he Rockies,
then also abounded on the plains, where there was not a tree of any
kind, save the few twisted and wind-beaten cottonwoods that here and
there, in sheltered places fringed the banks of the rivers.

Indians Hunting.

Lewis and Clark had seen the Mandan horsemen surround the buffalo herds
and kill the great clumsy beasts with their arrows. Pike records with
the utmost interest how he saw a band of Pawnees in similar fashion
slaughter a great gang of elk, and he dwells with admiration on the
training of the horses, the wonderful horsemanship of the naked
warriors, and their skill in the use of bow and spear. It was a wild
hunting scene, such as belonged properly to times primeval. But indeed
the whole life of these wild red nomads, the plumed and painted
horse-Indians of the great plains, belonged to time primeval. It was at
once terrible and picturesque, and yet mean in its squalor and laziness.
From the Blackfeet in the north to the Comanches in the south they were
all alike; grim lords of war and the chase; warriors, hunters, gamblers,
idlers; fearless, ferocious, treacherous, inconceivably cruel;
revengeful and fickle; foul and unclean in life and thought; disdaining
work, but capable at times of undergoing unheard-of toil and hardship,
and of braving every danger; doomed to live with ever before their eyes
death in the form of famine or frost, battle or torture, and schooled to
meet it, in whatever shape it came, with fierce and mutterless
fortitude. [Footnote: Fortunately these horse-Indians, and the game they
chiefly hunted, have found a fit historian. In his books, especially
upon the Pawnees and Blackfeet, Mr. George Bird Grinnell has portrayed
them with a master hand; it is hard to see how his work can be
bettered.]

Wilkinson Descends the Arkansas.
When the party reached the Arkansas late in October Wilkinson and three
or four men journied down it and returned to the settled country.
Wilkinson left on record his delight when he at last escaped from the
bleak windswept plains and again reached the land where deer supplanted
the buffalo and antelope and where the cottonwood was no longer the only
tree.

Pike Reaches Pike's Peak.

The others struck westward into the mountains, and late in November
reached the neighborhood of the bold peak which was later named after
Pike himself. Winter set in with severity soon after they penetrated the
mountains. They were poorly clad to resist the