172 PEAIBIE AND FOKEST. 



course the Indians have carried on wars among themselves, 

 and the white man has constantly been in the habit of 

 invading the territories of the aborigines, but the slaughter 

 in these forays has been trifling, the victims on either side 

 seldom left without interment, thus depriving the carnivorse 

 of an intimacy with the human family, which leads to 

 contempt of our powers of resistance or possibly a relish 

 for our flesh. 



Few of us have not experienced the excitement of a 

 gallop over a good grass country with the spotted beauties 

 leading the way, getting over the ground at a racing pace, 

 while your mount is nearly hauling you out of the saddle 

 with enthusiasm and inclination to make himself on still 

 more familiar terms with the pack. By Jove ! how reckless 

 such excitement makes you feel ! Fear is banished for the 

 time being all sense of danger is dispelled to the winds, 

 and sooner than be thrown out you would ride at a canal, 

 or charge any height of timber. You may be old yet 

 for the time feel young : you may be blase yet you feel as 

 buoyant as when you made your debut. But it is far 

 from the grass countries, across three thousand miles of 

 water and fifteen hundred of land far beyond the giant 

 Mississippi, to the illimitable prairies of the Far West I 

 wish you, in thought, to travel. Imagine a boundless 

 expanse of undulating land, covered with grass ; here and 

 there a sparse scattering of brush, with perhaps one or two 

 lines of timber that mark the margin of tributaries of some 

 mighty river, and you have the landscape without entering 

 into detail. What a place for a gallop ! what a place for 

 a buffalo run, or any other kind of run that will give your 



