After the first night I preferred to sleep on the trunks in the social hall [the lobby which contained the passengers’ baggage] rather than among the cots in the crowded cabin, and several others did the same. There were, in fact, not cots enough for all the passengers excluded from the state-rooms. I found that some, and I presume most, of the passengers, by making the clerk believe that they would otherwise take the “Swamp Fox,” had obtained their passage at considerably less price than I had paid.
[The above are the principal events of this description of steamboat life before the war. Our passenger’s journey ended at Natchitoches, on the Red River, whence he started on a vagrant trip through Texas, in which we need not follow him.]
WINTER ON THE PRAIRIES.
G. W. FEATHERSTONHAUGH.
[Of the earlier records of English travel in America one of the most interesting and informing works is Featherstonhaugh’s “A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor,” a journey made by the author in 1835, and yielding much useful information on what is now the ancient history of the great West. The selection given is devoted to some of his prairie experiences during his journey through the Sioux country from Lac qui Parle to Lake Travers.]
Renville had procured me a charette, or cart, to carry the tent, baggage, and provisions. I was to ride an old gray mare, with a foal running alongside; one of the Canadians was to drive the charette, and Miler and the rest were to walk. The morning was exceeding cold, and our road was along the prairie parallel with the lake. All the country in every direction, having been burnt over, was perfectly black, and a disagreeable sooty odor filled the atmosphere. At the end of five hours of a very tedious march we reached a stream called Wahboptah, which may be translated Ground-nut river, the savages being in the habit of digging up the Psoralea esculenta, a nutritive bulbous root which grows here. The stream was about thirty feet wide, and had some trees growing on its banks. Having built up a good fire, the men proceeded to cook their dinner, while I strolled up the stream and collected some very fine unios, although I found it bitterly cold wading in the shallow water to procure them.
Having fed our horses on the grass near the stream which had not been burnt over, we started again for Les Grosses Isles, which we were instructed were distant about seven leagues, at the foot of Big Stone Lake. During the first two leagues the strong sooty smell of the country gave me a severe headache, and the weather became so cold that I was very uncomfortable; the fire, however, had not extended beyond this distance, for in about an hour and a half from our departure we came to the grass again, and I fortunately got rid of my headache. Our cavalry was exceedingly pleased by the change, the horses repeatedly winnowing to each other, as if to express their satisfaction. I here perceived a live gopher, or geomys, feebly running in the grass, and, dismounting, caught it. It apparently had strayed from its burrow, and had suffered from the weather. After examining it I let it go again, as it was impossible to take care of it, and I did not like to consign it to the men, as I knew they would kill and eat it, for they spared nothing.
As the evening advanced it became excessively cold, and a sharp wind, accompanied with frozen sleet, set in from the northeast: this soon became so thick that I could scarcely look up, much more see anything in the direction in which I was proceeding. Securing my person and ears as well as I could with my blanket coat, I left it to the mare—who Renville told me had been more than once to Lake Travers—to take her own course. At length the sleet became so dense that I lost sight of everybody except the little foal, which, generally lagging behind in the wake of its dam, occasionally trotted up to her when in her great anxiety she called for it. I never saw greater marks of maternal feeling in an animal than in this poor creature to her young one.
As we advanced my situation became exceedingly painful: the frozen sleet came in streams upon my face and eyes when I looked up; my feet and hands were so cold that I had scarcely any power over them; my whole exterior, as well as the head and neck of the mare, was covered with a glazing of ice; night was advancing, and we were without a guide, upon a dreary and shelterless moor of very great extent, and far beyond our present day’s journey, with no prospect of an abatement of the storm. In the course of a somewhat adventurous life I have occasionally had to meet with serious privations and to look danger rather steadily in the face, but I had never been where there was so slight a chance of any favorable change. I had not even the comfort before me that every bleak moor in England offers under similar circumstances to the imagination,—some kind of shelter to receive us at last, if we were not overpowered by the inclemency of the weather. It became absolutely necessary to consider what it was best to do, if overtaken before dark by a deep snow.