THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. 



Again he wrote as follows : — 



" I think it would be as well to correct a misapprehension as 

 to the truth or fiction of the paper. It is no fiction. There is 

 no incident in it which has not actually occurred, nor one charac- 

 ter who is not well known in the Rocky 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 his 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 commenced the hazardous journey whose 

 excitement and dangers he so joyously anticipated : — 



*< As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on civilized 

 fixings in this ' big village ;' and this child has felt like going 

 West for many a month, being half froze for huffier meat and 

 mountain doins. My route takes me ma New York, the Lakes, 

 and St. Louis, to Fort Leavenworth, or Independence on the 

 Indian frontier. Thence packing my ' possibles' on a mule, and 

 mounting a bufialo horse (Panchito, if he is alive), I strike the 

 Santa Fe trail to the Arkansas, away up that river to the moun- 

 tains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La 

 Bonte Joined the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to 

 Great Salt Ijake — and that's far enough to look forward 



to always supposing my hair is not lifted by Comanche or 



Pawnee on the scalping route of the Coon Creeks and Pawnee 

 Fork." 



