1859.] HORACE GREELEY'S WIDE-SPREAD FAME. 169

CHAPTER XIV.

MAY 30. (Continued)-At Station Twelve where we dined, the carcasses of seven buffaloes were half submerged in the creek. Yesterday a herd of three thousand crossed the stream, leaping down the steep banks. A few broke their necks by the fall; others were trampled to death by those pressing on from behind. This afternoon our coach was stopped at a creek-crossing by a mired wagon which blocked the road. Several Ohio emigrants with their weary cattle were endeavoring to extricate it. Mr. G. assisted them in their efforts to lift the wheels from out the Slough of Despond. While they paused a moment one inquired of the stranger his business. He replied that he was connected with a New York daily journal.

'What journal?'

'The Tribune!'

Just then another of the party who had been absent, returned and recognizing the ablest editor and the most influential American of our generation laboring at the wheel, said to his comrades: 'Gentlemen, this is Mr. Greeley of New York.'

The curious interrogator was dumb with amazement and cha grin.

Nearly every train we pass contains some emigrant who stops the coach and remarks:

'Mr. G.

my

name is

I heard you lecture fourteen years

ago.'

And the veteran journalist invariably replies:

'O, yes! How are my old friends A. and B. and C.?' nam ing half-a-score of citizens in the région-whether of Maine or

170

HALF A MILLION OF BUFFALOES.

[1859.

Minnesota-from which the stranger hails. But to-day on the outskirts of a crowd a stolid-looking gold-seeker asked me earn

gained valuable information, and explained that he was 'born and raised' in Missouri.

After being mired in the same creek for two hours, our own vehicle was drawn out by the oxen of friendly emigrants. Spent the night at Station Thirteen. Day's travel, fifty-six miles.

May 31.-Though still plentiful, the buffaloes are diminishing. Mr. G. believes them nearly identical with the buffaloes he has seen on the Campania in Italy, though considerably larger. But the authorities call the American animal the bison, to distinguish him from the Asiatic buffalo. The former was never seen by Europeans till Cortez and his followers found two or three in the zoological gardens of Montezuma.

When Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, half a century ago, a herd of these animals crossing at one point choked the stream for a mile, compelling the explorers to wait till they had passed. Their report hesitatingly asserts that they 'thought' they saw twenty thousand at once; but I am confident we looked upon forty thousand from one stand-point, and that in all we have seen half a million. For several days we have never been out of sight of them except when our coach was in some deep ravine.

To-day we have been among prairie-dog towns, passing one more than a mile long. Some of their settlements are said to be

1859.] THE CURIOUS LITTLE PRAIRIE-DOG.

171

twenty miles in length, containing a larger population than any metropolis on the globe. The little animal is a trifle larger than the gray squirrel, subsists on grass and has none of the character. istics of the dog but his yelp, which is like that of a young puppy: Small owls perch upon the mound beside his hole; but there are no signs of the traditional rattlesnake said to be an unwelcome joint occupant of his subterranean city, whose labyrinthine passages honeycomb the ground. The hillock of earth extracted from each hole, is ten or twelve inches high and two feet in width. Upon this stands the prairie-dog, erect on his hind legs. His house is his castle. His own picket and scout, he maintains a sharp lookout for his foreign enemy the wolf, and has an occasional domestic feud with his persistent co-tenants, the rattlesnake and the owl.

The most honest of real estate dealers, he acts upon the great truth that inhabitants are indispensable to a city, and never offers lots in paper towns to unsuspecting victims. There is no deceit in that honest jovial face. Vegetarian diet has not made him an ascetic; he takes the world like a philosopher and a gentleman; frolics merrily with his fellows in the warm sunlight, and as you approach, scampers home. There from his own roof he gazes quizzically at you, shaking his fat sides with laughter; and as you reach forth your hand to take him, he turns a graceful summersault, gives a series of hearty cachinnations, and affording a dissolving view of his tail, dives into his underground domicile. This evening we supped on his flesh, and found it very palatable, resembling that of the squirrel.

We spend the night at Station Fifteen, kept by an ex-Cincin nati lawyer, who with his wife, formerly an actress at the Bowery Theater, is now cooking meals and making beds for stage passengers on the great desert three hundred miles beyond civilization. The mimic stage presents few sharper contrasts. Our road, following the valley of the Republican river, is here two thousand three hundred feet above sea-level. At midnight arrives a return coach bringing a fair delicate Indiana boy who ran away last spring, froze his feet en route for the mines, and after many hardships is now glad to return to home and school. Day's travel fifty-six miles.