Yet Far From Being Dull And Tame This Boundless Scene Was
Often A Wild And Animated One; For Twice A Day, At Sunrise And At
Noon, The Buffalo Came Issuing From The Hills, Slowly Advancing In
Their Grave Processions To Drink At The River.
All our amusements
were too at their expense.
Except an elephant, I have seen no animal
that can surpass a buffalo bull in size and strength, and the world
may be searched in vain to find anything of a more ugly and ferocious
aspect. At first sight of him every feeling of sympathy vanishes; no
man who has not experienced it can understand with what keen relish
one inflicts his death wound, with what profound contentment of mind
he beholds him fall. The cows are much smaller and of a gentler
appearance, as becomes their sex. While in this camp we forebore to
attack them, leaving to Henry Chatillon, who could better judge their
fatness and good quality, the task of killing such as we wanted for
use; but against the bulls we waged an unrelenting war. Thousands of
them might be slaughtered without causing any detriment to the
species, for their numbers greatly exceed those of the cows; it is
the hides of the latter alone which are used for purpose of commerce
and for making the lodges of the Indians; and the destruction among
them is therefore altogether disproportioned.
Our horses were tired, and we now usually hunted on foot. The wide,
flat sand-beds of the Arkansas, as the reader will remember, lay
close by the side of our camp.
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