {234} grove of white pine by a cold stream of water under a woody hill!

Who that had seen us stirring our fires that night in the starlight of bright skies among the mountain forests; who that had seen the buffalo ribs propped up before the crackling blaze—the brisket boiling in our camp-kettles; who that had seen us with open countenances yield to these well cooked invitations to "drive dull care away," will not believe that we accepted them, and swallowed against time, and hunger, and tole? Indeed, we ate that night till there was a reasonable presumption that we had eaten enough; and when we had spent a half-hour in this agreeable employment, that presumption was supported by a pile of bones, which if put together by Buffon in his best style, would have supported not only that but another presumption to the like effect. Our hearty old Kentuckian was at home, and we were his guests. He sat at the head of his own board, and claimed to dictate the number of courses with which we should be served. "No, no," said he, as we strode away from the bare ribs which lay round us, to our couches of pine leaves, "no, no, I have eaten with you, fared well, and now you {235} must take courage while you eat with me; no, no, not done yet; mighty good eating to come. Take a rest upon it, if you like, while I cook another turn; but I'll insure you to eat till day peeps. Our meat here in the mountains never pains one. Nothing harms here but pills and lead; many's the time that I have starved six and eight days, and when I have found meat, ate all night; that's the custom of the country. We never borrow trouble from hunger or thirst, and when we have a plenty, we eat the best pieces first, for fear of being killed by some brat of an Indian before we have enjoyed them. You may eat as much as you can; my word for it, this wild meat never hurts one. But your chickens and bacon, &c., in the settlements, it came right near shoving me into the Kenyon when I was down there last."

While the excellent man was giving vent to these kind feelings, he was busy making preparations for another course. The marrow bones were undergoing a severe flagellation; the blows of the old hunter's hatchet were cracking them in pieces, and laying bare the rolls of "trapper's butter" within them. A pound of marrow was {236} thus extracted, and put into a gallon of water heated nearly to the boiling point. The blood which he had dipped from the cavity of the buffalo was then stirred in till the mass became of the consistency of rice soup. A little salt and black pepper finished the preparation. It was a fine dish; too rich, perhaps, for some of my esteemed acquaintances, whose digestive organs partake of the general laziness of their habits; but to us who had so long desired a healthful portion of bodily exercise in that quarter, it was the very marrow and life-blood of whatsoever is good and wholesome for famished carnivorous animals like ourselves. It was excellent, most excellent. It was better than our father's foaming ale. For while it loosed our tongues and warmed our hearts towards one another, it had the additional effect of Aaron's oil; it made our faces to shine with grease and gladness. But the remembrance of the palate pleasures of the next course, will not allow me to dwell longer upon this. The crowning gratification was yet in store for us.

While enjoying the soup, which I have just described, we believed the bumper of our pleasures to be sparkling to the brim; {237} and if our excellent old trapper had not been there, we never should have desired more. But how true is that philosophy which teaches, that to be capable of happiness, we must be conscious of wants! Our friend Kelly was in this a practical as well as theoretical Epicurean. "No giving up the beaver so," said he; "another bait and we will sleep."

Saying this, he seized the intestines of the buffalo, which had been properly cleaned for the purpose, turned them inside out, and as he proceeded stuffed them with strips of well salted and peppered tender loin. Our "boudies" thus made, were stuck upon sticks before the fire, and roasted till they were thoroughly cooked and brown. The sticks were then taken from their roasting position and stuck in position for eating; that is to say, each of us with as fine an appetite as ever blessed a New England boy at his grandsire's Thanksgiving dinner, seized a stick pit, stuck it in the earth near our couches, and sitting upon our haunches, ate our last course—the desert of a mountain host's entertainment. These wilderness sausages would have gratified the appetite of {238} those who had been deprived of meat a less time than we had been. The envelopes preserve the juices with which while cooking, the adhering fat, turned within, mingles and forms a gravy of the finest flavour. Such is a feast in the mountains.

Since leaving Fort William we had been occasionally crossing the trails of the Eutaw war parties, and had felt some solicitude for the safety of our little band. An overwhelming number of them might fall upon us at night and annihilate us at a blow. But we had thus far selected such encampments, and had such confidence in our rifles and in our dog, who never failed to give us notice of the least movement of a wolf or panther at night, that we had not stationed a guard since leaving that post.

Our guide too sanctioned this course; always saying when the subject was introduced that the dawn of day was the time for Indian attacks, and that they would rise early to find his eyes shut after the howl of the wolf on the hills had announced the approach of light. We however took the precaution to encamp at night in a deep woody glen, which concealed the light of our fire, and slept with our equipments {239} upon us, and our well primed rifles across our breasts.

On the morning of the 21st we were awakened at sunrise, by our servant who had thus early been in search of our animals. The sun rose over the eastern mountains brilliantly, and gave promise of a fine day. Our route lay among vast swelling hills, the sides of which were covered with groves of the large yellow pine and aspen. These latter trees exclude every other from their society. They stand so closely that not the half of their number live until they are five inches in diameter. Those also that grow on the borders of the groves are generally destroyed, being deprived of their bark seven or eight feet up, by the elk which resort to them yearly to rub off the annual growth of their horns. The snow on the tops of the hills was melting, and along the lower edge of it, where the grass was green and tender, herds of buffalo were grazing. So far distant were they from the vales through which we travelled, that they appeared a vast collection of dark specks on the line of the sky.

By the side of the pebbly brooks, grew many beautiful plants. A species of convolvulus and honeysuckle, two species of {240} wild hops and the mountain flax, were among them. Fruits were also beginning to appear; as wild plums, currants, yellow and black; the latter like those of the same colour in the gardens, the former larger than either the red or black, but of an unpleasant astringent flavour.—We had not, since entering the mountains, seen any indication of volcanic action. The rocky strata and the soil appeared to be of primary formation. We made fifteen miles to-day in a general course of north by west.

On the 22nd we travelled eight miles through a country similar to that we had passed the day before. We were still on the waters of the Platte; but seldom in sight of the main stream. Numerous noisy brooks ran among the hills over which we rode. During the early part of the morning buffalo bulls were often seen crossing our path: they were however so poor and undesirable, that we shot none of them. About ten o'clock we came upon a fresh trail, distinctly marked by hoofs and dragging lodge poles. Kelly judged these "signs" to be not more than twenty four hours old, and to have been made by a party of Eutaws which had passed into {241} Boyou Salade to hunt the buffalo. Hostile Indians in our immediate neighbourhood was by no means an agreeable circumstance to us. We could not contend with any hope of success against one hundred and fifty tomahawks and an equal number of muskets and bows and arrows. They would also frighten the buffalo back to the bull pen, and thus prevent us from laying in a stock of meat farther along to support us across the desert in advance. We therefore determined to kill the next bull that we should meet, cure the best pieces for packing, and thus prepare ourselves for a siege or a retreat, as circumstances might dictate; or if the Indians should prevent our obtaining other and better meat, and yet not interrupt us by any hostile demonstration in pursuing our journey, we might, by an economical use of what we could pack from this point, be able to reach, before we should perish with hunger, the game which we hoped to find on tributaries of Grand River.

We, therefore, moved on with great caution; and at about two o'clock killed a fine young bull. He fell in a glen through which a little brook murmured along to a copse just below. The bulls in considerable {242} number were manifesting their surplus wrath on the other side of the little wood with as much apparent complacency as certain animals with fewer legs and horns often do, when there is not likely to be any thing in particular to oppose them. But fortunately for the reputation of their pretensions, as sometimes happens to their biped brethren, a circumstance chanced to occur, when their courage seemed waxing to the bursting state, on which it could expend its energies. The blood of their slaughtered companions scented the breeze, and on they came, twenty or more, tail in air, to take proper vengeance.

We dropped our butcher knives, mounted quickly, and were about to accommodate them with the contents of our rifles, when, like many perpendicular bellowers, as certain danger comes, they fled as bravely as they had approached. Away they racked, for buffalo never trot, over the brown barren hills in the north-east, looking neither to the right nor left, for the long hair around the head does not permit such aberrations of their optics; but onward gloriously did they roll their massive bulks—now sinking in the vales and now blowing up the ascents; stopping {243} not an instant in their career until they looked like creeping insects on the brow of the distant mountain. Having thus vanquished, by the most consummate generalship and a stern patriotism in the ranks never surpassed by Jew or Gentile, these "abandoned rebels," we butchered our meat, and as one of the works of returning peace, loaded it upon our animals, and travelled in search of quaking-asp wood wherewithal to dry it. The traders and trappers always prefer this wood for such purposes, because, when dry, it is more inodorous than any other; and consequently does not so sensibly change the flavour of the meat dried over a fire made of it. Half an hour's ride brought us to a grove of this timber, where we encamped for the night—dried our meat, and Eutaws near or far, slept soundly. In this remark I should except, perhaps, the largest piece of human nature among us, who had, as his custom was, curled down hard-by our brave old guide and slept at intervals, only an eye at a time, for fear of Indians.

23rd. Eighteen miles to-day among rough precipices, overhanging crags, and roaring torrents. There were, however, between the declivities and among the copses of {244} cotton-wood, quaking-asp and fir, and yellow pine, some open glades and beautiful valleys of green verdure, watered by the rivulets gushing from the stony hills, and sparkling with beautiful flowers. Five or six miles from our last encampment, we came upon the brow of a woody hill that overlooked the valley, where the waters on which we were travelling unite with others that come down from the mountains in the north, and from what is properly called the south fork of the Great Platte, within the mountains. Here we found fresh Indian tracks; and on that account deemed it prudent to take to the timbered heights, bordering the valley on the west, in order to ascertain the position of the Indians, their numbers, &c., before venturing within their reach. We accordingly, for three hours, wound our way in silence among fallen timber and thickset cotton-wood; climbed every neighbouring height, and examined the depressions in the plain, which could not be seen from the lower hills.

Having searched the valley thoroughly in this manner, and, perceiving from the peaceable and careless bearing of the small bands of buffalo around its borders, {245} that if there were Indians within it they were at some distance from our trail, we descended from the heights, and struck through a deep ravine across it, to the junction of the northern and southern waters of the stream.

We found the river at this place a hundred and fifty yards wide, and of an average depth of about six feet, with a current of five miles the hour. Its course hence is E. N. E. about one hundred miles, where it rushes through a magnificent kenyon[128] or chasm in the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains to the plains of the Great Prairie Wilderness. This valley is a congeries or collection of valleys. That is, along the banks of the main and tributary streams a vale extends a few rods or miles, nearly or quite separated from a similar one beyond, by a rocky ridge or bute or a rounded hill covered with grass or timber, which protrudes from the height towards the stream. This is a bird's-eye view of Boyou Salade, so named from the circumstance that native rock salt is found in some parts of it. We were in the central portion of it. To the north, and south, and west, its isolated plains rise one above the other, always beautiful, and covered {246} with verdure during the months of spring and summer. But when the storms of autumn and winter come, they are the receptacles of vast bodies of snow, which fall or are drifted there from the Anahuac Ridge, on its western horizon. A sweet spot this, for the romance of the future as well as the present and past. The buffalo have for ages resorted here about the last days of July, from the arid plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and thither the Eutaws and Cheyennes from the mountains around the Santa FÉ, and the Shoshonies or Snakes and Arrapahoes from the west, and the Blackfeet, Crows and Sioux from the north, have for ages met, and hunted, and fought, and loved. And when their battles and hunts were interrupted by the chills and snows of November, they have separated for their several winter resorts. How wild and beautiful the past as it comes up fledged with the plumage of the imagination!

These vales, studded with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams, with their thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I see the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited logs, in family groups whispering {247} the dreams of their rude love; or gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief at the hour of midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance or the whoop of war, that is to cast the deadly arrow with the first gleam of morning light. Or may we not see them gathered, a circle of braves around an aged tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies of half a century's daring deeds. The eldest and richest in scalps, rises from the centre of the ring and advances to the tree. Hear him:

"Fifty winters ago, when the seventh moon's first horn hung over the green forests of the Eutaw hills, myself and five others erected a lodge for the Great Spirit, on the snows of the White Bute, and carried there our wampum and skins and the hide of a white buffalo. We hung them in the Great Spirit's lodge, and seated ourselves in silence till the moon had descended the western mountain, and thought of the blood of our fathers that the Cumanches had killed when the moon was round and lay on the eastern plain. My own father was scalped, and the fathers of five others were scalped, and their bloody heads were gnawed by the wolf. We could not live while our fathers' lodges were empty, {248} and the scalps of their murderers were not in the lodges of our mothers. Our hearts told us to make these offerings to the Great Spirit who had fostered them on the mountains; and when the moon was down, and the shadows of the White Bute were as dark as the hair of a bear, we said to the Great Spirit, 'No man can war with the arrows from the quiver of thy storms; no man's word can be heard when thy voice is among the clouds; no man's hand is strong when thy hand lets loose its winds. The wolf gnawed the heads of our fathers, and the scalps of their murderers hang not in the lodges of our mothers. Great father spirit, send not thine anger out; hold in thy hand the winds; let not thy great voice drown the death-yell while we hunt the murderers of our fathers.' I and the five others then built in the middle of the lodge a fire, and in its bright light the Great Spirit saw the wampum, and the skin, and the white buffalo hide. Five days and nights, I and the five others danced and smoked the medicine, and beat the board with sticks, and chanted away the power of the great Medicine, that they might not be evil to us, and bring sickness into our bones. Then when the stars were shining {249} in the clear sky, we swore (I must not tell what, for it was in the ear of the Great Spirit) and went out of the lodge with our bosoms full of anger against the murderers of our fathers, whose bones were in the jaws of the wolf, and went for their scalps to hang them in the lodges of our mothers. See him strike the aged tree with his war club again, again, nine times. So many Cumanches did I slay, the murderers of my father, before the moon was round again, and lay upon the eastern plain."

This is not merely an imagined scene in former times in Boyou Salade. All the essential incidents related, happened yearly in that and other hunting grounds, whenever the old braves assembled to celebrate the valorous deeds of their younger days. When these exciting relations were finished, the young men of the tribe, who had not yet distinguished themselves, were exhorted to seek glory in a similar way. Woe to him who passed his manhood without ornamenting the door of his lodge with the scalps of his enemies!

This valley is still frequented by some of these tribes as a summer haunt, when the heat of the plains renders them uncomfortable. The Eutaws were scouring it when we {250} passed. We therefore crossed the river to its northern bank, and followed up its northern branch eight miles,[129] with every eye keenly searching for the appearance of foes; and made our encampment for the night in a deep chasm, overhung by the long branches of a grove of white pines. We built our fire in the dry bed of a mountain torrent, shaded by bushes on the side towards the valley, and above, by a dense mass of boughs, so effectually, as not only to conceal the blaze from any one in the valley, but also to prevent the reflection from gilding too high the conspicuous foliage of the neighbouring trees. After our horses had fed themselves, we tied them close to our couches, that they might not, in case of an attack, be driven away before we had an opportunity of defending them; and when we retired, threw water upon our fire that it might not guide the Indians in a search for us; put new caps upon our arms, and trusting to our dog and mule, the latter in such cases always the most skilful to scent their approach, tried to sleep. But we were too near the snows. Chilling winds sucked down the vale, and drove us from our blankets to a shivering watch during the remainder of the night. Not a cap, however, was burst. Alas! for {251} our brave intentions, they ended in an ague fit.

Our guide informed us, that the Eutaws reside on both sides of the Eutaw or Anahuac mountains; that they are continually migrating from one side to the other; that they speak the Spanish language; that some few half breeds have embraced the Catholic faith; that the remainder yet hold the simple and sublime faith of their forefathers, in the existence of one great creating and sustaining cause, mingled with a belief in the ghostly visitations of their deceased Medicine men or diviners; and that they number a thousand families. He also stated that the Cheyennes are a band of renegadoes from the Eutaws and Cumanches; and that they are less brave and more thievish than any other tribe living in the plains south of Arkansas.[130]

We started at seven o'clock in the morning of the 24th, travelled eight miles in a north by west direction, killed another buffalo, and went into camp to jerk the meat. Again we were among the frosts and snows and storms of another dividing ridge. Our camp was on the height of land between the waters of the Platte and those of Grand River, the largest southern {252} branch of the Colorado of the west.[131]

From this eminence we had a fine view of Boyou Salade, and also of the Anahuac range, which we had before seen from the ridge between the Arkansas and the southern waters of the Platte. To the south-east, one hundred and sixty miles, towered the bald head of James' Peak; to the east, one hundred miles distant, were the broken and frowning cliffs through which the south fork of the Platte, after having gathered all its mountain tributaries, forces its roaring cascade course to the plains. To the north, the low, timbered and grassy hills, some tipped with snow, and others crowned with lofty pines, faded into a smooth, dim, and regular horizon.