81 
THE DIVIDING LINE. 
and is much practised by the Indians and frontier inhabitants, who some- 
times, in the eagerness of their diversion, are punished for their cruelty, and 
are hurt by one another when they shoot across at the deer which are in the 
middle. What the Indians do now by a circle of fire, the ancient Persians 
performed formerly by a circle of men : and the same is practised at this 
day in Germany upon extraordinary occasions, when any of the princes of 
the empire have a mind to make a general hunt, as they call it. At such 
times they order a vast number of people to surround a whole territory. 
Then marching inwards in close order, they at last force all the wild beasts 
into a narrow compass, that the prince and his company may have the di- 
, version of slaughtering as many as they please with their own hands. Our 
hunters massacred two brace of deer after this unfair way, of which they 
brought us one brace whole, and only the primings of the rest. 
So many were absent on this occasion, that we who remained excused 
the chaplain from the trouble of spending his spirits by preaching to so thin 
a congregation. One of the men, who had been an old Indian trader, brought 
me a stem of silk grass, which was about as big as my little finger. But, 
being so late in the year that the leaf was fallen off, I am not able to describe 
the plant. The Indians use it in all their little manufactures, twisting a 
thread of it that is prodigiously strong. Of this they make their baskets 
and the aprons which their women wear about their middles, for decency’s 
sake. These are long enough to wrap quite round them and reach down to 
their knees, with a fringe on the under part by way of ornament. They put 
on this modest covering with so much art, that the most impertinent curiosity 
cannot in the negligentest of their motions or postures make the least dis- 
covery. As this species of silk grass is much stronger than hemp, I make 
no doubt but sail cloth and cordage might be made of it with considerable 
improvement. 
nth. We had all been so refreshed by our day of rest, that we decamped 
earlier than ordinary, and passed the several fords of Hico river. The 
woods were thick great part of this day’s journey, so that we were forced to 
scuffle hard to advance seven miles, being equal in fatigue to double that 
distance of clear and open grounds. We took up our quarters upon Sugar- 
tree creek, in the same camp we had lain in when we came up, and happened 
to be entertained at supper with a rarity we had never had the fortune to 
meet with before, during the whole expedition. A little wide of this creek, 
one of the men had the luck to meet with a young buffalo of two years old. 
It was a bull, which, notwithstanding he was no older, was as big as an ordi- 
nary ox. His legs were very thick and very short, and his hoofs exceeding 
broad. His back rose into a kind of bunch a little above the shoulders, 
which I believe contributes not a little to that creature’s enormous strength. 
His body is vastly deep from the shoulders to the brisket, sometimes six feet 
in those that are full grown. The portly figure of this animal is disgraced 
by a shabby little tail, not above twelve inches long. This he cocks up on 
end whenever he is in a passion, and, instead of lowing or bellowing, grunts 
with no better grace than a hog. The hair growing on his head and neck is 
long and shagged, and so soft that it will spin into thread not unlike mohair, 
which might be wove into a sort of camlet. Some people have stockings 
knit of it, that would have served an Israelite during his forty years’ march 
through the wilderness. Its horns are short and strong, of which the Indians 
make large spoons, which they say will split and fall to pieces whenever poi- 
son is put into them. Its colour is a dirty brown, and its hide so thick that 
it is scarce penetrable. However, it makes very spongy sole leather by the 
ordinary method of tanning, though- this fault might by good contrivance be 
mended. As thick as this poor beast’s hide was, a bullet made shift to enter 
I 
