The Lordly Buffalo 291 



cellent, and tender and juicy. Buffalo meat is with 

 difficulty to be distinguished from ordinary beef. 

 At any rate, the flesh of this bull tasted uncom- 

 monly 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 farina- 

 ceous 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 possession. 



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 Mis- 

 souri 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 fol- 

 lowed until we lost it. Some of the sharper ridges 

 were of soft, crumbling sandstone, 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. 



