res as those of other
Indians. Unless his handsome face greatly belied him, he was free from
the jealousy, suspicion, and malignant cunning of his people. For the
most part, a civilized white man can discover but very few points
of sympathy between his own nature and that of an Indian. With every
disposition to do justice to their good qualities, he must be conscious
that an impassable gulf lies between him and his red brethren of the
prairie. Nay, so alien to himself do they appear that, having breathed
for a few months or a few weeks the air of this region, he begins to
look upon them as a troublesome and dangerous species of wild beast,
and, if expedient, he could shoot them with as little compunction as
they themselves would experience after performing the same office upon
him. Yet, in the countenance of the Panther, I gladly read that there
were at least some points of sympathy between him and me. We were
excellent friends, and as we rode forward together through rocky
passages, deep dells, and little barren plains, he occupied himself very
zealously in teaching me the Dakota language. After a while, we came to
a little grassy recess, where some gooseberry bushes were growing at the
foot of a rock; and these offered such temptation to my companion, that
he gave over his instruction, and stopped so long to gather the fruit
that before we were in motion again the van of the village came in
view. An old woman appeared, leading down her pack horse among the
rocks above. Savage after savage followed, and the little dell was soon
crowded with the throng.

That morning's march was one not easily to be forgotten. It led us
through a sublime waste, a wilderness of mountains and pine forests,
over which the spirit of loneliness and silence seemed brooding. Above
and below little could be seen but the same dark green foliage. It
overspread the valleys, and the mountains were clothed with it from the
black rocks that crowned their summits to the impetuous streams that
circled round their base. Scenery like this, it might seem, could have
no very cheering effect on the mind of a sick man (for to-day my disease
had again assailed me) in the midst of a horde of savages; but if the
reader has ever wandered, with a true hunter's spirit, among the forests
of Maine, or the more picturesque solitudes of the Adirondack Mountains,
he will understand how the somber woods and mountains around me might
have awakened any other feelings than