324 BUFFALO LAND. 



with edges and surface composed of bubble-like lava, 

 the material having evidently hardened while still 

 distended by the struggling gases. The appearance, 

 to use a homely comparison, was somewhat that of 

 several low pots, over the edges of which boiling 

 molasses had poured, and then burned by the heat of 

 the fire. Some scattered objects, which at first we 

 took for stumps of huge trees, upon examination we 

 found to be pillars of mud and rock, upheavals, ap- 

 parently, from volcanic action, and not the work of 

 the floods, which, in those primeval times, we knew, 

 must have j^oured down the valley. They would 

 have answered, without much difficulty, for druidical 

 altars, had we only been in the land once inhabited 

 by those long-bearded, blood-thirsty priests of old. 



Two or three poisoned cayotes and a dead raven 

 were lying near some bleached bufi*alo skulls, on 

 which, as we presently discovered, daubs of lard 

 mixed with strychnine had been placed, and licked 

 off by the victims ; and straightway, as genius of 

 the scene, an unshaven, woolen-shirted little man ap- 

 peared in view, busily engaged in skinning a wolf. 

 We saluted him, and the response in French-English 

 told us his nationality at once. We found his name 

 to be Louis, and his proper occupation that of wjatch- 

 maker. But as the pinchbeck time-pieces of the 

 frontier did not furnish enough repairing to take up 

 his entire time, he had many spare hours, and these 

 he devoted to securing pelts. As buffalo were not 

 now in the vicinity, he larded their bones, with the 

 success of which we were eye-witnesses. 



Louis was a wiry little Gaul, very positive in his 



