which are here found in great abundance, even quarried out of a bluff and carried off by the wagon-load. The guide had been there but once, and somehow or other he could not locate it exactly, and we had a ride out of six miles and back without finding the spot. Still, we picked up a few on the way. As these are now so much the fashion for jewelry, I will describe them. First, I should say that most suppose they contain real moss, or fern-leaves, so distinct are they seen in a clear agate to resemble them. Thus you see imitations of pine-trees, vines, a deer's head, and sprigs of various kinds; but it is through iron solutions penetrating them when in a soluble state. If you take a pen and drop some ink into a tumbler of water, it will scatter and form for the moment an appearance like a moss agate. These agates, when found on bluffs or dry places, are coated over with a white covering of lime or alkali. Those in the beds of rivers found along the line of the Pacific Railroad, are smooth and transparent. They are called the "Cheyenne brown agate," "Granger water agate," "Church Buttes light-blue agate," and the "Sweet-water agate."
There are great quantities of them near Church Butte and Granger stations, nearly nine hundred miles west of Missouri River. You have to poke among cobble-stones, etc. to find them, and when a person comes upon a handsome specimen, he will shout, as did a minister from Chicago, one day, with me, when he picked up a nice one as large as an egg,—"Glory hallelujah!"
It is like searching for gold and silver,—very exciting, and far more pleasurable than fishing or hunting. A friend here has about sixty pounds of agates, for which he was offered by a lapidary in New York five dollars a pound. A handsome stone for a ring or pin is worth, when cut into shape, from three to five dollars. The lapidary cuts them with a steel wheel, about eight inches in diameter, using oil and diamond-dust in cutting and polishing.
At Chug Station I met a frontiersman named Phillips, of long experience, who told me in his new adobe house of an old chief who had lost five sons, and when the first was slain he cut off a piece of his thumb, next of his forefinger, and so on, till five told of his boys killed. The last was a brave, and supposed no ball could hit him, wearing, he supposed, "a charmed life." He came to the "Chug" and dared them to shoot. As he and three or four more had killed a white man and wounded others, the people all turned out, and Phillips shot the bold young fellow, and wounded the rest of the party so that they died. The body of the young Indian lay by the roadside for several weeks, till the wolves and ravens had picked his bones, and I picked up his skull, pierced through with several balls, to bring back and present to the post-surgeon.
This grinning skull was lying on the grass which covered the roadside, and almost beneath towering monuments or bluffs of sandstone, which jut out at several points on the road, running along for great distances, and towering up several hundred feet high. We passed soon after several of these projections, which look like fortifications and baronial castles of some knights of the olden time. "Chimney Rock" is well known to travelers as a series of fluted columns, and standing solitary, as sentinels in the desert, they look solemn, lonely, and sublime. Old George, the stage-driver, has passed them twice a week for many years, and the wonder is he has not lost his scalp.
Sometimes the chiefs and old Indians will cut slits in their cheeks and rub ashes in them, sitting over the fire and bemoaning the loss of their dead children. They present a horrid appearance to one who looks at their pagan mode of bewailing the departed.
Arrived at Fort Laramie on the third day, we were courteously welcomed by Colonel F. F. Flint, of the 4th Infantry, commandant of the post. Delicacy dictates that we forbear to speak of the charming family which surrounds him; but the rarity of Christian households in the army made our visit there like to an oasis in the desert.
To visit the Indian graves surrounding the post was a prominent object before us in going. Lieutenant Theodore F. True, with an orderly, two mules, and a horse saddled, found us fording the Laramie River to inspect the grave,—if such it can be called, as shown in the picture on this page,—where the body was dried up like a mummy, and nothing else but fragments of a buffalo-robe dangling in the wind was to be seen. Relic hunters had carried away everything in the shape of bow and arrow, wampum, etc.