194 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 
more wanton of place than the savage himself, possessed 
of invincible courage and unlimited resources, and feel- 
ing adventure a part of life itself, has already penetrated 
the remotest fastnesses, and wandered over the most ex- 
tended plains. Where the live lightning leaps from 
rock to rock, opening yawning caverns to the dilating 
eye, or spends its fury upon the desert, making it a 
sheet of fire, there have been his footsteps; and there 
has the buffalo smarted beneath his prowess, and kissed 
the earth. 
The child of fortune from the “old world,” the fa- 
vorite of courts, has abandoned his home and affectations, 
and sought, among these western wilds, the enjoyment 
of nature in her own loveliness. The American hunter 
frolics over them as a boy enjoying his Saturday sport. 
The Indian—like his fathers, ever restless—scours the 
mountain and the plain ; and men of whatever condition 
here meet equal, as sportsmen; and their great feats of 
honor and of arms, are at the sacrifice of the buffalo. 
In their appearance, the buffalos present a singular 
mixture of the ferocious and comical. At a first glance 
they excite mirth ; they appear to be the sleek-blooded 
kine, so familiar to the farmyard, but muffled about the 
shoulders in a coarse shawl, and wearing a mask and 
beard, as if in some outlandish disguise. ; 
Their motions, too, are novel. They dash off, tail 
up, shaking their great woolly heads, and planting their 
feet under them, with a swinging gait and grotesque pre: 
