dinner, and every one is feeling well this morning. I am making a late start in order to give the mules a chance to graze.
I send you by bearer a young curlew, as a playmate to the wild-goose. Should it live, its wings had better be clipped. Grasshoppers are its principal diet.
Our mess is a great success. Last night, notwithstanding the late hour at which we reached camp, Johnson, our new colored cook, had hot biscuit, and this morning hot cakes and biscuit. We will not be over twenty or twenty-five miles from the post to-night. The men are standing around waiting to take down the tents, so I must say good-bye.
Prospect Valley, Dakota,
Twelve miles from the Montana line, July 15th.
. . . We are making a halt of one day at this charming spot, in order to rest the animals and give the men an opportunity to wash their clothes. I will begin by saying everything is and has been perfectly satisfactory. Every one—officers, men, and citizens—are in the best of health and spirits.
We have marched through an exceedingly interesting country. We are now in the most beautiful valley we have seen thus far, and encamped on a small tributary of the Little Missouri, and about five miles from the latter. So beautiful did this place seem to us when we first came in sight of it, I directed the engineer-officer, who is making a map of the country, to call it Prospect Valley.
Three days ago we reached the cave referred to, before we started, by the Indian called "Goose." It was found to be about four hundred feet long, and just as he described, the walls and top covered with inscriptions and drawings. The prints of hands and feet are also in the rocks. I think this was all the work of Indians at an early day, although I cannot satisfactorily account for the drawings of ships found there.
"Bos,"[1] though this is his first expedition, takes to life on the plains as naturally as if bred to it. One of the officers says he thinks it must "run in the blood." He has to go through the usual experience that falls to all "plebs." Every one practises jokes on him, but he has such a good disposition it does not even ruffle him. I
- ↑ Our younger brother.
