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they annoyed no a great deal at meal times standing by and watching every morsel of food that went to our mouths we would generally give them some but when you gave to one others came crowding up and it was impossible to supply all their wants. We kept ourselves pretty well supplied with fresh meat we had ducks and rabbits in abundance. we saw some stray droves of elk but never in shooting range. they are lordly looking animals I should like very much to shoot one of them. Immense crowds of emmigrants passed us every day one day I counted one hundred wagons. the average of seven persons to a wagon would make seven hundred persons About sixty miles from Denver we came to St Vrains Fort an abandoned trading post it was established for the protection of the fur traders and once had a company of United States soldiers. Its mud walls were still standing about ten feet high six feet thick and an area of about a square achre it stood on slightly elevated ground and a first rate position for defense. We camped near its walls for the night, somehow although it was ruined and deserted we considered it far pleasanter to camp by its walls than to lay down on the open prairie. It was a fine moonlight night and as I sat there on the banks of the murmuring river listening to its monatonous rippling and seeing around me the vast prairie its undulating surface looking like the heaving sea, I could imagine that those ruined walls beside me were repaired I thought that crowds of martial men passed to and fro I imagined the sentry pacing to and fro on the wall and that I could hear his joyous ringing shoot of alls well. All the movements ? , and evolutions of a fort passed plainly before my eyes I gradually grew unconscious and awoke about midnight chilled through the men asleep rolled up in their blankets