luded sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward
and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he
apprehended would fall upon us. But the austerity of the captain's
features would not relax. "A very extraordinary proceeding, gentlemen!"
and repeating this, he rode off to confer with his principal.

By good luck, we found a meadow of fresh grass, and a large pool of
rain-water in the midst of it. We encamped here at sunset. Plenty of
buffalo skulls were lying around, bleaching in the sun; and sprinkled
thickly among the grass was a great variety of strange flowers. I had
nothing else to do, and so gathering a handful, I sat down on a buffalo
skull to study them. Although the offspring of a wilderness, their
texture was frail and delicate, and their colors extremely rich; pure
white, dark blue, and a transparent crimson. One traveling in this
country seldom has leisure to think of anything but the stern features
of the scenery and its accompaniments, or the practical details of each
day's journey. Like them, he and his thoughts grow hard and rough. But
now these flowers suddenly awakened a train of associations as alien to
the rude scene around me as they were themselves; and for the moment my
thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered
faces rose, vividly as life, before me. "There are good things," thought
I, "in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful
and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three
thousand miles of mountains, forests and deserts?"

Before sunrise on the next morning our tent was down; we harnessed our
best horses to the cart and left the camp. But first we shook hands
with our friends the emigrants, who sincerely wished us a safe journey,
though some others of the party might easily have been consoled had we
encountered an Indian war party on the way. The captain and his brother
were standing on the top of a hill, wrapped in their plaids, like
spirits of the mist, keeping an anxious eye on the band of horses below.
We waved adieu to them as we rode off the ground. The captain replied
with a salutation of the utmost dignity, which Jack tried to imitate;
but being little practiced in the gestures of polite society, his effort
was not a very successful one.

In five minutes we had gained the foot of the hills, but here we came to
a stop. Old Hendrick was in the shafts, and being the very incarnatio