118 ON THE FEONTIEE. 



scenery and habitants of the central portion of the Rocky 

 Mountains. So, leaving out everything connected with the 

 trip that would not serve these purposes, I shall proceed to 

 do so, commencing with some description of the personnel 

 composing the party, and giving those two dogs the pas. 

 Nip and Tug were brothers. Their mother was an 

 extraordinarily large and powerful English greyhound, 

 which had been procured at a long price, and imported at 

 considerable expense, for the purpose of breeding antelope- 

 coursers from. As other wards have been known to do, 

 she eluded her guardian and eloped, going off with a savage 

 bull-mastiff, who from his size and ferocity was a terror to 

 his own neighbourhood, and who had the honour to be 

 father to the subjects of this "first-class notice." Nip and 

 Tug remained the two survivors of a massacre of the 

 innocents, and were " raised " more out of curiosity as to 

 how they would turn out than with any idea of their 

 becoming valuable. Contrary to what might have been 

 presumed, instead of proving clumsy, ill-made, bad-condi- 

 tioned curs, they were very symmetrical dogs, combining the 

 general greyhound outline of form with prodigious strength 

 of build adding to the reach and gather of the greyhound, 

 the send and power of the mastiff, and the courage and 

 pertinacity of the bull ; and, strange to say, were both 

 higher and heavier than either of their parents ; in fact, 

 using the words in their American as well as English sense, 

 they were the "tallest" dogs I have ever seen. In colour 

 and markings they were striped black and tawny brindles, 

 and so much alike that many who were in the habit of 

 seeing them daily could never tell them apart. Four men 



