398 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



Of all the modes of hunting the buffalo practised by the 

 prairie tribes, there is no one, the accompaniments of 

 which are of such characteristic and terrible wildness, as 

 that of which the lithograph given is a strikingly accurate 

 delineation. The Indians are driving a maddened herd of 

 buffalo over the edges of one of those tremendous prairie 

 rifts or canones, as they are sometimes incorrectly called by 

 the border men. These are vast yawning fissures, which 

 suddenly open on the great Piano Estacado, which stretches 

 in one prodigious plain from the foot of the Rocky Mountains 

 to the head waters of the Red River, Arkansas, &c. Mr. 

 Kendall's description of this scene in his Santa Fe Expedi- 

 tion, is so nearly accurate, that I give it here in his own 

 words. 



We had scarcely proceeded six miles, after drying our 

 blankets, when we suddenly came upon another immense 

 rent or chasm in the earth, exceeding in depth the one we 

 had so much difficulty in crossing the day before. No one 

 was aware of its existence until we were immediately upon 

 its brink, when a spectacle, exceeding in grandeur any thing 

 we had previously beheld, came suddenly in view. Not a 

 tree or bush, no outline whatever, marked its position or 

 course, and we were all lost in amazement, as one by one 

 we left the double-file ranks and rode up to the verge of the 

 yawning abyss. 



In depth it could not be less than eight hundred feet, was 

 from three to five hundred yards in width, and at the point 

 where we first struck it, the sides were nearly perpendicular. 

 A sickly sensation of dizziness was felt by all as we looked 

 down, as it were, into the depths of the earth. In the dark 

 and narrow valley below, an occasional spot of green relieved 

 the eye. and a small stream of water, now rising to the view, 

 then sinking beneath some huge rock, was foaming and 

 bubbling along. Immense walls, columns, and in some places 

 what appeared to be arches, were seen standing, modellel by 



