54 : NOTES TAKEN. 
vicinity, amongst which the indefatigable doctor fairly revelled. 
Our friends got up many little social soirees for us and we 
were also enlivened by a wedding. One of the fair garrison 
belles, leaving parents and friends, cast in her lot with a 
young subaltern of infantry, who, after a four years’ absence 
upon the frontier, returned to the States a Benedict; long 
‘may he and his fair bride enjoy the sweets of the faith 
’ pledged beneath the harvest moon, in the midst of Nature’s 
choicest beauties. 
Poorly paid, and worse equipped, the soldiers of our repub- 
lic never can receive too high a mete of praise for the choice 
that decided and the energy which marks their profession. 
Isolated from home and the world, they carry with them 
into these solitudes, refinements the result of well trained 
habits and education, and moving in a sphere, hallowed by 
feminine grace, beauty, and accomplishments, reality becomes 
romance, though the rose is well armed with thorns. 
The country around Fort Washita bears unmistakeable 
evidences that, at a remote period, old ocean’s surges rolled 
in all their might and majesty over these vast plains. 
Hitherto, the idea that they were once the ancient bed of 
the ocean, appeared to me to be a very plausible theory, but, 
“ experientia docet,” no fact can be more fully established. 
Our explorations developed every water-course, hill side and 
ravine to be filled with fossiliferous remains. The indefati- 
gabie doctor was busy from early dawn to dewy eve with ham 
mer and specimen bag, and his-cabinet now contains fossil sea 
* 
