A Trip on the Prairie. 199 



away from the bright glare, and at a little distance things 

 seem to shimmer and dance in the hot rays of the sun. 

 The ground is scorched to a dull brown, and against its 

 monotonous expanse any objects stand out with a prom- 

 inence that makes it difficult to judge of the distance 

 at which they are. A mile off one can see, through the 

 strange shimmering haze, the shadowy white outlines of 

 something which looms vaguely up till it looks as large as 

 the canvas-top of a prairie wagon ; but as the horseman 

 comes nearer it shrinks and dwindles and takes clearer 

 form, until at last it changes into the ghastly staring skull 

 of some mighty buffalo, long dead and gone to join the 

 rest of his vanished race. 



When the grassy prairies are left and the traveller enters 

 a region of alkali desert and sage-brush, the look of the 

 country becomes even more grim and forbidding. I n places 

 the alkali forms a white frost on the ground that glances in 

 the sunlight like the surface of a frozen lake ; the dusty little 

 sage-brush, stunted and dried up, sprawls over the parched 

 ground, from which it can hardly extract the small amount 

 of nourishment necessary for even its weazened life ; the 

 spiny cactus alone seems to be really in its true home. 

 Yet even in such places antelope will be found, as alert 

 and as abounding with vivacious life as elsewhere. Owing 

 to the magnifying and distorting power of the clear, dry 

 plains air, every object, no matter what its shape or color 

 or apparent distance, needs the closest examination. A 

 magpie sitting on a white skull, or a couple of ravens, will 

 look, a quarter of a mile off, like some curious beast ; and 

 time and again a raw hunter will try to stalk a lump of 



