396 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 
On the Frontier; Reminiscences of Wild Sports, Personal 
Adventure, and Strange Scenes. By J. S. Campton, late 
Major, U.S.A. 8vo, pp. 372, with eight illustrations. London: 
Chapman and Hall. 1878. 
ParTLy through love of sport, partly in exercise of military 
duties, Major Campion found himself, for many months at a time, 
across the Mexican frontier, in the land of Indians and Buffaloes, 
an exile from all the comforts of civilization, leading a kind 
of wild life, suffering at times great deprivation, and incurring 
not a few dangers. Notwithstanding the unsettled state of 
affairs with many of the Indian tribes likely to be encountered 
en route, and contrary to the advice of friends, the author, one 
of a party of five, fully equipped and well mounted, set forth upon 
his journey. : 
From the starting-point a waggon trail led for about a hundred 
miles to Fort Riley; thence a few days’ travelling further west 
would bring the party to where Buffaloes were to be found. The 
route to Fort Riley lay through the land of the Pottowattomies, 
a partly civilized tribe, and then across a portion of the country 
claimed by the Pawnees. These latter were “ wild,” and though 
“treaty Indians,” had a well-deserved reputation of being the most 
expert horse-thieves of the plains. 
After leaving Fort Riley, the route lay through a region covered 
over by bands of Sioux, Cheyennes, and Kiowas—Indians nomin- 
ally at peace with the whites, but known to be disaffected; three 
tribes of evil repute, and no respecters of treaties when fortune 
offered a temporary advantage. Looking back to that trip with 
his acquired experience, the author wonders how he could have 
been hare-brained enough to have undertaken it, and how he 
contrived to return unharmed. He assuredly had many narrow 
escapes from death in various forms, and considering how fully 
occupied he must have been in protecting life and property, in 
tracking and hunting game whereon to subsist en route, and in 
taking active measures to prevent a surprise by the numerous 
parties of treacherous Indians encountered from time to time on 
