raw buffalo-hide, which they were forced to keep always wet, as, when dry,
it hardened about the foot like iron. At length, they bought dressed deer-
skin from the Indians, of which they made tolerable moccasons. The rivers,
streams, and gulleys filled with water were without number; and, to cross
them, they made a boat of bull-hide, like the "bull boat" still used on
the Upper Missouri. This did good service, as, with the help of their
horses, they could carry it with them. Two or three men could cross in it
at once, and the horses swam after them like dogs. Sometimes they
traversed the sunny prairie; sometimes dived into the dark recesses of the
forest, where the buffalo, descending daily from their pastures in long
files to drink at the river, often made a broad and easy path for the
travellers. When foul weather arrested them, they built huts of bark and
long meadow-grass; and, safely sheltered, lounged away the day, while
their horses, picketed near by, stood steaming in the rain. At night, they
usually set a rude stockade about their camp; and here, by the grassy
border of a brook, or at the edge of a grove where a spring bubbled up
through the sands, they lay asleep around the embers of their fire, while
the man on guard listened to the deep breathing of the slumbering horses,
and the howling of the wolves that saluted the rising moon as it flooded
the waste of prairie with pale mystic radiance.

They met Indians almost daily; sometimes a band of hunters, mounted or on
foot, chasing buffalo on the plains; sometimes a party of fishermen;
sometimes a winter camp, on the slope of a hill or under the sheltering
border of a forest. They held intercourse with them in the distance by
signs; often they disarmed their distrust, and attracted them into their
camp; and often they visited them in their lodges, where, seated on
buffalo-robes, they smoked with their entertainers, passing the pipe from
hand to hand, after the custom still in use among the prairie tribes.
Cavelier says that they once saw a band of a hundred and fifty mounted