hundred soldiers are, or have been sick, and nearly one hundred have died. This fatality is occasioned by the scurvy (scorbutus). Individuals who are seized rarely recover, as they cannot be furnished with the proper aliments; they have no vegetables, fresh meat, nor antiscorbutics, so that the patients grow daily worse, and entering the hospital is considered by them as a certain passport to the grave.'-James, vol. i. p. 176.

Mr. James has indulged in long and tedious accounts of the Omawhaws, the Ottoes, the Pawnees, &c. the variety of their dances and long speeches, their thefts and war parties, their manners, customs and religious rites, and in minor details, in which, we conclude, our readers would find as little interest as ourselves. There is, in fact, very little of the pleasing in the Indian character; and we entirely agree with Major Long that the delicate trains of thought and reflection, attributed to them by writers who have attempted to enlarge our acquaintance with the Indian character, usually have their origin in the ingenuity of the writers themselves. Many of the tribes cultivate a little maize, beans, water-melons and squashes in the summer, and in the autumn and winter go out to hunt the bison, the deer, the beaver, &c.; or to plunder and scalp some other tribe. Others, for they are not nice in their diet, live chiefly on ants; the squaws scoop them out of their hillocks, wash the dirt from them, roll them on a flat stone into a dense paste and flatten them into cakes, from which a soup is prepared. They use no salt with their food, nor spices, nor aromatics of any kind. The vice of gambling is universal, but drunkenness among the distant tribes is rare. The worst trait in the Indian character is the neglect shown towards the aged and helpless, which is carried to such a degree that, when on a march or a hunting excursion, it is a common practice to leave behind their nearest relations when reduced to that state, with a little food and water, abandoning them without further ceremony to their fate.

'When thus abandoned (says Mr. James) by all that is dear to them, their fortitude does not forsake them, and the inflexible passive courage of the Indian sustains them against despondency. They regard themselves as entirely useless; and as the custom of the nation has long led them to anticipate this mode of death, they attempt not to remonstrate against the measure, which is, in fact, frequently the consequence of their earnest solicitation.'-James, vol. i. p. 237.

Yet such is the regard which they affect to feel for their departed relations, that they mourn over their graves at certain seasons, and, like the more northern Indians, destroy their property as the means of soothing their affliction for their loss.

On the 6th June the party set out from their winter-quarters with a sufficient number of horses and mules; pursuing their route along

the

the valley of the Platte, which presented the view of an unvaried plain from three to eight miles in width, and extending more than one hundred miles along that river, being a vast expanse of prairie or natural meadow without a hill or other inequality of surface, and with scarce a tree or shrub to be seen upon it.' Of these dry prairies, which constitute so remarkable a feature in American scenery, Mr. Schoolcraft says, the profusion of wild flowers, and the sweet-scented Indian grass, while they fill the air with a refreshing fragrance, delight the eye with the richness and never-ending variety of their colours; and viewed under the influence of a gentle western breeze, which is seldom wanting, leaves nothing to complete the picture of the most enchanting rural beauty.'

These prairies continue to increase in number and extent, in proceeding up the Missouri as far as the Platte, and in the same proportion the quantity of forest trees decreases. Along the Platte the country presents, on every side, an undulating surface, with nothing to limit the view or variegate the prospect, but here and there a hill, knoll, or insulated tract of table-land. The limestone and coal strata have now ceased, and are succeeded by the red sandstone formation of the Great Desert, which extends in a gentle slope nearly 400 miles to the very base of the Rocky Mountains, and nearly 500 miles from north to south. Its surface is divided by deep ravines, to the depth of many hundred feet below the common level; and marked by a scanty growth of pitchpine, red cedar, stunted oaks, willows and a few other trees, skirting the rivers and brooks which meander along their bottoms; nothing like a tree, however, is found on the elevated surface of the great desert, which is occasionally characterized by waterworn pebbles, and gravel, of granite, gneiss and quartz; but the predominant characteristic is sand, which, in many places, prevails to the entire exclusion of all mould whatever. In patches where vegetation shows itself, it is mostly confined to tufts of withered grass, prickly pears, and those succulent and saline plants which can derive subsistence out of the most arid, sandy and sterile soils. Two species of the cactus are described as most formidable plants, the cactus ferox and the cactus cylindricus. The former is stated to reign sole monarch over myriads of acres of these desolate plains, in patches, which neither a horse nor any other animal will venture to pass, though Mr. Nuttall says, that the antelope finds the means of making this plant subservient to its necessities, ' by cutting it up with its hoofs.' The latter grows singly, and forms a cluster by itself, increasing to such a size that, seen from a distance, it is frequently mistaken for a bison. The whole plant is so thickly beset with terrific spines, that it forbids all approach to it either by man or beast. In some places are found loose fragments of vol

canic rocks and in others are knolls and detached table-masses, of several hundred feet high, of trap rock; but all these formations are superincumbent on horizontal strata of secondary sandstone. There are, however, no traces whatever of volcanoes. Major Long concludes they were extinguished previously to the recession of the waters that once inundated the vast region between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains. In various parts, however, of this great valley, and more particularly along the line of the Mississippi, and lower part of the Missouri, smoke and flame have been observed, sometimes accompanied by a strong sulphureous smell; and those false fires, usually known by the name of Willo'-the-wisp,' are stated to be very common, and to play as many tricks upon the back-settlers, as they were once thought to do with our own countrymen.

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Though, generally, on these dreary and desolate plains, scarcely a green plant or a living creature is met with, yet in the neighbourhood of the rivers and in the valleys through which they meander, there sometimes occur such immense herds of bisons, as to blacken the whole surface. In one place, Mr. James says, he does not exaggerate in asserting, that' at least ten thousand burst on the sight in the instant.' 'In the morning,' he adds, we again sought the living picture, but, upon all the plain, which last evening was so teeming with noble animals, not one remained.' From this place, the higher they advanced up the Platte, the more numerous were the various animals; and bisons, (called, erroneously, buffalos,) deer, bears and wolves, were every day met with. The wolf is sure to be found in the rear of the gregarious animals; and the grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis), the raw-head and bloody-bones' of North America, comes in for a share when berries and other vegetable food fail him. We find,' says Mr. James, a constant source of amusement, in observing the unsightly figure, the cumbrous gait, and impolitic movements of the bison; we were often delighted by the beauty and fleetness of the antelope, and the social comfort and neatness of the prairie-dog villages.'

A 'prairie-dog village' is the warren of a pretty little species of marmot, (the arctomys ludoviciana,) which has received the absurd and inappropriate name of Prairie Dog,' from a fancied resemblance of its warning cry to the hurried barking of a small dog. Some of the warrens spread over a surface of many square miles; the entrance of each burrow is at the top of a little mound of earth, of a foot or eighteen inches high, on the summit of which the little animals sit and bark, and flourish their tails, but plunge in on the least appearance of danger. We are told that, during the winter months, the prairie-dog becomes torpid; but first he closes up the entrance of his burrow, and then makes, for his comfort and security,

VOL. XXIX. NO. LVII.

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security, a neat globular cell of fine dry grass, with an aperture just large enough to admit a finger, and so compactly formed, that it might almost be rolled over the floor without receiving injury. The burrowing owl (strix cunicularia) is stated to be a fellow-citizen of the prairie-dog, dwelling in burrows precisely the same;' but whether they inhabit them in common with the marmot, or by right of conquest, or make them for themselves, the travellers had not the opportunity of deciding. Mr. James says, 'from the remarkable coincidence of note between these two widely distinct animals, we might take occasion to remark the probability of the prairie-dog being an unintentional tutor to the young owl, did we not know that this bird utters the same sounds in the West Indies, where the prairie-dog is not known to exist.'

But the animal that interested them the most, was the wild horse, which in vast herds, of various colours and sizes, was occasionally seen scouring over the plains with amazing fleetness. Their play fulness,' says Mr. James, rather than their fears, seemed to be excited by our appearance, and we often saw them, more than a mile distant, leaping and curvetting, involved by a cloud of dust, which they seemed to delight in raising. It is scarcely necessary to say, that they are the offspring of those animals which were carried by the Spaniards into the new world. They would often ap proach very near to the strangers, but eluded all attempts to take them alive. A singular method is sometimes adopted for catching them, by shooting the animal through a particular part of the neck, with a rifle ball, without touching the spine; the blow fells him to the ground, and stuns him to such a degree, that he allows himself to be taken; this is called 'creasing. The Osage Indians run them down, by stationing three parties at a distance from each other, in the direction that they are pretty well assured the troop of wild horses will take; the first party chases them to the second, which gallops after them to the third, who then joins in the pursuit till they are fairly tired, and suffer themselves to be noosed and captured.

In the 102d degree of longitude, the Platte divides into two branches, called the North and the South Forks; they are equally large, that is to say, about 800 yards wide near their confluence, both shoal and rapid, and both running over large sandy beds. These forks have their origin in the Rocky Mountains, at the distance of about one hundred and twenty miles apart. The party took the direction of the latter stream; but it was understood that the former skirted a more fertile and interesting country; among other animals, it was said to abound with the beaver, which is less disturbed here than in the vicinity of the white population, and the Indian hunters in their employ.

The

The party had now arrived at a spot where the influence of the Rocky Mountains was evidently exerted on the temperature of the atmosphere. In the heat of the day, a light and refreshing breeze sprung up, blowing directly from the mountains; whilst the mornings and evenings were calm and oppressive. If these mountains, covered with snow, be considered as the shore to the wide sea of sand at their base, we have an easy explanation how this influence is created; it is the rarifaction of the air over the latter, causing an ascending current, whilst its place is supplied by the rushing down of the condensed air from the mountains, and thus producing those alternate land and sea breezes, so well known in tropical regions. Even the ants appeared to be aware of this influence, for, of the innumerable hillocks raised by this insect, it was observed that the entrance was invariably on the east side. The temperature rarely exceeded 80° of Fahrenheit, whilst that of the water of the Platte was about 75°. Yet,' says Mr. James, Yet,' says Mr. James, though there were only about five degrees of difference between the temperature of the air and that of the water, it was remarked by several of the party, that a sensation of extreme cold was felt on passing from the one side to the other.' (vol. ii. p. 174.)

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Hitherto they had not met with a single human being, nor any traces of one on this desolate and dreary desert; but on a nearer approach to the mountains, and on the bank of the Platte, they discovered the remains of an Indian encampment, which, to all appearance, had but recently been abandoned; it was a small circle, built, to the height of five feet, with half-decayed logs of wood, intermixed with skeletons of bisons. In front of the entrance, at a little distance from it, was a semicircular row of sixteen bison skulls, with their noses pointing down the river, and a separate skull marked with a number of red lines; the interpretation of which was said to be, that the camp had been occupied by the Pawnee Loup Indians, who were returning from an expedition against some of the western tribes;'-the red lines, it seemed, showed the party to have consisted of thirty-six; the position of the skulls denoted their return home; and two rods, with two parcels of hair tied to each, signified that four scalps had rewarded their exertions. And here's now mystery, and hieroglyphics!"

The party, after much fatigue and some hardships, reached, on the 6th July, the chasin in the Rocky Mountains out of which the south fork of the Platte flows; it was here twenty-five yards wide, and three feet deep; the water clear and cool, and the current rapid. Here they encamped, and determined the position to be lat. 38° 18′ 19′′ N. and long. 105° 39′ 44" W. The sandstone formation of the desert, which had risen rapidly in its slope as they approached the mountains, here became a rocky barrier, front

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