rain and darkness. Each at an oar, we forged on, until we lost
the channel in the gloom. At the first peep of day we were off again,
after a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and coffee.

We were gradually becoming accustomed to the strain of constant rowing.
For at least sixteen hours a day we fought the wind, during which time
the oars were constantly dipping; and very often our day lengthened out
to twenty hours. We had no time-piece, and a night of drifting was
divided into two watches. These watches we determined either by the
dropping of a star toward the horizon, or by the position of the moon
when it shone. On dark nights, the sleeper trusted to the judgment of
his friend to call when the watch seemed sufficiently long. Daily the
water fell, and every inch of fall increased the difficulty of
traveling.

We were now passing through the country of the Mandans, Gros Ventres,
and Ricarees, the country through which old Hugh Glass crawled his
hundred miles with only hate to sustain him. To the west lay the barren
lands of the Little Missouri, through which Sully pushed with his
military expedition against the Sioux on the Yellowstone. An army flung
boldly through a dead land--a land without forage, and waterless--a
labyrinth of dry ravines and ghastly hills! Sully called it "hell with
the lights out." A magnificent, Quixotic expedition that succeeded! I
compared it with the ancient expeditions--and I felt the eagle's wings
strain within me. _Sully!_ There were trumpets and purple banners for me
in the sound of the name!

Late in the evening we reached the mouth of the Little Missouri. There
we found one of the few remaining mud lodges of the ancient type. We
landed and found ourselves in the midst of a forsaken little frontier
town. A shambling shack bore the legend, "Store," with the "S" looking
backward--perhaps toward dead municipal hopes. A few tumble-down frame
and log shanties sprawled up the desultory grass-grown main street, at
one end of which dwelt a Mandan Indian family in the mud lodge.

A dozen curs from the lodge resented our intrusion with canine
vituperation. I thrust my head into the log-cased entrance of the
circular house of mud, and was greeted with a sound of scolding in the
Mandan jargon, delivered by a squaw of at least eighty years. She arose
from the fire that burned in the center of the great circular room, and
approached me with an "I-want-your-scalp" expression. One of her
daughters, a gi