Impatient with the slow progress we were making, myself and three other young men that night, resolved that in the morning we would dissolve our connection with the train, and hasten, with longer marches and quickened pace, to our journey's end. Accordingly, early the next morning we packed our provisions, blankets and other personal effects on our horses, and, bidding adieu to our companions, shouldered our rifles and, with reliant faith in our ability to protect ourselves, started on. Our course was up the narrow, silent and gloomy valley of Burnt River. The banks of the river were fringed with a stunted growth of cottonwood and poplar. On either side were high and treeless hills of red earth and rocks, the still remaining evidence of the presence of tremendous igneous agencies in the far-distant past, and which, no doubt, gave the river its name. We camped at noon on a small brooklet which came rollicking down from its canyon home until it reached the valley, and then, embosomed in willows and tall rye grass, flowed silently on to the more noisy and pretentious river. A short distance from camp in a sunny glen we discovered an abundance of service berries and black currants, large, luscious and fully ripe. Having tasted no fruit of any kind for over three months, that noonday repast was not only greatly relished by us, but it awakened associations of home and home life. As we feasted we talked of sister, mother and the bright-eyed girl far away. All things enjoyable must have an end. It was time to move on. On our return to camp we came across a monster rattlesnake, coiled up and defiant in his lonely home. Having heard it said that tobacco was a deadly poison to this species of snake, we concluded to stop long enough to verify or disprove this saying. We cut some long willow switches and split the smaller end, into which we fastened a quantity of strong, fine-cut chewing tobacco, moistened so that the juice would flow freely, and then presented it to his worthy snakeship with our compliments. He struck it three times viciously. We could not induce him to strike it any more. He had got a quantity of the juice and some of the tobacco in his mouth. It manifestly had taken all the viciousness out of him. He was evidently subjugated. He began slowly to uncoil, and as he lay at full length a tremor passed over him and he was seemingly dead; but for fear he might recover we bruised his head, not with our heels, but with stones. In stating this little incident I have wandered somewhat from the thread of my narrative. I do this for two reasons: First, to show that I am a lover of experimental science; and, secondly, to show that the filthy weed may be put to a good purpose.