THE ANTELOPE 239 



top of a butte, or rather from the top of a little ridge 

 which connected two buttes. I could see where my 

 shots struck each time. I was overshooting, and after 

 giving me three or four chances the antelopes scam- 

 pered away, and turning the angle of a butte were 

 soon out of sight. 



I have seen the wild-sage bushes, where they grew in 

 great fields, tall enough to conceal an antelope or give 

 the sportsman a fine opportunity to stalk the game, 

 but the sage-bushes are more often low, and the ante- 

 lopes prefer the wide, undulating plains, where they can 

 see great distances. The white markings on the ante- 

 lopes are easily seen when the animals are near, and 

 attract the eye often at long range when they are 

 moving about feeding. 



One who has not seen and travelled the great plains 

 can hardly realize their immensity. Beginning far to 

 the north in the British possessions, they extend south- 

 ward in vast undulating waves like a mighty ocean. 

 In some places there are level stretches for hundreds 

 of miles like the sea in a calm. Again there are great 

 swells like waves, or the ground is broken, as if huge 

 waves had been arrested as they tumbled, and ragged, 

 precipitous banks, buttes, or bad lands appear with 

 surfaces much wrinkled by erosion, and in some places 

 handsomely decorated with conglomerate layers or 

 layers of different colors, which run for miles and miles 

 in and out of ranges of hills which are so bewildering 

 in number as to be dangerous to the traveller who ven- 

 tures among them. There was a time when the ante- 

 lopes were to be seen everywhere on these plains, from 

 the British possessions to Texas and west to California 



