n, piling them together, and setting them on fire.

Many fires are soon blazing brightly. The savages squat around them,
cooking their suppers. We can see the paint glittering on their faces
and naked breasts. They are of many hues. Some are red, as though they
were smeared with blood. Some appear of a jetty blackness. Some black
on one side of the face, and red or white on the other. Some are
mottled like hounds, and some striped and chequered. Their cheeks and
breasts are tattooed with the forms of animals: wolves, panthers, bears,
buffaloes, and other hideous devices, plainly discernible under the
blaze of the pine-wood fires. Some have a red hand painted on their
bosoms, and not a few exhibit as their device the death's head and
cross-bones!

All these are their coats of arms, symbolical of the "medicine" of the
wearer; adopted, no doubt, from like silly fancies to those which put
the crest upon the carriage, on the lackey's button, or the brass seal
stamp of the merchant's clerk.

There is vanity in the wilderness. In savage as in civilised life there
is a "snobdom."

What do we see? Bright helmets, brazen and steel, with nodding plumes
of the ostrich! These upon savages! Whence came these?

From the cuirassiers of Chihuahua. Poor devils! They were roughly
handled upon one occasion by these savage lancers.

We see the red meat spluttering over the fires upon spits of willow
rods. We see the Indians fling the pinon nuts into the cinders, and
then draw them forth again, parched and smoking. We see them light
their claystone pipes, and send forth clouds of blue vapour. We see
them gesticulate as they relate their red adventures to one another. We
hear them shout, and chatter, and laugh like mountebanks. How unlike
the forest Indian!

For two hours we watch their movements, and listen to their voices.
Then the horse-guard is detailed, and marches off to the caballada; and
the Indians, one after another, spread their skins, roll themselves in
their blankets, and sleep.

The fires cease to blaze; but by the moonlight we can distinguish the
prostrate bodies of the savages. White objects are moving among them.
They are dogs prowling after the _debris_ of their supper. These run
from point to point, snarling at one another, and barking at the coyotes
that sneak around the skirts of the camp.

Out upon the prairie the horses are still awake and busy. We can hear
them stamping their hoofs and