inferior size rush with noise and impetuosity from the mountains, until
they enter the prairies, where they glide smoothly in long serpentine
courses between banks covered with flowers and shaded by the thick
foliage of the western magnolia. The plains, as I have said, are gently
undulating, and are covered with excellent natural pastures of
moskito-grass, blue grass, and clover, in which innumerable herds of
buffaloes, and mustangs, or wild horses, graze, except during the
hunting season, in undisturbed security.

The Shoshones[6] are indubitably a very ancient people. It would be
impossible to say how long they may have been settled on this portion of
the continent. Their cast of features proves them to be of Asiatic
origin, and their phraseology, elegant and full of metaphors, assumes
all the graceful variety of the brightest pages of Saadi.

[Footnote 6: The American travellers (even Mr. Catlin, who is generally
correct) have entirely mistaken the country inhabited by the Shoshones.
One of them represents this tribe as "the Indians who inhabit that part
of the Rocky Mountains which lies on the Grand and Green River branches
of the Colorado of the West, the valley of Great Bear River, and the
hospitable shores of the Great Salt Lakes." It is a great error. That
the Shoshones may have been seen in the above-mentioned places is likely
enough, as they are a great nation, and often send expeditions very far
from their homes; but their own country lies, as I have said, betwixt
the Pacific Ocean and the 116th degree of west longitude. As to the
"hospitable" shores of the Great Salt Lake. I don't know what it means,
unless it be a modern Yankee expression for a tract of horrid swamps
with deadly effluvia, tenanted by millions of snakes and other "such
hospitable reptiles." The lake is situated on the western country of the
Crows, and I doubt if it has ever been visited by any Shoshone.]