402 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTEKS. 



wholesale massacres as this of which we give an illustration. 

 Although the buffalo, for causes at which I have hinted, are 

 yearly becoming less accessible to them — whether their num- 

 bers be so appreciably diminished in reality or not, yet they 

 persist, as of old, whenever they can come upon a herd, 

 however immense, feeding in such relative position to one 

 of these rifts as to offer the inducement of possible success, 

 in ui'ging the panic-stricken masses over the sudden abyss, 

 where, bounding from rough point to point — down ! down ! — 

 their great bodies are piled in a huge hecatomb of blackened, 

 writhing, sweltering slaughter, such as could rejoice only 

 these Red Demons of destruction. 



Next to this, in wholesale wantonness, among the methods 

 of hunting buffalo peculiar to their Indian foes, is the 

 "Prairie Surround." The widely scattered line of the 

 Surround, enclosing some valley containing a herd, is 

 rapidly closed up by the yelling warriors composmg it, 

 who drive the frightened animals from its circumference, 

 urging towards a centre, where, precipitated in the headlong 

 crush upon each other, the helpless mass sways, bellowing — 

 while amidst the dust-clouds of their collision, the forms of 

 the warriors, who have leaped from their horses upon the 

 backs of the buffalo, may be dimly seen treading the horned 

 tumult with fierce gestures, and wielding the long lance as 

 a rope dancer does his balance pole, with the slight difference, 

 that with nearly every step they thrust its sharp point down 

 through joint and marrow, between the spine and skull of 

 some new victim, whose shaggy back they have but pressed 

 in passing with their moccasined feet. Thousands are thus 

 slaughtered in a few moments. 



This scene, as weird and wild as it is real, tames, by 

 contrast, all midnight phantasmagoria beneath the blaze of 

 the noon-tide. 



