ed upon me, and I found myself scarcely able to stand. Raymond had
brought up Pauline and the mule, and I stooped to raise my saddle from
the ground. My strength was quite inadequate to the task. "You must
saddle her," said I to Raymond, as I sat down again on a pile of buffalo
robes:

"Et hoec etiam fortasse meminisse juvabit."

I thought, while with a painful effort I raised myself into the saddle.
Half an hour after, even the expectation that Virgil's line expressed
seemed destined to disappointment. As we were passing over a great
plain, surrounded by long broken ridges, I rode slowly in advance of
the Indians, with thoughts that wandered far from the time and from the
place. Suddenly the sky darkened, and thunder began to mutter. Clouds
were rising over the hills, as dreary and dull as the first forebodings
of an approaching calamity; and in a moment all around was wrapped in
shadow. I looked behind. The Indians had stopped to prepare for the
approaching storm, and the dark, dense mass of savages stretched far to
the right and left. Since the first attack of my disorder the effects
of rain upon me had usually been injurious in the extreme. I had no
strength to spare, having at that moment scarcely enough to keep my seat
on horseback. Then, for the first time, it pressed upon me as a strong
probability that I might never leave those deserts. "Well," thought I
to myself, "a prairie makes quick and sharp work. Better to die here, in
the saddle to the last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber,
and a thousand times better than to drag out life, as many have done,
in the helpless inaction of lingering disease." So, drawing the buffalo
robe on which I sat over my head, I waited till the storm should come.
It broke at last with a sudden burst of fury, and passing away as
rapidly as it came, left the sky clear again. My reflections served
me no other purpose than to look back upon as a piece of curious
experience; for the rain did not produce the ill effects that I had
expected. We encamped within an hour. Having no change of clothes, I
contrived to borrow a curious kind of substitute from Reynal: and this
done, I went home, that is, to the Big Crow's lodge to make the entire
transfer that was necessary. Half a dozen squaws were in the lodge, and
one of them taking my arm held it against her own, while a general laugh
and scream of admiration were raised at the contrast in the color of the
skin.

Our enca