streams, which only serve now to torment the traveler and augment his thirst. At long intervals the monotony of this great desert is interrupted by heaps of stones, piled in confusion, like ruins; or perhaps it is traversed by ridges of rocks, rising up before the traveler like insurmountable barriers; such are the Black Hills. Beyond rise the Rocky Mountains, the boundaries of the Atlantic world. The gorges and valleys of this vast chain give a refuge to a great number of savage tribes, some of which are but the mutilated remainders of different peoples, formerly peaceful possessors of the prairies, now driven back by war into almost inaccessible defiles, where the spoiler ceases at length to pursue them.
It seems that this western desert, such as I have described it, must forever defy the industry of civilized man. There are perhaps some places, more fortunately situated upon the banks of rivers, where agriculture could be successfully practiced; others might be converted into grazing lands as fertile as those of the east; but it is to be feared that, with very little exception, this immense region is nothing more than an ocean between civilization and barbarism, where bands of malefactors, organized like the caravans of the Arabs, may work their depredations with impunity. Some day perhaps it may be the cradle of a new people, composed of the old savage races and of this class of adventurers, of the fugitive and the banished, thrust out from the bosom of society, a heterogeneous and menacing population, which the American Union is piling up like a sinister cloud upon its frontiers, increasing continually its strength and its irritation by transporting whole tribes of Indians from their birthplace on the banks of the Mississippi, into the places of exile assigned them among these western solitudes. These savages bring with them an implacable hatred of the whites, who, they say, have driven them from their own country, far from the burial-places of their fathers, that they may take unjust possession of their heritage. If some of these tribes