54 FIRST GLIMPSE OF BUFFALO. 



although some of onr easily excited com- 

 panions immediately surmised tiiat the oxen 

 had scented a lurking Pawnee. 



Our route lay through uninterrupted prairie 

 for ahout forty miles— in fact I may say, for 

 five hundred miles, excepting the very nar- 

 row fringes of timber along the borders of the 

 streams. The antelope of the high prairies 

 which we now occasionally saw, is sometimes 

 found as far east as Council Grove ; and as a 

 few old buffaloes have sometimes been met 

 with about Cottonwood, we now began to 

 look out for tliis desirable game. Some scat- 

 tering bulls are generally to be seen first, form- 

 mg as^ It would appear the ' van' or ' piquet 

 guards' of the main droves with their cows 

 and calves. The buffalo are usuaHy found 

 much further east early in the spring, than 

 dunng the rest of the year, on account of the 

 long grass, which shoots up earher in the sea- 

 son than the short pasturage of the plains. 



Our hopes of game were destined soon to 

 be reahzed ; for early on the second day after 

 leading Cottonwood (a few nuLes beyond the 

 principal Turkey creek), our eyes were greet- 

 ed With the sight of a herd amountmg to near- 

 ly a hundred head of buffalo, quietly grazing 

 m tlie distance before ua Half of our coni- 

 pany had probably never seen a buffalo be- 

 lore (at least in its wild state) ; and the ex- 

 citement that the first sight of these ' prairie 

 beeves' occasions among a party of no\ices, 

 beggars all description. Every horseman was 

 off in a scamper : and some of the wagoners. 



