Until the next afternoon we were still remaining with Bisonette.  My companion and I with our three attendants then left his camp for the Pueblo, a distance of three hundred miles, and we supposed the journey would occupy about a fortnight.  During this time we all earnestly hoped that we might not meet a single human being, for should we encounter any, they would in all probability be enemies, ferocious robbers and murderers, in whose eyes our rifles would be our only passports.  For the first two days nothing worth mentioning took place.  On the third morning, however, an untoward incident occurred.  We were encamped by the side of a little brook in an extensive hollow of the plain.  Delorier was up long before daylight, and before he began to prepare breakfast he turned loose all the horses, as in duty bound.  There was a cold mist clinging close to the ground, and by the time the rest of us were awake the animals were invisible.  It was only after a long and anxious search that we could discover by their tracks the direction they had taken.  They had all set off for Fort Laramie, following the guidance of a mutinous old mule, and though many of them were hobbled they had driven three miles before they could be overtaken and driven back.

For the following two or three days we were passing over an arid desert.  The only vegetation was a few tufts of short grass, dried and shriveled by the heat.  There was an abundance of strange insects and reptiles.  Huge crickets, black and bottle green, and wingless grasshoppers of the most extravagant dimensions, were tumbling about our horses’ feet, and lizards without numbers were darting like lightning among the tufts of grass.  The most curious animal, however, was that commonly called the horned frog.  I caught one of them and consigned him to the care of Delorier, who tied him up in a moccasin.  About a month after this I examined the prisoner’s condition, and finding him still lively and active, I provided him with a cage of buffalo hide, which was hung up in the cart.  In this manner he arrived safely at the settlements.  From thence he traveled the whole way to Boston packed closely in a trunk, being regaled with fresh air regularly every night.  When he reached his destination he was deposited under a glass case, where he sat for some months in great tranquillity and composure, alternately dilating and contracting his white throat to the admiration of his visitors.  At length, one morning, about the middle of winter, he gave up the ghost.  His death was attributed to starvation, a very probable conclusion, since for six months he had taken no food whatever, though the sympathy of his juvenile admirers had tempted his palate with a great variety of delicacies.  We found also animals of a somewhat larger growth.  The number of prairie dogs was absolutely astounding.  Frequently the hard and dry prairie would be thickly covered, for many miles together, with the little mounds which they make around the mouth of their burrows,