By sunset we came in sight of a small creek, on the banks of which grew a few dark pine-trees. Beneath one of these pines we made our camp; the horses found good pasturage along the edge of the creek, and from a high sand dune which rose behind the camp the Sioux pointed out to us our course for the morrow.
As we stood together on the summit of the sand ridge, the scene that lay to the west was enough to make even the oldest voyageur pause in wonder as he beheld it. Many a long mile away, over a vast stretch of prairie, the western sky blazed in untold hues of gold, saffron, orange, green, and purple. Down to the distant rim of the prairie, the light shone clear and distinct. No fog, no smoke blurred the vast circle of the sky-line. Never before had we realized at a single glance the vastness of earthly space. The lustrous sky made dim the intervening distance, and added tenfold to the sense of immensity.
The Indian pointed his finger full towards the spot where the sun had gone down.
“There lies our course,” he said. “Would that, like yon sunset, the prairie land circled the world, then we might for ever travel into the west.”
“Well, master, we’re in the big wilderness, surely,” said Donogh, as he stood by my side watching intently this vast ocean of grass, slowly sinking into night beneath the many-hued splendours of the western skies. “When we used to sit together on the top of Seefin, talking of the lands beyond the seas, I didn’t think that one short year would carry us so far.”
“How do you like it, Donogh?” I asked him.
“Like it, sir! I like it as long as it holds you in it. And I like it for all the fine wild birds and beasts it has. But I’d like it better if it had a few more hills, just to remind me of Coolrue, and the rest of the old mountains about Glencar!”
“We’ll come to the hills all in good time,” I replied. “There, beyond where you see the sun has gone down, twenty long days’ riding from here you will see hills that will make Seefin and Coolrue seem only hillocks in comparison—mountains where the snow never melts.”
“What name do the Indians call the Rocky Mountains?” I asked Red Cloud, who was listening to our conversation.
“The Blackfeet call them the Ridge of the World,” he answered. “My people named them the Mountains of the Setting Sun; and the Assineboines, who dwell at their feet, call them the Hills of Life and Death, because they say that the spirits of the dead climb them to look back on life, and forward on the happy hunting-grounds.”