The Lordly Buffalo. 26 9 



called hump meat that is, the strip of steak on each 

 side of the backbone is excellent, and tender and juicy. 

 Buffalo meat is with difficulty to be distinguished from 

 ordinary beef. At any rate, the flesh of this bull tasted 

 uncommonly good to us, for we had been without fresh 

 meat for a week ; and until a healthy, active man has 

 been without it for some little time, he does not know 

 how positively and almost painfully hungry for flesh he 

 becomes, no matter how much farinaceous food he may 

 have. And the very toil I had been obliged to go 

 through, in order to procure the head, made me feel 

 all the prouder of it when it was at last in my posses- 

 sion. 



A year later I made another trip, this time with a 

 wagon, through what had once been a famous buffalo 

 range, the divide between the Little Missouri and the 

 Powder, at its northern end, where some of the creeks 

 flowing into the Yellowstone also head up ; but though in 

 most places throughout the range the grass had not yet 

 grown from the time a few months before when it had 

 been cropped off down close to the roots by the grazing 

 herds, and though the ground was cut up in all directions 

 by buffalo trails, and covered by their innumerable skulls 

 and skeletons, not a living one did we see, and only one 

 moderately fresh track, which we followed until we lost 

 it. Some of the sharper ridges were of soft, crumbling 

 sand-stone, and when a buffalo trail crossed such a one, 

 it generally made a curious, heart-shaped cut, the feet 

 of the animals sinking the narrow path continually deeper 

 and deeper, while their bodies brushed out the sides. 



