TRAPPING IN IOWA 1865-6. 107 
became bewildered and lost. I had nocompass and was 
drifting out to the treeless and shelterless basin of the 
upper Floyd River. Inthe direction I was going, I could 
not hope to strike timber short of sixty miles, and as 
the snow was from one to three feet deep I must become 
exhausted and perish in a few hours. 
In this dilemma, while trying to take observations from 
a raise of ground, I sawon my back trail what appeared, 
though a slight lull in the still flying particles of snow,a 
grove of timber. I immediately retraced my steps, but on 
arriving where the supposed timber was, found nothing 
but elk tracks. These I followed at a venture, and after 
two more hours of snow wading was joyfully surprised to 
find myself within a mile of our trapping camp. 
Towards night it turned blusterous and bitterly cold,and 
the camp fire sent up a cheerful glare that hid the death 
phantom that had followed the wake of my outward trail. 
About the middle of May, Hawthorne and his partner 
broke camp and started homeward, while I remained a 
few days longer to trap the beaver dam runaways. In 
so doing I met with the same trouble of the previous au- 
tumn, namely,from the immense number of wild ducks. 
_ They were there in every variety of plumage-the green 
headed mallard, the red headed fish duck from the Arctic 
and the white plumes from the Hudson Bay country. 
As the May days lengthened and the prairies became 
fresh and green the morning walk to the trap line be- 
came periods of unrest. From the topmost buttes I 
gazed wistfully across the mazy and quivering sea of 
atmosphere that lay between the brakes of Mill Creek 
and the long winding ridges of the Little Sioux Valley 
and the West Fork its tributary stream. I would stand 
