error they bad been indebted for their
opportunity.

Journeying on, the country was at first
found to be peopled by vast herds of buffaloes;
at one time it is the painter's estimate that
there must have been two hundred thousand
buffaloes in sight. The prairie was black
with them; sometimes they stopped the way.
There was an hour's halt to allow only a
single herd to gallop at full speed across the
path. Civilisation mounted the dark box,
but in vain tried to daguerreotype fragments
of a moving herd. Prairie-dogs run to their
holes as the travellers approach. At the
entrance to a dog-hole there commonly stood
a small owl as sentinel. Delawares say, that
the prairie dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake
always congregate.

Having reached the Arkansas river, and
being encamped, some Indian-hunters came
in to the travellers with their bows and
arrows, and their game. There is something
pleasant in the notion of wild Indians
in a Chagenne village sitting for daguerreotypes,
but they were not so much amazed
and pleased at the daguerreotypes as at
the silvering of some of their brass
ornaments by dipping into quicksilver. Silver
ornaments are their ideal of magnificence,—
few compass more than brass, and the great
alchemist who, by a touch, could turn brass
into silver, was an exalter of horns whom
they would gladly have prevailed upon to
settle in their district.

At Bent's Trading Port the expedition
was re-fitted, and Colonel Fremont having
perfectly recovered health, the doctor halted
to return by the first train of waggons to St.
Louis. Onward then went the exploring
party up the Arkansas to the mouth of the
Huerfano, and then tracing the course of that
river to the beautiful Huerfano valley, where
the abundant cereals feed only herds of antelope
and deer that roam through the primeval
forests, and have sole dominion over the
magnificent vales, the fertile hills and
undulating plains. There is not the smoke even
from a single human dwelling to cloud the
pure air. Hereabouts there is a sugar-loaf
rock of granite four or five hundred feet
high, the Huerfano Butte, and the American
suggests that whenever a railroad passes
through this valley, a statue of Fremont be
placed upon the Butte.

At the base of the Rocky Mountains, as the
party was approaching Sand-hill Pass, fresh
bear tracks were discovered, and a bear hunt
followed, ending in bear steaks of which the
painter who has still a tender stomach could
eat little, inasmuch as fat bear-meat proved
too luscious and greasy for his palate. On
the day following, Colonel Fremont went
into the Roubidoux Pass, from the summit
of which our painter had the first view of
the San Louis valley, and head-waters of the
Rio Grande del Norte. Forty miles across
were the San Juan Mountains, the scenes of
Colonel Fremont's most terrible disasters on
a former expedition. The daguerreotype
apparatus was set up, and the valley, and the
river, and the mountains wrote the story of
their loneliness on silver plates.

Entering the Sans Louis valley through
the Sand-hill Pass, the expedition travelled
about twenty miles up verdant slopes through
which meandered a fresh stream of water
fringed with cotton-wood elms. The camp
was fixed in an immense natural deer-park
under wide-spreading cedars, and it was
scarcely fixed when a venison supper trotted
down to the water-side close by. Out of a
herd of black-tail deer descending from the
mountain every shot killed a fine buck, and
it was determined to remain for a few days
in this position, killing and curing meat for
use among the wintry mountains which were
next upon the road. Then the way of the
travellers was up the valley to the
Cochotope, and upward still through forest,
surrounded by huge granite mountains, till at
last the little streams which had been running
as if to meet the comers, began running
in the same direction with them, and so it
was clear that the high land was reached
which parts the waters flowing towards the
Atlantic from those bound for the Pacific.
After issuing from these woods Colonel
Fremont camped on the edge of a rivulet. Near
this camp there was a rugged and barren
mountain covered with snow, and inaccessible
to mules. The leader of the exploration
regretted that the important views which
might be taken from its summit should be
lost, but gave up the idea of an ascent as
impracticable. Our painter—bold in his vocation
—volunteered to climb; Colonel Fremont
resolved, therefore, to accompany him, and
in three hours they were at the top, one
making observations with barometer and
thermometer; the other, up to his middle in
snow, copying in daguerreotype the whole
panorama.

On New Year's Day (the journey was
made three years ago) the members of the
expedition had a feast among the
snow-covered rocks across which they were
labouring. The cured venison was gone, the
horses that gave out as beasts of burden
became next assailable as meat, and there
were several pounds of candles made of
buffalo tallow, which had been preserved at
Bent's Station, and which had been broken
to pieces. The cook's brilliant conception for
a New Year's dinner was to fry in the tallow
the horse-steaks which came to table after
the horse-soup, and this he did. The painter
had also a surprise in store. He meant to
follow up the horse-steak and tallow sauce
with a huge mass of blancmange. He had
preserved carefully in his private store two
boxes, one containing a pound of preserved
eggs, the other a like quantity of preserved
milk. He had also a paper of arrowroot,
which his wife had packed up for him in