124: : THE EFFECT OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 



side of the crafty aspirant, are sure to fall into his hands, 

 and I must in fairness own that on two separate occa 

 sions it was my fate to do so. 



After a great many consultations in Mr Campbell's 

 counting-house, with several persons supposed to be 

 conversant with prairie life, I soon began to see that 

 veracity was very far from being an object of venera 

 tion, and that if any man had been as far across the 

 desert as the Rocky Mountains, it was impossible to 

 believe a word he said. Either the climate of those 

 wild hills, or the fact that when a man quitted the fron 

 tier settlements he left all observers behind, so inflamed 

 or enlarged his imagination that the action of the hour 

 was forgotten in the mists of mental reflection, and the 

 traveller became a visionary instead of a verity to be 

 relied on. From one of these gentlemen I had been in 

 the habit of taking advice, when all that he had told me 

 was considerably shaken by the following story he was 

 very fond of telling. 



He was out on the plains in winter time, and by some 

 accident severed from his party ; night came on, and 

 with it the [most intense frost, and he found his vital 

 energies failing, and saw nothing, until a bison came to 

 his assistance, but destruction staring him in the face. 

 The friendly bison approached without any idea in his 

 shaggy head half so extensive or comfortable as pertained 

 to the uses to which he was presently to be put ; and my 

 adviser, with just strength enough left in him to level his 

 rifle, numbed fingers and all, was lucky enough to hit the 

 bison just through the heart, and drop him dead con 

 veniently for future operation. Having refreshed him 

 self with a bit of warm raw flesh, my adviser then cut 

 the bison open, and took out the entrails ; and as it was 



