A FOREBODING OF MISFORTUNE. 149 
whatever side I reclined, sleep obstinately refused to come 
to my eyelids. True, twice I had to turn out of my warm 
and snug blankets to see what disturbed my mare and 
mule, but this was a nightly occurrence; nevertheless, a 
load seemed settled upon my spirits—in fact, I had a fore- 
boding of misfortune. But daylight at length came. How 
blessed is its appearance to the storm-tossed mariner, the 
invalid on a sick-couch, ay, and to the wanderer who is far 
beyond civilization—a sojourner in a land where savage 
brutes and doubly savage man surround him, craving for 
the darkness of night to accomplish his destruction! At 
the period I speak of, I was among the Black Hills, at that 
time, although not many years since, the favorite retreat 
of the grizzly bear, and the frequent lurking-place of the 
young brave, or war party of Indians, craving for an op- 
portunity to shed an enemy’s blood. To win honor they 
had left their tribe, and to return with a scalp was to reap 
the reward. 
When day became sufficiently advanced, and the mists 
that wrapped the valley in their impenetrable shroud had 
rolled up the hill-sides, I sedulously searched around my 
solitary bivouac to find if there were grounds for my un- 
easiness. In gradually increasing circles I walked around 
the camp, and until I had gained the distance of a hundred 
yards from it, no impression on the fast-disappearing snow, 
no broken twig, nor disturbed rotten limb, indicated that I 
was not far from animal life. By degrees I increased the 
diameter of my circling search, and was all but returning, 
satisfied that my own excited imagination had been playing 
me tricks, when I came across the wide-spread, deep im- 
pressions of an immense bear. Whatever others might 
think, in such utter desolation and loneliness, it was pleas- 
ing to learn that Bruin was my foe instead of a stealthy 
redskin. 
