GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON". IX 



tion, cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my 

 own head. They axe all matters of history in the moun- 

 tains ; but I have no doubt jumbled the dramatis per- 

 sona: one with another, and may have committed anachron- 

 isms in the order of their occurrence." 



Again he wrote as follows : 



" T think it would be as well to correct a misapprehen- 

 sion as to the truth and fiction of the paper. It is no 

 fiction. There is no incident in it which has not actually 

 occurred, nor one character who is not well known in the 

 Eocky Mountains, with the exception of two whose names 

 are changed the originals of these being, however, equally 

 well known with the others." 



His last letter, written just before Ms departure from 

 England, a few weeks previously to his death, will hardly 

 be read by any one who ever knew the writer, without a 

 tear of sympathy for the sad fate of this fine young man, 

 dying miserably in a strange land, before he had well com- 

 menced the hazardous journey whose excitement and dan- 

 gers he so joyously anticipated : 



" As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on civil- 

 ised fixings in this ' big village ; ' and this child has felt 

 like going West for many a month, being half froze for 

 buffler-meat and mountain doin's. My route takes me vid 

 New York, the Lakes, and St Louis, to Fort Lavenworth, 

 or Independence, on the Indian frontier. Thence, packing 

 my ' possibles ' on a mule, and mounting a buffalo horse 

 (Panchito, if he is alive), I strike the Santa Fe trail to the 

 Arkansa, away up that river to the mountains, winter in 

 the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La Bonte joined 

 the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to Great Salt 

 Lake and that's far enough to look forward to always 



