272 FORT ATKINSON. Book II. 
thing in it to send him to sleep. Such fears are not 
unfounded; it is a fact that the whites have attempted 
to poison whole tribes of Indians, and I have myself often 
heard the question discussed how this could be effected in 
the best manner. A story of the designed introduction of 
the small-pox amongst a remote Indian tribe is current in 
the west, and I have heard it related with every particular. 
Fort Atkinson must be an interesting station for a 
botanist. The slight variations in height in the soil exhibit 
a great variety in the character of the vegetation within a 
very small space. Yellow sunflowers, of various kinds, 
red Cinnias, blue Delphiniums and Salvias, white-leaved 
Euphorbias, and innumerable other flowers and herbs show 
a varied mixture of bright colours in the tall grass. Raised 
only a little above this flowery meadow, on the banks of 
the above -described conglomerate, and between detached 
masses of quartz, jasper, lava, &c, is another world of 
plants, on a dwarflike scale, — pigmy Asters, with small 
violet flowers; elegant little mallows, with crimson and 
vermillion blossoms ; low, grey, woolly Artemisias, of an 
alpine character, with a strong aromatic scent, similar to 
the A. muttelina of the Alps ; dwarflike Asclepias ; small 
white Syngenesistse, with only four marginal blossoms, 
which look like Cruciferce, — every kind of such plants in 
miniature, occasionally mixed with a leather -like Opuntia, 
cover the short scanty turf. 
In places a gulley has been washed away into the 
banks of conglomerate, in which gourds creep over the 
ground, while here and there grows an Archemone, or 
some other prickly plant, of which I do not know the 
name, in the crevices and farrows of the marl. 
Whilst encamped above the Fort I followed these con- 
glomerate banks in pursuit of a wolf, but without being 
