THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 445 



The shrub which bears them resembles some varieties of the thorn, though (as I 

 have said) differs entirely in the color of its leaves. It generally grows to the height 

 of six or seven feet, and often to ten or twelve, and in groves or hedges, in some 

 places, for miles in extent. While gathering the fruit, and contemplating it as capa- 

 ble of producing good wine, I asked my men this question : " Suppose we three had 

 ascended the river to this point in the spring of the year, and in a timbered bottom 

 had pitched our little encampment, and one of you two had been a boat-builder, and 

 the other a cooper — the one to have got out your staves and constructed the wine 

 casks, and the other to have built a mackinaw-boat, capable of carrying fifty or a 

 hundred casks ; and I had been a good hunter, capable of supplying the little en- 

 campment with meat ; and we should have started off about this time, to float down 

 the current, stopping our boat wherever we saw the finest groves of the buffalo bush, 

 collecting the berries and expressing the juice, and putting it into our casks for fer- 

 mentation while on the water for two thousand miles ; how many bushels of these 

 berries could you two gather in a day, provided I watched the boat and cooked your 

 meals ? And how many barrels of good wine do you thiuk we could offer for sale in 

 Saint Louis when we should arrive there?" 



This idea startled my two men exceedingly, and Ba'tiste gabbled so fast in French 

 that I could not translate; and I am almost willing to believe, that but for want of 

 the requisite tools for the enterprise, I should have lost the company of Bogard and 

 Ba'tiste ; or that I should have been under the necessity of submittiug to one of the 

 unpleasant alternatives which are often regulated by the majority in this strange and 

 singular wilderness. 



I at length, however, got their opinions on the subject ; when they mutually agreed 

 they could gather thirty bushels of this fruit per day ; and I gave it then, and I offer 

 it now, as my own also, that their estimate was not out of the way, and judged so far 

 from the experiments which we made in the following manner : We several times 

 took a large mackinaw blanket which I had in the canoe, and spreading it on the 

 ground under the bushes, where they were the m ost abundantly loaded with fruit ; and 

 by striking the stalk of the tree with a club, we received the whole contents of its 

 branches in an instant on the blanket, which was taken up by the corners, and not 

 unfrequently would produce us, from one blow, the eighth part of a bushel of this fruit; 

 when the boughs, relieved of their burden, instantly flew up to their natural position. 



Of this beautiful native, which I think would form one of the loveliest ornamental 

 shrubs for a gentleman's park or pleasure grounds, I procured a number of the roots ; 

 but which, from the many accidents and incidents that our unlucky bark was sub- 

 jected to on our rough passage, I lost (and almost the recollection of them), as well as 

 many other curiosities I had collected on our way down the river. [See No, 387.] 



A FALSE SCENT. 



On the morning of the next day, and not long after we had stopped and taken our 

 breakfast, and while our canoe was swiftly gliding along under the shore of a beau- 

 tiful prairie, I saw in the grass, on the bank above me, what I supposed to be the back 

 of a fine elk, busy at his grazing. I left our craft float silently by for a little distance, 

 when I communicated the intelligence to my men, and slyly run in to the shore. I 

 pricked the priming of my fire-lock, and taking a bullet or two in my mouth, stepped 

 ashore, and trailing my rifle in my hand, went back under the bank, carefully crawl- 

 up in a little ravine, quite sure of my game ; when to my utter surprise and violent 

 alarm, I found the elk to bo no more nor less than an Indian pony, getting his break- 

 fast, and a little beyond him a number of others grazing; and nearer to me, on the 

 left, a war-party reclining around a little fire ; and yet nearer, and within twenty paces 

 of the muzzle of my gun, the naked shoulders of a brawny Indian, who seemed busily 

 engaged in cleaning his gun. From this critical dilemma the reader can easily ima- 

 gine that I vanished with all the suddenness and secrecy that was possible, bending 

 my coarse towards my canoe. Bogard and Ba'tiste correctly construing the expres- 



