LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



73 



camped on the spot, and many a draught of the delicious 

 sparkling water they quaffed in honour of the " medicine " 

 of the fount. Rube, however, sat sulky and silent, his 

 huge form bending over his legs, which were crossed, 

 Indian fashion, under him, and his long bony fingers 

 spread over the fire, which had been made handy to the 

 spring. At last they elicited from him that he had sought 

 this spot for the purpose of " making medicine" having 

 been persecuted by extraordinary ill-luck, even at this early 

 period of his hunt the Indians having stolen two out of 

 his three animals, and three of his half-dozen traps. He 

 had therefore sought the springs for the purpose of invok- 

 ing the fountain spirits, which, a perfect Indian in his 

 simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit their mys- 

 terious waters. When the others had, as he thought, fallen 

 asleep, La Bonte observed the ill-starred trapper take from 

 his pouch a curiously-carved red stone pipe, which he care- 

 fully charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then ap- 

 proaching the spring, he walked three times round it, and 

 gravely sat himself down. Striking fire with his flint and 

 steel, he lit his pipe, and bending the stem three several 

 times towards the water, he inhaled a vast quantity of 

 smoke, and bending back his neck and looking upwards, 

 puffed it into the air. He then blew another puff towards 

 the four points of the compass, and emptying the pipe into 

 his hand, cast the consecrated contents into the spring, say- 

 ing a few Indian " medicine " words of cabalistic import. 

 Having performed the ceremony to his satisfaction, he 

 returned to the fire, smoked a pipe on his own hook, and 

 turned into his buffalo -robe, conscious of having done a 

 most important duty. 



In the course of their trapping expedition, and accom- 

 panied by Rube, who knew the country well, they passed 

 near the Great Salt Lake, a vast inland sea, whose salitrose 

 waters cover an extent of upwards of one hundred and 

 forty miles in length, by eighty in breadth. Fed by seve- 

 ral streams, of which the Big Bear River is the most con- 

 siderable, this lake presents the curious phenomenon of a 

 vast body of water without any known outlet. According 



