parade; for, from spending half his life among Indians, he had
caught not only their habits but their ideas. Margot, a female animal
of more than two hundred pounds' weight, was couched in the basket of
a travail, such as I have before described; besides her ponderous bulk,
various domestic utensils were attached to the vehicle, and she was
leading by a trail-rope a packhorse, who carried the covering of
Reynal's lodge. Delorier walked briskly by the side of the cart, and
Raymond came behind, swearing at the spare horses, which it was his
business to drive. The restless young Indians, their quivers at their
backs, and their bows in their hand, galloped over the hills, often
starting a wolf or an antelope from the thick growth of wild-sage
bushes. Shaw and I were in keeping with the rest of the rude cavalcade,
having in the absence of other clothing adopted the buckskin attire
of the trappers. Henry Chatillon rode in advance of the whole. Thus we
passed hill after hill and hollow after hollow, a country arid, broken
and so parched by the sun that none of the plants familiar to our more
favored soil would flourish upon it, though there were multitudes of
strange medicinal herbs, more especially the absanth, which covered
every declivity, and cacti were hanging like reptiles at the edges of
every ravine. At length we ascended a high hill, our horses treading
upon pebbles of flint, agate, and rough jasper, until, gaining the top,
we looked down on the wild bottoms of Laramie Creek, which far below us
wound like a writhing snake from side to side of the narrow interval,
amid a growth of shattered cotton-wood and ash trees. Lines of tall
cliffs, white as chalk, shut in this green strip of woods and meadow
land, into which we descended and encamped for the night. In the morning
we passed a wide grassy plain by the river; there was a grove in front,
and beneath its shadows the ruins of an old trading fort of logs. The
grove bloomed with myriads of wild roses, with their sweet perfume
fraught with recollections of home. As we emerged from the trees, a
rattlesnake, as large as a man's arm, and more than four feet long,
lay coiled on a rock, fiercely rattling and hissing at us; a gray hare,
double the size of those in New England, leaped up from the tall ferns;
curlew were screaming over our heads, and a whole host of little prairie
dogs sat yelping at us at the mouths of their burrows on the dry plain
beyond. Suddenly an antelope