My voyage from the mouth of the Teton River to this place has been the most rugged, yet the most delightful, of my whole Tour. Our canoe was generally landed at night on the point of some projecting barren sand-bar, where we straightened our limbs on our buffalo robes, secure from the annoyance of musquitoes, and out of the walks of Indians and grizzly bears. In addition to the opportunity which this descending Tour has afforded me, of visiting all the tribes of Indians on the river, and leisurely filling my portfolio with the beautiful scenery which its shores present—the sportsman’s fever was roused and satisfied; the swan, ducks, geese, and pelicans—the deer, antelope, elk, and buffaloes, were “_stretched_” by our rifles; and some times—“pull boys! pull!! a war party! for your lives pull! or we are gone!” I often landed my skiff, and mounted the green carpeted bluffs, whose soft grassy tops, invited me to recline, where I was at once lost in contemplation. Soul melting scenery that was about me! A place where the mind could think volumes; but the tongue must be silent that would _speak_, and the hand palsied that would _write_. A place where a Divine would confess that he never had fancied Paradise—where the painter’s palette would lose its beautiful tints—the blood-stirring notes of eloquence would die in their utterance—and even the soft tones of sweet music would scarcely preserve a spark to light the soul again that had passed this sweet delirium. I mean the prairie, whose enamelled plains that lie beneath me, in distance soften into sweetness, like an essence; whose thousand thousand velvet-covered hills, (surely never formed by chance, but grouped in one of Nature’s sportive moods)—tossing and leaping down with steep or graceful declivities to the river’s edge, as if to grace its pictured shores, and make it “a thing to look upon.” I mean the prairie at _sun-set_; when the green hill-tops are turned into gold—and their long shadows of melancholy are thrown over the valleys—when all the breathings of day are hushed, and nought but the soft notes of the retiring dove can be heard; or the still softer and more plaintive notes of the wolf, who sneaks through these scenes of enchantment, and mournfully how—l——s, as if lonesome, and lost in the too beautiful quiet and stillness about him. I mean _this_ prairie; where Heaven sheds its purest light, and lends its richest tints—_this round-topp’d bluff_, where the foot treads soft and light—whose steep sides, and lofty head, rear me to the skies, overlooking yonder pictured vale of beauty—this solitary _cedar-post_, which tells a tale of grief—grief that was keenly felt, and tenderly, but long since softened in the march of time and lost. Oh, sad and tear-starting contemplation! sole tenant of this stately mound, how solitary thy habitation! here Heaven wrested from thee thy ambition, and made thee sleeping monarch of this land of silence.