when it unceremoniously discharged itself, burying its ball in the lights of the buffalo —the very spot I should have selected had it been optional with myself. The old fellow staggered a few steps and fell dead!
My companion coming up, we soon completed the process of butchering, and, after furnishing ourselves with an ample supply of choice beef, proceeded to a neighboring creek, where, finding a few sticks of drift-wood, a fire was quickly kindled, and we ended our fast of five successive days and nights with feasting and glad hearts.
I have always regarded this event as a special Providence, and ever revert to it with no ordinary feelings of gratitude. Had the ball, thus accidentally discharged, missed the animal, or had it only wounded him, in all human probability, becoming alarmed at the presence of danger, and prompted by the instinct common to the species, he would soon have been beyond the reach of pursuit, leaving me to the dernier resort of slaughtering my horse or perishing among the snows and chill blasts of the prairie.
Enfeebled as we were from continued toil and suffering, we could have scarcely held out a day longer, and even the partial relief afforded by a poor supply of horse flesh, left, as we would have been, to travel on foot and carry our beds, guns, and provisions, must have served only to prolong our miseries a brief space, finally to meet the inevitable fate that threatened us! as this solitary buffalo was the only living creature that met our view during the entire journey.
I have never consented to dispose of the rough-looking piece long previously christened "Old Straightener," and, when asked the reason, have uniformly replied, "It is the only gun I ever saw or heard of that has killed game of its own accord!
The second day succeeding this occurrence, my companion left me to obtain his mule, and I completed the remainder of my journey alone, —arriving the appointed rendezvous late in the afternoon of the 20th of March.
The country travelled over, from the Platte to the Arkansas, near the mouth of Fontaine qui Bouit, has been fully described in former pages.
My route, from the mouth of this stream, followed the Arkansas for some forty miles. The landscape, back from the river-bottoms, was quite undulating, presenting upon the left a superfice of gravel, clay, and sand, mixed with vegetable matter; and, upon the right, a light, sandy soil, somewhat sterile and unproductive.
Many rich spots of a deep bluish loam meet the eye of the traveller, interspersed with spreads of naked sand, or clay whitened by exuding salts, or clothed in dwarfish grass; among which numerous clusters of absinthe, frequently five or six feet high, are seen in almost every direction.
The country, as a general thing, is evidently ill-adapted to other than grazing purposes.
Two broad beds of sand-creeks are passed upon the left, a few miles below Fontaine qui Bouit, one of which is Black Squirrel creek, and the other is known as the Wolf's Den. Upon the right, the Rio San Carlos. Cornua Virda, Apache, and Huaquetorie, after tracing their serpentine courses from the Taos Mountains, commingle with the Arkansas.
Some six miles below the mouth of Fontaine qui Bouit are the ruins of an old
