CHAPTER XXI. 



THE BISON. 



HEN he has quitted Fort Leavenworth, on the 

 extreme frontier of the State of Illinois, at the 

 confluence of the Missouri, and ascended north- 

 ward the river Arkansas, the traveller soon 

 enters upon those great verdurous savannahs, those Saharas 

 full of freshness, those undulating prairies, of which no 

 description can give a very complete or satisfactory idea. 

 The prairies as in the United States they are called 

 are no immense smooth plains, clothed with trefoil, 

 lucerne, and similar herbage ; but undulating fields, fur- 

 rowed by numerous brooks, on whose borders flourish dwarf 

 cotton-trees, the buffalo-grass an herb with an elongated 

 stem, which furnishes the ruminants of these wilds with 



