probably all other causes combined. They destroyed nearly all the vegetables cultivated last year at Fort Randall, and extended their ravages east as far as Iowa."
As we advanced, the horizon, every where within musket-shot—a wearying sight!—widened out, and the face of the country notably changed. A scrap of blue distance and high hills—the "Court-house" and others—appeared to the northwest. The long, curved lines, the gentle slopes, and the broad hollows of the divide facing the South Fork changed into an abrupt and precipitous descent, "gullied" like the broken ground of sub-ranges attached to a mountain chain. Deep ravines were parted by long narrow ridges, sharp-crested and water-washed, exposing ribs and backbones of sandstone and silicious lime, like the vertebrae of some huge saurian: scatters of kunker, with a detritus of quartz and granite, clothed the ground, and, after passing Lodge-Pole Creek, which bears away to the west, the rocky steps required the perpetual application of the brake. Presently we saw a dwarf cliff inclosing in an elliptical sweep a green amphitheatre, the valley of our old friend the Platte. On the far bank of its northern fork lay a forty-mile stretch of sandy, barren, glaring, heat-reeking ground, not unlike that which the overland traveler looking southward from Suez sees.[1] We left far to the right a noted spot, Ash Hollow, situated at the mouth of the creek of the same prenomen. It is described as a pretty bit in a barren land, about twenty acres, surrounded by high bluffs, well timbered with ash and cedar, and rich in clematis and other wild flowers. Here, in 1855, the doughty General Harney, with 700 to 800 men, "gave Jessie" to a large war-party of Brûlé Sioux under their chief Little Thunder, of whom more anon, killing 150, and capturing 60 squaws and children, with but seven or eight casualties in his own force.
Descending into the bed of a broad "arroyo,"[2] at this season bone dry, we reached, at 5 45 P.M., Mud-Spring Station, which takes its name from a little run of clear water in a black miry hollow. A kind of cress grows in it abundantly, and the banks are bright with the "morning-glory" or convolvulus. The station-house was not unlike an Egyptian fellah's hut. The material was sod, half peat with vegetable matter; it is taken up in large flakes after being furrowed with the plow, and is cut to proper lengths with a short-handled spade. Cedar timber,[3] brought from the neighboring hills, formed the roof. The only accommodation was an open shed, with a sort of doorless dormitory by its side.
- ↑ According to Lieutenant Warren, the tract called the Sand-hills occupies an area, north of the Platte, not less than 20,000 square miles: from between the Niobrara and White Rivers to the north, probably beyond the Arkansas in the south.
- ↑ The Arabo-Spanish "arroyo," a word almost naturalized by the Anglo-Americans, exactly corresponds with the Italian "fiumara" and the Indian nullah.
- ↑ The word "cedar," in the United States, is applied to various genera of the pine family. The red cedar (J. Virginiana) is a juniper. The "white cedar" of the Southern swamps is a cypress.
