ave
retained the name, and he answers to it readily. He is strong, fleet,
and beautiful. Many of my friends fancy him on the route, and offer
large prices for him; but these do not tempt me, for my Moro serves me
well. Every day I grow more and more attached to him. My dog Alp, a
Saint Bernard that I bought from a Swiss _emigre_ in Saint Louis, hardly
comes in for a tithe of my affections.

I find on referring to my note-book that for weeks we travelled over the
prairies without any incident of unusual interest. To me the scenery
was interest enough; and I do not remember a more striking picture than
to see the long caravan of waggons, "the prairie ships," deployed over
the plain, or crawling slowly up some gentle slope, their white tilts
contrasting beautifully with the deep green of the earth. At night,
too, the camp, with its corralled waggons, and horses picketed around,
was equally a picture. The scenery was altogether new to me, and imbued
me with impressions of a peculiar character. The streams were fringed
with tall groves of cottonwood trees, whose column-like stems supported
a thick frondage of silvery leaves. These groves meeting at different
points, walled in the view, so dividing the prairies from one another,
that we seemed to travel through vast fields fenced by colossal hedges.

We crossed many rivers, fording some, and floating our waggons over
others that were deeper and wider. Occasionally we saw deer and
antelope, and our hunters shot a few of these; but we had not yet
reached the range of the buffalo. Once we stopped a day to recruit in a
wooded bottom, where the grass was plentiful and the water pure. Now
and then, too, we were halted to mend a broken tongue or an axle, or
help a "stalled" waggon from its miry bed.

I had very little trouble with my particular division of the caravan.
My Missourians turned out to be a pair of staunch hands, who could
assist one another without making a desperate affair of every slight
accident.

The grass had sprung up, and our mules and oxen, instead of thinning
down, every day grew fatter upon it. Moro, therefore, came in for a
better share of the maize that I had brought in my waggons, and which
kept my favourite in fine travelling condition.

As we approached the Arkansas, we saw mounted Indians disappearing over
the swells. They were Pawnees; and for several days clouds of these
dusky warriors hung upon the skirts of the caravan. But they k