THE BUFFALO. 395 



winding in and winding out, amidst the surging tumult of 

 horns and heels, without receiving a scratch. 



On no other conditions could this powerful animal be 

 assailed with sufficient effect to answer the requisitions of 

 the numerous tribes upon it for their yearly subsistence. 

 Were they able only to assail the outskirts of the herds, the 

 foraging they might do would be meagerly enough eked out 

 upon the weakly bodies of the sick and wounded and super- 

 annuated lingerers. 



Indeed, were the buffalo possessed of the same alert, high- 

 headed and agile motions of the mustang, in addition to the 

 " bovine rage" with which it seems so easily inspired, the 

 weight of the fore-parts of its body, and of the closely- 

 packed, incalculable columns in which it moves, of choice, 

 would make it the most formidable brute on earth, and 

 enable it to trample the mightiest armies of men like grass 

 in its path. There is no object in nature so terrible as the 

 headlong advance of a great herd of these animals thoroughly 

 aroused by terror. Niagara itself is not more tremendously 

 resistless than that black, bellowing torrent which is thus 

 sometimes poured through narrow defiles of Rocky Mountain 

 steppes, or which is suddenly turned loose like a new roaring 

 flood, to overwhelm the slant and trembling plains. 



No sights equalling this are witnessed elsewhere on the 

 face of the earth, though South Africa exhibits an approxi- 

 mating parallel in the migratory movements of the Spring- 

 bock and other antelopes, to which we shall refer. A 

 herd of elephant bulls, may be, and is properly esteemed 

 " pro-di-gi-ous," by English adventurers in that direction, 

 but the oceanic mases in which the native bison of our 

 plains are accustomed to move, have no real parallel except 

 those in which our people urge and act towards a given point 

 of empire ! 



When we come to think that at a rough estimate, more 

 than seventy thousand souls of our native tribes upon the 



