On the 22d of June another entry is recorded,—Jean's last memorandum of their journey in the Black Hills: " The prickly pears still give us much annoyance. The roads are heavy with sand, and the rocks over which our wagons must bump and bound are terribly rough and jagged.
"Across the Platte, and away to the southward many miles, though they seem much nearer, owing to the rarity of the air, are quaint and curious formations in the rocky cliffs, worn by the winds of ages into rude images of men and animals that stare at us with sunken eyes, their broken noses, grinning skulls, and disfigured bodies reminding us of unhappy phantoms risen from the under world.
"Sometimes the semblance of a great mosque or cathedral rears its domes and minarets in the clear blue of the heavens; and sometimes what seems a great embattled fortification is seen rising with realistic majesty from a vast sage plain that looks, with a little aid of the imagination, like the dried-up bed of a big moat. Of course, * 't is distance lends enchantment to the view,' as no doubt the images we see so distinctly would resolve themselves into shapeless masses if we could see them at close range.
"The grass we so much need for the stock has again disappeared, and daddie says we shall return to-morrow to the main travelled road. Wild flowers are blooming in profusion all around our camp, smiling at us as if in mockery of the prevailing desolation. Wood is scarce again, and we find few buffalo chips.
"We seldom see any more deer or antelope, and the buffalo have all escaped to the distant hills; that is, all but the hapless multitudes that have been cruelly and needlessly slaughtered by the unthinking and greedy hunters of the plains.
"We passed half-a-dozen newly made graves again
to-day, and it is evident that we are getting back into
the dreaded cholera belt. The day has been extremely
' hot, but the evening is chilly and blustering. Daddie
