n his horse, and on the occasion
to which I have alluded, some one of them chanced to chafe or gall
the pony, inducing him to give a kick up with his hinder limbs.
The rattling of the pots and pans started him off immediately, and
the faster he ran the more they rattled. We immediately secured
our horses by catching up the _lariats_, and then watched the
fanciful antics of the animal that had raised all the commotion.

'He would run about ten jumps and then stop and kick up about as
many times; then he would shake himself violently, and then start
off again on a gallop. Every now and then a culinary or scientific
instrument would be detached from its fastenings, when the
infuriated pony would manage to give it a kick before it struck
the ground and send it aloft again. The quadrant took the
direction toward the sun without taking it; the saucepan was
kicked into a stew; the thermometer was up to an hundred--inches
above the ground, and fell to--worth nothing. To sum it all up,
what with rearing, pitching, kicking, and galloping about, the
pony was soon rid of saddle and all other incumbrances, and then
went quietly to feeding, apparently well satisfied with all the
trouble he had given his owner.

'The whole affair was ludicrous in the extreme, defying
description. The rattling of the tin, earthen, and other ware, as
the pony snorted, kicked, and pranced about, made a noise
resembling that produced at a _charivari_. His antics were of the
most unseemly nature, too--and the cool philosophy of Mr.
Falconer, as he quietly followed in the wake of the vicious
animal, picking up the fragments scattered along, completed a
picture which would have made the fortune of Cruikshank, had he
been on the spot to take it down. Some time after this adventure
the Indians stole the horse, but they made a bad bargain of it.'

There are scores of passages, describing the burning of a prairie, hunting
buffaloes, fighting the Indians, camping out at night under a deluge of
rain, and other scenes by which their journey was marked; but we must pass
to the following account of the feelings which attend starvation, which we
copy for its intrinsic interest, and as an instance of the fearful
extremities to which the expedition was sometimes reduced:

'I have never yet seen a treatise on dissertation upon starving to
death;