376 THE ENEMIES OF THE BISON. 



entered his lungs ; and yet, despite of this double wound, 

 he was not overtaken until after a desperate course of 

 fifteen minutes' duration. I have seen an old bison hit 

 with eighteen shots at ten paces, yet rush headlong for- 

 ward, and not drop until he had got a mile from the place 

 where he had been wounded, succumbing only to a bullet 

 which had broken his frontal bone. If Mr. Mead, one of 

 our best riflemen, had not been the cause of his death, 

 the bison might, perhaps, have served to feed one of the 

 large eagles so numerous in the United States. 



I ought to add that the bison's head is covered with 

 hair so thick and matted, that it is with difficulty a ball 

 can penetrate to the brain, unless, indeed, it is fired within 

 ten or twelve feet of the animal. This I have experienced 

 a score of times, and my bullet has fallen back flattened, 

 as if it had struck the broadside of an iron-plated man-of- 

 war. 



Spite of the immense destruction which the Indian 

 pioneers and trappers effect among the innumerable herds 

 animating the monotonous landscape of the prairies, many 

 years will glide by before the race disappears from the 

 American continent, and becomes as rare as that of the 

 urus is in Europe, which nowadays is met with only 

 in the great forest of Bielowitz. 



Spite of the many enemies who seem to conspire 

 for their destruction, the bisons, I say, still pasture in 

 thousands upon the plains and ridges of the green Far 

 West. 



However, it is much to be desired that the American 

 Government would find some means of preventing the 

 disappearance of these noble quadrupeds, w^hich are so 

 great an ornament of the rolling prairies, and so valuable 



