THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 43 



forming for a short time a cool and comfortable bath, in which he wal- 

 lows like a hog in the mire, swinging himself round and round on his 

 side, and thus enlarging the pool until he is nearly immersed. At 

 length he rises besmeared with a coating of mud, which, drying, in- 

 sures him immunity from insect pests for many hours. Others follow, 

 each enlarging the "wallow" until it becomes twenty feet in diameter, 

 remains a prominent feature in the landscape, and forms a cistern 

 where a grateful supply of water is often long retained for the thirsty 

 denizens of that dry region. 



Like the other species of the bovine group the bison is of a sluggish 

 disposition, and mild and timid, ferocious as his shaggy head and vicious 

 eye make him look. He rarely attacks, except in the last hopeless 

 effort of self-defense. " Endowed with the smallest possible amount 

 of instinct," says Colonel R. I. Dodge, "the little he has seems adapted 

 rather for getting him into difficulties than out of them. If not alarmed 

 at sight or smell of a foe, he will stand stupidly gazing at his compan- 

 ions in their death-throes until the whole herd is shot down. He will 

 walk unconsciously into a quicksand or quagmire already choked with 

 struggling, dying victims." Having made up his mind to go a certain 

 way, it is almost impossible to swerve him from his purpose, and he 

 will rush heedless into sure destruction. Two trains were " ditched " 

 in one week on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad by herds 

 of buffaloes rushing blindly against and in front of them. Finally the 

 conductors " got the idea," and gave the original occupants of the soil 

 the right of way whenever they asked it. During a voyage down the 

 upper Missouri in 1877, our steamer more than once had to stop to 

 allow swimming herds to get out of the way, and once we com- 

 pletely keel-hauled a sorry old bull. Yet, as Mr. Allen suggests, 

 their inertness may be exaggerated by writers, as their sagacity cer- 

 tainly has been. This stupidity, unwariness, or liability to demoraliz- 

 ing panic, places them at the mercy of the hunter, who is their only 

 enemy besides the wolves. In former times, young or weak animals 

 straying from the herds, and all the wounded and aged that could be 

 separated from their fellows, were quickly set upon and worried to 

 death by wolves ; but now these brutes have become so reduced as not 

 to form a serious check upon their increase. 



The early explorers of the Mississippi Valley believed that the buf- 

 falo might be made to take the place of the domestic ox in agricultural 

 pursuits, and at the same time yield a fleece of wool equal in quality to 

 that of the sheep ; but no persistent attempts have yet been made to 

 utilize it by domestication. That the buffalo-calf may be easily reared 

 and thoroughly tamed has been conclusively proved, but little atten- 

 tion has been paid to their reproduction in confinement, or to training 

 them to labor. During the last century they were domesticated in 

 various parts of the colonies, and interbred with domestic cows, pro- 

 ducing a half-breed race which is fertile, and which readily amalgamates 



