The English Sportsman in the Western Prairies Book

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1861 Excerpt: ...About an hour before dark we descended into the narrow valley of the Kansas river, the fort being on the opposite side, to arrive at which we must cross in a very indifferent ferry-boat: so having attained the banks of the river, it being nearly dark, I ordered Taymouth to be got ready for me to ride, and some things that I should need to be put into the dog-waggon, which was to follow me, and the rest to encamp where they were, and await further orders on the following morning. Having possessed myself of my letters of introduction, covered with black dust, and feeling the heat of the fever increased by a beard of ten days' growth (having tried that hirsute appendage, I cannot conceive any man in his senses wearing one unless in a very cold climate), I crossed the ferry, and my high-couraged chestnut steed sprang from the boat to land with a joyous toss of his head, and as if anticipating a stable he stepped gaily up the ascending ground. In my progress I met several soldiers who, I thought, looked very like our own men at home, many RECEPTION AT THE FORT. 231 of whom stared hard at me in the dusk of the evening, but none of them questioned my business; when at last (the distance was longer than I thought for) I came to the top of the hill, I saw "the Fort," as it was called, but which had nothing of a fort about it, not so much as our barracks have in England,-for it was not protected nor shut in even by a wall. At the two ends of an elongated square or ample parade-ground were buildings, the quarters of the officers, and on the other two sides commodious barracks for the men; a wide interval being left at the four corners, by which the parade could be attained, and which remained free to any ingress, save as the sentinels might interfere. On tro...