гас

About to lease for same weet's so journ in the west cofence coccust so reading and constantly conferint the Evol bublic, I wish to leave.

mass of suggestions and colici tubing the live cover of Note vetovotions and corcard, floing set forthe Foot it comma be misquoted exor missive Lender

That I have love bell the they waist bom foundatury of a yeuring exduring resettler meux distrobed and

FAC SIMILE OF HORACE GREELEY'S MANUSCRIPT. (FROM A TRIBUNE EDITORIAL, 1866.)

1859.] AMONG THE ANTELOPES AND BUFFALOES.

165

tering in the breeze like a shred of linen—a perpetual flag of truce to human enemies. Here he ventures near us, but on the older roads, rifles and shot-guns have made him shy and difficult to ap proach. Old hunters are wont to stick a ramrod in the earth with a handkerchief flying from it, and then conceal themselves among the grass or sand-hills. The antelope, lured by a curiosity fatal as mother Eve's, circles nearer and nearer, until he falls by the cruel bullet. From a close view his liquid eyes suggest infinite pathos and more than human tenderness. He is easily domesticated, and naturally tame.

The antelope and the buffalo are antipodes. One is incarnate grace; the other clumsiness itself. The antelope gallops airily over the hills, with an elasticity surpassing the fleetest race-horse. The buffalo is heavy and awkward; and the male, with huge head and enormous shaggy neck from which the hair hangs to the ground, canters lumberingly along like a mastodon suddenly awakened and uncertain of his native element.

Dined at Station Ten sitting upon billets of wood, carpet-sacks, and nail-kegs, while the meal was served upon a box. It consisted of fresh buffalo meat, which tastes like ordinary beef though of coarser fiber, and sometimes with a strong, unpleasant flavor. When cut from calves or young cows it is tender and toothsome.

Hundreds of deep buffalo trails cross our road; and through the whole afternoon the prairies for miles and miles away, quite black with the huge animals, look like bushes covered with ripe whortleberries, or like wood-land afar off. The cows are about the size of our domestic cattle. The bulls are twice as large, and roll in the sand and wallow in mud-holes like hogs. While great

droves are feeding in the valleys they keep sentinels on the ridges, ready to give notice of the approach of danger. Running herds produce clouds of dust, and shake the earth like thunder. The calves are kept in the center of the drove for protection against men and wolves.

A huge tree beside our road is completely covered with names of emigrants and dates and messages for their friends behind: an ingenious and very public post-office.

Six weeks ago not a track had been made upon this route.

166

A JOVIAL PRAIRIE MICAWBER.

[1859,

Now it resembles a long-used turnpike. We meet many return. ing emigrants, who declare the mines a humbug; but pass hundreds of undismayed gold-seekers still pressing on.

One Ohio wagon bears the inscription, 'Root Hog or die.' A returning passenger states that further on he encountered a philosophical emigrant whose wagon was labeled, 'Pike's Peak or Bust.' One after another the traveler's cattle died, till only one cow and an ox were left. During a luckless night these either strayed away or were stolen by Indians. The next day my informant found this prairie Micawber sitting upon his wagon-tongue smoking his pipe and waiting for something to turn up. But under the first in

'BUSTED, BY THUNDER!'

scription he had penciled with charcoal: 'Busted, by thunder!' Spent the night at Station Eleven, occupied by two men who gave us bread and buffalo meat like granite.-Day's travel, fifty-six miles.

May 30.-Large gray wolves abound near our road. They often kill old old or wounded buffaloes, and sometimes open

graves and devour

human bodies. Upon this newly-opened thoroughfare through the heart of the buffalo country the animals are very tame. Tens of thousands are feeding beside the track, and they often cross it five or six yards before us, compelling the driver to stop, lest they should stampede the mules. The mule never becomes reconciled to buffalo or Indian, and if stampeded, the most rheumatic animal will dash off at incredible speed. In some instances they have run fifty miles before they could be stopped.

One serene old bull approaches within twenty rods of us and the driver waits while I fire at him again and again with Sharpe's

1859.]

FACTS ABOUT THE BUFFALO.

167

rifle. He continues to approach, only greeting each ball that strikes him with a nervous movement and switch of the tail, as a sensitive horse would respond to a fly. As he is facing me I am unable to hit him back of the fore-leg; and forward of that, the buffalo is not vulnerable. After I have fired four or five times he turns and limps slowly away into a ravine. Afterward I fire at several others with the same brilliant success. Mr. G. urges me to continue, on the ground that it amuses me and does not hurt the buffalo; but is quite too uncertain of his own marksmanship to try the rifle.

6

These animals add inconceivably to the poetry and life of the plains. Geographers and road-makers by instinct, the best routes across the continent have been established upon their beaten trails. They once roamed over the entire Pacific slope and thence eastward to Lake Champlain. The last buffalo east of the Mississippi was killed in 1832. According to Fremont, up to 1836 one traveling between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri never lost sight of them. They have now greatly diminished, as more than half a million are killed annually-often from wantonness or curiosity. Every emigrant is ambitious to shoot a buffalo; and whitened skulls perforated by bullets, make the road a Golgotha. But even now, some authorities believe that they outnumber all the domestic cattle of the United States.

To the prairie Indian they are useful and indispensable as the camel to the Arab, or the reindeer to the Laplander. Their flesh supplies him with food during the entire year. Their hides clothe his person, protect his lodge from winter storms, and afford him an article of barter with the traders. Their hoofs furnish him with glue, for manifold purposes; and in these treeless wastes their excrement is an admirable substitute for firewood. Their strong necks and their tough foreheads, which will flatten a rifle ball like a wall of stone, constitute a formidable battering-ram, almost justifying the belief that if a buffalo had taken the place of the unfortunate bull which attempted to butt the locomotive off the track, he would have met a happier fate than that brave but indiscreet animal. A blow from the head of a calf two months old, is sufficient to prostrate an athletic man.

R. B. Fuller, superintendent of this division of the stage route,

168

A NARROW ESCAPE FROM DEATH. [1859.

while riding in a desert-valley encountered several thousand of these wild cattle; and his mule with characteristic perversity, refused to budge an inch, but stood broad-wise to the approaching herd. Under the horns of the first buffalo the steed dropped dead upon the spot, almost without a single kick. His rider, stunned by the shock, fortunately fell close beside the mule, and so escaped being trampled to death. In a few seconds, recovering his consciousness, he saw that several of the ponderous brutes had already leaped over him; and drawing his revolver he fired six shots in rapid succession. The reports and smoke broke the herd into two columns; and in a few minutes with saddle and bridle upon his shoulder he was walking briskly toward the road, vowing that he would never, never, never ride a mule again.