the morning. After doing honor to our host's eggs, we resumed our march to make twenty-two miles. The road crosses immense and beautiful plateaus, which present innumerable parterres, where, at this agreeable season of the year, the lovely little daisy abounds; it is really the queen of this country. It appears in all its splendor, in the most vivid and most varied colors; it ranges from snow white to purple, red, blue and the deepest yellow.
We came to Bijou toward three in the afternoon, and camped near a clear cold spring. These very high hills serve as landmarks in these parts; they can be seen for thirty miles away. Everywhere in these elevated plains you come upon numerous natural basins or reservoirs, which really deserve to be called lakes, being three to six miles in extent. They fill up every spring, at the time of the melting of the Snow and during the rainy seasons. Ducks, wild geese, snipe and other aquatic birds abound; they make their nests in the reeds and tall grass.
We passed by several large prairie-dog villages. Their inhabitants live underground and seem to live in harmony with the owl, the prairie hawk and the rattlesnake. At the approach of the hunter, they are sometimes seen to enter the same hole all together. Formerly, these fair plains supported numerous herds of buffalo, elk and deer; to-day, since the military road has crossed them, the large animals have disappeared. We saw in the distance a few antelope, and along the road a great number of snipe, prairie-chickens, wild pigeons and a variety of small birds.
The Sioux chief of the Brule tribe, Katanka-Wakan, or Ghost Bull, joined us on the road, and we camped together at the foot of the hills at Bijou. Here a Canadian pioneer has built his cabin. I baptized his five little children.
May 25th. The night was cold; water froze in my tent. We left the hills at Bijou at six in the morning and re sumed our journey. We crossed another series of plateaus, parterres of variegated flowers and slightly rolling prairies, where ponds of water are frequent. These usually evapo