172 HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. 



the white man. And a strange sight it is to see a hundred or 

 two fantastically attired braves working away under the hot 

 sun with pick and shovel at the great irrigating ditch which is 

 to convert the grass -grown plain into a garden of plenty, and 

 who but a short year or so ago would have disdained to occupy 

 themselves wuth anything but the pleasures of the chase, varied 

 by an occasional murder of defenceless white men, with their 

 wives and little children. But the buffalo, whose countless 

 bleaching skulls dot the wide prairies for hundreds of miles, 

 have become almost extinct, and starvation and the swift blue 

 riders of the Waseetcha, scouring the country through and fall- 

 ing upon the scattered villages, bearing dire vengeance under 

 the silken folds of their starry guidons, have tamed the wild 

 savages into sulky submission, and have gathered them in on 

 their reservations. 



The time for our departure is at hand. From the top of 

 the guard-house the lookout has signalled " smoke way up the 

 river," where the boat, probably the last one down this season, 

 is slowly making its way through the now almost unnavigable 

 channel. We make our farewell calls on the families of our 

 kind entertainers, and once more climbing into the waiting 

 ambulance, rattle away to the landing-place. It is late in the 

 evening, and the river shines like fluid gold under the bright 

 light of the sky : before us the land opposite stretches away 

 flat to the round buttes on the far horizon ; naked trees, where 

 a fire has scorched their limbs, rise up out of the purple un- 

 dergrowth and stand out against the sky in fantastic shapes ; far 

 out over the plain some figures, men and horses, are moving. 



Patiently we wait near a huge pile of buffalo robes and 

 other freight; the usual curve in the river prevents a sight of 

 the steamboat, but we can see her smoke rising over the trees, 

 where she seems to be stationary. " Stuck on the bar, Til bet 



