TRAPPING IN NORTH DAKOTA 1871. 123 
fold, the retura trip being previously described in Frontier 
and Indian Life under the caption, ‘With a Gros Ventre 
| War Party.” 
About the beginning of October, we reset the traps at 
| the lake with profitable results; after which we packed 
our pony and loaded our bull boat, to make a journey by 
| land and water to the mouth of Heart River, a noted 
wild game stream, putting into the Missouri from the 
| west side about twenty-five miles below our place of 
| launching. 
‘ On the morning of our departure, the atmospheric ele- 
. “ments nestled down to a dead calm, and a misty fog hung 
| ‘over the river Missouri, like aveil. The swirling current 
| of the channel emitted roaring sounds that deafened us 
a to all else as we drifted slowly along. 
4 At a little cottonwood point in the narrows below the 
Burnt Woods,—about one mile from our point of start- 
ing—we got sight of an object and heard humaniike 
| sounds, apparantly, une from it. As we neared the 
He place the mist arose sufficiently to see that we were rapid- 
a ly drifting on a huge sawyer that was bedded between 
| two cross currents, and seemed to have a man clinging 
'to it. But all disappeared as we passed rapidly by, save 
the ponderous snag whipping the water with unceasing 
pressure of the turbulent current. We concluded that 
the apparition was some unlucky boatman, who being 
asleep was dashed against the snag and drowned at that 
time, or was a phantom of some past accident. The In- 
“dians bore us out in this latter theory,they believing this 
. neighborhood subject to visitation of ghosts, or, as they 
sometimes foe a —‘‘where people have medicine put 
over their eyes.’ 
