504 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



which had now become saturated with water, it had sunk entirely under the surface, 

 letting me down nearly to the waist in the water. In this critical way I moved slowly 

 along, keeping the sticks together under me, and at last, when I reached the shore, 

 some of the long and awkward limbs projecting from my raft having reached it before 

 me, and, being suddenly resisted by the bank, gave the instant signal for its dissolu- 

 tion and my sudden debarkation, when I gave one grand leap in the direction of the 

 bank, yet some yards short of it, and into the water from head to foot, but soon 

 crawled out, and wended my way a mile or two up the shore, where I found my canoe 

 snugly and safely moored in the willows, where I stepped into it and paddled back to 

 the island and to the same spot where my misfortunes commenced, to enjoy the pleas- 

 ure of exultations which were to flow from contrasting my present with my former 

 situation. 



"Thus the island of Mas-co-tin soon lost its horrors, and I strolled two days and en- 

 camped two nights upon its silent shores, with prairie hens and wild fowls in abun- 

 dance for my meals. From this 'lovely ground, which shows the peaceful graves of 

 hundreds of red men, who have visited it before me, I paddled off in my light bark, 

 and said, as I looked back, ' Sleep there in peace, ye brave fellows, until the sacri- 

 legious hands of white man and the unsympathizing ploughshare shall turn your 

 bones from their quiet and beautiful resting-place !' 



" Two or three days of strolling brought me again to the Camp Des Moines, and from 

 thence, with my favorite little bark canoe placed upon the deck of the steamer, I em- 

 barked for Saint Louis, where I arrived in good order and soon found the way to the 

 comfortable quarters from whence I am now writing." 



When I finished telling this story to Joe, his portrait was done, and I rejoiced to 

 find that I had given to it all the fire and all the game look that had become so famil- 

 iar and pleasing to me in our numerous rambles in the far distant wilds of our former 

 campaigns.* 



CANOE LOST. 



When I had landed from the steamer Warrior, at the wharf, I left all other consid- 

 erations to hasten and report myself to my dear wife, leaving my little canoe on deck 

 and in the especial charge of the captain, till I should return for it in the afternoou 

 and remove it to safe storage with my other Indian articles, to form an interesting 

 part of my museum. On my return to the steamer it was missing, and, like one that I 

 have named on a former occasion, by some medicine operation forever severed from 

 my sight, thongh not from my recollections, where it will long remain, and also in a 

 likeness which I made of it just after the trick it played me on the shore of the Mas- 

 co-tin Island. 



After I had finished the likeness of my friend Joe, and had told him the two stories, 

 I sat down and wrote thus in my note-book, and now copy it into my letter : 



THE WEST. 



The West— not the " Far West," for that is a phantom, traveling on its tireless 

 wing, but the west, the simple west — the vast and vacant wilds which lie between 

 the trodden haunts of present savage and civil life — the great and almost boundless 

 garden-spot of earth ! This is the theme at present. The " antres vast and deserts 

 idle," where the tomahawk sleeps with the bones of the savage, as yet untouched by 

 the trespassing ploughshare — the pictured land of silence, which, in its melancholy, 

 alternately echoes backward and forward the plaintive yells of the vanished red men 

 and the busy chants of the approaching pioneers. I speak of the boundless plains of 

 beauty, and nature's richest livery, where the waters of the " great deep" parted in 

 peace, and gracefully passed off without leaving deformity behind them ; over whose 



* Poor Chad wick ! a few days after the above occasion, he sent his portrait to his mother, and started 

 for Texas, where he joined the Texan army, with a commission from Governor Houston ; was taken 

 prisoner in the first battle that he fought, and was amongst the four hundred prisoners who were shot 

 down in cold blood by the order of Santa Anna. — G. C. 



