"Look to yer primin', then, an' we'll have tongues 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. Leastways, we'll try. 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.

Buffaloes roam in countless thousands all over the North American
prairies, from the Hudson Bay Territories, north of Canada, to the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The advance of white men to the west has driven them to the prairies
between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and has somewhat
diminished their numbers; but even thus diminished, they are still
innumerable in the more distant plains. Their colour is dark brown,
but it varies a good deal with the seasons. The hair or fur, from its
great length in winter and spring and exposure to the weather, turns
quite light; but when the winter coat is shed off, the new growth is
a beautiful dark brown, almost approaching to jet-black. In form the
buffalo somewhat resembles the ox, but its head and shoulders are much
larger, and are covered with a profusion of long shaggy hair which
adds greatly to the fierce aspect of the animal. It has a large hump
on the shoulder, and its fore-quarters are much larger, in proportion,