old, and joke passed, and song sung
round the evening fire. All, however, were asleep at an early hour. Some
under the tents, others wrapped in blankets before the fire, or beneath
the trees; and some few in the boats and canoes.

On the 28th, they breakfasted on one of the islands which lie at the
mouth of the Nebraska or Platte River--the largest tributary of the
Missouri, and about six hundred miles above its confluence with the
Mississippi. This broad but shallow stream flows for an immense distance
through a wide and verdant valley scooped out of boundless prairies. It
draws its main supplies, by several forks or branches, from the Rocky
Mountains. The mouth of this river is established as the dividing point
between the upper and lower Missouri; and the earlier voyagers, in
their toilsome ascent, before the introduction of steamboats, considered
one-half of their labors accomplished when they reached this place. The
passing of the mouth of the Nebraska, therefore, was equivalent among
boatmen to the crossing of the line among sailors, and was celebrated
with like ceremonials of a rough and waggish nature, practiced upon the
uninitiated; among which was the old nautical joke of shaving. The river
deities, however, like those of the sea, were to be propitiated by a
bribe, and the infliction of these rude honors to be parried by a treat
to the adepts.

At the mouth of the Nebraska new signs were met with of war parties
which had recently been in the vicinity. There was the frame of a skin
canoe, in which the warriors had traversed the river. At night, also,
the lurid reflection of immense fires hung in the sky, showing the
conflagration of great tracts of the prairies. Such fires not being made
by hunters so late in the season, it was supposed they were caused by
some wandering war parties. These often take the precaution to set the
prairies on fire behind them to conceal their traces from their enemies.
This is chiefly done when the party has been unsuccessful, and is on the
retreat and apprehensive of pursuit. At such time it is not safe even
for friends to fall in with them, as they are apt to be in savage humor,
and disposed to vent their spleen in capricious outrage. These signs,
therefore, of a band of marauders on the prowl, called for some degree
of vigilance on the part of the travellers.

After passing the Nebraska, the party halted for part of two days on the
bank of the river, a little above Papillion Cr