breeze; they were enameled with flowers, as varied in form as in color. But at every bend or twist of the river, you see the same prairie, the same bluffs and the same hills, following the same type and in the same positions, and in spite of their uniformity, they are beautiful yet. I have admired them after the burning summer sun had transformed the vivacious green into a greyish yellow and the supple plant had become hard, dry and crisp, w4iting only for the match of a careless hunter or a spark from the lightning to become the prey of flames. These aspects are disagreeable to the sight. I have seen this country on fire by day. The sun seemed to intensify the flame, and thick clouds of smoke rose above hills, uplands and bottoms, until the light of day was obscured. By night the spectacle is very different. The column of smoke becomes a column of fire; you see fire in all its forms. Here, it is solitary brasiers and snaky flames winding from branch to branch; there, it is a moving wall, a long train of fire, which lengthens, advances and devours everything upon its line of passage. I have passed these places again after the fire had devastated them, leaving not the slightest trace of verdure. These plateaus, these prairies, these bluffs and hills then offered the image of a land of desolation, which it makes one sick to look at. Finally the snows of winter come and cover with a mournful shroud all this strange nature. This is its last and gloomiest transformation; it gives us an idea of the instability of all worldly things.
From the Cheyenne to the mouth of the Platte it is 800 miles, in which distance there are twenty-three tributaries. The principal ones are-White river on the south, 300 yards wide at its mouth; the Niobrara (L'Eau qui Court) on the south; James river (Riviere d Jacques) on the north, and the Big Sioux on the north, IIo yards wide at the mouth.
The Platte, on the south, is 6oo yards wide at its mouth and enters the Missouri 716 (635) miles above the mouth of the latter stream. Its bed is composed of moving sand