the ceaseless cold seemed to be slowly freezing
his mind, and making a new wilderness there,
dreary and empty as the waste that encompassed
him. His thoughts wandered with a certain
sadness to the Christmas-trees and the children's
festivals, at that blessed season, in his native
Germany—but he was too far gone for any deep
grief, or for any bitter pangs of despair. He
kept Christmas-day with the only indulgence he
could afford himself, a pipeful of the dry willow
leaves; and, as night fell, he lay on his back by
the fire, looking up through the hole in his tent at
the frosty heavens, and fancying dimly that the
kind stars looked down on him, as they had often
looked, in bygone days, at home.

The old year ended, and the new year came.
His hold on life was slackening—and the end
was not far off. It was daylight, early in the
month of January. He was resting under his
blankets—not asleep, and not awake. Suddenly
the sound of approaching footsteps reached him
on the still air. It was no dream—a salutation
in the Indian language sounded in his ears a
moment afterwards. He roused himself, and
caught up his rifle. More words were spoken
before he could get out of the tent. It was the
English language this time. "You are badly
off here, friend," said a cheerful voice. Had
the white men of the Post and the Mission
remembered him at last? No. When the tent
covering was raised, an Indian entered, and
pushed his five-foot rifle in before him. A
savage looking man, with five savage companions.
The lost traveller advanced to meet them with
his rifle ready. Happily, he was wrong this
time. These savage wanderers of the prairie—
these charitable heathens, whom the pitiless
Christians at the Mission were established to
convert—had come to do the good work which
his white brethren had, to their eternal disgrace,
neglected: they had come to save him.

The man who had spoken in English was a
half-breed—a voluntary renegade from civilisation.
His companions belonged, like himself,
to the friendly tribe of Ottoe Indians. They
had gone out with their squaws on a hunting
expedition; and they had seen the smoke of the
lost traveller's fire two miles off. "You are
hungry," they said to him, producing their own
food—"eat. You are ready to perish—come
with us. You are sick—we will take care of
you and clothe you." These were the words of
the Red Skins; and the friendly promises they
implied were performed to the letter.

On the next day every member of the hunting
party, including the women and the boys,
assembled at the tent to remove the forsaken
white man, and all that belonged to him, to their
own camp. The goods, for the preservation of
which he had risked his life, were packed up; the
waggon, abandoned by his fellow-traveller and
himself, at the beginning of their disasters, when
their last horse died, was cleared of snow and
made fit for use again; and even the tent was
not left behind. It was too firmly frozen to the
ground to be pulled up; so it was cut off just
above the snow, and was thrown over the rest of
the baggage. When the Indians had packed the
waggon, their wives and their boys harnessed
themselves to it, and dragged it away cheerfully
to the camp. Mr. Möllhausen, and the elder
warriors followed. The Prussian traveller
stopped, before he left the place for ever, to take
a last look at the lonely scene of all his sufferings
and all his perils. The spot where his tent
had stood was still marked in the snowy waste
by the ashes of his expiring fire. His eyes
rested long on that last-left, touching trace of
himself and his hardships—then wandered away
to the little hill from which he used to look out
on his solitude—to the bank of the river where
he had lain in ambush for the Pawnees—to the
hole in the ice through which he had thrust
their bodies. He shuddered, as well he might,
at the dreadful memories which the familiar
objects around him called up. A moment more,
and he was descending the hill, from the summit
of which he had looked back, to follow the trail
of his Indian friends—a moment more, and he
had left his home in the desert for ever.

In less than five weeks from that time, he and
his waggon-load of goods were safe, thanks to the
Ottoe Indians, at a fur-trading station on the
Missouri river; and he was eating good bread
again, and drinking whisky-punch in the society
of white men.

The particulars of this fearful narrative of
suffering and peril have been abridged from an
episode in Mr. Möllhausen' s own record of his
travelling adventures in North America during
a second visit to that part of the world, when he
was in the employment of the United States
Government. The book (published in London by
Messrs. LONGMAN and Co.) is written with great
modesty and good sense; and contains some of
the most curious revelations of manners and
customs among the North American Indians
which have yet been offered to the public. The
author's experiences among the friendly Ottoes
who rescued him may be singled out as
especially interesting, or, more properly (from the
singular nature of his position, at that period of
his travels) as something quite unique.

On the 31st of May will be published, price
                      One Shilling,
Uniform with PICKWICK, DAVID COPPERFIELD, BLEAK
                       HOUSE , &c.,
            The First Monthly Part of
             A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
              BY CHARLES DICKENS.
With Two Illustrations on Steel by HABLOT K.
                         BROWNE.
     To be completed in Eight Monthly Parts.
      CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.W.,
                               AND
"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" Office, 11, Wellington-street
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