104 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



gradually smoothed away into a vast unbroken expanse of 

 rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to show themselves, 

 and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon returned with 

 plenty of their tender meat. The .luxuriant but coarse grass 

 they had hitherto seen now changed into the nutritious and 

 curly buffalo grass, and their animals soon improved in ap- 

 pearance on the excellent pasture. In a few days, without 

 any adventure, they struck the Platte river, its shallow waters 

 (from which it derives its name) spreading over a wide and 

 sandy bed, numerous sand bars obstructing the sluggish 

 current, nowhere sufficiently deep to wet the forder's knee. 



By this time, but few antelopes having been seen, the 

 party ran entirely out of meat ; and one whole day having 

 passed without so much as a stray rabbit presenting itself, 

 not a few objurgations on the buffalo grumbled from the lips 

 of the hunters, who expected ere this to have reached the 

 land of plenty. La Bonte killed a fine deer, however, in the 

 river bottom, after they had encamped, not one particle of 

 which remained after supper that night, but which hardly 

 took the rough edge off their keen appetites. Although 

 already in the buffalo range, no traces of these animals had 

 yet been seen ; and as the country afforded but little game, 

 and the party did not care to halt and lose time in hunting 

 in it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of con- 

 versation being the well remembered merits of good buffalo 

 meat of " fat fleece," "hump-rib," and "tender-loin," of 

 delicious "boudins," and marrow-bones too good to think of. 



La Bonte had never seen the lordly animal, and conse- 

 quently but half believed the accounts of the mountaineers, 

 who described their countless bands as covering the prairie 

 far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel to 

 pass through ; but the visions of such dainty and abundant 

 feeding as they descanted on set his mouth watering and 

 danced before his eyes as he slept supperless, night after night, 

 on the banks of the hungry Platte. 



