Adventure and adventurers > Away in the wilderness, or, Life among the red Indians and fur-traders of North America

AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS.
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CHAPTER IX.
THE FORT, AND AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
E turn now to a very different scene. It is
V t a small fort or trading-post on the banks
of a stream which flows through the prairie. The
fort is very much like the one which has been
already described, but somewhat stronger; and
there are four block-houses or bastions, one at each
corner, from which the muzzles of a few heavy
guns may be seen protruding.
The trees and bushes have been cleared away
from around this fort, and the strips of forest-land
which run along both sides of the river are not so
thickly wooded as the country through which the
reader has hitherto been travelling. In front of
the fort rolls .the river. Immediately behind it
lies the boundless prairie, which extends like a
sea of grass, with scarcely a tree or bush upon it,
as far as the eye can reach. This is Fort Erie.
You might ride for many days over that prairie
without seeing anything of the forest, except a
clump of trees and bushes here and there, and