him, the animal is always in excellent
condition, and his proud eyes and majestic bearing present to the
beholder the beau ideal of the graceful and the beautiful. The elegant
dress and graceful form of the Shoshone cavalier, harmonises admirably
with the wild and haughty appearance of the animal.

The Shoshone allows his well-combed locks to undulate with the wind,
only pressed to his head by a small metal coronet, to which he fixes
feathers or quills, similar to those put to his horse's rosette. This
coronet is made either of gold or silver, and those who cannot afford to
use these metals make it with swan-down or deer-skin, well prepared and
elegantly embroidered with porcupine-quills; his arms are bare and his
wrists encircled with bracelets of the same material as the coronet; his
body, from the neck to the waist, is covered with a small, soft,
deerskin shirt, fitting him closely without a single wrinkle; from the
waist to the knee he wears a many-folded toga of black, brown, red, or
white woollen or silk stuff, which he procures at Monterey or St.
Francisco, from the Valparaiso and China traders, his leg from the ankle
to the hip is covered by a pair of leggings of deer-skin, dyed red or
black with some vegetable acids, and sewed with human hair, which hangs
flowing, or in tresses, on the outward side; these leggings are fastened
a little above the foot by other metal bracelets, while the foot is
encased in an elegantly finished mocassin, often edged with small
beautiful round crimson shells, no bigger than a pea, and found among
the fossil remains of the country.

Round his waist, and to sustain the toga, he wears a sash, generally
made by the squaws out of the slender filaments of the silk-tree, a
species of the cotton-wood, which is always covered with long threads,
impalpable, though very strong. These are woven together, and richly
dyed. I am sure that in Paris or in London, these scarfs, which are
from twelve to fifteen feet long, would fetch a large sum among the
ladies of the haut ton. I have often had one of them shut up in my hand
so that it was scarcely to be perceived that I had any thing enclosed in
my fist.

Suspended to this scarf, they have the knife on the left side and the
tomahawk on the right. The bow and quiver are suspended across their
shoulders by bands of swan-down three inches broad, while their long
lance, richly carved, and with a bright copper or iron point, is carried
horizo