26 HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



bull. The great herd was then passing north, 

 and Mr. King reckoned that it must have cov- 

 ered an area nearly seventy miles by thirty in 

 extent ; the figures representing his rough 

 guess, made after travelling through the herd 

 crosswise, and upon knowing how long it took 

 to pass a given point going northward. This 

 great herd of course was not a solid mass of 

 buffaloes ; it consisted of innumerable bands 

 of every size, dotting the prairie within the 

 limits given. Mr. King was mounted on a 

 somewhat unmanageable horse. On one oc- 

 casion in following a band he wounded a large 

 bull, and became so wedged in by the mad- 

 dened animals that he was unable to avoid 

 the charge of the bull, which was at its last 

 gasp. Coming straight toward him it leaped 

 into the air and struck the afterpart of the 

 saddle full with its massive forehead. The 

 horse was hurled to the ground with a broken 

 back, and King's leg was likewise broken, 

 while the bull turned a complete somerset 

 over them and never rose again. 



In the recesses of the Rocky Mountains, 

 from Colorado northward through Alberta, 

 and in the depths of the subarctic forest be- 

 yond the Saskatchewan, there have always 

 been found small numbers of the bison, locally 

 called the mountain buffalo and wood buffalo ; 

 often indeed the old hunters term these ani- 

 mals " bison, " although they never speak of 

 the plains animals save as buffalo. They 

 form a slight variety of what was formerly the 

 ordinary plains bison, intergrading with it ; on 



