picturesque scene.
It occupied an extensive plain which sloped gently
down to a creek,[*] whose winding course was marked
by a broken line of wood, here and there interspersed
with a fine clump of trees, between the trunks of which
the blue waters of a lake sparkled in the distance.
Hundreds of tents or "lodges" of buffalo-skins covered
the ground, and thousands of Indians--men, women,
and children--moved about the busy scene. Some
were sitting in their lodges, lazily smoking their pipes.