A DEAD LAND. 173 



cabins in which their friends resided. Non-obedience 

 to these orders also drew down on them some emphatic 

 cautions, and thus, in the earliest possible instance, 

 although I had not then seen Capt. Marcy's most useful 

 work, " The Prairie Traveller," I endeavoured to im 

 press on all my men that there ought to be, and, with 

 me, could only be, one head and one commander to the 

 little force of which my small party consisted. 



After some miles of travel, all the dips in the track we 

 followed having small sluggish rills of water in them, 

 and on either side several yards of slough, through 

 which the waggons had to be driven with considerable 

 caution, the plains became very lonely, swelling into 

 moderate undulations, and in their brown state of 

 ripened grass, with only a flower here and there to be 

 seen, consisting of the snake-root and the wild sun-flower, 

 resembling in outline the petrifaction of a Dead Sea. 



Having gone beyond the distance to which the sports 

 men of Kansas city might have been expected to reach, 

 I gave orders for my setter, Chance, and the retriever, 

 Brutus, to be let loose, and mounting my pony, with one 

 of the old John Manton guns in hand, I gave Chance the 

 office to range the prairies in line parallel with the track 

 pursued by the waggons, while Brutus followed at the 

 pony's heels. Nothing could be more beautiful than the 

 way the old setter ranged these gently undulating plains, 

 delighting in the easy ground, and caring nothing for the 

 long grass nearly up to his back, for the grass of the 

 prairies is something like the English spear-grass, and 

 in no way, save when in winter there have been water 

 courses to make it high and rank, offering any impedi 

 ment to a dog ; and, in addition to this, there are neither 

 stones nor thorns to lame him. While Chance was thus 



