l as they, usually managed, if not
forced to put back by stress of provisions, to come up with him in the
gates of the hills. There an idle interchange of arrow and round ball
between hollow and cliff wound up the eventful history of the chase.
As a rule, no marked chastisement was inflicted on the Indian: he
realized in peace the proceeds of his little speculation.

Now, Minie, like the Harpagon of his countryman, has "changed all
that." The retreating heathen flies to his hills in vain. They do not
cover him, but the rifle does. Cantering to the summit of a knoll,
he waves his compliments to the distant dragoon with a gesture of
derision, more expressive than elegant, he has acquired from the
white. Turning calmly to depart, as he sinks below the crest of the
hill a sagittiform bullet, fired at five hundred yards' distance with
all the science and talent purchasable with thirteen dollars a month
and rations, plumps into the rump of his unhappy pony, and the Stoic
of the woods is unhorsed. Reared on horseback, and weak in the legs
from long addiction to that mode of locomotion, this is a _casus
omissus_ in Lo's tactics. Scant time, however, has he for reflection.
He gathers up himself and his drapery as well as circumstances will
allow, and scuttles hurriedly off, a fluttering chaos of rags and
feathers. It is too late. Heaven is on the side of the best artillery.
A few minutes and the Philistines are upon him. Burnside's or
Remington's last patent again lifts up its voice, and the triumph of
civilization is complete.

The prairie Indian, unlike his congener of the woods, has as yet been
but partially able to substitute gunpowder for the bow. The advantage
he has in the protection afforded him by the desolation of his
waterless _mesas_ and sage-covered hills is thus in great measure
neutralized. What, when he does possess the modern firearm, he is
capable of doing with it, the achievements of the Modocs in their
volcanic stronghold will attest. But these were few, and soon went
down. The extinction of the tribes west and south of the Rio Grande
and the Humboldt cannot be many years postponed. The red rover of that
region will disappear as a combatant in the same way, and before the
same weapon, as his brother nomad of Algeria, the earliest victim of
the conoidal bullet. The spherical ball has done its appointed part
in disposing of the aborigines east of the Mississippi, where forests
covered the land and trees gener