CHAPTER III. 



The Kepublican river Yalley Bluffs and their Formation "Buffaloes at 

 Last ! " Our nightly Concert Buffalo Wolves Camp Gibraltar Get- 

 ting in Hay Disappointed Whisky-poker A mysterious Noise The 

 Herd Danger A Fire Safe. 



Two days' travel passed barren of adventure, and on the 

 following one we made our first camp on the bank of the 

 Republican. 



We first struck the river about forty miles above where 

 it joins the Kaw, and over four hundred below its sources, 

 and, though at its lowest stage, found it to be a much more 

 considerable stream than the one we had left. It was 

 meandering a most winding course in the "bottom" down 

 which it flowed, with a sharpish current of two and a half 

 miles an hour. The central portion of every curve it made 

 was fringed and clustered with strips and groups of cotton- 

 wood trees, fifty or sixty feet high, and averaging two feet 

 six inches through at their butts, and with large willows, 

 osiers, and wild plums. The bottom varied in width be- 

 tween its bluffs from a half mile to five miles, and looked 

 as level as a billiard-table ; but such was only a deceptive 

 general appearance, it was in reality full of depressions 



o 2 



