212 
CHARACTER, 
position,* patiently putting up with inconveniences 
and privations, and never losing that natural good 
temper which so strongly characterizes them. On 
the occasion of my second visit from Moorunde, to 
the Rufus natives in 1841, when I had so far over- 
come the ill-feelings and dread, engendered by the 
transactions in that quarter, in 1840, as to induce a 
large body of them to accompany me back to the 
station, they had to walk a distance of 150 miles, 
making daily the same stages that the horses did, 
and unprovided with any food but what they could 
procure along the road as they passed, and this from 
the rapidity with which they had to travel, and the 
distance they had to go in a day, was necessarily 
limited in quantity, and very far from sufficient to 
appease even the cravings of hunger, yet tired, foot- 
sore, and hungry as they were, and in company with 
strangers, whose countrymen had slain them in 
scores, but a few months before, they were always 
merry at their camps at nights, and kept singing, 
laughing, and joking, to a late hour. 
On falling in with them in larger numbers, when 
I have been travelling in the interior with my party, 
I have still found the same disposition to meet me 
on terms of amity and kindness. Nor can a more 
interesting sight well be imagined, than that of a 
* Such appears usually to be the characteristic of Nature’s 
children, than whom no race appears more thoroughly to enjoy 
life. — Vide character of the American Indians, by Catlin, vol. 1 . 
p. 84. 
