ass. You kill
deer out of any park you are passing through without being questioned,
and you have the rare privilege of leaving your night's lodging without
calling for the landlord's bill. All law and government proceed from
yourself; and the great point upon which everything turns is the
successful management of the party you are the head of. Prudence,
consistency, firmness, and a little generosity now and then by way of
condiment, will carry such a traveller through everything.

But there is a reverse to the picture. Days and nights exposed to cold,
soaking rains; want of food and water; unavoidable exaggeration of
danger; painful solicitude for those dear to and absent from you, and
most anxious moments when you occasionally feel that prudence is
scarcely sufficient to insure your safety. Even the intense and curious
impatience to push on in the face of apparent danger makes you at times
feel a remorse on account of those you are leading into it. Such are the
contrasts of feeling by which the wanderer in these distant regions,
still unvisited by a ray of civilization, is frequently agitated.

[Reaching Lake Travers, one of the sources of the Red River
of the North, he found quarters with Mr. Brown, the resident
factor of the American Fur Company.]

After breakfast Mr. Brown showed me some very rare furs he
possessed,--several very fine grizzly bear-skins (_Ursus ferox_), one of
which was a bright yellow, a rare variety. He had also an exceedingly
large and rich otter-skin, which, with many other things, I purchased of
him. But my most valuable acquisition here was made from an Assiniboin
chief, who came in about an hour before I departed. This was a fine bow,
made of bone and wood, with a cord of very strong sinew. The chief had
performed a feat with it for which Wanetah, a Nahcotah chief, had been
celebrated. He had killed two buffaloes that were galloping on a
parallel with his own horse at one draft of his arrow, it having passed
through the first and inflicted a mortal wound upon the second.

The chief was very unwilling to part with it. We tried him several times
in vain, and at length I offered him five gold-pieces, or twenty-five
dollars. "_Mahzazhee! Heeyah!_" "Yellow iron! No!" he replied. At last
Mr. Brown produced some brilliant scarlet cloth. The sight of it
overcame his reluctance; it would make such beautiful leggings, and his
squaws would be so delighted with it! So I gave him three