402 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS, 
wholesale massacres as this of which we give an illustration. 
Although the buffalo, for causes at which I have hinted, are 
yearly becoming less accessible to them—whether their num- 
bers be so appreciably diminished in reality or not, yet they 
persist, as of old, whenever they can come upon a herd, 
however immense, feeding in such relative position to one 
of these rifts as to offer the inducement of possible success, 
in urging the panic-stricken masses over the sudden abyss, 
where, bounding from rough point to point—down! down !— 
their great bodies are piled in a huge hecatomb of blackened, 
writhing, sweltering slaughter, such as could rejoice only 
these Red Demons of destruction. 
Next to this, in wholesale wantonness, among the methods 
of hunting buffalo peculiar to their Indian foes, is the 
“Prairie Surround.” The widely scattered line of the 
Surround, enclosing some valley containing a herd, is 
rapidly closed up by the yelling warriors composing it, 
who drive the frightened animals from its circumference, 
urging towards a centre, where, precipitated in the headlong 
crush upon each other, the helpless mass sways, bellowing— 
while amidst the dust-clouds of their collision, the forms of 
the warriors, who have leaped from their horses upon the 
backs of the buffalo, may be dimly seen treading the horned 
tumult with fierce gestures, and wielding the long lance as 
a rope dancer does his balance pole, with the slight difference, 
that with nearly every step they thrust its sharp point down 
through joint and marrow, between the spine and skull of 
some new victim, whose shaggy back they have but pressed 
in passing with their moccasined feet. Thousands are thus 
slaughtered in a few moments. 
This scene, as weird and wild as it is real, tames, by 
contrast, all midnight phantasmagoria beneath the blaze of 
the noon-tide. 
