he unsophisticated children of nature. The latter was squatted on his
buffalo robe, his strong features and red skin glaring in the broad
light of a blazing fire, while he recounted astounding tales of the
bloody exploits of his tribe and himself in their wars with the Pawnees;
for there are no old soldiers more given to long campaigning stories
than Indian "braves."

The feuds of White Plume, however, had not been confined to the red men;
he had much to say of brushes with bee hunters, a class of offenders
for whom he seemed to cherish a particular abhorrence. As the species
of hunting prosecuted by these worthies is not laid down in any of
the ancient books of venerie, and is, in fact, peculiar to our western
frontier, a word or two on the subject may not be unacceptable to the
reader.

The bee hunter is generally some settler on the verge of the prairies; a
long, lank fellow, of fever and ague complexion, acquired from living
on new soil, and in a hut built of green logs. In the autumn, when the
harvest is over, these; frontier settlers form parties of two or three,
and prepare for a bee hunt. Having provided themselves with a wagon, and
a number of empty casks, they sally off, armed with their rifles, into
the wilderness, directing their course east, west, north, or south,
without any regard to the ordinance of the American government, which
strictly forbids all trespass upon the lands belonging to the Indian
tribes.

The belts of woodland that traverse the lower prairies and border the
rivers are peopled by innumerable swarms of wild bees, which make their
hives in hollow trees and fill them with honey tolled from the rich
flowers of the prairies. The bees, according to popular assertion,
are migrating like the settlers, to the west. An Indian trader, well
experienced in the country, informs us that within ten years that he has
passed in the Far West, the bee has advanced westward above a hundred
miles. It is said on the Missouri, that the wild turkey and the wild bee
go up the river together: neither is found in the upper regions. It is
but recently that the wild turkey has been killed on the Nebraska, or
Platte; and his travelling competitor, the wild bee, appeared there
about the same time.

Be all this as it may: the course of our party of bee hunters is to
make a wide circuit through the woody river bottoms, and the patches
of forest on the prairies, marking, as they go out, every tree in which
they have