small parties, notwithstanding their professions of friendship.  Not long after my arrival, a party of trappers arrived from the Upper Missouri in two boats, which were loaded with buffalo and other furs.  The stalwart look of these hardy mountaineers proved the hardening effect of their mode of life.  They were brawny fellows of a ruddy brown complexion, of the true Indian hue, and habited in skins.  These men, I ascertained, had been in the mountains for four or five years, during which time they had subsisted entirely on Buffalo and other meat, bread not being used or cared for.  Their healthy look under such circumstances completely shook my faith in the Brahminical vegetarian theory, and goes far, I think, to prove that man was intended by his Maker to be a carnivorous animal.

Just before the steamer approached the city, a circumstance occurred on board that filled me and my fellow-passengers with horror.  We were taking breakfast in the cabin, congratulating each other on the near termination of our tedious passage, when a sudden shriek, followed by shouts from the deck-hands of the vessel, disturbed our meal.  Hastening in great perturbation to the deck, we soon discovered the cause of the disturbance.  One of the white waiters was lying on the deck, with a frightful gash in his side, from which the blood was fast oozing.  Our first care was to attend to the sufferer, and a surgeon being fortunately amongst the passengers, the hemorrhage was soon abated, but the wound was pronounced to be of a fatal character.  The poor fellow, who was a lad of about eighteen years of age, moaned piteously.  Every attention that skill and kindness could suggest was paid to him.  He was immediately carried to a state-room in the cabin, where he remained in great agony until the vessel was moored alongside the levee, when he was carefully removed on a litter to a hospital on shore.  The perpetrator of the savage act proved to be a negro, filling the office of assistant cook.  The passengers were very clamorous, and would, without doubt, have hanged the culprit immediately, had it not been for the interference of the captain, who, after a curt examination, had him pinioned and taken below.  From the version given of the affair by the negroes who witnessed it (but which was contradicted by two white men who were on the spot), I was inclined to think the crime was committed under feelings of great provocation, the negro, as is commonly the case on board steam-boats, having been for a long time browbeaten by the victim of the sad catastrophe, and subjected to very insolent and overbearing treatment at his hands.  The culprit, who was a very sullen, stolid-looking, full-bred negro, refused to answer the questions put to him on the subject, and certainly manifested a careless indifference to consequences that was not in his favour; his fierce scowl denoting great ferocity, in all probability induced by long ill-treatment.  As soon as convenience allowed, some officers from