ould think it must equal the eucalyptus
for draining moist lands. Many a pretty face is the more admired for its
owner's wealth, and were the now-despised cottonwood of greater
market-value it could not, I think, have escaped a reputation for
beauty. A cottonwood grove of tall trees ten to eighteen feet in
diameter, set twenty to forty feet apart, with dark-green shining leaves
spreading high in air over a sod absolutely free of underbrush, struck
such of us as had no Western prejudices as altogether a noble sight.
Between Forts Custer and Keogh the cottonwoods are still finer, and what
a mocking-bird is among birds are these among trees--now like the apple
tree, now like the olive, now resembling the cork or the red-oak or the
Lombardy poplar, and sometimes quaintly deformed so as to exhibit
grotesque shapes,--all as if to show what one tree can do in the way of
mimicking its fellows.

To our delight, General Sheridan's old war-scout, Mr. Campbell, rode in
with letters at dusk, and we had the happiness to learn that our long
absence had made ill news for none of us. By six next day we were up and
away to see the great Crow camp, which we reached by crossing a long
ford of the swift Big Horn River. There were one hundred and twenty
lodges, about one thousand Crows, about two thousand dogs and as many
ponies. I think it was the commissary who dared to say that every dog
could not have his day among the Crows, as there would not be enough
days to go round; but surely never on earth was such a canine chorus. It
gave one a respect for Crow nerves. Let me add, as a Yankee, my
veneration for the Crow as a bargainer, and you will have the most
salient ideas I carried away from this medley of dogs, horses, sullen,
lounging braves with pipes, naked children warmly clad with dirt,
hideous squaws, skin lodges, medicine-staffs gay with bead and feathers,
and stenches for the describing of which civilized language fails.

Crossing a branch of the Big Horn, we rode away again over these
interminable, lonely grass-plains; past the reaping-machines and the
vast wagons, with a dozen pairs of oxen to each, sent out to gather
forage for the winter use of the fort; past dried-up streams,
whitewashed with snowy alkaline deposits, cheating the eye at a distance
with mockery of foaming water. Still, mile on mile, across rolling
lands, with brief pause at the river to water horses, scaring the gay
little prairie-dogs and laughing at the swift