382 WILD ANIMALS. 



througli overcrowding. They are also very agile and sure-footed, 

 for they will dash headlong in their course, even if tlie route 

 leads down a cliff on the mountain's side, or over places wliere it 

 would be thought no animal would venture. 



Buffaloes have a very ferocious, determined appearance, owing 

 to their great bulk, shaggy mane, and vicious eyes, but in reality 

 they are mild and inoffensive beasts, and being of a timid dis- 

 position, are easily alarmed. They fly terror-stricken before a 

 man, but if absolutely driven to bay, or wounded, will savagely 

 attack him. They appear on other occasions as though they 

 intended doing so, for facing about, with an angry look in their 

 eyes, they begin to paw the earth in a most threatening manner, 

 but it ends in nothing but a turning tail and continued flight on 

 the nearer approach of the hunter. Oathn, after wounding a 

 buffalo, writes, " I defy the world to produce another animal that 

 can look so frightful as a huge buffalo bull, when wounded as 

 he was, turned around for battle, and swelling with rage; — his eyes 

 bloodshot, and his long shaggy mane hanging to the ground, — his 

 mouth open, and his horrid rage hissing in streams of smoke and 

 blood from his mouth, and through his nostrils, as he is bending 

 forward to spring upon his assailant." 



" The domestic cattle of Texas, miscalled tame," remarks 

 Colonel Dodge,^ " are fifty times more dangerous to footmen than 

 the fiercest buffalo. He is the most unwieldy, sluggish, and stupid 

 of all plain animals. Endowed with the smallest possible amount 

 of instinct, the little he has seems adapted rather for getting him 

 into difficulties than out of them. If not alarmed at sight or smell 

 of a foe, he wiU stand stupidly gazing at his companions in their 

 death-throes until the whole herd is shot down. He will walk 

 unconcernedly into a quicksand or quagmire already choked with 

 struggling, dying victims. Having made up his mind to go a 

 certain way, it is almost impossible to divert him from his pur- 

 pose. He is as timid about his flanks and rear as a new recruit. 

 When travelling nothing in his front stops him, but an unusual 

 object in his rear will send him to the right-about at the top of 

 his speed." 



' The " Hunting-Grounds of the Great West." 



