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Show BUFFALO CHIPS. 65 Our Delawares told me that the prairie dog, the owl, and. the rattlesnake always congregate together-a strange V trio. tf The prairie after you pass Pawnee Fork, and also on "* the divide between Walnut Creek and the Arkansas „*'i River, is covered with a short grass, called buffalo grass. <^ Firewood or timber, only grows on the creek, and t h £ ^ artemisia entirely disappears. ^ We camped one night on the open prairie, without ^ wood, near Pawnee Fork, a tributary of the Kansas The thermometer was below freezing point, and there was no vestige of wood or timber to be seen. I was busily engaged making my daguerreotype views of the country, over which I had to travel the next day. On looking through my camera I observed two of our men approaching over a slope, holding between them a blanket filled with something; curious to know what it was, I hailed them, and found they had been gathering " dried buffalo chips," to build, a fire with. This material burns like peat, and makes a very hot fire, without much smoke, and keeps the heat a long time; a peculiar smell exhales from it while burning, not at all unpleasant. But for this material, it would be impossible to travel over certain parts of this immense country. It served us very often, not only for cooking purposes but also to warm our half frozen limbs. I have seen chips of a large size-one I had the curiosity to measure, was two feet in diameter. Our first camp on the Arkansas was visited by a number of Indian hunters, with the product of their skill, in the use of their bows and arrows, hanging across their horses. One of them borrowed my jack-knife, and cutting a piece of the raw antelope liver, deliberately ate |