108 FASTING AND FEASTING. 



its virtues, and recommend it as the most innocent and effective medicine, 

 if medicine it may be called, that can be employed for a result so neces- 

 sary to general health. 



Early on the succeding day we resumed our journey. 



I nov/ for the first time noticed a gradual change in the geological 

 character of the country. The soil in many places appears to be sterile, 

 and is generally of a red clayish nature, mixed with sand and fragmentary 

 rock, and strongly impregnated with mineral salts, among which nitre 

 forms a prominent component. Some spots, for a considerable extent, 

 are entirely destitute of vegetation, and present a surface whitened by 

 saline efflorescences, among which nitre and sulphate of soda form a 

 predominant part. 



The character of the various moulds (with the exception of the allu- 

 vion in the vicinity of the rivers and creeks) is almost entirely primitive, 

 like numerous strata of rocks upon which they repose. 



The grass, from the dry specimens of the previous summer's growth, 

 appeared to be of a longer and a coarser kind, and more sparse and iso- 

 lated. The short buffalo-grass of the grand prairie had almost entirely 

 disappeared, — in some places a blueish salt grass (herba saliie) showed 

 itself in plats uncropped by game. Artemisie* or rather greasewood of 

 the mountaineers, became quite abundant, as did absinthe, or wild sage, 

 together with severals specimens of the cacti family, which are the common 

 pest of the mountain prairies. 



The purifying eflects of saline exhalations, with the odor of the grease- 

 wood and absinllie of the prairies, plateaux and table lands, and the balsam 

 and cedar of the adjacent mountains, afforded an atmosphere, even at this 

 unfavorable season, as aromatic as the air of Eden and as wholesome as 

 the deathless clime of Elysium. 



Eastward lay a broad expanse of prairie, bounded only by the horizon, 

 while westward and upon either hand, the high summits of the Black 

 Hills, with their pines and snows, told our ingress to other and wilder 

 scenes. 



Our course for some twenty or twenty-five miles led through a broad 

 valley, though occasionally winding among rugged hills of red-sandstone 

 and primitive rock, with denuded sides and level summits, covered with 

 shrubs and dwarfish pines. 



Towards night, on reaching a small stream, called Horse-shoe creek, 

 we struck camp. One of the party having killed a buck deer, we were 

 promptly on hand, and not at all backward in obeying the calls of appe- 

 tite, sharpened by a continuous abstinence of three days. 



* Lt. Fremont, in his report relative to the proceedings of the expedition of 1842, 

 '3, and '4, has designated some three varieties of shrubs by the general term arte- 

 misie, among v^hich are greasewood and prairie sage. AUhough the latter are of 

 the same family, the difference in their appearance is so marked, I have thought 

 it proper to observe a nominal distinctioa, and for that reason, they are called in 

 subsequent pages by tenr^ familiar to the mountaineers. 



