484 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



of the way high and dry ground, without water, for which we sometimes suffered 

 very much. From day to day we have dragged along exposed to the hot and burn- 

 ing rays of the sun, without a cloud to relieve its intensity or a bush to shade us 

 or anything to cast a shadow except the bodies of our horses. The grass for a great 

 part of the way was very much dried up, scarcely affording a bite for our horses ; and 

 sometimes for the distance of many miles the only water we could find was in stag- 

 nant pools lying on the highest ground, in which the buffaloes have been lying and 

 wallowing like hogs in a mud-puddle. We frequently came to these dirty lavers, from 

 which we drove the herds of wallowing buffaloes, and into which our poor and almost 

 dying horses irresistibly ran and plunged their noses, sucking up the dirty and poi- 

 sonous draught, until in some instances they fell dead in their tracks. The men also 

 (and oftentimes amongst the number the writer of these lines) sprang from their 

 horses and laded up and drank to almost fatal excess the disgusting and tepid draught, 

 and with it filled their canteens which were slung to their sides, and from which 

 they were sucking the bilious contents during the day. 



In our march wo found many deep ravines, in the bottoms of which there were the 

 marks of wild and powerful streams ; but in this season of drought they were all 

 dried up except an occasional one, where we found them dashing along in the cool- 

 est and clearest manner, and on trial, to our great agony, so salt that even our horses 

 could not drink from them ; so we had occasionally the tantalizing pleasure of hear- 

 ing the roar of and looking into the clearest and most sparkling streams, and after 

 that the dire necessity of drinking from stagnant pools which lay from month to 

 month exposed to the rays of the sun till their waters become so poisonous and heavy 

 from the loss of their vital principle, that they are neither diminished by absorption 

 nor taken into the atmosphere by evaporation. 



This poisonous and indigestible water, with the intense rays of the sun in the hot- 

 test part of the summer, is the cause of the unexampled sickness of the horses and 

 men. Both appear to be suffering and dying with the same disease, a slow and dis- 

 tressing bilious fever, which seems to terminate in a most frightful and fatal affection 

 of the liver. 



HORNED FROGS. 



In these several cruel days' march I have suffered severely, having had all the time 

 (and having yet) a distracting fever on me. My real friend Joe has constantly rode 

 by my side, dismounting and filling my canteen for me, and picking up minerals or 

 fossils which my jaundiced eyes were able to discover as we were passing over them, 

 or doing other kind offices for me when I was too weak to mount my horse without 

 aid. During this march over these dry and parched plains we picked up many cu- 

 rious things of the fossil and mineral kind, and besides them a number of the horned 

 frogs. In our portmanteaus we had a number of tin boxes in which we had carried 

 Seidlitz powders, in which we caged a number of them safely, in hopes to carry them 

 home alive. Several remarkable specimens my friend Joe has secured of these, with 

 the horns of half and three-fourths of an inch in length and very sharp at the points. 



These curious subjects have so often fallen under my eye while on the Upper Mis- 

 souri, that with me they have lost their novelty in a great degree ; but they have 

 amused and astonished my friend Chadwick so much, that he declares he will take 

 every one he can pick up, and make a sensation with them when he gets home. In 

 this way Joe's fancy for horned frogs has grown into a sort of frog- mania, and his 

 eyes are strained all day, and gazing amongst the grass and pebbles as he rides along 

 for his precious little prizes, which he occasionally picks up and consigns to his 

 pockets. * 



* Several months after this, when I visited my friend Joe's room in Saint Louis, he showed me his 

 horned frogs in their little tin hoxes, in good flesh and good condition, where they had existed several 

 months without food of any kind. 



