The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume], September 16, 1859, Image 1

About The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865

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VOL. XI —NO. 21.
[ Written for the Pioneer and Democrat.]
the: golden year.
To the far-off Colchian shore, the Argo
Crept o’er the storm-grey sea to touch the
Fleece
Which goldenly gleamed out upon the deep ;
And when the sun went down, strained eyes
did gaze
To where the glittering ripple touched the wave,
And maiked the goal of long and dreary toil.
As Jason sailed to grasp the Golden Fleece,
So, cycles later, toiled new Argos filled
1 With hearts expectant of the fancied joy,
j To where the Western sands tossed in the spray
Their more than Atrian wealth, and where the
land
1 Glowed with the throbbing veins of virgin gold;
1 So men for years have sought the Golden shore,
A few to grasp the gold, and more to fight
Attenuating want and danger dark,
Aud some to stretch in death their wearied
limbs,
In savage wilds, adding their ghastly bones
To the grim thousands there.
Thus ever men
Have wasted youth and strength in distant
hopes,
The while the earth they spurn behind them far,
Cradles a brighter gold and surer yield,
Than sun scorched sands reveal, thromgh dewy
toil.
In truth, God’s earth doth bitterly reproach
The wandering race ; for every year she calls
For human toil to ease her of her wealth,
And where man toileth not, she pants beneath
Her own wild wealth ot bloom and waving
grass. [here,
Thank God! that man has learned the lesson
And surely found the gold beneath his feet.
Daily the full, golden sheaves, royally
Roll to the sheltering barns, ’mid joyou3 song,
Like glittering conquerors, victorious borne
' Into the bosom of imperial Rome.
! For every field of grain hath poured its tide
Of waving affluence to the san-browned hands,
And joyed the stronger hearts of those who
toiled,
i And braved the fervid sun for daily bread,
j God’s sun and shower have dressed the mur
muring land [with
With rippling smiles ; have met the thankless
A God like hand of grace and kindly look:
Have poured a golden tide of wealth and bread
Upon the universal man, and left
j Him no complaint.
And yet the Good Right Hand
Which nursed these fields of bread and watered
them
With tenderest care— bringing the kindly sun
To breathe his warmth and stir the germ of life,
i Till th' inert grains sprang into merry stalks—
This Good Right Hand works on, by man
ignored.
Remember you who murmur bitterly,
Because you suffer for your own misdeed,
In looking every where but unto God ;
Remember evermore this Golden Year ;
I Remember how the earth hath smiled with God,
Aud let her smiles flow through thy thankless
heart,
As the soft flow of summer waves upon
A flowery shore, or as the pleasant sound
Of summer wind among the summer trees.
ALROY.
! Ruse Township, Sep'. X, ISSO.
THE EXPEDITION TO FRAZEE RIVER
letters from Col. Nobles’ Parly.
Burbauk's Stage Line—'The Anson Northru —Fort
Abercrombie —Captain ILivis—English Noblemen
and Scotch Lassies—A Present Fact and a Future
Inference.
Fort Abercrombie, July, 1859.
On the 4th day of July the first regular
mail stage to the Red River arrived at Fort
Abercrombie, with the U. S. Mail and two
coach loads of passengers tor the British
settlements in the north, —eight days after
the pioneer steamboat, “Auson Northup,”
had returned from her first trip to Fort Garry,
and unfolded to social use and value the
long hidden scroll of navigable waters, on
which Nature has written the pregnant
prophecy ol future States and peoples.
The establishment of a stage route to the
Red River, and the opening of navigation on
that stream to Lake Winnipeg, are the first
accomplished links in the chain of active
commercial communication, which it is the
ambition of the people of Minnesota to
stretch across the Northwestern wilderness
to the Pacific Ocean. Aud when the gen
tlemeu at Fort Abercrombie told me that
the Anniversary of the nation’s proudest
day had not been celebrated there in the
usual torm for want of certain indispensable
blank cartridges, I could not help thinking
that the rumble of Burbank’s & Co’s four
horse coaches, and the snort of Anson
Northcp’B little steamboat, were a better
echo to the million-throated voices of the
day than all the sulphurous rancor of artille
ry. These two events, which thus salute
each other in the midst of the wilderness,
open a new and cardinal epoch in the his
tory of Minnesota.
When I met Anson Northup and his
party at Alexandria, after the comple
tion of the round trip to Fort Garry,
on his return to St. Paul, with a load of
lady passengers from Selkirk, you will
comprehend the chagrin I felt on being
so atrociously cheated out of the romance of
that first voyage on the secret waters of the
north. It was some compensation for the
loss of a personal share in the glory of the
affair, that my friend Woodbury was on
board the Anson Northrop, to fill the part
of historian, and had taken ample notes for
the benefit of the press. But, with the
heavy imprint of Burbank & Co.’s coaches
before us, to mark our way to the Red
River, and the secret of the river stolen by
the Anson Northrop, all sense of novelty
seemed banished from the route. All the
freshness had died out of the solitudes when
Capt. Blakely had marked out stations
and stables for a stage route; and the waters
of the river, in the prospect of unwinding
link by link the mystery of whose ways I
had found a strange fascination, now, once
ravished of their virgin charm, seem stale,
and old, and dull. All about the voyage of
the Anson Northrop, and—as your corres
pondent, Mr. Taylor, came by stage—all
about the adventurous opening of the stage
through sloughs and woods, and over, and
sometimes under rivers without bridges, you
know, of course, already. If you think
Blakely came by Abercrombie in any one
horse hack concern, you must have a
“mighty” poor opinion of Burbank & Co.’s
resources : four-horse coaches, and two of
them at that—nothing less than the best
turnout of the establishment—to carry the
mail weekly, as per contract, to Fort Aber
crombie ; with a precious burden, beside, of
rosy Scotch lassies, looking for their lovers
among the icebergs, and of certain lazy,
rollicking English boys, of whom, I think, I
made mention in their place, before.
And if you are indulging, Gentlemen
Editors, in the arrogant delusion, which
would be just like you by the way, that the
“ Anson Northrop” is a mere scow, with an
improvised attachment of engine and wheels,
you will be, as usual, mightily mistaken,
Gentlemen. The Anson Northrop, to be
sure, is not as large nor as magnificent as
an ocean steamship of the Collins’ line, but
in her dimensions she is exactly suited to the
capacity of the stream ; and in her appoint
ments to the immediate necessities of the
travel and trade hitherward. Everybody
acquainted with the circumstances under
which she was fitted up, and the materials
at hand, expresses an unaffected astonish
ment at the neatness and finish of the joiners’
work. Her cabin is contracted to be sure,
and without carpet or gilding, or paint out
side or in ; but these luxuries are not indis
pensable in a country where the prevailing
carpet is the green grass of the prairie, and
where the voyage is performed almost with
out a spectator for five hundred miles. The
cabin is without staterooms ; but the smooth
board bunks with their calico hangings,
may be supposed to meet every demand t>f
luxury, in a country where a buffalo robe
spread upon the ground is a couch for a
lord. ***** *
Rough place, this Abercrombie ! Ten
thousand dollars expended to make one
moderately sized cottage on the prairie, for
the quarters of commanding officer—which,
by the way, absorbs eight-tenths of the ap
propriation in a universal ceiling, and square
edging and joining from top to bottom, and
is not yet half finished—and the residue
gone into a number of low mud-c Linked log
huts for the subordinate and private fry, ar
ranged in the form of a square under the
big treees of Graham’s Point, to frighten
the Indiaus.
This is no place to requite with compli
ments the graceful hospitality and courtesy
of the officers whom we found at the fort,
with one company of infautry, all which
the caprices of the War Department have
left there. Captain Davis was in expecta
tion, with every mail, to receive orders to
vacate the premises. Unless the govern
ment intended to plant a fort somewhere on
this unprotected frontier otter which it is ex
tending its surveys, there should surely be a
strong effort made by the friends of pro
gress in this direction to impress upon the
federal authorities the serious impolicy of
this movement.
It was interesting to observe in the hum
ble rooms, which serve for the temporary
quarters of the officers —how an educated
taste can develope an air of comlort and even
luxury from the rude materials of frontier
life, and this too, in the quarters of a jolly
set of bachelors—in which no part of the
credit is to be awarded to the tact, the
inventiveness, the refining influence ol female
supervision.
—We found the English party encamped
just above the fort, and the bonnie Scotch
lassies assigned, by the politeness of Capt.
Davis, to a comfortable lodgment in some
of the finished rooms of the commanding
officers’ unoccupied quarters—the whole
party deeply disappointed that the “ Anson
Northrop ” was not to proceed for a time
upon her second trip. Capt. Blakely,how
ever, was energetically engaged in building
a batteau lor the transportation of the party,
with their innumerable trunks and other in
dispensablesof English and Scotch comfort.
SAINT PAUL, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1859
I have come to the conclusion that the
girls are decidedly handsome—and then,
when they are mothers, their children will be
heroes.
On the 7th, Kittson’s carts crossed the
river here under the direction of his partner,
Sargent, with several hundred packs of
furs which had been brought down by the
steamboat to the Fort and stored there.
The passage of the carts and furs was made
on the ‘ r Anson Northup.” The swimming
of the cattle and horses across the stream,
and their struggles to ascend the muddy
banks opposite, afforded quite an exciting
spectacle, and made a pleasant mornings’
holiday for the Fort people. j. a. w.
Red River Scenery—Bad and Good Roads—Embryo
Cities—Lafayette, Dakota, and Sheyenne—The
Sheyenne.
Editorial Correspondence of the Pioneer and Democrat.
On the Road. July, 1859.
From some misdirection, during the tem
porary absence of Col. Nobles at the Fort,
the train ascended the right bank of the
river, with the view of crossing on the
steamboat at Fort Abercrombie ; but this
beiDg found inexpedient, it was resolved to
make the crossing at Lafayette, about forty
five miles farther down.
The dark bays and promontories of tim
ber which cover the spiral involutions of
the river bottoms, close with its crooked
shadows on our left, and the perpetual,
mirage-like spectre of the Leaf or Pelican
hills still banging on the far horizon of the
East, were the only relief to the endless
platitude of the wide sea ot grass about,
until the black line of the timber on Buffalo,
which flows into the Red above Lafayette,
rose up before us, or when we caught
glimpses of the Sheyenne woods through
the parted foliage ol the trees on our left.
We reached Lafayette on the 7th, and
found the crossing, from the muddiness of
the banks, so horribly bad, that the expedi
tion will have performed a material service
to the emigrant if its experience in this re
spect should admonish the emigraut to take
another route —of which route question by
and by, when we get better posted. This I
tnay say now, however, upon the authority
of Sir George Simpson, whom we met near
Graham’s Point, and of others who had
just passed over the route— that a far better
road than that taken by us, is the one which
crosses the Red River at the ford some
six miles above the fort, and thence by
the old trail along the head of the streams,
which Wood and Pope followed in 1849,
under the guidance of Joseph Rolette. Ex.
cept the Wild Rice Crossing, which might
be bridged in two hours by half a dozen men,
the road is as smooth and as dry as the
sidewalks of Broadway the whole distance
to Pembina. The road out from the Shay
enue crossing to Elm river, passes over a
low marshy surface, intersected with numer
ous coulees and bad sloughs.
Lafayette is the name given to a prospec
tive town, laid out in the woods on the east
bank of the river, nearly opposite the mouth
of the Shayenne rive". There are a couple of
log houses, whose builders seem to have
taken a hint from the elevated styles of Egyp
tian architecture, in so far as to place the
houses on piles or blocks, some three or four
feet above the ground and above the reach of
the inundations, which once in a while sweep
over the valley of this Northern Nile.
Dakota City, perched with its single hut,
upon the high bank opposite, is apparently
beyond the reach of floods.
Shayenne, where the “ Anson Northrop ”
was built, is a mile further down, contained
in two houses, nestling in the wooded fringe
of the river bottom, where the ways on
which the little steamer was launched and
the loose timber strown about the eventful
scene, are the most interesting objects.
At the close of a toilsome afternoon,em
ployed in crossing the train, Mr. Taylor and
myself took a canoe ride of a half mile or
so from the ferry to the mouth of the Shey
enne. We found it a difficult job to paddle
our little boat against the rapid current
hereabout, but by a dexterous use of the
roots and bushes along the banks, we man
aged to pull ourselves to a point of observa
tion. We found the mouth of the Sheyenne
here nearly as wide as the Red River
itself—perhaps 120 feet—and a strong,
deep, smooth current issuing from it that
indicated the immense volume of water it
collects from its numerous tributaries in
these long van-like reaches to the south and
north.
I should not forget to say that Mr. J.
W. Taylor joined our party at Abercrom
bie, on his way to Fort Garry, and enters
with a most companionable zest into the
novel life of the camp.
Of the interior incidents of this life—of
the routine of daily travel—of the social and
domestic experiences of the camp—of sleep
ing and waking, and eating and smoking—
of mosquitoes and smudges, and woodtieks
and—worse —I will attempt to tell you
something whenever I can get round to it.
J. A. W.
Buffalos—Chasing the Monarch of the Prairies—Exciting
Sport—The Game Bagged.
Editorial Corre pondenee of the Pioneer 4" Democrat.
Camp at Elm River, July 11, 1859,
We had not gone over twenty-five miles
from the mouth of the Sheyenne, where the
half a dozen occupants of the few shanties
thereabout, were half starving for something
good to eat—fish as a regular article of
diet not coming in that category—when, as
I live! viands for a regiment of hungry
gods! brought to us in the pockets of
Jupiter’s old coat—a bull’s hide, you will
remember, with a bill inside of it.
Off to the right of us, some three miles
away, as we neared the valley ol the Elm,
some one caught sight of a solitary buffalo,
careering at full speed towards the North
west. There was some incredulity at first,
till field glasses and telescopes had proved
his genus and species, and settled him into
a veritable bison bull; and then when every
body had contributed his individual testi
mony to the zoological fact in question, and
claimed it as his particular discovery, there
was some press of preparation to go after
him and kill him, which came to nothing, as
it was scarcely worth it.
Ascending a ridge which overlooked the
valley of the Elm, a few horsemen of us, a
couple of hours afterwards, saw what we
took fur two buffaloes browsing in the plains
before us, some five miles to the Northwest,
two apparently motionless, black specks,
that looked like nothing else in all the stereo
typed forms of the prairie, and logically
must be buffaloes. Must be buffaloes ?
thirty miles from the city of Shayenne
where a steamboat had been built a few,
weeks before, and men were living on crumbs
of rusty pork?—real, live monsters of the
desert, grazing at home, within a day’s
journey of those townsites, that had posi
tively been the subject of stock speculation,
to the detriment m linly of the speculators ?
Were these the bulls ot change, come from
the Strand of Miniwakan, to toss Sheyenne
Shari'S into the market again ?
These were buffaloes indeed, but the sight
of their shaggy shoulders, and sleek flanks,
kindled less a thirst for the glory of conquer
ing them in battle, than lor the juicy meat
that lay stored for us under their royal hides.
A slow trot of half an hour brought us
within full view of the noble animals, still
browsing gently, unconscious of our ap
proach. Then Bill Caldwell and Judge
Lynch, who were ahead, began to catch the
enthusiasm of the chase, and let off at a rate
of speed, that I did not care to extort just
then from my precious “ Lady Mary, ”
mare of mine, and which I blush to say, was
not within the resources of “ Dan Rice,”
friend Marble’s stolid Indian pony.
Caldwell and Lynch, whose approach
was mullled by the wind, had advanced
within a quarter of a mile, when the buffaloes
took the alarm—and, then, the chase! No
thought now of the juicy meat under his
shaggy mane; nothing but the bounding
exultation of the swift pursuit—nothing
now but to overmatch him in his majestic
leap ; and the grand triumph of confronting
and conquering the wild strength of the
monarch of the prairies. Fuli rein to Lady
Mary ! spurs to Dan Rice ! Flash—crash !
there — Caldwell and Lynch are tugging,
closing to their terriflic sides, and pouring
alternate broadsides into their flanks.
Marble joins the chase, Dan Rice all wild
with the hunter’s fire. On they go, brave
boys! rushing and firing in a frantic glee ;
while the stately old bulls kept steadily
plunging forward, with lead enough in their
sides to sink a ship, aud as heedless of the
new sensation as a sixty gun frigate under a
fire of musketry.
The two animals separated, Marble fol
lowing one alone, which he brought down
with his maiden shot, breaking the animal’s
leg the first time. As he had no more car
tridges, he could not follow up this exploit;
but the disabled animal was killed in the
course of the day. In the meantime, Cald
well and Lynch were joined by Nobles
and Hamilton in the pursuit of the other
buffalo; and it was not till they had run
him two or three miles, and he had been
pounded all over with bullets of every weight
and form, that the august monster finally
yielded to the unequal attack of four full
blooded white individuals, and the combined
fatality of dead shots. He fell like
Caesar, scarcely turning in his track, while
the shots were pouring into his bowels; he
turned his large wild eye upon his pursuers,
and sinking, with a splendid shiver, upon his
fore knees, seemed lying down to rest, till
the quick, tremulous wrench of his limbs,
as he fell flat on the ground, told us that the
noble brute was dead. The hunters stood
around him, as he lay upon his side, at a
respectful distance—whether from a feeling
of reverence for the dead, or from a linger
ing fear that be might not be dead about
the horns, I cannot say.
Then the smell of prospective viands re
turned. The sleek hide was torn from his
bleeding side; Jove’s pockets were searched
to their innermost seam; and the treasures
of fat meat carried home in two carts, to
the camp on Elm River, where we remained
on the day following (Sunday.) The day
was spent in jerking buffalo meat, a process
which consists simply in cutting the meat
into thin slices and drying it in the sun or
over a fire.
Pemb'na—An Agreeable Change—Monotonous Scenery—
The Red River Valley—A Blueberry Feast and
ROiui dfcence—Kinnekinnick and Its Substitutes—
Strawberri s—One of the Party goes a Berrying, and
Loses his Way—Searching for a Philosopher.
Editorial Correspondence of the Pioneer and Democrat.
Pembina, July 25, 1859,
One feels as if he had been dead a hundred
years or so, and had woke out of a mild
purgatorial probation—half unconditioned
torpor, mere negation of all activities, and
half an Inferno of mosquitoes—into another
existence, in a strange, new world, in emerg
ing from the sleepy days and sleepless nights
of a journey down the Red River valley,
and all its vacant towns and empty spaces,
to find himself alive and talking face to face
with these strange wild picturesque Pem
binese—of whom by and by.
The party arrived here on the 18th,
nearly a week ago, in ten days from Elm
river, or in thirteen days lrom Abercrom
bie. There is nothing interesting in the
route, which is a constant repetition of the
level surface forms of the valley. The
topography of one day’s journey is as like
another as so many pancakes, which we
seem to be turning off from the immense
griddle of the horizon, smoking hot from the
fiery oven of the sun. One day’s experience
is that of every other. We plunge from a
shore of wood in the morning to bury our
selves for a few hours in a sea of grass, and
to emerge at evening on apparently the
same dark shore again.
Beyond the Elm river, the principal
streams we crossed, on our route, were the
Goose, Turtle, Salt, Clark and Pembina
rivers, all small streams, a rod or two only
in width at the crossings, running in nearly
the same general southeasterly direction,
and embracing between these wooded val
leys naked sketches of prairie from 18 to 25
miles wide. A dense growth of Ash, Ma
ple, Elm, and Biss wood covers the narrow
bottoms of all these streams, except where
their shores, nearly level with the prairie,
afford no protection against fire.
That portion of the valley over which
our trail guided us, consists of two or three
immense plateaux, the difference of whose
actual elevation is so slight, as to be scarce
ly sensible in the transition, but which are in
reality great enough to give an imposing ap
pearance of abruptness in the illusory per
spective of these dead levels—where a bunch
of grass a little ranker than its neighbors
seems a grove of wood, and a herb, dense
enough to cast a shadow, is liable to be
mistaken for a tree or a buffalo.
The lower of those plateaux, adjacent to
the R J d River, extends for tweuty or thirty
miles back—a perfectly fiat surface, and
showing immense districts of marsh, indica
ted by the rank overgrowth of coarse sedge 3.
The stagnant surface water, concealing the
stinks of Acheron under its superficial
sweetness, spreads for miles over t hese grassy
flats, which are partially drained here and
there in numerous centres and ravines, in
which, in dry seasons, the water collects in
deep, rush-margined sinks, where it keeps
quite cool and pure —unless you stir it too
deeply, and Acheron salutes you again with
its vorive incense.
In rainy seasons the redundant water a:-
cumulates here in streams, and the centres
become temporary rivers of considerable
depth and velocity. All this level, which
extends, on both sides of the river, along its
whole length, is, in fact, the great Red River
bottom, subject to inundations that at pe
riods of years turn nearly the whole valley
for hundreds of miles in length, and from
fifty to seventy-five or more in breadth, into
an inland sea. The trail generally avoids
this alluvial bottom when it is practicable,
and follows the higher and dryer ground of
the upper plateau, above the junctions of
the principal forks, whose gentle undula
tions, or ranges of dome-like ridges, relieve
the level lines of the horizon, and sloughs
seldom interrupt the progress of carts. All
the aspects ot vegetation indicate not only
the better drainage of the surface, but the
change of soil from the dense Nile Lake
clays of the bottom, to a lighter and more
silicious mould. The verdure is finer and
sweeter, and spangled with constellations ot
flowers—among which the deep scarlet of
the lily, the soft blue of the harebell, the
white and yellow gerauium, and several
species of sunflower and native clover are
conspicuous for their rich contrasts of color.
The crossings of all the streams in the
higher levels are excellent, with rocky bot
toms and firm shores, while, on the lower
plateau, the crossings are generally as bad
as the most inextricable Red River mud
can make them.
In breaking through the ridg;es these
streams form deep channels under high steep
banks, whose winding gulls, darkened with
NEW SERIES—NO. 195.
masses of foliage, form fine pictures to re
lieve the eternal platitudes of the plain
around. Some of the finest of these points
have been selected with the native taste of
the voyageurs and Indians, as camping
grounds.
On the edge of the high bluffs of Salt
River, where we camped on the evening of
the 15th, the hungry party anticipated sup
per by a delicious repast on a thick growth
of blueberries which we found there. This,
to me, familiar fruit—a species of huckle~
berry—tne first I have seen this side of the
Alleghenies, awoke reminiscences long for
gotten, of hazy blueberry fields, far away
under the fogs of another sky, and I took
my revenge on the luscious berries for many
a thrashing I had receive 1 on their account
in the good old truant school days, when
this independent line of botanical investiga
tion was not in the regular course of study—
among the “ ceruleo-nasals,” as Holmes
has it. The leaf of this shrub forms a fa
vorite ingredient in the pemmican made up
this way, instead of the pembina, or high
bush cranberry, to which Dr. Parry assigns
this place in his catalogue.
Among the shrubbery of these bottoms,
we found frequent bushes of the Comm
Sericea, or Red Rod, a species of Dogwood
conspicuous among the willow fringes of
the streams. This is the only genuine Kinne
kinnic of the Indians. The Red Osier, or
Willow, as it is popularly called, also
abounds. This is often mistaken for the
real Kinnekinnic, and, indeed, is the com
mon substitute for it among the Lake Su
perior Indians, who have not access to the
genuine article. When this is not to be
obtained, the leaves of the cranberry and
winterberry are used by the Indians to di
lute the narcotic properties of the tobacco,
whose effects are much increased by the
universal Indian custom of exhaling the
smoke from the nose. These latter diluents
are said to be very pleasant. They are pre
pared by passing the leaves through aflame,
or more leisurely drying them by the fire,
when the preparation is called Pahgezegum.
The Kinnekinnic is prepared for smoking
by scraping off and drying the inner bark of
the Red Rod upon an extemporized gridi
ron of willow withes, which the Indians
contrive for the purpose.
July 19,1859.
It is a favorite quotation of my friend
J., from ancient English Fuller, that
“ doubtless God might have made a better
berry than the strawberry, but doubtless
God never did.” We had seen but few
strawberries till we reached the valley of
the Red River, where the rich clayey soil
seems in the highest degree favorable to
their growth ; and there they increased in
abundauce and perfection as we went north
ward though their beautiful red vines were
almost everywhere woven with the grasses of
the uplands. They are found generally in
round patches, on gentle swells of the prai
rie, where they reach the perfection of full
ness and ripeness under the thick herbage,
or are sprinkled in the deep but well sunned
grasses which shadow the dark ruts of the
trail. It is thus that nature dishes up her
choicest delicacies in the path of the trav
eller. If nature would just add a little
cream to the repast, aud sprinkle a modi
cum of sugar therein, it would do more
credit to her hospitality.
Our horsemen, regardless of this defect of
preparation, might have been frequently
seen in groups of halt a dozen or more, far
behind the train kneeling on the sward,
with the bridle in one hand, and with the
other gathering handfulls of strawberries
with a sweep of the fingers under the vines,
drinking down their delicious juices like
brimmiug goblets of red wine stolen from
the cellars ot Oberon.
Strawberries came nigh beiDg the ruin of
one of the party, who could not withstand
the fatal snare of these tempting vines. It
happened thus : On the morning of the
14th, after starting from the middle branch
of the Goose river, nature indicated an in
tention of supplying our demand for cream
for our strawberries from a bbffalo cow,
that was seen with a small herd of bulls in
the night. Judge Lynch and Bill Cald
wall undertook to replenish our supply of
meat, anefafter- a bard chase of three or
four miles, succeeded in killing a young fat
bull. Lynch was, on this occasion, the
hero of the fatal shot, although Cald
wei.’s horse did so well in the perilous me
nage of tin fray as to earn for his master
the soubriquet of “ Buffalo Bill.” In the
meantime the train had stopped for an early
morning, and two or three pack horses and
saddles were sent after the meat.
On their return, Henry Smith, a sharp
eyed Cree Half-Breed, directed the atten
tion of the party to a moving figure in the
distance, visible only to eyes accustomed
to the large circumference of the prairie
horizon, and which, as Henry was never
without a conservative suspicion of Indians,
he believed to be an Indian. Col. Nobles,
with his field glass, resolved the vital speck
into the erratic cook of Agony Hall, who
always went ahead with his last ox, fol
lowing an eceentric twist of the trail ;
a scientific gentleman by bis side, with a
telescope that nothing could beat, made it
out a buffalo ; and as there could be no mis
take about the telescope, the quadrupedal
theory superseded both the white and red
bipedal hypothesis.
The train went on some miles ahead and the