A Sportsman 157 



After reaching the Bar we took up Fall River Creek 

 on our way to Central, and met here one of those im- 

 mense swarms of grasshoppers occasionally encount- 

 ered in Colorado. The air was full of them, immense 

 full-sized grasshoppers, near the earth and reaching 

 up as high as we could see, so that in looking up 

 they resembled a heavy passage of snowflakes. They 

 were coming from an opposite direction and struck 

 us so steadily that we had to cover our faces with 

 our handkerchiefs. They were drowned in immense 

 numbers in the waters of the stream, and swirled away 

 in the currents by the barrelful. 



Amid this storm of grasshoppers we saw two white 

 horses up the hillside, and D aland declared they were 

 Generals Grant and Sherman whom we had lost when 

 we were at the Ute Indian encampment in Summit 

 County, and whom we suspected the Indians had stolen. 

 A closer examination revealed that they were in real- 

 ity the missing mustangs, and General Sherman was 

 observed to have around his neck two feet of his 

 old tether rope. They were fat and wild, but were 

 secured with some labor, and their backs which were 

 somewhat bruised and sore when lost were entirely 

 healed. Here these two animals had found their way 

 back over the mountains and streams more than one 

 hundred and fifty miles from the present site of Lead- 

 ville to the old grazing lands of Fall River, where they 

 had originally been obtained from, showing the re- 

 markable faculty which horses and some other animals 

 have in finding their way back to familiar localities 

 without compass or signs which mortals depend upon. 

 I could relate many incidents of this character, 

 of which similar ones are doubtless known to the 

 reader. 



