appearance, happy, and for the first time I heard an Indian really laugh outright. Outside squatted the common herd in a costume which explains the prevalence of rheumatism. The men were in rags, yet they had their coquetry, vermilion streaked down their cheeks and across their foreheads—the Indian fashion of the omnilocal rouge. The women, especially the elders, were horrid objects, shivering and half dressed in breech-cloths and scanty capes or tippets of wolf and rabbit skin: the existence of old age, however, speaks well for the race. Both are unclean; they use no water where Asiatics would; they ignore soap, and rarely repair to the stream, except, like animals, in hot weather.
We then strolled about the camp and called upon the two Mistresses Chokop. One was a buxom dame, broad and strong, with hair redolent of antelope marrow, who boasted of a "wikeap" or wigwam in the shape of a conical tent. The other, much her junior, and rather pretty, was sitting apart in a bower of bushes, with a newly-born pappoose in a willow cage to account for her isolation: the poor thing would have been driven out even in the depth of winter, and were she to starve, she must do without meat. As among the Jews, whenever the Great Father is angry with the daughters of Red Men, they sit apart; they never touch a cooking utensil, although it is not held impure to address them, and they return only when the signs of wrath have passed away. The abodes of the poorer clansmen were three-quarter circles of earth, sticks, and sage-bush to keep off the southerly wind. A dog is usually one of the occupants. Like the African, the Indian is cruel to his brute, starves it and kicks it for attempting to steal a mouthful: "Love me, love my dog," however, is his motto, and he quarrels with the stranger that follows his example. The furniture was primitive. Upon a branch hung a dried antelope head used in stalking: concerning this sport Uncle Billy had a story of his nearly being shot by being mistaken for the real animal; and tripods of timber supporting cloths and moccasins, pans, camp-kettles, stones for grinding grass-seed, and a variety of baskets. The material was mostly willow twig, with a layer of gum, probably from the pine-tree. Some were watertight like the "Hán" of Somaliland; others, formed like the Roman amphora, were for storing grain; while others, in giant cocked-hat shape, were intended for sweeping in crickets and the grass-seeds upon which these Indians feed. The chief gramineæ are the atriplex and chenopodaceous plants. After inspecting the camp we retired precipitately: its condition was that of an Egyptian army's last nighting-place.
About two miles from the station there is a lake covered with water-fowl, from the wild swan to the rail. I preferred, however, to correct my Shoshonee vocabulary under the inspection of Mose Wright, an express rider from a neighboring station. None of your "one-horse" interpreters, he had learned the difficult dialect
