THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 295 



with fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues, which were thrown down in a mass, 

 and for which they required but a few gallons of whisky, which was soon demolished, 

 indulging them in a little and harmless carouse. 



This profligate waste of the lives of these noble and useful animals, when, from all 

 that I could learn, not a skin or a pound of the meat (except the tongues) was brought 

 in, fully supports me in the seemingly extravagant predictions that I have made as 

 to their extinction, which I am certain is near at hand. In the above extravagant 

 instance, at a season when their skins were without fur and not worth taking off, 

 and their camp was so well stocked with fresh and dried meat that they had no occa- 

 sion for using the flesh, there is a fair exhibition of the improvident character of the 

 savage, and also of his recklessness in catering for his appetite so long as the present 

 inducements are held out to him in his country for its gratification. 



In this singular country, where the poor Indians have no laws or regulations of 

 society making it a vice or an impropriety to drink to excess, they think it no harm 

 to indulge in the delicious beverage as long as they are able to buy whisky to drink. 

 They look to white men as wiser than themselves, and able to set them examples; 

 they see none of these in their country but sellers of whisky, who are constantly ten- 

 dering it to them, and most of them setting the example by using it themselves ; and 

 they easily acquire a taste, that to be catered for, where whisky is sold at sixteen 

 dollars per gallon, soon impoverishes them, and must soon strip the skin from the 

 last buffalo's back that lives in their country, to "be dressed by their squaws," and 

 vended to the traders for a pint of diluted alcohol. — Pages 256, 257, vol. 1, Catlin's 

 Eight Years. 



Thus much I wrote of the buffaloes, and of the accidents that befall them, as well 

 as of the fate that awaits them ; and before I closed my book I strolled out one day to 

 the shade of a plum tree, where I laid in the grass on a favorite bluff, and wrote 

 thus : 



It is generally supposed, and familiarly said, that a man falls into a reverie, but 

 I seated myself in the shade a few minutes since resolved to force myself into one, 

 and for this purpose I laid open a small pocket map of North America, and excluding 

 my thoughts from every other object in the world I soon succeeded in producing the 

 desired illusion. This little chart over which I bent was seen in all its parts as 

 nothing but the green and vivid reality. I was lifted up upon an imaginary pair of 

 wings, which easily raised and held me floating in the open air, from whence I could 

 behold beneath me the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, the great cities of the East, 

 and the mighty rivers. I could see the blue chain of the Great Lakes at the north ; 

 the Rocky Mountains, and beneath them and near their base the vast and almost 

 boundless plains of grass, which were speckled with the bands of grazing buffaloes. 



The world turned gently around and I examined its surface; continent after con- 

 tinent passed under my eye, and yet, amidst them all, I saw not the vast and vivid 

 green that is spread like a carpet over the western wilds of my own country. I saw 

 not elsewhere in the world the myriad herds of buffaloes — my eyes scanned in vain, 

 for they were not. And when I turned again to the wilds of my native land, I be- 

 held them all in motion. For the distance of several hundred miles from north to 

 south they were wheeling about in vast columns and herds, some were scattered, and 

 ran with furious wildncss — some lay dead, and others were pawing the earth for a 

 hiding place — some were sinking down and dying, gushing out their life's blood in 

 deep drawn sighs, and others were contending in furious battle for the life they pos- 

 sessed and the ground that they stood upon. They had long since assembled from 

 the thickets and secret haunts of the deep forest, into the midst of the treeless and 

 bushless plains as the place for their safety. I could see in a hundred places, amid 

 the wheeling bands and on their skirts and flanks, the leaping wild horse darting 

 among them. I saw not the arrows nor heard the twang of the sinewy bows that 

 sent them, but I saw their victims fall. On other steeds that rushed along their sides 



