186 BUFFALO LAND. 



alone was worth a journey to the plains to see. i 

 remember having been very much interested, when a 

 boy, in reading accounts of gazelle hunting in the 

 Orient, where hawks and dogs are both used. The 

 former pounce down from the air on the fleet-footed 

 victim's head, compelling it to stop every few mo- 

 ments to shake its unwelcome passenger off, and the 

 dogs are thus enabled to overtake it. This always 

 seemed to me a cowardly sort of sport. The harm- 

 less victim of the chase, who can not touch the earth 

 without its turning tell-tale to the keen-scented pur- 

 suer, should not be robbed of his only refuge, speed, 

 or the pursuit becomes butchery. 



The American antelope upon our plains is what 

 the gazelle is upon those of Africa. Timid and fleet, 

 it often detects and avoids danger to which its pow- 

 erful neighbor, the buffalo, falls a victim. The group 

 which we had frightened bounded away with an elas- 

 ticity as if nature had furnished them hoofs and joints 

 of rubber. There was no apparent effort in their mo- 

 tion, and we imagined larger powers in reserve than 

 really existed. As the greyhound slowly gained 

 upon them, we noticed this, and the Professor there- 

 upon delivered what Sachem aj)tly styled a running 

 discourse. 



"Gentlemen, poetry of motion, perhaps by poeti- 

 cal license, gives exaggerated ideas of force. A 

 smooth-running engine, though taxed to its utmost 

 capacity, seems capable of accomplishing more, while 

 its wheezing neighbor, groaning and straining as if 

 on the verge of dissolution, has abundant powers in 

 reserve. Some Hercules may lift a weight on which 



