220 LIEUTENANT BAYARD, U. S. A. 



" To-morrow," said my friend, musing; " no, can't 

 to-morrow, it's my shaking day," alluding to intermittent 

 ague, " and I arn't fit for nothing." 



" Well, God bless you, my boy ; take an English 

 man's advice, leave off chewing that mouthful of poison 

 ous tobacco and spitting up the juices of your stomach 

 to the sallow colouring of your cheeks ; drink none of 

 the stuff you call whiskey, and instead of spirits buy 

 calomel and quinine, and grow some fruit and vegetables 

 in your never half-cultivated garden, and then you'll 

 look a jollier fellow." 



> We always conversed in this familiar way, and a 

 finer lot of fellows than the generality of the frontier 

 settlers I do not wish to see ; but, alas ! go as far ahead 

 as the American frontier man may, two things for ever 

 keep pace with him tobacco and whiskey, while religion 

 and roads are left behind. Whiskey bad whiskey, or 

 even spirits of any kind are the worst things he can 

 drink with his liver in dangerous disorder, which is, in 

 fact, the cause of the fever on the plains ; but as whiskey 

 affords him temporary warmth in the aguish chill, and 

 enables him still further to debase the witless or thievish 

 ly crafty savage, whiskey is the deity of the cabin, and 

 will continue to be the source of evil to the destroyer 

 and the destroyed, or, in other words, to the white man 

 and the redskin of the plains. 



The cause of the Indian outbreak which lay in front of 

 me was as follows, and I give its correct details, inas 

 much as I subsequently made the acquaintance of the 

 smart young officer (Lieut. Bayard, of the United States 

 army), who, in his strict duty, had indirectly created the 

 difficulty, and the narration of it cannot but be curiously 

 interesting to my readers : 



