re long, it was
evident that he was losing in the chase. But the hunter, thinking that
the buffaloes could not long continue their flight at such a speed, and
that they would soon, in weariness, loiter and stop to graze,
vigorously pressed on, though his jaded beast was rapidly being
distance by the herd.

At length the enormous moving mass appeared but as a cloud in the
distant horizon. Still, Crockett, his mind entirely absorbed in the
excitement of the chase, urged his weary steed on, until the buffalos
entirely disappeared from view in the distance. Crockett writes:

"I now paused to allow my mustang to breathe, who did not altogether
fancy the rapidity of my movements; and to consider which course I
would have to take to regain the path I had abandoned. I might have
retraced my steps by following the trail of the buffaloes, but it had
always been my principle to go ahead, and so I turned to the west and
pushed forward.

"I had not rode more than an hour before I found, I was completely
bewildered. I looked around, and there was, as far as the eye could
reach, spread before me a country apparently in the highest state of
cultivation--extended fields, beautiful and productive, groves of trees
cleared from the underwood, and whose margins were as regular as if the
art and taste of man had been employed upon them. But there was no
other evidence that the sound of the axe, or the voice of man, had ever
here disturbed the solitude of nature. My eyes would have cheated my
senses into the belief that I was in an earthly paradise, but my fears
told me that I was in a wilderness.

"I pushed along, following the sun, for I had no compass to guide me,
and there was no other path than that which my mustang made. Indeed, if
I had found a beaten tract, I should have been almost afraid to have
followed it; for my friend the bee-hunter had told me, that once, when
he had been lost in the prairies, he had accidentally struck into his
own path, and had travelled around and around for a whole day before he
discovered his error. This I thought was a poor way of going ahead; so
I determined to make for the first large stream, and follow its course."

For several hours Crockett rode through these vast and lonely
solitudes, the Eden of nature, without meeting with the slightest trace
of a human being. Evening was approaching, still, calm, and bright. The
most singular and even oppressive silence prevailed, for neither voice
of bird