THE BUFFALO OF THE PLAINS. 58/ 



ible as an avalanche. When they arrived within fifty yards, a few well- 

 directed shots split the herd, and sent them left and right in two 

 streams." In like manner, whole herds would charge the trains on the 

 Atchison and Santa Fe railroad, and often threw the cars from the track. 

 This senseless obstinacy characterizes the animal even when it encoun- 

 ters natural obstacles. A herd of four thousand tried to cross the South 

 Platte in 1867, when the water was low. The leaders were soon stuck in 

 the mud. Those behind, pressed forward by the column, trampled over 

 their struggling companions, and soon the whole bed of the river, nearly 

 half a mile wide, was filled with dead or dying buffalo. Usually the 

 Buffalo is very careful of the roads by which he passes from one creek 

 to another, and shows an antipathy to steep grades. But when alarmed, 

 he will with impunity climb banks, or plunge down precipices where no 

 horse can follow. Contrary to the statements usually given, General 

 Dodge declares that there is very little fighting among the bulls, and 

 that the small herds have each generally more bulls than cows, seem- 

 ingly all on the very best terms with each other. These small herds are 

 in no sense families ; they are merely instinctive, voluntary and acci- 

 dental, as regards their individual components. Herds merge together, 

 and herds break up gradually during the process of grazing. The only 

 perceptible change that takes place is that the bulls work themselves out 

 to a new circumference, so as to have the cows and calves within the 

 circle. The bulls have the duty of protecting the calves. An army 

 surgeon asserts that he saw six or eight bulls protecting from wolves a 

 poor little calf which could scarcely walk. 



Vast quantities of Bisons are killed annually, whole herds being some- 

 times destroyed by the cunning of their human foes. The hunters, 

 having discovered a herd of Bisons at no very great distance from one 

 of the precipices which abound in the prairie-lands, quietly surround the 

 doomed animals, and drive them ever nearer and nearer to the precipice. 

 When they have come within half a mile or so of the edge, they sud- 

 denly dash toward the Bisons, shouting, firing, waving hats in the air, 

 and using every means to terrify the intended victims. The Bisons are 

 timid creatures, and easily take alarm, so that on being startled by the 

 unexpected sights and sounds, they dash off, panic-struck, in the only 

 direction left open to them, and which leads directly to the precipice. 

 When the leaders arrive at the edge, they attempt to recoil, but they are 

 so closely pressed upon by those behind them that they are carried for- 



