one or another of the party was charged and forced to take to a tree, at the foot of which the bear sometimes mounted guard for hours before going off.  When wounded the beasts fought with desperate courage, and showed astonishing tenacity of life, charging any number of assailants, and succumbing but slowly even to mortal wounds.  In one case a bear that was on shore actually plunged into the water and swam out to attack one of the canoes as it passed.  However, by this time all of the party had become good hunters, expert in the use of their rifles, and they killed great numbers of their ursine foes.

    Other Brute Enemies.

Nor were the bears their only brute enemies.  The rattlesnakes were often troublesome.  Unlike the bears, the wolves were generally timid, and preyed only on the swarming game:  but one night a wolf crept into camp and seized a sleeper by the hand; when driven off he jumped upon another man, and was shot by a third.  A less intentional assault was committed by a buffalo bull which one night blundered past the fires, narrowly escaped trampling on the sleepers, and had the whole camp in an uproar before it rushed off into the darkness.  When hunted the buffalo occasionally charged; but there was not much danger in their chase.

    The Scourge of Mosquitos.

All these larger foes paled into insignificance compared with the mosquitos.  There are very few places on earth where these pests are so formidable as in the bottom lands of the Missouri, and for weeks and even months they made the lives of our explorers a torture.  No other danger, whether from hunger or cold, Indians or wild beasts, was so dreaded by the explorers as these tiny scourges.

    Pleasant Life in the Plains Country.

In the Plains country the life of the explorers was very pleasant save only for the mosquitos and the incessant clouds of driving sand along the river bottoms.  On their journey west through these true happy hunting grounds they did not meet with any Indians, and their encounters with the bears were only just sufficiently dangerous to add excitement to their life.  Once or twice they were in peril from cloud bursts, and they were lamed by the cactus spines on the prairie, and by the stones and sand of the river bed while dragging the boats against the current; but all these trials, labors, and risks were only enough to give zest to their exploration of the unknown land.  At the Great Falls of the Missouri they halted, and were enraptured with their beauty and majesty; and here, as everywhere, they found the game so abundant that they lived in plenty.  As they journeyed up-stream through the bright summer weather, though they worked hard, it was work of a kind which was but a long holiday.  At nightfall they camped by the boats on the river bank.  Each day some of the party spent in hunting, either along the river bottoms through the groves of cottonwoods with shimmering, rustling leaves, or away from the river where the sunny prairies stretched into seas of brown grass, or where groups of rugged hills stood, fantastic in color and outline, and with stunted pines growing on the sides of their steep ravines.  The only real suffering was that which occasionally befell someone who got lost, and was out for days at a time, until he exhausted all his powder and lead before finding the party.