PAGE Deer-Shooting.-Life on the Prairies.-Beautiful Encampment.-Hunt- er's Luck.-Anecdotes of the Delawares and their Superstitions, . 77 A Sick Camp.-The March.-The Disabled Horse.-Old Ryan and the Stragglers.-Symptoms of Change of Weather, and Change of Hu- THE CAMP OF THE WILD HORSE.-Hunters' Stories.-Habits of the Fording of the North Fork.-Dreary Scenery of the Cross Timber.— Scamper of Horses in the Night.-Osage War Party.-Effects of a A Council in the Camp.-Reasons for Facing Homewards.-Horses Lost.-Departure with a Detachment on the Homeward Route. PAGE INTRODUCTION. HAVING, since my return to the United States, made a wide and varied tour, for the gratification of my curiosity, it has been supposed that I did it for the purpose of writing a book; and it has more than once been intimated in the papers, that such a work was actually in the press, containing scenes and sketches of the Far West. These announcements, gratuitously made for me, before I had put pen to paper, or even contemplated any thing of the kind, have embarrassed me exceedingly. I have been like a poor actor, who finds himself announced for a part he had no thought of playing, and his appearance expected on the stage before he has committed a line to memory. I have always had a repugnance, amounting almost to disa bility, to write in the face of expectation; and, in the presen instance, I was expected to write about a region fruitful of won ders and adventures, and which had already been made the theme of spirit-stirring narratives from able pens; yet about which I had nothing wonderful or adventurous to offer. |