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and tertiary exist everywhere over the Plains, in basins which form the most natural reservoirs for a petroleum deposit, and are often sufficiently indurated to retain it,

On the way back to Denver, we found growing on one of the sand-hills a running verbena entirely new to both of us; in form exactly resembling the scarlet variety of our gardens, but bearing profuse blossoms of a brilliant blue tint, which would have thrown into ecstasies any of those florists who have spent such effort to produce it artificially. We dug up several of the plants, and, the rain favoring, kept sufficient soil about the roots to transplant them successfully in Mr. Pierce's garden on our return.

The day before we left Denver, we had an opportunity to witness one of those periodic incursions of the Arrapahoe tribe of Indians, which led a new-come Irishman to ask on one occasion "whether that was the reason why Americans called the season Indian summer." In Denver nobody says "Arrapahoe." The wag who first misquoted "Lo the poor Indian" has perpetuated himself in Denver by the fact that Indians there are always called "the Lo Family." "How are you, Lo (or Mr. Lo)?" is the familiar address of a copper-colored warrior. Of a sudden, just about midday, the Messrs., Mistresses, Masters, and Misses Lo swarmed in the streets of Denver, with as little preface as seventeen-year locusts. They might have come out of holes in the ground. Some of the men had magnificent buffalo-robes, elegantly worked and stained on the inside; others had robes of wolf-skin; and I saw a number of fine blankets. But the majority of the tribe were half naked, and in a condition of squalid filth. One of the squaws en

tered a grocery store with a baby bound to her back, and a greasy blanket over all. In her hand she held some pieces of deer-skin work for barter. Her eye wandered with a savage restlessness over the shelves, and fell to an open barrel of brown sugar. An Arrapahoe can no more resist sugar than a wasp. Mrs. Lo uttered a guttural of exultation, thrust the deer-skin into the grocer's hands, whipped the baby out of his pouch in a jiffy, cast her blanket on the floor, and after throwing into the middle of it all the sugar she could scoop before the grocer cried, "Hold!" tied it up composedly by the corners, hung it over one arm and her offspring over the other, marching out of the store with all the dignity of Penthesilea, and considerably fewer clothes than that royal Amazon wore on public occasions; in other words, nothing but a breech-cloth.

Towards nightfall might occasionally be seen a stalwart brave stalking out of the town towards the encampment, metaphorically speaking with his hands in his pockets, and a high-bred insolence in his carriage, followed by a trail of wives laden with babies and the day's shopping of the family. I was about to utter a sneer at the cruelty of savage life, when a question occurred to me whether women still carry the heaviest burdens in our own civilized society. Here is Mrs. Lo stumbling under twenty pounds of sugar and young Indian; but I have known white wives who had loads to carry for their lords something heavier and far less sweet.

On the 23d of June, two of us resumed our journey toward California, by the Overland wagon. The other two stayed behind to visit friends who had introduced Eastern farming to a well timbered tract

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of low bottom land on the Platte, near Denver. Our party was to reunite at Salt Lake or at some intermediate station.

Nothing noticeable occurred on the road to Latham to change the moonlight impression of it which I have heretofore given, with the exception of Arrapahoe Indians. They were on their way southward, and those we had seen in or around Denver were the mere skirmish line of the tribe. For the first forty miles out of Denver, we were perpetually meeting parties of them on horseback, or encamped under black skin tents resembling the Sibley, and having quite an improved style of egress at the apex of the cone for the smoke, which among some tribes has no means of exit but the front slit. They made no hostile signs, being for the present on their summer tour, and not their war-path; but I could not help thinking of them, as I have among lunatics in an asylum, or wild beasts in a menagerie, how little they knew their power, or how to exercise it. There were enough of them to have swept away every vestige of civilization between Latham and Pike's Peak. The puniest woman who could wield my Ballard's carbine was a match for ten of them.

We found tents pitched near several of the stations where we stopped to change horses, and took advantage of the halt to push our acquaintance with the Arrapahoes. I was particularly anxious to see the noble Indian. When a boy, I read everything that was ever written about him. At that time of life, I regarded him as a sort of every-day Alexander the Great, slightly tinctured with Damon and Pythias. He principally followed burning himself at stakes, rather liked it than otherwise,-so much so that he

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