318 ON THE FRONTIER. 



from and to the other camps, no doubt to satisfy their 

 curiosity about us ; each fresh batch having questions to 

 ask, and wanting to examine our " rig." Our rifles espe- 

 cially interested them, being of a pattern they had never 

 seen before, for they were a then lately invented arm 

 Winchester's improved Henry's; to ray notion the most 

 perfect rifle in existence the very prince of weapons ! 

 Ours were carbine size, having, when loaded, fourteen shots 

 in them, capable of being reloaded after the first or any 

 succeeding discharge ; and of being reloaded as quickly 

 per shot as an ordinary muzzle loader can be capped. To 

 show what could be done with our rifles, and thereby 

 impress the Indians with a sense of our formidableness, one 

 of our party notched a cross in a sycamore tree, and at a 

 distance of a hundred yards threw his fourteen shots at it ; 

 firing with the utmost rapidity, and without once taking 

 his gun from his shoulder. When the lead was chopped 

 out of the tree by the Indians, six of the balls were found 

 welded together, while the remaining eight were clustered 

 quite close round the mass. The performance created as 

 the French would put it a profound sensation ! A hawk, 

 which soon afterwards sailed over camp, being killed in 

 mid air by X., the prestige of our party was still further 

 increased. 



I had observed, during the day, that the Indians pos- 

 sessed many articles of civilized manufacture ; and those 

 amongst them who had fire-arms (got no doubt from 

 murdered whites) had plenty of ammunition. All of them 

 had knives, principally of cheap Sheffield make. These 

 knives were certainly not captured from frontiersmen. No 



