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Show CHAPTER XVII. THE BLACK HILLS. "To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rare! y been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean; This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled." CI-IILDE HAROLD. WE travelled eastward for two days, and then the gloomy ridges of the Black Hills rose up before us. The village passed along for some miles beneath their declivities, trailing out to a great length over the arid prairie, or winding at times among small detached hills of distorted shapes. Turning sharply to the left, we entered a wide defile of the mountains, down the bottom of which a brook came winding, 1ined with tall grass and dense copses, amid which were hidden many beaver dams and lodges. We passed along between two lines of high precipices and rocks, piled in utter disorder one upon another, and with scarcely a tree, a bush, or a clump of grass 'to veil their THE BLACK HILLS. 293 nakedness. The restless Indian boys were wandering along their edges and clambering up and down their rugged sides, and sometimes a group of them would stand on the verge of a cliff and look down on the array as it passed in review beneath them. As we advanced, the passage grew more narrow; then it suddenly expanded into a round grassy meadow, completely encompassed by mountains; and here the families stopped as they came up in turn, and the camp rose like magic. The lodges were hardly erected when, with their usual precipitation, the Indians set about accomplishing the object that had brought them there ; that is, the obtaining poles for supporting their new lodges. Half the population, men, women, and boys, mounted their horses and set out for the interior of the mountains. As they rode at full gallop over the shingly rocks and into the dark opening of the' defile beyond, I thought I had never read or dreamed of a more strange or picturesque cavalcad·e. We passed between precipices more than a thousand feet high, sharp and splintering at the tops, their sides beetling over the defile or descending in abrupt declivities, bri st l'm g W·i t h bl ack fir-trees. On our left they rose close to us like a wall, but on the right a win din a brook with a narrow . b stnp of marshy soil intervened. The stream was clogged with old beaver-dams, and spread frequently into wide pools. There were thick bt IS he s an d many d ead and blasted trees along I. ts course, though frequently nothing remained but stumps cut clo.s e to the g I.o un d b y t h e beaver, and marked W.i th the sharp chisel-like te et h of t h ose I. ndefati. gable laborers. Sometimes we Were diving among trees, and then emerging upon open spots, overwhich ' lndI' an-11.1 c e, a l l galloped at full speed. As Pauline bounded 0 ver t h e rocks I felt her saddle-girth . slipping, and |