We found ourselves wondering to what race the hidden dead belonged, and whether the unpictured maidens of those days were pleasant to look upon, or true ancestors of the hideous and unromantic creatures who, with their savage lords, now roam the plains. Thinking of the tribes of the past brought those of the present to mind, and, not wishing to have our hair presented as tribute to some maiden wooed by treacherous Cheyenne, we turned our horses' heads homeward, bringing the beads with us, safely deposited in one of our entomologist's pocket-cases. They remain among the trophies of our expedition, and Mr. Colon has lately written me that he will have an excavation made, during the present year, at the spot where they were found. These beads, I can not but think, form one link in a chain connecting an ancient people, perhaps the mound-builders, with the savage tribes of the present. There is a tradition among some of the Western Indians that, centuries ago, a people, different in language and form from the red men, came from over the seas to trade beads for ponies. The buffaloes were then larger, and the climate warmer, than now. Dissensions finally arose, in which the strangers were killed. Is there not reason to believe that this tradition gives us a glimpse of the time when some of the large mammals still existed on the plains, and the genial sun looked down upon pastures clothed in rich vegetation--a time and region, probably, of perennial summer? Once, during our stay in Kansas, we were directed by a hunter to a spot where he had seen portions of an immense skeleton, and there found one vertebra only remaining of a mastodon. It afterward transpired that, shortly before our trip, some Indians had passed Fort Dodge with the large bones lashed on their ponies, taking them to a medicine-lodge on the Arkansas, to be ground up into good medicine. They stated that the bones belonged to one of the big buffaloes which roamed over the plains during the times of their fathers. At that period, the Happy Hunting Ground was on earth, but was afterward removed beyond the clouds by the Great Spirit, to punish his children for bad conduct. Many reasons, besides dim traditions, exist for the belief that those mysterious nations whose paths we have been able to trace from the Atlantic west, and from the Pacific east, pushed inward until they met in the middle of the continent. The numerous mounds in the Western States, with the curious weapons and vessels which they contain, show that the nations then existing, and migrating toward the interior, were not only powerful but essentially unlike our modern Indians. To instance but one illustration of this, there are near Titusville, Pa., ancient oil wells, which bear unmistakable evidences of having been dug and worked by the mound-builders. Thus they speculated in oil, which of itself is a token of high civilization.