and trappings, moving with such exquisite grace and manly beauty, added to that bold defiance which man carries on his front, who acknowledges no superior on earth, and who is amenable to no laws except the laws of God and honour." In this enthusiastic and hearty tone does Mr. Catlin describe and paint the heroes, the native dress, and the wigwams of the red man. Three hundred of these portraits in oil he brought home safe with him; also "two hundred other paintings in oil, containing views of their villages, their wigwams, their games and religious ceremonies, their dances, their ball-plays, their buffalo-hunting, and other amusements (containing in all over 3000 full-length figures), and the landscapes of the country they live in, as well as a very extensive and curious collection of their costumes, and all their other manufactures, from the size of a wigwam down to the size of a quill or a rattle."

These facts, these pictures, as the splendid and unique collection exhibited at the Egyptian Hall has demonstrated to multitudes,and this style of description, show how earnest and enthusiastic Mr. Catlin's heart is towards the aboriginal Americans. And not more earnest and enthusiastic is he than his manner is truthful and faithful. Truth is stamped on everything he says, verisimilitude is in every one of his pictures. We indeed wonder how he could execute such works with his pencil, and describe so fully with his pen, considering the opportunities he could snatch while living thousands of miles from the confines of civilization. But his heart was in the subjects, he had higher aims than merely to travel in strange lands, and paint savage scenes; and hence the graphic and vivid character of his sketches as an author and as an artist. He says, "In addition to the knowledge of human nature and of my art, which I hope to acquire by this toilsome and expensive undertaking, I have another in view, which, if it should not be of equal service to me, will be of no less interest and value to posterity. I have, for many years past, contemplated the noble races of red men who are now spread over the trackless forests and boundless prairies, melting away at the approach of civilization-their rights invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, and therefore lost to the world; and they at last sunk into the earth, and the ploughshare turning the sod over their graves,and I have flown to their rescue-not of their lives or of their race (for they are doomed,' and must perish)-but to the rescue of their looks and their modes, at which the acquisitive world may hurl their poison and every besom of destruction, and trample them down and crush them to death; yet, phoenix-like, they may rise from the stain' of a painter's ' palette,' and live again upon canvass, and stand forth for centuries yet to come the living monuments of a noble race."

It was for the purpose, therefore, not only of advancement in his

art, but to preserve the memory and the likeness of a doomed people, that Mr. Catlin cherished the purpose of visiting every tribe of Indians on the American continent; a bold and hazardous undertaking. Accordingly he devoted eight years to his enterprise, actually visiting forty-eight tribes, the greater portion speaking different languages, and the whole amounting to about four hundred thousand souls. This multitude again recalls the melancholy idea of the entire race speedily disappearing from the face of the earth. What a dreary and sad look it is to glance into such a future! What a painful and dreadful retrospect does the modern and recent history of the red people present! A few centuries ago white men set foot for the first time in the country of the doomed race, when the numbers of the aboriginal Americans are supposed to have exceeded sixteen millions. But, alas! now it is believed that not two remain; entire tribes having wholly disappeared; while of these, perhaps, not a fourth part remain untainted and undemoralized by the civilized invaders. Such, indeed, has been the desolation wrought by the contaminating vices and diseases of white men,-such the poison of whiskey, and the death by small-pox,-that the natives of the forests and the prairies have been cut off at a rate unknown in the history of war and of the human family. In 1837, "the gentle and courteous" Mandans numbered two thousand, and now not a single soul of them remains ; only between thirty and forty having escaped the pestilence of the small-pox, and these a hostile tribe butchered,

We must now, with few breaks, present a variety of Mr. Catlin's life-looking, curious, and arresting sketches and records. The whole has such an authentic appearance that it is impossible to doubt his good faith; every picture speaks with such an earnest enthusiasm that it is impossible not to be carried along and away with the author.

Our first extract will serve to convey some ideas of the vast extent of the untamed regions of America, and also of the immense distance to which our traveller penetrated:

"In the commencement of my tour, several of my travelling companions from the city of New York, found themselves at a frightful distance from the West, when we arrived at Niagara Falls; and hastened back to amuse their friends with tales and scenes of the West. At Buffalo a steamboat was landing with 400 passengers, and twelve days out-'Where from ?'— 'From the West.' In the rich state of Ohio, hundreds were selling their farms and going to the West. In the beautiful city of Cincinnati, people said to me, 'Our town has passed the days of its most rapid growth, it is not far enough West.' In St. Louis, 1,400 miles west of New York, my landlady assured me that I would be pleased with her boarders, for they were nearly all merchants from the 'West.' I there asked whence came those steamboats, laden with pork, honey, hides, &c. ?- From the West.'

Whence those ponderous bars of silver, which those men have been for hours shouldering and putting on board that boat? They come from Santa Fé, from the West.'"

After a number of similar inquiries and answers in the course of large strides, we find the traveller starting in the Yellow-Stone, saying "I'll go to the West."

"Two thousand miles on her, and we were at the mouth of YellowStone river at the West. What! invoices, bills of lading, &c., a wholesale establishment so far to the West? And those strange looking, longhaired gentlemen, who have just arrived, and are relating the adventures of their long and tedious journey. Who are they?-Oh! they are some of our merchants just arrived from the West. And that keel-boat, the Mackinaw-boat richly laden with goods ?---These, Sir, are outfits starting for the West. Going to the West, ha? Then,' said I, 'I'll try it again, I will try and see if I can go to the West."

At a fort, a dauntless and semi-barbarous-looking, jolly fellow, dashed forth in advance of his party on his wild horse to meet Mr. Catlin, and the following is part of the dialogue that ensued :—

"Ne parlez vous l'Anglais ?-Non, Monsr. I speaks de French and de Americaine; mais je ne parle pas l'Anglais.—Well then, my good fellow, I will speak English, and you may speak Americaine.-Val, sare, je suis bien content, pour for I see dat you speaks putty coot Americaine.—You live here, I suppose ?-Non, Monsieur, I comos fair from de West.--What, from the West! Where under the heavens is that?-Wat, diable! de West? well, you shall see, Monsieur, he is putty fair off, suppose.-Do you see anything of the Flatheads' in your country?-Non, Monsieur, ils demeurent very, very fair to de West."

We must now extract some more minute and particular picturing of regions which presented objects and nature in strange and novel shapes and colours. Having from the junction of the Missouri with the Mississippi ascended the former 2000 miles, to the Yellowstone River, Mr. Catlin here fixed his first station; the fort of the American Fur Company offering a resting and secure place. A description of the Missouri furnishes a specimen of the artist's style when he handles the pen, and also of extraordinary features in the world of nature. That river, he tell us, is perhaps different in appearance and character from all other rivers in the world; "there is a terror in its manner which is sensibly felt, the moment we enter its muddy waters from the Mississippi." "Its boiling, turbid waters, sweep off, in one unceasing current." It is always turbid and opaque, owing to the continual falling in of its rich alluvial banks; having "the colour of a cup of chocolate or coffee, with sugar and cream stirred into it." The following are other singular condi

tions:

"For the distance of 1000 miles above St. Louis, the shores of this

river (and in many places the whole bed of the stream) are filled with snags and raft, formed of trees of the largest size, which have been undermined by the falling banks and cast into the stream; their roots becoming fastened in the bottom of the river, with their tops floating on the surface of the water, and pointing down the stream, forming the most frightful and discouraging prospect for the adventurous voyageur. Almost every island and sand-bar is covered with huge piles of these floating trees; and when the river is flooded, its surface is almost literally covered with floating raft and drift-wood; which bids positive defiance to keel-boats and steamers on their way up the river."

The scene is not, however, all so dreary, nor such as has been reported.

"It has been heretofore very erroneously represented to the world, that the scenery on this river was monotonous, and wanting in picturesque beauty. This intelligence is surely incorrect, and that because it has been brought, perhaps, by men who are not the best judges in the world of nature's beautiful works! and if they were, they always pass them by, in pain or desperate distress, in toil and trembling fear for the safety of their furs and peltries, or for their lives, which are at the mercy of the yelling savages who inhabit this delightful country. One thousand miles or more of the upper part of the river was, to my eye, like fairy-land; and during our transit through that part of our voyage, I was most of the time riveted to the deck of the boat, indulging my eyes in the boundless and tireless pleasure of roaming over the thousand hills, and bluffs, and dales, and ravines; where the astonished herds of buffaloes, of elks, and antelopes, and sneaking wolves, and mountain-goats, were to be seen bounding up and down and over the green fields; each one and each tribe, band, and gang, taking their own way, and using their own means to the greatest advantage possible, to leave the sight and sound of the puffing of our boat, which was for the first time saluting the green and wild shores of the Missouri with the din of mighty steam. From St. Louis to the falls of the Missouri, a distance of 2600 miles, is one continued prairie; with the exception of a few of the bottoms formed along the bank of the river, and the streams which are falling into it, which are often covered with the most luxuriant growth of forest-timber. The summit level of the great prairies stretching off to the west and the east from the river, to an almost boundless extent, is from two to three hundred feet above the level of the river; which has formed a bed or valley for its course, varying in width from two to twenty miles. This channel or valley has been evidently produced by the force of the current, which has gradually excavated, in its floods and gorges, this immense space, and sent its débris into the ocean. By the continual overflowing of the river, its deposits have been lodged and left with a horizontal surface, spreading the deepest and richest alluvion over the surface of its meadows on either side; through which the river winds its serpentine course, alternately running from one bluff to the other; which present themselves to its shores in all the most picturesque and beautiful shapes and colours imaginable-some with their green sides gracefully sloped down in the most lovely groups to the water's edge, whilst others, divested of their

verdure, present themselves in immense masses of clay of different colours, which arrest the eye of the traveller, with the most curious views in the world. These strange and picturesque appearances have been produced by the rains and frosts, which are continually changing the dimensions, and varying the thousand shapes of these denuded hills, by washing down their sides and carrying them into the river. Amongst these groups may be seen tens and hundreds of thousands of different forms and figures, of the sublime and the picturesque; in many places for miles together, as the boat glides along, there is one continued appearance, before and behind us, of some ancient and boundless city in ruins-ramparts, terraces, domes, towers, citadels and castles may be seen,-cupolas, and magnificent porticoes, and here and there a solitary column and crumbling pedestal, and even spires of clay which stand alone-and glistening in the distance, as the sun's rays are refracted back by the thousand crystals of gypsum which are imbedded in the clay of which they are formed. Over and through these groups of domes and battlements (as one is compelled to imagine them), the sun sends his long and gilding rays, at morn or in the evening; giving life and light, by aid of shadows cast to the different glowing colours of these clay-built ruins; shedding a glory over the solitude of this wild and pictured country, which no one can realize unless he travels here and looks upon it."

It is amidst such wild and primeval haunts that the mountainsheep and the antelope live in herds, secure by the sides and slopes of the bluffs, which are nearly inaccessible, from their natural enemies. It was among and through river-scenes and scenery for 2000 miles that the steamer in which Mr. Catlin was proceeding to the West," tugged, and puffed, and blowed, and toiled for three months." But what of the native on the adjacent banks?—

"If anything did ever literally and completely astonish (and astound) the natives,' it was the appearance of our steamer, puffing and blowing, and paddling, and rushing by their villages which were on the banks of the river. These poor and ignorant people, for the distance of 2000 miles, had never before seen or heard of a steamboat, and in some places they seemed at a loss to know what to do, or how to act; they could not, as the Dutch did at Newburgh, on the Hudson river, take it to be a floating saw-mill-and they had no name for it, so it was, like every thing else (with them) which is mysterious and unaccountable, called medicine (mystery). We had on board one twelve-pound cannon and three or four eight-pound swivels, which we were taking up to arm the Fur Company's fort at the mouth of Yellow Stone; and at the approach to every village they were all discharged several times in rapid succession, which threw the inhabitants into utter confusion and amazement—some of them threw their faces to the ground, and cried to the Great Spirit-some shot their horses and dogs, and sacrificed them to appease the Great Spirit, whom they conceived was offended-some deserted their villages, and ran to the tops of the bluffs some miles distant; and others, in some places, as the boat landed in front of their villages, came with great caution, and peeped over the bank of the