WAPITI-RUNNING ON THE PLAINS 65 



is of light sand, and the whole region is a vast series 

 of sand-heaps. It looks as if the ocean in a violent 

 gale — the height of the waves being exaggerated to 

 some fifty or a hundred feet — had suddenly been 

 arrested, solidified, and turned into sand. There 

 are occasional level places, low bottoms, in which 

 the water supplied by the winter snows and rains 

 collects and remains some time after the great heats 

 and droughts of summer have set in. These places 

 are covered with a rank vegetation of tall grass, in 

 which it is sometimes very difficult to force one's 

 way on horseback ; but generally the surface of 

 the country is sand, either devoid of vegetation or 

 covered with patches of coarse grass ; and here and 

 there are level tracts clothed with short, succulent, 

 curling buffalo-grass. The wind has a great effect 

 on the soft surface of the sand, and most of the hills 

 have one side blown or scooped out, which makes 

 the country somewhat dangerous to ride over, for 

 one is apt, in galloping after some animal, to come 

 suddenly upon a perpendicular cliff twenty or thirty 

 feet high, the descent down which would result in 

 broken bones for man and horse. The native 

 horses are pretty well accustomed to this pecu- 

 liarity of the country, and will stop suddenly, a 

 proceeding which, though excellent and wise as 



