THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 515 



stood half-merged, like mermaids, and gazed upon us, siugiug ' Chee-na-sce-nun, chee- 

 nasee-nun, ke-mon-shoo, Jcee-ne-he-?ia, ha-way-tah? shee-sha, shee-sha;' 'How do you do, 

 how do you do? where are you going, old tree? Come here, come here.' ' Lah-kee- 

 hoon! lah-kee-hoon! natoh, catogh! ' ( 'A canoe, a canoe ! see the paddle ! ') In a moment 

 the songs were stopped, the lights were out, the village in an instant was in dark- 

 ness and dogs were muzzled, and nimbly did our paddles ply the water till spy-glass 

 told us, at morning's dawn, that the bank and boundless prairies of grass and green 

 that were all around us were free from following footsteps of friend or foe. A sleep- 

 less night had passed, and lightly tripped our bark, and swift, over the swimming 

 tide during that day, which was one, not of pleasure, but of trembling excitement, 

 while our eyes were continually scanning the distant scenes that were behind us, and 

 our muscles throwing us forward with tireless energy. * * * 



" Night came upon us again, and we landed at the foot of a towering bluff, where the 

 mosquitoes met us with ten thousand kicks and cuffs and importunities, until we 

 were choked and strangled into almost irrevocable despair and madness.* 



"A snaggy bend announced its vicinity just below us by its roaring, and hovering 

 night told us that we could not with safety ' undertake it.' 



11 The only direful alternative was now in full possession of us (I am not going to 

 tell the story yet), for just below us was a stately bluff of two hundred feet in height, 

 rising out of the water at an angle of forty-five degrees, entirely denuded in front, 

 and constituted of clay. 'Montons, montons!' said Ba'tiste, as he hastily clambered 

 up its steep inclined plane on his hands and feet, over its parched surface, which had 

 been dried in the sun ; ' essay ez vous, essayez ! ce'n'est pas difficile, Monsieur Cataline,' 

 exclaimed he, from an elevation of about one hundred feet from the water, where he 

 had found a level platform, of some ten or fifteen feet in diameter, and stood at its 

 brink, waving his hand over the twilight landscape that lay in partial obscurity be- 

 neath him. 



" ' Nous avons ici une belle place pour for to get some slips, some coot slips, vare de 

 dam Riccaree et de dam muskeet shal nevare get si haut, by gar ! Montez, montez 

 en haut.' 



" Bogard and I took our buffalo robes and our rifles, and with difficulty hung and 

 clung along in the crevices with fingers and toes until we reached the spot. We 

 found ourselves about half-way up the precipice, which continued almost perpendic- 

 ular above us ; and within a few yards of us, on each side, it was one unbroken slope 

 from the bottom to the top. In this snug little nook we were most appropriately 

 fixed, as we thought, for a warm summer's night, out of the reach entirely of mus- 

 quitoes, and all other earthly obstacles, as we supposed, to the approaching gratifi- 

 cation for which the toils and fatigues of the preceding day and night had so ad- 

 mirably prepared us. "We spread one of our robes, and having ranged ourselves side 

 by side upon it, and drawn the other one over us, we commenced without further 

 delay upon the pleasurable forgetfulness of toils and dangers which had agitated us 

 for the past day and night. We had got just about to that stage of our enjoyment 

 which is almost resistless and nearly bidding defiance to every worldly obtrusive ob- 

 stacle when the pattering of rain on our buffalo robes opened our eyes to the dismal 

 scene that was getting up about us ! My head was out and on the watch, but the 

 other two skulls were flat upon the ground and there chained by the unyielding links 

 of iron slumber. The blackest of all clouds that ever swept hill iops of grass, of 

 clay, or towering rock was hanging about us, its lightning's glare was incessantly 

 flashing us to blindness, and the giddy elevation on which we were perched seemed 

 to tremble with the roar and jar of distant and the instant bolts and cracks of present 

 thunder! The rain poured and fell in torrents (it's not enough); it seemed floating 

 around and above us in succeeding waves, which burst upon the sides of the immense 



*The gTeater part of the world can never, I am sure, justly appreciate the meaning and application 

 of the above sentence, unless they have an opportunity to encounter a swarm of these tormenting in- 

 sects on the banks of the Missouri or Mississippi River. 



