1874

[CONTENTS]

I.[A HUNTING ENCAMPMENT]
II.[A TRAIL DISCOVERED]
III.[THE EMIGRANTS]
IV.[THE GRIZZLY BEAR]
V.[THE STRANGE WOMAN]
VI.[THE DEFENCE OF THE CAMP]
VII.[THE INDIAN CHIEF]
VIII.[THE EXILE]
IX.[THE MASSACRE]
X.[THE GREAT COUNCIL]
XI.[AMERICAN HOSPITALITY]
XII.[THE SHE-WOLF OF THE PRAIRIE]
XIII.[THE INDIAN VILLAGE]
XIV.[THE RECEPTION]
XV.[THE WHITE BUFFALO]
XVI.[THE SPY]
XVII.[FORT MACKENZIE]
XVIII.[A MOTHER'S CONFESSION]
XIX.[THE CHASE]
XX.[INDIAN DIPLOMACY]
XXI.[MOTHER AND DAUGHTER]
XXII.[IVON]
XXIII.[THE PLAN OF THIS CAMPAIGN]
XXIV.[THE CAMP OF THE BLACKFEET]
XXV.[BEFORE THE ATTACK]
XXVI.[RED WOLF]
XXVII.[THE ATTACK]
XXVIII.[CONCLUSION]

[CHAPTER I.]

A HUNTING ENCAMPMENT.

America is the land of prodigies! Everything there assumes gigantic proportions, which startle the imagination and confound the reason. Mountains, rivers, lakes and streams, all are carved on a sublime pattern.

There is a river of North America—not like the Danube, Rhine, or Rhone, whose banks are covered with towns, plantations, and time-worn castles: whose sources and tributaries are magnificent streams, the waters of which, confined in a narrow bed, rush onwards as if impatient to lose themselves in the ocean—but deep and silent, wide as an arm of the sea, calm and severe in its grandeur, it pours majestically onwards, its waters augmented by innumerable streams, and lazily bathes the banks of a thousand isles, which it has formed of its own sediment.

These isles, covered with tall thickets, exhale a sharp or delicious perfume which the breeze bears far away. Nothing disturbs their solitude, save the gentle and plaintive appeal of the dove, or the hoarse and strident voice of the tiger, as it sports beneath the shade.