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Show 60 THE CITY OF THE SAINTS. CHAP. I. languti. None of the braves carried scalps, finger-bones, or notches on the lance, which serve like certain marks on saw-handled pistols farther east, nor had any man lost a limb. They io\- lowed us for many a mile, peering into the hinder part of our traveling wigwam, and ejaculating "How! How!" the normal salutation. It is supposed to mean " good," and the Western man, when he drinks to your health, says " Here, how!" and expects a return jin kind. The politeness of the savages did not throw us off our guard; the Dakotah of these regions are expert and daring kleptomaniacs; they only laughed, however, a little knowingly as we raised the rear curtain, and they left us after begging pertinaciously-bakhshish is an institution here as on the banks of the Nile-for tobacco, gunpowder, ball, copper caps, lucifers, and what not. The women, except the pretty party, looked, methought, somewhat scowlingly, but one can hardly expect a smiling countenance from the human biped trudging ten or twenty miles under a load fit for a mule. A great contrast with these Indians was a train of " Pike's Peakers," who, to judge from their grim looks, were returning disappointed from the new gold diggings. I think that if obliged to meet one of the two troops by moonlight alone, my choice would have fallen upon " messieurs les sauvages." At 6 P.M. we resumed our route, with a good but fidgety train, up the Dark Valley, where musquetoes and sultry heat combined to worry us. Slowly traveling and dozing the while, we arrived about 9 15 P.M'. at Diamond Springs, a bright little water much frequented by the "lightning-bug" and the big-eyed "Devil's darning-needle,"* where we found whisky and its usual accompaniment, soldiers. The host related an event which he said had taken place but a few days before. An old mountaineer, who had married two squaws, was drinking with certain Cheyennes, a tribe famous for ferocity and"hostility to the whites. The discourse turning upon topics stoical, he was asked by his wild boon companions if he feared death. The answer was characteristic: " You may kill me if you like!" Equally characteristic was their acknowledgment; they hacked him to pieces, and threw the corpse under a bank. In these regions the opposite races regard each other as wild beasts; the white will shoot an Indian as he would a coyote. He expects to go under whenever the "all-fired, red-bellied varmints"-I speak, oh reader, Occidentally- get the upper hand, and vice versd. The Platte Biver divides at N. lat. 40° 05' 05", and W. long. (G.) 101° 21' 24". The northern, by virtue of dimensions, claims to be the main stream. The southern, which is also called in obsolete maps Padouca, from the Pawnee name for the Iatans, whom * The first is the firefly, the second is the dragon-fly, called in country parts of England "the Devil's needle." |