suite of half-starved dogs: for these animals, in savage as well
as in civilized life, seem to be the concomitants of beggary.

These dogs, it must be allowed, were of more use than the beggary curs
of cities. The Indian children used them in hunting the small game of
the neighborhood, such as rabbits and prairie dogs; in which mongrel
kind of chase they acquitted themselves with some credit.

Sometimes the Diggers aspire to nobler game, and succeed in entrapping
the antelope, the fleetest animal of the prairies. The process by which
this is effected is somewhat singular. When the snow has disappeared,
says Captain Bonneville, and the ground become soft, the women go into
the thickest fields of wormwood, and pulling it up in great quantities,
construct with it a hedge, about three feet high, inclosing about a
hundred acres. A single opening is left for the admission of the game.
This done, the women conceal themselves behind the wormwood, and wait
patiently for the coming of the antelopes; which sometimes enter this
spacious trap in considerable numbers. As soon as they are in, the women
give the signal, and the men hasten to play their part. But one of them
enters the pen at a time; and, after chasing the terrified animals round
the inclosure, is relieved by one of his companions. In this way
the hunters take their turns, relieving each other, and keeping up a
continued pursuit by relays, without fatigue to themselves. The poor
antelopes, in the end, are so wearied down, that the whole party of men
enter and dispatch them with clubs; not one escaping that has entered
the inclosure. The most curious circumstance in this chase is, that an
animal so fleet and agile as the antelope, and straining for its life,
should range round and round this fated inclosure, without attempting to
overleap the low barrier which surrounds it. Such, however, is said to
be the fact; and such their only mode of hunting the antelope.

Notwithstanding the absence of all comfort and convenience in their
habitations, and the general squalidness of their appearance, the
Shoshokoes do not appear to be destitute of ingenuity. They manufacture
good ropes, and even a tolerably fine thread, from a sort of weed found
in their neighborhood; and construct bowls and jugs out of a kind of
basket-work formed from small strips of wood plaited: these, by the aid
of a little wax, they render perfectly water tight. Beside the roots on
which they mainly depend f