254 BUFFALO LAND. 



minutes — across beds of gravel, among huge bowlders, 

 and once or twice over great fissures in the earth 

 which chilled my blood as I took a sort of bird's- 

 eye view of their depths. In a lumbering run on 

 ahead of us went the frightened bull, his feet occa- 

 sionally sending back dashes of pebbles, while behind 

 him rattled such a clattering of hoofs that the poor 

 brute, if he could think at all, must have imagined 

 he had butted open the door of Hades, and was now 

 being pursued by its inmates. 



There were mishaps in this our first buffalo hunt, 

 of course, and among them, Muggs dropped a stirrup, 

 and was obliged to support himself afterward on one 

 foot — an awkward matter, resulting from his incon- 

 venient English saddle, one of the kind which com- 

 pels one, half the time, to sustain the whole body by 

 the stirrups alone. We gained upon the game 

 steadily, though no particular member of our party 

 excelled as leader, first one being ahead and then the 

 other. Cynocephalus developed wonderfully, and 

 kept well up with his better conditioned neighbors. 



What a magnificent prize for the hunter rushed 

 on before us, swinging his ponderous head from side 

 to side, for the purpose of getting better rear views — 

 such an ungainly and shaggy animal, a perfect marvel 

 of magnificent disproportions ! It is well enough to 

 go to Africa and hunt lions, and describe their ma- 

 jestic, flowing manes ; but this bison, in mad flight 

 ahead of us, could have furnished hair and mane 

 enough to fit out half a dozen lions. At close quar- 

 ters, too, he was fully as dangerous as the king of 

 beasts. 



