240 LOOK OUT FOE BISON. 



brandy, but, it neither being good for the state of his 

 health nor according to rny pleasure that he should have 

 it, he obtained only that which he pretended to desire, 

 the orders for next day, and with those he was coldly 

 dismissed. 



If I found the barracks at Fort Blley a sort of heaven 

 upon earth in regard to the habits of much of the so 

 ciety into which I had latterly been thrown, and had 

 discovered that, with some exceptions in other places, 

 the army alone held the courtesies of English life, and 

 the abstinence from the almost universal vice of promis 

 cuous spitting, my pleasure was again agreeably en 

 hanced by the discovery that my two companions, Major 

 Martin and Mr Bayard, never used tobacco in any one 

 way, and that therefore I was not bored with even the 

 fumes of a cigar. Nothing, then, could have suited me 

 better than the society into which I had been thrown, 

 when, after a good night's rest, by eight o'clock on the 

 following morning we had done breakfast, and, much 

 refreshed after the cool of the morning was over, I again 

 rested in my ambulance, while my friends rode on a little 

 ahead of the line of march. 



Mr Bayard had brought with him a greyhound, with 

 whom and Bar we hoped to have a course at hare or 

 deer. We were now fast approaching that part of the 

 plains where report had brought us word the first herds 

 of bison were to be met with, or, in other words, that 

 we should find them " two days' march beyond Fort 

 Kiley ; '* and in consequence of this, every eye was occa 

 sionally addressed to the undulating hills and to the 

 various sky-lines, and many a dark stone or spot in the 

 landscape anxiously scrutinised. For myself I felt so 

 wild a longing to see my first bison that I could think of 



