40 HUNTING TRIPS 



ghastly staring skull of some mighty buffalo, 

 long dead and gone to join the rest of his 

 vanished race. 



When the grassy prairies are left and the 

 traveller enters a region of alkali desert and 

 sage-brush, the look of the country becomes 

 even more grim and forbidding. In places 

 the alkali forms a white frost on the ground 

 that glances in the sunlight like the surface 

 of a frozen lake ; the dusty little sage-brush, 

 stunted and dried up, sprawls over the 

 parched ground, from which it can hardly 

 extract the small amount of nourishment 

 necessary for even its weazened life; the 

 spiny cactus alone seems to be really in its 

 true home. Yet even in such places antelope 

 will be found, as alert and as abounding with 

 vivacious life as elsewhere. Owing to the 

 magnifying and distorting power of the 

 clear, dry plains air, every object, no matter 

 what its shape or color or apparent distance, 

 needs the closest examination. A magpie 

 sitting on a white skull, or a couple of ravens, 

 will look, a quarter of a mile off, like some 



