urs in the east escaped; but the sites of their
villages were well calculated to render the disease more general and
terrible; their settlements being generally built in some recess, deep
in the heart of the mountains, or in valleys surrounded by lofty hills,
which prevent all circulation of the air; and it is easy to understand
that the atmosphere, once becoming impregnated with the effluvia, and
having no issue, must have been deadly.

On the contrary, the Shoshones, the Apaches, and the Arrapahoes, have
the generality of their villages built along the shores of deep and
broad rivers. Inhabiting a warm clime, cleanness, first a necessity, has
become a second nature. The hides and skins are never dried in the
immediate vicinity of their lodges, but at a great distance, where the
effluvia can hurt no one. The interior of their lodges is dry, and
always covered with a coat of hard white clay, a good precaution against
insects and reptiles, the contrast of colour immediately betraying their
presence. Besides which, having always a plentiful supply of food, they
are temperate in their habits, and are never guilty of excess; while the
Crows, Black-feet, and Clubs, having often to suffer hunger for days,
nay, weeks together, will, when they have an opportunity, eat to
repletion, and their stomachs being always in a disordered state (the
principal and physical cause of their fierceness and ferocity), it is
no wonder that they fell victims, with such predispositions to disease.

It will require many generations to recover the number of Indians which
perished in that year; and, as I have said, as long as they live, it
will form an epoch or era to which they will for centuries refer.

CHAPTER XIX.

In the last chapter but one I stated that I and my companions, Gabriel
and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were
journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be
hanged as an example to all liberators. This escort was commanded by two
most atrocious villains, Joachem Texada and Louis Ortiz. They evidently
anticipated that they would become great men in the republic, upon the
safe delivery of our persons to the Mexican Government, and every day
took good care to remind us that the gibbet was to be our fate on
our arrival.

Our route lay across the central deserts of Sonora, until we arrived on
the banks of the Rio Grande, and so afraid were they of falling in with
a hostile pa