898 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
Of all the modes of hunting the buffalo practised by the 
prairie tribes, there is no one, the accompaniments of 
which are of such characteristic and terrible wildness, as 
that of which the lithograph given is a strikingly accurate 
delineation. The Indians are driving a maddened herd of 
buffalo over the edges of one of those tremendous prairie 
rifts or caviones, as they are sometimes incorrectly called by 
the border men. These are vast yawning fissures, which 
suddenly open on the great Plano Estacado, which stretches 
in one prodigious plain from the foot of the Rocky Mountains 
to the head waters of the Red River, Arkansas, &. Mr. 
Kendall’s description of this scene in his Santa Fe Expedi- 
tion, is so nearly accurate, that I give it here in his own 
words. 
We had scarcely proceeded six miles, after drying our 
blankets, when we suddenly came upon another immense 
rent or chasm in the earth, exceeding in depth the one we 
had so much difficulty in crossing the day before. No one 
was aware of its existence until we were immediately upon 
its brink, when a spectacle, exceeding in grandeur any thing 
we had previously beheld, came suddenly in view. Not a 
tree or bush, no outline whatever, marked its position or 
course, and we were all lost in amazement, as one by one 
we left the double-file ranks and rode up to the verge of the 
yawning abyss. 
In depth it could not be less than eight hundred feet, was 
from three to five hundred yards in width, and at the point 
where we first struck it, the sides were nearly perpendicular. 
A sickly sensation of dizziness was felt by all as we looked 
down, as it were, into the depths of the earth. In the dark 
and narrow valley below, an occasional spot of green relieved 
the eye, and a small stream of water, now rising to the view, 
then sinking beneath some huge rock, was foaming and 
bubbling along. Immense walls, columns, and in some places 
what appeared to be arches, were seen standing, modelle] hy 
