d exclaim, "Of course he was; I could have told
_you_ that." You know very well that you have often seen a man above
six feet high, broad and powerful as a lion, with a bronzed shaggy
visage and the stern glance of an eagle, of whom you have said, or
thought, or heard others say, "It is scarcely possible to believe that
such a man was once a squalling baby." If you had seen our hero in
all the strength and majesty of full-grown doghood, you would have
experienced a vague sort of surprise had we told you--as we now
repeat--that the dog Crusoe was once a pup--a soft, round, sprawling,
squeaking pup, as fat as a tallow candle, and as blind as a bat.

But we draw particular attention to the fact of Crusoe's having once
been a pup, because in connection with the days of his puppyhood there
hangs a tale.

This peculiar dog may thus be said to have had two tails--one in
connection with his body, the other with his career. This tale, though
short, is very harrowing, and as it is intimately connected with
Crusoe's subsequent history we will relate it here. But before doing
so we must beg our reader to accompany us beyond the civilized
portions of the United States of America--beyond the frontier
settlements of the "far west," into those wild prairies which are
watered by the great Missouri River--the Father of Waters--and his
numerous tributaries.

Here dwell the Pawnees, the Sioux, the Delawarers, the Crows, the
Blackfeet, and many other tribes of Red Indians, who are gradually
retreating step by step towards the Rocky Mountains as the advancing
white man cuts down their trees and ploughs up their prairies. Here,
too, dwell the wild horse and the wild ass, the deer, the buffalo, and
the badger; all, men and brutes alike, wild as the power of untamed
and ungovernable passion can make them, and free as the wind that
sweeps over their mighty plains.

There is a romantic and exquisitely beautiful spot on the banks of one
of the tributaries above referred to--long stretch of mingled woodland
and meadow, with a magnificent lake lying like a gem in its green
bosom--which goes by the name of the Mustang Valley. This remote vale,
even at the present day, is but thinly peopled by white men, and is
still a frontier settlement round which the wolf and the bear prowl
curiously, and from which the startled deer bounds terrified away. At
the period of which we write the valley had just been taken possession
of by several families of squa