Xll THE LATE 



fine young man, dying miserably in a strange land, 

 before he had well commenced the hazardous journey 

 whose excitement and dangers he so joyously antici- 

 pated : 



" As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on 

 civilised fixings in this ' big village ; ' and this child has 

 felt like going West for many a month, being half froze 

 for bufner meat and mountain doins. My route takes 

 me via New York, the Lakes, and St Louis, to Fort 

 Leavenworth, or Independence on the Indian frontier. 

 Thence, packing my ' possibles ' on a mule, and mount- 

 ing a buifalo horse, (Panchito, if he is alive,) I strike 

 the Santa Fe trail to the Arkansa, away up that river 

 to the mountains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where 

 Killbuck and La Bonte joined the Yutes, cross the 

 mountains next spring to Great Salt Lake and that's 

 far enough to look forward to always supposing my 

 hair is not lifted by Comanche or Pawnee on the scalp- 

 ing route of the Coon Creeks and Pawnee Fork." 



Poor fellow ! he spoke lightly, in the buoyancy of 

 youth and a confident spirit, of the fate he little thought 

 to meet, but which too surely overtook him not indeed 

 by Indian blade, but by the no less deadly stroke of 

 disease. Another motive, besides that love of rambling 

 and adventure, which, once conceived and indulged, is 



