CURIOUS USE OF A BISON. 125 



just getting 'dark, to save his life from the intense frost, 

 he replaced the entrails with his own body, and crept 

 into the carcass of the animal with his head towards the 

 tail, and his feet pushed up his windpipe, the skin, when 

 it had been divided, being permitted to fall as a curtain to 

 the ground. Here he revelled in animal heat, not in the 

 least incommoded by that enormous quantity of blood 

 and moisture which I have since seen contained in the 

 carcass of an animal of this size, and at last fell asleep. 

 How long he continued in comfortable oblivion he is not 

 quite sure, always desirous of being exact, but he awoke 

 with a sensation of cold, and found that every limb save 

 his hands, which he had fortunately kept folded under 

 his chin, was not only benumbed, but the blood and 

 moisture had become a frame of ice, and the severed 

 skin of the animal itself had frozen firmly and immov 

 ably to the ground. Thus, then, he was iced for the rest 

 of his life a sort of forced meat, in fact, in the bovine 

 " rissole" which surrounded him, with no white-capped 

 and aproned cook to deliver the buffalo of his despairing 

 burthen. Simultaneously with his awakening from his 

 sleep, however, he had been aware of a strange noise 

 outside the frozen case which compassed him ; so, with 

 ears sharpened by necessity, he endeavoured to discover 

 the cause. The external rattling and scratching con 

 tinued, till slight openings admitted a gleam of the in 

 tensely cold morning moon, when through the crevices 

 he could plainly distinguish the gnawing, crunching of 

 bones, snarling, and fighting of a large drove of wolves. 

 Here, then, was a Scylla to the Chary bdis which already 

 contained him, and a more active or pending dissolution 

 was thus fearfully around ; for, sportsman as he was, he 

 well knew that there was always an immense and hasty 



