and marrow bones for supper to-night, I’se warrant, Hist! down on yer knees and go softly. We might ha’ run them down on horseback, but it’s bad to wind yer beasts on a trip like this, if ye can help it; an’ it’s about as easy to stalk them. Lift yer head slowly, Dick, an’ don’t show more nor the half o’t above the ridge.”
Dick elevated his head as directed, and the scene that met his view was indeed well calculated to send an electric shock to the heart of an ardent sportsman. The vast plain beyond was absolutely blackened with countless herds of buffaloes, which were browsing on the rich grass. They were still so far distant that their bellowing, and the trampling of their myriad hoofs only reached the hunters like a faint murmur on the breeze. In the immediate foreground, however, there was a group of about half a dozen buffalo cows feeding quietly, and in the midst of them an enormous old bull was enjoying himself in his wallow. The animals, towards which our hunters now crept with murderous intent, are the fiercest and the most ponderous of the ruminating inhabitants of the western wilderness. The name of buffalo, however, is not correct. The animal is the bison, and bears no resemblance whatever to the buffalo proper; but as the hunters of the far west, and, indeed, travellers generally, have adopted the misnomer, we bow to the authority of custom and adopt it too. It is scarcely possible to conceive a more ferocious and terrible monster than a buffalo bull. He often grows to the enormous weight of two thousand pounds. His lion-like mane falls in a shaggy confusion quite over his head and shoulders, down to the ground. When he is wounded he becomes imbued with the spirit of a tiger: he stamps, bellows, roars, and foams forth his rage with glaring eyes and steaming nostrils, and charges furiously at man and horse with utter recklessness. Fortunately, however, he is not naturally pugnacious, and can easily be thrown into a sudden panic. Moreover, the peculiar position of his eye renders this creature not so terrible as he would otherwise be to the hunter. Owing to the stiff structure of the neck, and the sunken, downward-looking eyeball, the buffalo cannot, without an effort, see beyond the direct line of vision presented to the habitual carriage of his head. When, therefore, he is wounded and charges, he does so in a straight line, so that his pursuer can leap easily out of his
