But perhaps the most singular of the casual population are the mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures, wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all the gayety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back streets of the town is a tavern well known as the Rocky-Mountain House; and hither the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long as their money lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as Jack Tars, is for a few days only. Such scenes, both tragic and comic, as are enacted in the Rocky-Mountain House, are beyond the powers of pen to describe; and when a fandango is in progress, to which congregate the coquettish belles from "Vide Poche," * as the French portion of the suburb is nicknamed, the grotesque endeavors of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure on the light fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the mystic jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine" dances in honor of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp, are such startling innovations on the choreographic art as would make the shade of Gallini quake and gibber in his pumps. * Empty Pocket: A humorous nickname that the old French bestowed upon Carondelet. (Ed.) Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the stranger stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon his ears, accompanied by extraordinary noises--sounding unearthly to the greenhorn listener, but recognized by the initiated as an Indian song roared out of the stentorian lungs of a mountaineer, who, patting his stomach with open hands to improve the necessary shake, choruses the well-known Indian chant:-- Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi, &c., &c., &c. and polishes off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street. Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed voyageur from the North--and who, deserting the service of the "North West" (the Hudson's Bay Company), has come down the Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of "free" trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has just recognized an old campanyero, with whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of the Blackfeet. "Why, John, old hoss, how do you come on?" "What! Meek, old coon! I thought you were under?"