more and more imitated in the Middle States, at the West, and even under a different social system of the South. Cherish no fears, then, oh apprehensive friends! for you may rest assured, that democracy is spreading the noblest influences of art, knowledge, and religion along with an unprecedented material development. "The house that is a building," quoth Carlyle, "is not the house that is built," and a wise man beholds through the smut and rubbish that encumber the scaffolding the fair proportions of the finished edifice.

But the most striking fact of our growth is its tendency to a more beneficent and harmonious social union. The physical aspects of the Continent, as we have already seen, point the way to this end,-the mobile and enterprising character of our people looks in the same direction; the prodigious multiplication of the mere mechanical means of intercourse promote it; the common legislation of the central

government cherishes a common national spirit, while the general sentiment of the popular heart, in spite of political prejudices or local estrangements, which are few and temporary, is melting the entire nation into a close and fraternal unity. Every day, in the face of that powerful expansive movement which carries us over the broad territories of the West, and to the unoccupied or misused lands of the South, we are getting nearer to each other in space, and drawing nearer to each other in mutual respect and affection. We are thus exemplifying that process which is the distinguishing mark of the highest civilization, viz., the growth of a more and more complex association among men; and we are also reaching forward towards the ideal of a true Christian life, according to that beautiful image of the Scriptures drawn from the harmonious workings of the natural body, which represents mankind as "members one of another," in a spirit of universal fellowship and peace.

ON the 20th of May, A. D., 1852, I was

pursuing my slow and somewhat devious course across the unbroken wilderness which lies between our Western frontier and California. Who I am is of no particular consequence, as this I is a very vague, commonplace, generic sort of character, in the commencement of a story, that may even feel flattered if he has succeeded in throwing around himself any individual interest at its conclusion. As the motives, however, which impel a man to such a journey, and the objects he has in view, seem to come more within the range of a natural curiosity, and may serve to give a coloring to the incidents of his story, it will perhaps be expected that I admit the reader to my confidence in this respect.

First, then, negatively, I was on no tour of exploration or scientific discovery. I had not sold, or—what is the same thing -mortgaged a good farm in the settled States to purchase a square rod of claim in the El Dorado. I had not set out with the "sink or swim, live or die " determination of making a fortune. I can only

SPENSER'S Fairy Queen,

plead guilty, in this particular, to the indistinct vision of a "pile," which every one who turns his face towards the land of golden hills and auriferous streams has floating before his imagination. In the second place, positively, if I can bring out of the haze of memory what was then not very distinct in my consciousness, the only motives which I can specify-though it is not a very satisfactory account to give of myself-were curiosity and the love of adventure. I should, perhaps, add an unsettled state of mind caused by domestic circumstances, with which you, dear reader, have no concern, and which I now wonder had then such power to move

me.

I had already, in my short life, twice been to California-once by the way of the Isthmus, and, years before its golden mines were discovered, I had visited the then unimportant town of San Francisco -but I had never travelled in the deep solitude of vast prairies and rugged mountains, thousands of miles from the haunts of civilization. I had never been in the lodge of the Pawnee, the Sioux, the Oma

haw, the Cheyenne, the "Digger," and the Lord only knows how many more tribes of Indians, nor held a pow-wow with these unsophisticated aboriginals; and my long cherished purpose to do this must be gratified. Besides, I wished to shake hands with my friend Brigham Young, and get a peep into his Haremnot knowing but the sight of the sacred plates, or of some Mormon beauty, might convert me to the latter revelations, and salt me down on the borders of the great lake of that name.

But, whatever brought me there-there I was, on the aforesaid 20th, in the desert, about a day's journey from New Fort Kearney, on the military route to Oregon, and about three hundred miles from my starting point on the Missouri River. I was well equipped for such a journey. A light carriage, drawn by two thoroughbreds, which as yet had shown no diminution of mettle or bottom, led the way. This was a regular multum in parvo, constructed after a plan of my own, at considerable expense, and was provided with appliances of comfort, means of defence, and sources of amusement, that would make the uninitiated wonder. Not a square inch of its interior but was hung with munitions of war, fishing tackle, books, &c. &c., not omitting all the essentials to a dear lover of the weed-alas! all destined, with the exception of my splendid meerschaum,-now hanging in triumph over the mantel,-vehicle, and all, to lie scattered in fragmentary confusion along the route. A large, four horse caravan-looking wagon, filled with provender for man and beast, cooking utensils, bedding, &c., followed. Besides these I had some spare animals for the saddle, and to supply the places of any which might give out. My companions were three active and hardy sons of the West, whom I had engaged to go with me for "aid and comfort."

The day had been cold and disagreeable; and warned by the black and lowering sky, and the gathering clouds, which portended a coming storm, I concluded to stop some time before the approach of evening. My tent was therefore pitched, and every thing made secure for the night, the horses turned out, and our hearty meal of bacon and hard bread concluded. It was not yet dark, when an infatuated desire of "passing an evening out" began to possess me. The monotony of the journey had become somewhat oppressive; my internal resources had begun to fail; Shakespeare did not seem quite so original as usual; and no one, who has

any more impressibility than a Turk, can smoke all the time. My restlessness was undoubtedly increased by the knowledge of the fact that there were other encampments, in my immediate vicinity, of fellowtravellers wending their way Californiaward, on the same graceless errand with myself, who had also been admonished to secure quarters for the night before the storm broke upon them. I had formed the acquaintance of some of them, in the excursions which I was accustomed to make from my own party, on horseback, in search of amusement, and of the "variety which is the spice of life," especially on such a journey. The previous day I had thus fallen in with a Dr. C—e, of St. Louis, and his amiable and accomplished lady, who were braving the fatigues of a journey "across lots" to San Francisco, where I trust he is now reaping a rich harvest of professional success. His tent I supposed to be about a mile from my own, and I pined for the society I had found so congenial. So, encasing myself in an India Rubber suit, and paying no heed to the warnings of my companions, or the still, small voice of presentiment in my own breast, I set out on foot for the Doctor's. The ground over which I had to pass was undulating and broken, and meeting several ravines filled with stagnant water, I was compelled to make quite a detour in order to reach his camp. I found my friends "at home," and was received with a most cordial welcome and graceful hospitality.

The evening passed away rapidly, in familiar and pleasant talk about home and friends, our mutual adventures and future prospects, and afforded a social enjoyment of which civilized balls, routs and reunions can give but a faint idea. The increasing storm, however, which made itself heard above our cheerful voices, and which shook with violence our frail canopy, admonished me that it was time to return to my own camp, if I designed to go at all that night. My friends urged me to stay; but, as a person occupies more space lying down than sitting up, I doubted the feasibility of the project, as there was no peg to hang on, or post to lean against. So I said, "no, I thank you, " with a most determined tone, though not without some little faintness of heart, and sallied forth upon the invisible expanse. and such a night! It was darker than Erebus and Egypt together. The wind was blowing in fierce and fitful gusts, the rain pouring down in torrents. Altogether, it was as fearful a storm and as uncomfortable a night as had ever fallen within the

Oh,

range of my experience in different quarters of the globe. Few pedestrians would willingly encounter the fury of such a storm even in the streets of a great city.

On first emerging from the shelter of a good tent, I was saluted by a blast of wind and rain that actually staggered me, and drove me temporarily back. My hospitable friends then absolutely insisted upon it that I should pass the night with them. It would be a suicidal tempting of Providence, they said, to think of reaching my camp, and I would certainly lose my way. But a foolish feeling of pride would not allow me to listen to their pressing entreaties or warning remonstrances. I was an old sailor, I told them, and my nautical experience would enable me to find my way, especially as I had carefully noted the direction of the wind as I came along. Besides, I thought it was not altogether improbable that a stampede of my own animals might take place on so tempestuous a night-in which case I should be sorry to be absent. Alas! how little I dreamed of the suffering and anguish which my reckless self-confidence and foolish conceit of my own skill were to

cause me!

"Let him who wanders by a devious way, Look to his reckoning-or wide astray His barque may veer on peril's fatal track." The Doctor, finding that I would not be persuaded, held a lantern for me at the entrance of his tent, that I might occasionally look back and take my "departure from it. So I wrapped yet closer my poncho about me, and set forth on my perilous journey with a stout heart and a cheerful "good night." I designed to keep the wind about "two points on the starboard quarter" of my nose, but I was obliged to deviate from a straight line to avoid the gulches of which I have before spoken, which soon caused me to lose sight of the cheering and guiding light behind, and I had no other resource than to keep on to the best of my judgment, though I could not help the growing feeling that I was decidedly "in for it." As I was walking along at as rapid a gait as was consistent with proper caution, I suddenly felt the earth crumbling beneath my feet, and, before I could recover myself, was precipitated some fifteen feet down a ravine, and landed in a ditch, the water of which was nearly to my waist when standing up, which was not exactly my position when I touched bottom. I came down with a perfect facility-but to scramble up the steep and slippery bank, like the ascent from a more classic region-hic labor, hoc opus fuit.

After several ineffectual attempts, which resulted in a mortifying failure, and which considerably damped my courage and pantaloons, I at length succeeded in reaching terra firma; and there I was-lost consciously, as I had been before in reality-my pride all gone-and my courage oozing, with the water, out of my dripping garments. Need I be ashamed to own it? I bellowed most lustily for assistance; ringing reiterated changes upon help! fire! murder! and all the similar exclamations which have been canonized in the use of respectable distressed persons since the invention of our mother tongue.

I knew that there were camps not very far distant, and had a slight hope that the occupants of some one of them might hear me. But the hope was vain. Though I called-nay, even howled-"they answered not again." At length, to my inexpressible relief I heard, as I supposed, the whining of a dog. Was it indeed this? or did my ears deceive me? Noin the lull of the storm, I heard it yet more distinctly. In such a place, on such a night, the bark of "mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me," would have seemed friendly, and I followed the sound. As I advanced, however, it appeared to recede, until a growl that I well understood filled me with consternation. audible ignis fatuus that I had been pursuing was a prairie wolf. I knew well that this animal seldom, if ever, made an attack upon a man, except when rendered desperate by hunger; but still, to a lost traveller, in the midst of Egyptian darkness, and in such a lonely and strange spot, wolf-tones are calculated to create any thing but agreeable sensations, especially when he is familiar with veracious accounts of their chasing Russian sledgedrivers and tasting their quality.

The

There was no hope of rescue for the night, and the only thing that remained to me was to make myself as comfortable as I could, where I was, until morning. I sat down, made a sort of marquée tent of my poncho, by drawing it over my head and putting my arms a-kimbo, pulled out from the capacious pockets of my large vest, made expressly for this journey, the inseparable companion of all my excursions, mine incomparable meerschaum (I had it "jury-rigged" at such times, as the long, Weichsel stem was inconvenient to carry), some tobacco, and a bunch of matches which were well protected from the water, and soon surrounded myself with the comforts of an Irish cabin, the pleasant volume rolling

up, as if intimating the speechless gratitude of the smoker.

Fitz-Boodle in enumerating the various times when a good cigar is most consoling -"after a hard day's sport, or a day spent indoors, or after a good dinner, or a bad one, or at night when you are tired, or in the morning when you are fresh, or of a cold winter's day, or of a scorching summer's afternoon, or at any other moment you choose to fix upon "-never passed such a night as I did, amid the wild waste of such a wilderness, or his "confessions" on this subject would have been more specific.

After sitting till my limbs were chilled and stiff, I would get up and walk about, in as near a geometrical circle as I could describe, so as not to wander far from my position, and then sit down again, light my pipe afresh, and with the aid of the same match (for a prophetic economy was stealing over me) look to my watch, in utter astonishment that the long hours I supposed had passed were hardly a short half one. Sages are supposed to see charms in the face of solitude; but they would have found it very difficult to see any if they had been in my place, and they certainly would have preferred "the alarms" of any habitable part of the globe to the "rain in that horrible place." Men have been known to moralize under the gallows-my peril, though without shame, was little less-and I moralized. I thought to myself what a devout charlatan in sentiment Cowper was, and wondered whether he would have been willing to be "shut out from all noise and rumors of the world, " in the same manner that I was.

The wearisome night at length wore away. The violence of the storm had abated, but there was a drizzling rain and a thick fog, and I dared not move from my tracks. I waited as patiently as I could for several hours, but as the fog did not light up any, I again attempted to find the camp, though without success.

I must have wandered far from my right course during the night, in my perambulations to keep warm, as I could discover no trace of the road or the camp, and no answer came back to my repeated shouts. I then began to feel seriously uneasy. I knew my own men would not wait for me. My positive instructions to them were always to harness up in the morning and "move on," if I did not make my appearance at breakfast, as I was sometimes absent from the camp over night, and I knew that the different companies must have all passed on. I then

endeavored to find the road by pursuing a zigzag, Virginia rail-fence sort of a course; going two or three miles in one direction, and then striking off from it, at a greater or less angle, in another. I walked in this way several hours, but all to no purpose. During the whole time I had been observing carefully the ground, if perchance I might discover the imprint of a hoof, a broken twig, or any sign of the grass having been fed-but not a solitary vestige could I perceive of living thing.

Then it was, for the very first time, that the thought flashed like lightning across my mind, in all its terrible distinctness and significance, that I might fail to find the road, and perish from hunger. Great God! what mental agony this caused me! I had a full sense of the danger of my situation, and felt that I must summon all my energies for a desperate effort to save myself. My clothes were heavy; so I took off my coat, trowsers, boots, which were very thick, and stockings, and threw them away. I could not afford to be encumbered and have my progress impeded by superfluous weight, for was I not running a race against time, and was not dear life the stake!

I would have thrown away my money belt, containing a few hundred dollars in gold, merely to be relieved of its weight; but my experience, even among New Zealand cannibals, had taught me that gold has a magic charm for the savage as well as the white man, and that it is awkward to find one's self minus, not only in the heart of a great city, but even in the midst of the desert of Sahara. I accelerated my pace almost to a run, and giving up as futile all attempts to find the road, I started anew, with the determination to proceed to the Platte River, and follow up its windings to the Fort. The sun all this time disdained to shine," and my only guide was the wind, which I judged from its keenness to be blowing from the North-though I learned by subsequent inquiry, from the Surgeon of the Fort, who kept meteorological tables, that the wind had been East, which at that season of the year is colder than one coming from the North. I had a general idea of the geography of the country, and of the relative course of the river and the road, and hoped-though it was but a hope-that I might be able to reach the former.

I had not gone far before I came to a deep valley, a most wild and sequestered spotprobably never before trodden by the foot of a white man. It was, as near as I could judge, about five miles in diameter, and

environed by high bluffs. This was literally covered with buffalo bones through its whole extent, and was evidently a spot where these animals were in the habit of gathering in the fall, before their usual period for migrating to the South, and where, tempted by the late grass and sheltering hills which shut out the bleak winds, they had been hemmed in by thousands, until the severity of the winter warned them to leave; when the deep snows in the passes prevented their egress, and they must have perished from hunger and cold-leaving their bones to whiten there in the sun and rain.

"A ghastly place of sepulchre-where yet no human head

Perchance had pillowed."

No language can give any idea of the fearful desolation of the place. It filled my heart with a nameless dread. I could think of nothing but the valley seen in prophetic vision, and I almost expected to hear the awful voice breaking upon the solitude-"Can these dry bones live?" My course lay directly across the valley, and hardly looking around me, I ran at full speed, without stopping, till I had passed it, which I must have done in an almost incredibly short space of time. I continued my way, walking and running, as fast as I could, guided only by the wind, which must have actually veered all round the compass; for, after travelling what seemed to me about twenty miles, to my inexpressible horror, there lay before me the valley of bones, and what was worse, I found that I had come back again to within a hundred yards of the spot whence I had started, which I readily identified by a singular collection of bones I had stopped to examine when speculating upon the anatomy of the buffalo in the morning.

My fatiguing journey of hours had been lost. My heart now fairly sank within me, despair stared me in the face, and I threw myself upon the ground in a bitterness of soul too deep for tears. Here, then, thought I, is to be my final restingplace! In this great charnel house of the wilderness, my bones are destined to moulder without sepulture! Oh, if I could but perish in some fierce encounter with man or beast, or in some desperate struggle with the elements, it would be some relief! If a savage Indian would rise up before me, tomahawk in hand and yelling his startling war-whoop, how grateful would be the sight, and how gladly would I grapple with him in the death struggle! But to die like a doga lingering death of exhaustion and star

vation-alone, without the presence even of an enemy to connect me with my racethe thought was insupportable! I tried to banish it, but in vain! The ghost which my excited fancy had conjured up would not down at my bidding. In a paroxysm of despair, without thought, without settled purpose, hardly knowing what I did, I grasped my pistol, cocked it, put the muzzle to my head and pulled the trigger; but it had been filled with water, and I was saved from an act abhorrent to my principles and feelings, and upon which-though almost involuntary-I cannot look back without a shudder of remorse. I could not but regard it as an interposition of Providence in my behalf, and feelings of gratitude and submission filled my heart. Thoughts of loved ones at home came stealing over me, and I breathed an earnest prayer for their happiness. The bitterness of anguish was gone, and a delicious feeling of calm and resignation succeeded. The touching inonody of the poet kept vibrating in my memory and even rising to my lips.

"I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea

Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony." But the ground was very damp, the rain was pelting, and the air quite cold, and I soon awoke again to the full consciousness of the fearful dangers which environed me, and the necessity and duty of making one last, resolute effort for self-preservation. So I arose, took out my ivory tablets, pencilled a few lines of kind remembrance and farewell to my family, in the faint hope that if exhausted nature should fail, and I should perish on the way, perchance some stranger might find my mouldering remains; and then addressed myself anew, if not with hope yet with a stern courage, to my toilsome journey. I found myself, however, exceedingly lame-my feet were blistered, and full of briers and the thorns of the prickly pear over which I had been walking all day, and I could not make great progress. Night soon overtook me. but it was of no use to stop, and I kept on-on-on-like the Wandering Jew, through the long and dreary hours of that memorable night, watching the heavens, with the utmost intentness, for a single star to send a ray of light through the gloomy and funeral pall that overhung me, to guide me on my way.

I have kept some wearisome watches in my life-one of four hours at midnight off the pitch of Cape Horn, on the lee yard