68 



A CALIFORNIA TRAMP. 



who wished to go back to the States were allowed permission. 

 This party, a part of whom were females, accepted, and being 

 supplied with teams and provisions, started. They were a 

 hard looking party, the women in particular. With short, 

 travel-stained clothing, and dust-begrimed faces and frowsy 

 hair, they proclaimed the fact that woman, as a foot traveler 

 over the plains, is not a prepossessing object. They were short 

 of food, and we gave them some from our stores. 



September 1st. We passed many Indians, who followed us 

 and thronged around us at our noon camp, begging and thiev- 

 ing. They belonged to a village we passed farther on. On 

 an elevation near by we saw a singular burying ground. On 

 scaffolds, six or eight feet high, the corpses, wrapped in robes 

 of the buffalo, were reclining. These stages, rudely built of 

 forked poles and sticks, were the first the deceased took on 

 their journeys to the happy hunting grounds. The sight was 

 very repulsive. A walled sepulchre on the roadside marked 

 the resting place of a "big Injun." 



Our road the next morning lay on the bluffs overlooking the 

 river and through sand, in which our teams were continually 

 stalling. From our high ground we had a fine view of the 

 surrounding country, the most prominent object of which was 

 Laramie Peak. To our right extended the valley of the Platte, 

 as far as the eye could reach, walled in and half hidden by 

 high and precipitous hills ; while from the distant mountains 

 on the left rolled the sparkling waters of the Laramie River, 

 till they mingled with the waves of the larger stream. De- 

 scending the bluffs we moved, up the valley, the whole caval- 

 cade enveloped in clouds of dust. We were now nearing Fort 

 Laramie, and soon the many rude buildings and tents of that 

 post were spread before us. 



