VI 



Camp Life 155 



on us, so we folded our tents like the Arabs and 

 silently vanished away. Then we travelled west- 

 ward to Fort Laramie, which is situated at the foot 

 of the beautiful Laramie Peak, where the granite 

 of the Rockies bursts through the prairie, and 

 there, and in the Black Hills to the north-west, 

 we abode and hunted till a day or two ago. We 

 got three sheep, but none of them with very fine 

 horns. We saw lots of lynxes ; they run at a 

 tremendous pace with their little tails stuck up, 

 till you overtake them, then they turn and spit at 

 you like cats, but they are not dangerous. We 

 really lead a very hard life ; we have been camped 

 in single - walled tents for nearly the last three 

 months, and have had to lie out in frosts which, 

 at home, would be considered intense. We have 

 to roll ourselves up at night in buffalo robes and 

 blankets, leaving only a small air-hole to breathe 

 through, and in the morning this is coated with 

 ice. Where we go next I hardly know, but at 

 present the idea is to run down to New Mexico. 



' December 24///. — Our New Mexico trip is given 

 up, a conclusion which I regard with mixed feelings. 

 I should have liked to have seen the country very 

 much — it is wonderful — but we hear that, at present, 

 it is really too dangerous, those fiends the Apaches 

 are on the war-path. We have all been forced to 

 take to buck-skins, nothing else will stand the work, 

 so expect a figure all fringes, and tags, and lappets, 

 and dried gore, to present himself at Highgate 



