who are ready to utter the words, the feelings, and experience which they have treasured up in a traveling ministry of fifty years, and whose accents, trembling with age, still more impressively than their words, announce that they will soon travel and preach no more on earth."

But the ambitious and the wealthy, too, are there; for in this region opinion is all-powerful. They are there, either to extend their influence, or, lest even their absence might prejudice their good name. Aspirants for office are there, to electioneer and to gain popularity. Vast numbers are there from simple curiosity, and merely to enjoy the spectacle. The young and beautiful are there, with mixed motives, which it were best not to scrutinize severely. Children are there, and their young eyes glisten with intense interest of eager curiosity. The middle-aged fathers and mothers are there, with the sober view of people whose plans of life are fixed, and who wait calmly to hear. Men and women of hoary hairs are there, with such thoughts, it may be hoped, as their years invite. Such is the congregation, consisting of thousands.

FASCINATING LIFE OF THE MOUNTAIN HUNTER.

A TRAVELER who spent winter among the wild scenes, and still wilder characters of the Rocky Mountains, has given the following vivid description of the fascinating life of the mountain hunter.

When I turned my horse's head from Pike's Peak, I quite regretted the abandonment of my mountain life, solitary as it was, and more than once thought of again taking the trail to the Salado valley, where I enjoyed such good sport. Apart from the feeling of loneliness, which any one in my situation must naturally have experienced, surrounded by stupendous works of nature, which in all their solitary grandeur frowned upon me, and sinking into utter insignificance, the miserable mortal who crept beneath their shadow; still there was something inexpressibly exhilarating in the sensation of positive freedom from all worldly care, and a consequent expansion of the sinews, as it were, of mind and body, which made me feel elastic as a ball of India rubber, and in such a state of perfect ease, that no more dread of scalping Indians entered my mind, than if I had been sitting in Broadway, in one of the windows of the Astor House. A citizen of the world, I never found any difficulty in investing my resting-place, wherever it might be, with the attributes of a home; and hailed with delight, equal to that which the artificial comforts of a civilized home would have caused, the, to me, domestic appearance of my hoppled animals as they grazed around the camp, when I returned from a hard day's hunt.

Although liable to an accusation of barbarism, I must confess

that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West; and I never recall but with pleasure, the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salado, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no companions more sociable than my horse and mules, or the attendant coyote (prairie wolf), which nightly serenaded me. With a plentiful supply of dry pine logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze stream- ' ing far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well filled bellies, standing contentedly over their picket-pins, I would sit cross-legged enjoying the genial warmth, and pipe in mouth, watch the blue smoke as it curled upward, building castles in its vapory wreaths and in the fantastic shapes it ascended. Scarcely did I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life, and unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such are the fascinations of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe that not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilized of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty and freedom from every worldly care, not regretting the moment when he exchanged the monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing and sighing again, once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements.

A hunter's-camp in the Rocky Mountains, is quite a picture. It is invariably made in a picturesque locality, for, like the Indian, the white hunter has ever an eye to the beautiful. Nothing can be more social and cheering than the welcome blaze of the campfire on a cold winter's night, and nothing more amusing or entertaining, if not instructive, than the rough conversation of the simple-minded mountaineers, whose nearly daily task is all of exciting adventure, since their whole existence is spent in scenes of peril and privation; and consequently the narration of their every-day life is a tale of thrilling accidents and hair-breadth escapes, which, though simple matter of fact to them, appear a startling romance to those unacquainted with the nature of the lives led by those men, who, with the sky for a roof, and their rifles to supply them with food and clothing, call no man lord or master, and are as free as the game they follow.

ADVENTURE OF A TRAPPER.

THE grizzly bear is the fiercest animal of the Rocky Mountains. His great strength and wonderful tenacity of life, renders an encounter with him so full of danger, that both the Indian and white hunters never attack him unless backed by a strong party. Although like every other wild animal, he usually flees from man, yet at certain seasons, when maddened by either love or hunger, he not unfrequently charges at first sight of a foe, when, unless

killed, a hug at close quarters is anything but a pleasant embrace, his strong hooked claws stripping the flesh from the bones as easily as a cook peels onions. They attain a weight of near a thousand pounds, and not unfrequently their bodies are eight and ten feet in length. So gigantic is their strength, that they will carry off the body of a buffalo to a considerable distance. Many are the tales of bloody encounters with these animals, which the trappers delight to relate, to illustrate the fool-hardiness of ever attacking the grizzly bear.

Some years ago, a trapping party were on their way to the mountains, led, we believe, by old Sublette, a well known captain of the West. Among the band, was John Glass, a trapper who had been all his life among the mountains, and had seen, probably, more exciting adventures, and had had more wonderful and hairbreadth escapes than any of the rough and hardy fellows who make the Far West their home, and whose lives are spent in a succession of perils and privations. On one of the streams running from the " Black Hills, a range of mountains northward of the Platte, Glass and a companion were, one day, setting their traps, when on passing through a cherry thicket, which skirted the stream, the former who was in advance, descried a large grizzly bear quietly turning up the turf with his nose, searching for pignuts. Glass immediately called his companion, and both proceeding cautiously, crept to the skirt of the thicket, and taking steady aim at the animal, discharged their rifles at the same instant, both balls taking effect, but not inflicting a mortal wound. The bear giving a groan of agony, jumped with all four legs from the ground, and charged at once upon his enemy, snorting with pain and fury.

"Hurra, Bill," roared out Glass, as he saw the animal rushing toward them, "we'll be made 'meat' of, sure as shootin'!" He then bolted through the thicket, followed closely by his companion. The brush was so thick that they could scarcely make their way through, while the weight and strength of the bear carried him through all obstructions, and he was soon close upon them.

About a hundred yards from the thicket was a steep bluff; Glass shouted to his companion to make to this bluff as the only chance. They flew across the intervening open and level space like lightning. When nearly across, Glass tipped over a stone and fell, and just as he rose, the bear rising on his hind feet, confronted him. As he closed, Glass, never losing his presence of mind, cried to his companion to close up quickly, and discharged his pistol full into the body of the animal, at the same moment that the bear, with blood streaming from his nose and mouth, knocked the pistol from his hand with one blow of his paw, and fixing his claws deep into his flesh, rolled with him to the ground. The hunter, notwithstanding his hopeless situation, struggled manfully, drawing his knife, and plunging it several times into the body of the beast, which, ferocious with pain, tore with tooth and claw, the body

of the wretched victim, actually baring the ribs of flesh and exposing the very bones. Weak from loss of blood, and blinded with blood which streamed from his lacerated scalp, the knife at length fell from his hand, and Glass sank down insensible and apparently dead.

His companion, who, up to this moment, had watched the conflict, which, however, lasted but a few seconds, thinking that his turn would come next, and not having even presence of mind to load his rifle, fled back to the camp and narrated the miserable fate of poor Glass. The captain of the band of trappers, however, dispatched the man with a companion, back to the spot. On reaching the place, which was read with blood, they found Glass still breathing, and the bear dead and stiff, actually lying upon his body. Poor Glass presented a horrid spectacle; the flesh was torn in strips from his bones and limbs, and large flaps strewed the ground; his scalp hung bleeding over his face, which was also lacerated in a shocking manner. The bear, beside the three bullets in his body, bore the marks of about twenty gaping wounds in the breast and belly, testifying to the desperate defense of the mountaineer. Imagining that if not already dead, the poor fellow could not possibly survive more than a few moments, the men collected his arms, stripped him of even his hunting-shirt and moccasins, and merely pulling the dead bear off from the body, they returned to their party, reporting that Glass was dead, and that they had buried him. In a few days, the gloom which pervaded the trappers' camp at his loss, disappeared, and the incident, although frequently mentioned over the camp-fire, at length was almost entirely forgotten in the excitement of the hunt and the Indian perils which surrounded them.

Months elapsed, the hunt was over, and the party of trappers were on their way to the trading fort with their packs of beaver. It was nearly sundown, and the round adobe bastions of the mudbuilt fort were just in sight, when a horseman was seen slowly approaching them along the banks of the river. When near enough to discern his figure, they saw a lank, cadaverous form, with a face so scarred and disfigured that scarcely a feature was discernible. Approaching the leading horsemen, one of whom happened to be the companion of the defunct Glass in his memorable bear scrape, the stranger in a hollow voice, reining in his horse before them, exclaimed:

“Hurra, Bill, my boy! you thought I was 'gone under' that time, did you? but hand me over my horse and gun, my lad; I ain't dead yet, by a long shot!" What was the astonishment of the whole party, and the genuine horror of Bill and his worthy companion in the burial story, to hear the well-known but now altered voice of John Glass, who had been killed by a grizzly bear months before, and comfortably interred, as the two men had reported and all had believed!

There he was, however, and no mistake; and all crowded around

to hear from his lips how, after the lapse of, he knew not how long, he gradually recovered, and being without arms or even a butcherknife, he had fed upon the almost putrid carcass of the bear for several days, until he had regained sufficient strength to crawl, when tearing off as much of the bear's meat as he could carry in his enfeebled state, he crept down the river; and suffering excessive torture from his wounds, and hunger and cold, he made the best of his way to the fort, which was some eighty or ninety miles distant, and living mainly upon roots and berries, he, after many, many days, arrived in a pitiable state, from which he had now recovered, and was, to use his own expression, "as slick as a peeled onion."

THE COMMERCE OF THE PRAIRIES.

THE Overland trade between the United States and Santa Fe, grew out of accidental circumstances. In 1805, James Pursely crossed the desert plains of the West to Santa Fe, being the first American who ever passed over the western plains into the Spanish provinces. The year previous, however, Morrison, a merchant of Kaskaskia, in consequence of information obtained from the trappers through the Indians, relative to the isolated province of Santa Fe, dispatched Le Lande, a French Creole, with a quantity of goods up Platte River, with directions to push his way into Santa Fe, if practicable. He was successful in the enterprise; but instead of returning to account to his employer for the proceeds of the adventure, appropriated the funds to setting up business in Santa Fe on his own account, where he remained until his death, some twenty years after, having in the meantime married, grown rich, and become one of the nabobs of the place.

The Santa Fe trade attracted but little notice until Capt. Pike returned from his expedition made in 1806 and 1807. His exciting descriptions of the new El Dorado, spread like wild fire through the West. In 1812, an expedition was fitted out under the auspices of M'Knight, Beard, Chambers, and eight or ten others, who succeeded in crossing the dreary western wilds in safety to Santa Fe. But the royalists having gained the ascendency, the injurious restrictions which had formerly rendered all foreign intercourse, except by permission of the Spanish Govern. ment illegal, being again in force, these unfortunate traders immediately on their arrival, were seized and carried to Chihuahua, and imprisoned there until 1821, when the republicans again obtaining the ascendency, they were released. The glowing reports which they circulated upon their return, induced others to launch into the same field of enterprise; and the same year, Glenn, an Indian trader, near the mouth of Verdigris River, and Captain Becknell, a Missourian, with small parties, went to Santa Fe and made profitable expeditions.