Such are the fluctuating fortunes of these savage nations.  War, famine, pestilence, together or singly, bring down their strength and thin their numbers.  Whole tribes are rooted up from their native places, wander for a time about these immense regions, become amalgamated with other tribes, or disappear from the face of the earth.  There appears to be a tendency to extinction among all the savage nations; and this tendency would seem to have been in operation among the aboriginals of this country long before the advent of the white men, if we may judge from the traces and traditions of ancient populousness in regions which were silent and deserted at the time of the discovery; and from the mysterious and perplexing vestiges of unknown races, predecessors of those found in actual possession, and who must long since have become gradually extinguished or been destroyed.  The whole history of the aboriginal population of this country, however, is an enigma, and a grand one—­will it ever be solved?

CHAPTER XXIV.

New Distribution of Horses—­Secret Information of Treason in the Camp.—­Rose the Interpreter—­His Perfidious Character—­ His Plots.—­Anecdotes of the Crow Indians.—­Notorious Horse Stealers.—­Some Account of Rose.—­A Desperado of the Frontier.

On the sixth of August the travellers bade farewell to the friendly band of Cheyennes, and resumed their journey.  As they had obtained thirty-six additional horses by their recent traffic, Mr. Hunt made a new arrangement.  The baggage was made up in smaller loads.  A horse was allotted to each of the six prime hunters, and others were distributed among the voyageurs, a horse for every two, so that they could ride and walk alternately.  Mr. Crooks being still too feeble to mount the saddle, was carried on a litter.

Their march this day lay among singular hills and knolls of an indurated red earth, resembling brick, about the bases of which were scattered pumice stones and cinders, the whole bearing traces of the action of fire.  In the evening they encamped on a branch of Big River.

They were now out of the tract of country infested by the Sioux, and had advanced such a distance into the interior that Mr. Hunt no longer felt apprehensive of the desertion of any of his men.  He was doomed, however, to experience new cause of anxiety.  As he was seated in his tent after nightfall, one of the men came to him privately, and informed him that there was mischief brewing in the camp.  Edward Rose, the interpreter, whose sinister looks we have already mentioned, was denounced by this secret informer as a designing, treacherous scoundrel, who was tampering with the fidelity of certain of the men, and instigating them to a flagrant piece of treason.  In the course of a few days they would arrive at the mountainous district infested by the Upsarokas or Crows, the tribe among which Rose was to officiate as interpreter.