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Show 446 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. at Westport, and Henry Chatillon went down in the boat with us. The passage to St. Louis occupied eight days, during about a third of which time we were fast aground on sand-bars. We passed the steamer Amelia crowded with a roaring crew of dis. banded volunteers, swearing, drinking, gambling, and fighting. At length one evening we reached the crowded levee of St. Louis. Repairing to the Planters' I-Iouse, we caused diligent search to be made for our trunks, which after some time were discovered stowed away in the farthest corner of the storerooom. In the morning we hardly recognized each other; a frock of broadcloth had supplanted the frock of buckskin; well-fitted pantaloons took the place of the Indian leggins, and polished boots were substituted for the gaudy moccasons. After we had been several days at St. Louis we heard news of Tete Rouge. He had contrived to reach Fort Leavenworth, where he had found the paymaster and received his money. As a boat was just ready to start for St. Louis, he went on board and engaged his passage. This done, he immediately got drunk on shore, and the boat went off without him. It was some days before another opportunity occurred, and meanwhile the sutler's stores furnished him with abundant means of keeping up his spirits. Another steamboat came at last, the clerk of which happened to be a friend of his, and by the advice of some charitable person on shore, he persuaded Tete Rouge to remain on board, intending to detain him there until the boat should leave the Fort. At first Tete Rouge was well contented with this arrangement, but on applying for a dram, the bar-keeper, at the clerk's instigation, refused to let THE SETTLEMENTS. 447 him have it. Finding them both inflexible in spite of his entreaties, he became desperate and made his escape from the boat. The clerk found him after a long search in one of the barracks ; a circle of dragoons stood contemplating him as he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk, and crying dismally. With the help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, and our informant, who came down in the same boat, declares that he remained in great despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. Louis soon after his arrival, we did not see the worthless, good-natured little vagabond again. On the evening before our departure, Henry Chatillon came to our rooms at the Planters' House to take leave of us. No one who met him in the streets of St. Louis, would have taken him for a hunter fresh from the Rocky Mountains. He was Yery neatly and simply dressed in a suit of dark cloth ; for although since his sixteenth year he had scarcely been for a month together among the abodes of men, he had a native good taste and a sense of propriety which always led him to pay great attention to his personal appearance. His tall athletic figure with its easy flexible motions appeared to advantage in his present dress ; and his fme face, though roughened by a thousand storms, was not at all out of keeping wi'-h it. We took leave of him with much regret; and unless his changing features, as he shook us by the hand, belied him, the feeling on his part was no less than on ours.* Shaw had given him a * I cannot take leave of the reader without adding a word of the guide who had served us throughout w1· t h sue h zea 1 an d fidelity · Indeed his services had far surpassed the terms of h.IS engageme nt · Yet whoever had been his employers, or to whatever c1 o seness of m· te rc ourse they might hav. e thought fit to admit him, he would never have changed the bearing of qUiet |