in captain, ich have goet help; Meinherr Gode assist me most
wonderful."

"Well, Mr Haller and I will do full justice to your dishes. Let us to
them at once!"

"Oui, oui! bien, Monsieur Capitaine," said Gode, hurrying in with a
multitude of viands. The "Canadien" was always in his element when
there was plenty to cook and eat.

We were soon engaged on fresh steaks (of wild cows), roasted ribs of
venison, dried buffalo tongues, tortillas, and coffee. The coffee and
tortillas were the labours of the pueblo, in the preparation of which
viands he was Gode's master.

But Gode had a choice dish, _un petit morceau_, in reserve, which he
brought forth with a triumphant flourish.

"Voici, messieurs?" cried he, setting it before us.

"What is it, Gode?"

"Une fricassee, monsieur."

"Of what?"

"Les frog; what de Yankee call boo-frog!"

"A fricassee of bull-frogs!"

"Oui, oui, mon maitre. Voulez vous?"

"No, thank you!"

"I will trouble you, Monsieur Gode," said Seguin.

"Ich, ich, mein Gode; frocks ver goot;" and the doctor held out his
platter to be helped.

Gode, in wandering by the river, had encountered a pond of giant frogs,
and the fricassee was the result. I had not then overcome my national
antipathy to the victims of Saint Patrick's curse; and, to the
voyageur's astonishment, I refused to share the dainty.

During our supper conversation I gathered some facts of the doctor's
history, which, with what I had already learned, rendered the old man an
object of extreme interest to me.

Up to this time, I had wondered what such a character could be doing in
such company as that of the Scalp-hunters. I now learned a few details
that explained all.

His name was Reichter--Friedrich Reichter. He was a Strasburgher, and
in the city of bells had been a medical practitioner of some repute.
The love of science, but particularly of his favourite branch, botany,
had lured him away from his Rhenish home. He had wandered to the United
States, then to the Far West, to classify the flora of that remote
region. He had spent several years in the great valley of the
Mississippi; and, falling in with one of the Saint Louis caravans, had
crossed the prairies to the oasis of New Mexico. In his scientific
wanderings along the Del Norte he had met with the Scalp-hunters, and,
attracted by the opportunity thus afforded him of penetrating into
regions hitherto unexplored by the devotees of science, he had offered