212 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



perienced at their hands he had the utmost horror of Indians. 

 Therefore hiding himself, and taking advantage of every 

 ravine, every tree and bush, he succeeded in regaining the 

 track of the caravan, which he followed for three days without 

 food or sleep, when, to his infinite delight, he overtook it and 

 was relieved from his anxieties. 



On another occasion he was rambling in the vicinity of the 

 camp when a band of Indians, apparently hostile, made its ap- 

 pearance. The alarm was immediately given, with orders to 

 prepare for an expected attack. Nuttall was nowhere to be 

 seen, and a friend ran in search of him. It was not long 

 before he perceived the naturalist at some distance, quietly 

 examining a specimen. He hailed him with signs to return 

 quickly. " We are going to have a brush with the Indians," 

 said his friend ; " is your gun in good order ? " Alas ! the gun 

 had been freely used to uproot plants, and was filled with earth 

 to the muzzle. Had Nuttall fired it in this condition it would 

 inevitably have burst in his hands and killed or severely 

 wounded him. 



On his journey to the Pacific the caravan separated into 

 two parties to cross the Rocky Mountains by different routes. 

 One of the parties had the good fortune to meet with plenty of 

 buffalo cows, upon whose meat they became fat. The other, 

 to which Nuttall belonged, suffered much from fatigue, and 

 found scarcely anything to eat except a few lean grizzly bears. 

 When the parties reunited, Nuttall had lost so much flesh that 

 his old companions could scarcely recognise him. Upon one 

 of these expressing his surprise at the great change in his ap- 

 pearance, he heaved a sigh of inanition and retorted, " Yes, 

 indeed, you would have been just as thin as myself if, like me, 

 you had lived for two weeks upon old Ephraim (grizzly bear), 

 and on short allowance of that too ! " 



At Christmas, 1841, Nuttall returned to England, where he 

 resided for the remaining seventeen years of his life. An uncle 

 who had prospered in business, having no family of his own, 

 bequeathed to him an estate called Nutgrove, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Liverpool. A condition attached to the bequest was 

 that Nuttall should reside in England at least nine months of 

 the year for the rest of his life. He had been thirty-four 

 years in the United States and become much attached to 

 this country, so that, although he had visited England in 1811 



