NATURE'S REALM. 93 
Great Spirit has given them what are all their 
truths to them? Would an Indian ever meas- 
ure the height of a mountain that he could 
climb? No, never! The legends of his tribe 
tell him nothing about quadrants and _ base- 
lines and angles. Their old braves, however, 
have for ages watched from the cliffs the green 
life in the spring and the yellow death in the 
autumn of their holy forests. Why should he 
ever calculate an eclipse? He always knew 
such occurrences to be the doings of the Great 
Spirit. Science, it is true, can tell the times 
and seasons of their coming, but the Indian, 
when they do occur, looks through Nature 
without the aid of science, up to its cause. Of 
what use is a Lunar to him? His swift canoe 
has the green-embowered shores and well- 
known headlands to guide his course. In fine, 
what are the arts of peace, of war, of agricul- 
ture, or anything civilized, to him? His na- 
ture and its elements, like the pine which 
shadows his wigwam, are too mighty, too 
grand, of too strong a fibre, to form a stock on 
which to ingraft the rose and the violet of pol- 
ished life. No! I must range the hills; I 
must always be able to out-travel my horse ; I 
must always be able to strip my own wardrobe 
from the backs of the deer and buffalo, and to 
feed upon their rich loins; I must always be 
able to punish my enemy with my own hand, 
or I am no longer an Indian. And if I am 
anything else Iam a mere imitation, an ape.” 
The first trappers to penetrate the great 
hunting grounds beyond the Missouri River 
were the French, and the ease with which they 
conformed to Indian customs tended in no 
small degree to mitigate the perils and priva- 
tions of the wilderness. Scarcely a region that 
is breathed ypon by the western winds but 
what has been visited by these adventure- 
loving characters, and a great proportion of 
the mountains, lakes and rivers still retain the 
pleasing-and poetic names bestowed upon them 
in their rude geography. 
Along with a variety of rough accomplish- 
ments, such as the skillful propelling of a frail 
birch bark canoe over the treacherous rapids 
of some rock-vexed river, the unerring direct- 
ness of their course on their overland journeys, 
and their expertness in outwitting and captur- 
ing the sagacious beaver in its haunts, these 
nomadic dandies of the wilderness were gifted 
with a proficiency in the art of love making 
sufficiently remarkable to have excited the envy 
of the most successful cavaliers that ever 
thrummed a guitar in the gardens of Andalu- 
sia; and many a dusky, passionate-eyed mai- 
den of the forest, charmed by the polite and 
winning blandishments of the roaming trap- 
pers, or dazzled by the glittering display of 
beads, colored cloths and other Indian finery 
in the canoes of the picturesque ‘‘Coreurs des 
Bois,” have given their hands and hearts in 
marriage to their bold and volatile admirers. 
A liberal sprinkling of descendents, the result 
of these intermarriages, may be found among 
the various tribes of western Indians, particu- 
larly the Sioux. The half-breeds are charac- 
terized by a gay and careless disposition, with 
a fondness for boisterous amusements, dancing 
and horse racing, the proverbial stoicism ot 
their Indian ancestors being conspicuously ab- 
sent. The early Government exploring parties 
usually employed the Erench voyageurs and 
trappers as guides, scouts and interpreters, 
their knowledge of the country and their flu- 
ency in both the English and Indian tongues 
rendering their services indispensable. 
A prominent specimen of this class is Basil 
Clement, an old ex-guide, scout and inter- 
preter, hunter and trapper, at present residing 
in an old-fashioned double log cabin on the up- 
per Missouri River in Dakota. Clement's wife 
is a half-breed Sioux, a descendent from the 
famous Lewis & Clarke expedition, which years 
ago explored the country in the vicinity of the 
Yellowstone. The knowledge of the geograph- 
ical features of the interior wilderness beyond 
the Missouri which old Basil possesses amounts 
to an instinct, and has ever placed him in the 
foremost rank as a guide and scout in military 
expeditions. 
One night in the winter of '81 Clement was 
one of a party of passengers returning on the 
stage from Deadwood to Fort Pierri. The 
conversation chancing to turn on Clement's 
great reputation as a guide, the passengers, 
simply through an idle curiosity, decided to 
put him to the test. Accordingly during the 
night, whenever a halt was made at the differ- 
