and our biscuit; all this takes about three-quarters of an hour. By five o'clock we were on the road.
There is not room in this letter to give you, day by day, the details of our march and of the country we traversed. To spare you wearisome repetitions, I will mention here that the country through which we rode for about 250 miles, is a succession of smiling undulating plains and of immense high plateaus, entirely without timber. The soil, or vegetable earth, is very light throughout and in many places impregnated with saltpetre, making the standing water disagreeable to drink, and unwholesome. In summer especially running water is scarce. The Cannonball river has but a small volume of flow throughout its entire course. It takes its source in certain promontories, visible at two days' journey, which the Indians call the Rainy or Cloudy Buttes,
being incessantly enveloped in a bluish fog. All its tributaries consist of springs, and water-holes which in summer contribute their quota to the mother stream only in the frequent momentary showers, except in rainy seasons. It
abounds in little fish, muskrats and beaver. Here and there on the banks of these little streams one finds the elder, the elm and the wild cherry, which has a pretty and fragrant flower and a very agreeable fruit, which the Indians gather
with care. When wood fails, dry buffalo dung is used for
fuel; it burns like peat. The plains are covered with a short but very nutritious grass called buffalo grass, which will some day serve to support and fatten numberless domestic
herds.4 Everywhere the pomme blanche is found in abundance - a kind of wild potato, which Providence has sown here in profusion for the maintenance of its poor children of the desert. When an Indian is pressed by hunger, he has only to dismount from his horse, and armed with a little pointed stick of hard wood, which he always carries when traveling, he will pull out roots enough in ten minutes to satisfy him for the moment. This potato is farinaceous,
4 This prophecy has long since been fulfilled in the immense stockgrazing business of the plains.