THE CATLIN COLLECTION OP INDIAN PAINTINGS. 599 



The plate facing page 711 in Donaldson's "Catlin Indian Gallery" is 

 from a photograph taken in 1868, when he had reached the venerable 

 age of seventy-two, about four years prior to his death. A scar on the 

 left cheek, which shows in this picture, was caused accidentally by a 

 hatchet stroke received in boyhood from a comrade with whom he was 

 " playing Indian," an indication that the sight of the delegation in 

 Philadelphia was not the first incident in his life which led to his voca- 

 tion, although it may have been the decisive one. 



Whatever unfavorable criticism may be made of Catlin as a colorist, 

 little disparagement can be made of his accuracy and spirit as a deline- 

 ator. In landscape he seizes the genius of the locality with marvelous 

 quickness and iusight. Any one who has traveled on the Upper Mis- 

 souri will recognize how perfectly, in a few strokes, in the sketch before 

 us (PI. cxxxt, Fig. 1), he has fixed the features of that turbid flood, with 

 its monotonous walls of cottonwood trees, terraced as they rise from the 

 newer to the older alluvial deposits on its shores; with its caving bank, 

 its falling trees and snags on the convexity of the river's curve where 

 the current strikes the land with greatest force, and the low, shelving 

 bank of the opposite side. It is not a placid stream ; with a few well 

 placed Hues he tells us that it moves at the rate of seven miles an hour. 



Geology, sixty years ago, was an infant science. The geologic land- 

 scape artist had not become differentiated from landscape artists in 

 general — to this day but a limited few have obtained high proficiency 

 among this class, vet I doubt if some of the best draftsmen attached 

 to our own Govern 3nt surveys could bring out more correctly the sali- 

 ent features of the ft Tertiary bluffs of the Dakota region than Mr. 

 Catlin has done in the sketch represented in PI. cxxxi, Fig. 2. Such 

 is the country that is so appropriately designated Mauvaises Terres, 

 or Bad Lands. 



PI. cxxxn, Fig. 1, copies his painting of a feature common in the bluffs 

 of the Upper Missouri region, where small interrupted deposits of hard 

 sandstone are mingled with much softer formations, not greatly exceed- 

 ing ordinary clay in hardness. These pieces of sandstone, protecting 

 the underlying soft rock from erosion by the rain, cause a series of 

 pillars to be formed, as shown in the painting. A seam of lignite runs 

 along the base of the bluff. The flood plain of the Missouri, here almost 

 treeless, forms the distance. 



The picture shown in PI. cxxxti, Fig. 2, represents conical hills, which 

 are very common in the same country. From these summits, during 

 the rare rains of the region, streams of temporary existence flow with 

 great force and cut deep, narrow, fantastic gulleys in the alluvial soil, 

 such as that shown in the painting. These hills are striped horizon- 

 tally in divers beautiful colors, being composed of strata of different 

 tints to which the original canvas does ample justice. 



Everywhere he has seized the distinctive features of the land- 

 scape and apparently with an iutuitive understanding of its geologic 



