I made a journey to Fort Gibson through the Cherokee Nation. I had been advised to stop and take breakfast with an Indian family, for I would there, no doubt, see two beautiful and accomplished girls, members of the family. Report had not done them justice. There was only a delicate shade of Indian color in the white skin. They were lithe, tall, and graceful; and nature gave them hands as beautiful as ever Praxiteles shaped in marble. They had lately returned from Troy, N. Y., where they had been educated by Miss Willard. Pope's Lo the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind, does not apply to the Choctaw and Cherokee Indians; many of them are well educated. I became acquainted with John Ross, chief of the Cherokees, in Washington, and lately sent to Mr. Clyde, of New York, a letter from John Ross to frame and place in the saloon of his steamship Cherokee. Indian blood is being rapidly diffused with the blood of the white man--a half-breed, quarter, and eighth. Fred Douglass is dead--a mulatto. Shall we credit his intelligence to the white blood or the negro? Suppose he had been an octoroon? What then! Sometime during the year 1855 Col. Henry Wilson made Fort Smith his headquarters, and with him came Lieut. J. H. Potter, adjutant of the Seventh Infantry, who was a classmate of mine. He was a jovial, good fellow, and a wound in his leg made it an excellent indicator of rain, and was used to guide us on hunting expeditions. Partridges were numerous, and during the hunting season nearly every afternoon Mrs. French and I in a carriage, and Lieut. Potter on his pony, would ride over the prairie and have rare sport. We had well-trained dogs and open shooting, and time passed pleasantly on. From this dream life I was awakened to make a visit to Natchez, Miss., on business connected with the estate of Mr. J. L. Roberts. In company with a French planter on the Teche, in Louisiana, whom I invited to go with me, I started in an ambulance for Little Rock. The weather was bitterly cold, the thermometer being ten degrees below zero. The close of the second day brought us to the usual "stopping place," but all accommodations were occupied by the sheriff, guards, and prisoners. The owner of the house told me I would have to go on to Little Rock, unless Capt. ----, who lived seven miles farther on, could be induced to let us stay overnight with him; but that he was a misanthrope, and would see no one. The gray, leaden sky, the biting wind, the snow that was falling in dry pellets, and the bitter cold made our situation desperate, and induced me to try the Captain with a little adulation.