WIDE AWAKE. 117 



in a clean and workmanlike manner, you will deserve all 

 praise, for you have caused to bite the dust the swiftest, in 

 my belief, of all quadrupeds in fact, their speed is such 

 that the eye can scarcely follow the action of their limbs. 

 Yet their gait is not low and close to the ground, but a 

 succession of rather lofty bounds, and performed with such 

 surprising ease, that it causes the beholder to wonder how 

 the frame of any creature can sustain uninjured such a 

 tremendous strain. 



The prong-horned antelope is the oniy species of the 

 genus, and is about the size of Cervus Virginianus, both 

 graceful and elegant in form and action. Well may the 

 Americans be proud of possessing the only representative of 

 the race, for when the antelope is seen on the boundless 

 prairies of the Far West, untrammelled by limit, free to go 

 and return as they choose, the impressions caused will 

 never be effaced, or a better representation of perfect 

 independence and freedom beheld. 



In referring to my diary, I find the following narrative of 

 a day's shooting : 



" Cap., are you asleep ? " such was the welcome sound 

 that informed me that some one else was awake besides 

 myself. Such a night I do not think I had ever previously 

 passed, and trust shall never have to again. To ask a man 

 nurtured in a Christian land whether he was asleep ! the 

 thing is perfectly preposterous : a gale of wind blowing the 

 entire night, with drops of rain as large and so numerous 

 that a brick wall would scarcely have repelled them, let 

 alone a flimsy break-wind composed of green boughs, yet 

 these western companions of mine slept. Half-a-dozen 



