THE AMERICAN BISONS. 135 



foule and fierce beast of countenance and forme of bodie. The horses fledde 

 from them, either because of their deformed shape, or else because they had 

 never seene them. Their masters have no other substance : of them they 

 eat, they drinke, they apparel, they shooe themselves." * 



According to Davis, Castaneda thus describes the buffalo and the Plains 

 where it was met with by the people of Coronado's Expedition : " The first 

 time we encountered the buffalo, all the horses took to flight on seeing them, 



for they are horrible to the sight They have a broad and short face, 



eyes two palms from each other, and projecting in such a manner sideways 

 that they can see a pursuer. Their beard is like that of goats, and so long 

 that it drags the ground when they lower the head. They have, on the 

 anterior portion of the body, a frizzled hair like sheep's wool ; it is very fine 

 upon the croup, and sleek like a lion's mane. Their horns are very short 

 and thick, and can scarcely be seen through the hair. They always change 

 their hair in May, and at this season they really resemble lions. To make 

 it drop more quickly, for they change it as adders do their skins, they roll 

 among the brush-wood, which they find in the ravines. 



" Their tail is very short, and terminates in a great tuft. When they run 

 they carry it in the air like scorpions. When quite young they are tawny, 

 and resemble our calves ; but as age increases they change color and form. 

 .... Their wool is so fine that handsome clothes would certainly be made 

 of it, but it cannot be died, for it is a tawny red. We were much surprised 

 at sometimes meeting innumerable herds of bulls without a single cow, and 

 other herds of cows without bulls. It would sometimes be forty leagues 

 from one herd to another, and that in a country so level that from a 

 distance the sky was seen between their legs, so that when many were 

 together, they would have been called pines whose foliage united, and if 

 but one was seen his legs had the effect of four pines. When near, then it 

 was impossible by an effort to see the ground beyond, for all this country 

 is so flat that turn which way we will the sky and the grass are alone to 

 be seen. 



"Who would believe that a thousand horses, one hundred and fifty cows 

 of Spanish breed, and more than five thousand sheep, and fifteen hundred 

 persons, including Indian servants, would not leave the slightest trace of their 

 passage in the desert, and that it was necessary to raise, from point to point, 

 heaps of stones and buffalo bones, in order that the rear guard might follow 



* Hakluyt, Voyages, Vol. Ill, p. 456. 



