I lived on this prairie for eleven years, and never was happier at any period of my life, and feel assured that I can safely say that no other man ever enjoyed the luxury of hunting wolves in bed. The pleasure of narrating such adventures for the present generation is, in this instance, marred by the reflection that both Captain Dodd and my old friend Garvie were killed by the Indians in 1862, the former while gallantly fighting at the battle of New Ulm, and the latter at the Yellow Medicine Agency, on the first day of the outbreak. [Illustration] THE POISONED WHISKY. I was told by a gentleman at my club the other day that he had read in some magazine that the British army had blown open the tomb of the Mahdi in upper Africa, and had mutilated the body, cutting off the head and sending it to England in a kerosene can. I could hardly believe the story, but he vouched for having read it in a reputable publication, and being a strong hater of the English, affirmed his unqualified faith in the statement. Notwithstanding his position, it seemed to me incredible that such an act of barbarism could be perpetrated by the disciplined soldiery of a civilized nation in the nineteenth century. The conversation so impressed me that I could not drive it out of my mind, and I kept revolving it and making comparisons with events in my own experience, until I concluded that it is more than probable that it took place as related, and have since learned that it actually occurred. I have seen a good deal of ferocity and savagism, and it was not at all confined to people acknowledged to be barbarians. I remember an instance where I came very near being a party to a scheme, the brutality of which would have made the mutilation of the dead Mahdi commendable in comparison; but fortunately my better nature and second thought overcame my passions, and I was spared the perpetration of the awful crime, the remembrance of which, had it been committed, would undoubtedly have haunted me through life.