and respect all stragglers that might fall in their path.  To their inquiries as to the numbers of the people of the United States, he assured them that they were as countless as the blades of grass in the prairies, and that, great as Snake River was, if they were all encamped upon its banks, they would drink it dry in a single day.  To these and similar statistics, they listened with profound attention, and apparently, implicit belief.  It was, indeed, a striking scene:  the captain, with his hunter’s dress and bald head in the midst, holding forth, and his wild auditors seated around like so many statues, the fire lighting up their painted faces and muscular figures, all fixed and motionless, excepting when the pipe was passed, a question propounded, or a startling fact in statistics received with a movement of surprise and a half-suppressed ejaculation of wonder and delight.

The fame of the captain as a healer of diseases, had accompanied him to this village, and the great chief, O-push-y-e-cut, now entreated him to exert his skill on his daughter, who had been for three days racked with pains, for which the Pierced-nose doctors could devise no alleviation.  The captain found her extended on a pallet of mats in excruciating pain.  Her father manifested the strongest paternal affection for her, and assured the captain that if he would but cure her, he would place the Americans near his heart.  The worthy captain needed no such inducement.  His kind heart was already touched by the sufferings of the poor girl, and his sympathies quickened by her appearance; for she was but about sixteen years of age, and uncommonly beautiful in form and feature.  The only difficulty with the captain was, that he knew nothing of her malady, and that his medical science was of a most haphazard kind.  After considering and cogitating for some time, as a man is apt to do when in a maze of vague ideas, he made a desperate dash at a remedy.  By his directions, the girl was placed in a sort of rude vapor bath, much used by the Nez Perces, where she was kept until near fainting.  He then gave her a dose of gunpowder dissolved in cold water, and ordered her to be wrapped in buffalo robes and put to sleep under a load of furs and blankets.  The remedy succeeded:  the next morning she was free from pain, though extremely languid; whereupon, the captain prescribed for her a bowl of colt’s head broth, and that she should be kept for a time on simple diet.

The great chief was unbounded in his expressions of gratitude for the recovery of his daughter.  He would fain have detained the captain a long time as his guest, but the time for departure had arrived.  When the captain’s horse was brought for him to mount, the chief declared that the steed was not worthy of him, and sent for one of his best horses, which he presented in its stead; declaring that it made his heart glad to see his friend so well mounted.  He then appointed a young Nez Perce to accompany his guest to the next village, and “to carry his talk” concerning them; and the two parties separated with mutual expressions of good will.