GUERRE; for, like many Indians, he concealed his real name out of some superstitious notion.  He was a very noble looking fellow.  As he suffered his ornamented buffalo robe to fall into folds about his loins, his stately and graceful figure was fully displayed; and while he sat his horse in an easy attitude, the long feathers of the prairie cock fluttering from the crown of his head, he seemed the very model of a wild prairie-rider.  He had not the same features as those of other Indians.  Unless his handsome face greatly belied him, he was free from the jealousy, suspicion, and malignant cunning of his people.  For the most part, a civilized white man can discover but very few points of sympathy between his own nature and that of an Indian.  With every disposition to do justice to their good qualities, he must be conscious that an impassable gulf lies between him and his red brethren of the prairie.  Nay, so alien to himself do they appear that, having breathed for a few months or a few weeks the air of this region, he begins to look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast, and, if expedient, he could shoot them with as little compunction as they themselves would experience after performing the same office upon him.  Yet, in the countenance of the Panther, I gladly read that there were at least some points of sympathy between him and me.  We were excellent friends, and as we rode forward together through rocky passages, deep dells, and little barren plains, he occupied himself very zealously in teaching me the Dakota language.  After a while, we came to a little grassy recess, where some gooseberry bushes were growing at the foot of a rock; and these offered such temptation to my companion, that he gave over his instruction, and stopped so long to gather the fruit that before we were in motion again the van of the village came in view.  An old woman appeared, leading down her pack horse among the rocks above.  Savage after savage followed, and the little dell was soon crowded with the throng.

That morning’s march was one not easily to be forgotten.  It led us through a sublime waste, a wilderness of mountains and pine forests, over which the spirit of loneliness and silence seemed brooding.  Above and below little could be seen but the same dark green foliage.  It overspread the valleys, and the mountains were clothed with it from the black rocks that crowned their summits to the impetuous streams that circled round their base.  Scenery like this, it might seem, could have no very cheering effect on the mind of a sick man (for to-day my disease had again assailed me) in the midst of a horde of savages; but if the reader has ever wandered, with a true hunter’s spirit, among the forests of Maine, or the more picturesque solitudes of the Adirondack Mountains, he will understand how the somber woods and mountains around me might have awakened any other feelings than those of gloom.  In truth they recalled gladdening recollections of