We borrowed a kettle from our Indian friends.  It was not remarkably clean; but we heated a little water in it, and prairie-hay’d it out, before consigning our birds to it, and with a bowl of Indian potatoes, a present from our kind neighbors, we soon had an excellent soup.

What with the cold, the smoke, and the driving ashes and cinders, this was the most uncomfortable afternoon I had yet passed, and I was glad when night came, and I could creep into the tent and cover myself up in the blankets, out of the way of all three of these evils.

The storm raged with tenfold violence during the night.  We were continually startled by the crashing of the falling trees around us, and who could tell but that the next would be upon us?  Spite of our fatigue, we passed an almost sleepless night.  When we arose in the morning, we were made fully alive to the perils by which we had been surrounded.  At least fifty trees, the giants of the forest, lay prostrate within view of the tent.

When we had taken our scanty breakfast, and were mounted and ready for departure, it was with difficulty we could thread our way, so completely was it obstructed by the fallen trunks.

Our Indian guide had joined us at an early hour, and after conducting us carefully out of the wood, and pointing out to us numerous bee-trees,[18] for which he said that grove was famous, he set off at a long trot, and about nine o’clock brought us to Piche’s, a log cabin on a rising ground, looking off over the broad prairie to the east.  We had hoped to get some refreshment here, Piche being an old acquaintance of some of the party; but, alas! the master was from home.  We found his cabin occupied by Indians and travellers—­the latter few, the former numerous.

There was no temptation to a halt, except that of warming ourselves at a bright fire that was burning in the clay chimney.  A man in Quaker costume stepped forward to answer our inquiries, and offered to become our escort to Chicago, to which place he was bound—­so we dismissed our Indian friend, with a satisfactory remuneration for all the trouble he had so kindly taken for us.

A long reach of prairie extended from Piche’s to the Du Page, between the two forks of which, Mr. Dogherty, our new acquaintance, told us, we should find the dwelling of a Mr. Hawley, who would give us a comfortable dinner.

The weather was intensely cold; the wind, sweeping over the wide prairie with nothing to break its force, chilled our very hearts.  I beat my feet against the saddle to restore the circulation, when they became benumbed with the cold, until they were so bruised I could beat them no longer.  Not a house or wigwam, not even a clump of trees as a shelter, offered itself for many a weary mile.  At length we reached the west fork of the Du Page.  It was frozen, but not sufficiently so to bear the horses.  Our only resource was to cut a way for them through the ice.  It was a work of time, for the ice had frozen to several inches in thickness during the last bitter night.  Plante went first with an axe, and cut as far as he could reach, then mounted one of the hardy little ponies, and With some difficulty broke the ice before him, until he had opened a passage to the opposite shore.