Sketches. 



541 



" In the same place may also be seen the animal which is called 

 Wisionwisk by the savages, and by travellers, the dog of the mea- 

 dows, and to which I would give the name of American squirrel. 

 It is larger than the grey squirrel, but resembles it in every other 

 respect : its manner of moving is as animated and graceful ; the 

 colour of its skin is of a deeper brown ; its teeth and claws are exactly 

 of the same form ; and its tail, shorter and less tufted, shades its 

 pretty head. They never go alone ; a secret instinct keeps them to- 

 gether in families. The situation of their holes is admirably chosen; 

 it is upon the declivity of a hill, the border of a lake, or the bank of 

 a river, and the site is always sufficiently high to secure them against 

 any inundation, however great. The most perfect order reigns in 

 each colony ; one might say, that here is a little model- republic in 

 the midst of the desert. Travellers, who are greatly taken with 

 their admirable industry, and envy their undisturbed tranquillity, 

 relate, that the sole nourishment of these little creatures consists of 

 the grass-roots, and that the dew of heaven forms their only drink. 



" On the 28th, we forded the southern arm of the river Platte. 

 All the land lying between this river and the great mountains is only 

 a heath, almost universally covered with lava and other volcanic sub- 

 stances. The sterile country, says a modern traveller, resembles, in 

 nakedness and the monotonous undulations of its soil, the sandy 

 deserts of Asia. Here no tent has ever been erected, and even 

 the huntsman seldom appears in the best seasons of the year. At 

 all other times the grass is withered, the streams dried up; the 

 buffalo, the stag, and the goat, desert those dreary plains, and retire 

 with the expiring verdure, leaving behind them a vast solitude com- 

 pletely uninhabited. Deep ravines, which were formerly the beds 

 of impetuous torrents, intersect it in every direction, but now-a-days 

 the sight of them only adds to the painful thirst which tortures the 

 traveller. Here and there are heaps of stones, piled confusedly like 

 ruins ; ridges of rock, which rise up before you like impassable bar- 

 riers, and which interrupt, without embellishing, the wearisome 

 sameness of these solitudes. Such are the Black Coasts; beyond 

 the Rocky Mountains rise the imposing land-marks of the Atlantic 

 world. The passes and valleys of this vast chain of mountains afford 

 an asylum to great numbers of savage tribes, many of whom are only 



