XLII.

THE BUFFALO HERD.

BY JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.'

"THERE are both scents and sounds in the air, though my miserable senses are not good enough to hear the one or to catch the taint of the other," said the trapper. "There is nothing to be seen,” cried Middleton, who kept close at his side. My eyes and my ears are good, and yet I can assure you that I neither hear nor see anything."

66

5

"Your eyes are good! and you are not deaf!" returned the other, with a slight air of contempt; "no, lad, no; they may be good to see across a church, or to hear a 10 town-bell, but afore you had passed a year in these prairies you would find yourself taking a turkey for a buf· falo, or conceiting fifty times that the roar of a buffalo bull was the thunder of the Lord! There is a deception of natur' in these naked plains in which the air throws 15 up the images like water,' and then it is hard to tell the prairies from the sea. But yonder is a sign that a hunter never fails to know!"

The trapper pointed to a flight of vultures that were sailing over the plain at no great distance. At first 20 Middleton could not distinguish the small dark objects that were dotting the dusky clouds; but as they came swiftly onward, first their forms and then their heavy waving wings became distinctly visible.

"Listen!" said the trapper, when he had succeeded 25 in making Middleton see the moving column of birds.

"Now you hear the buffaloes-or bisons, as your know ing doctor sees fit to call them, though buffaloes is their name among all the hunters of these regions. And I conclude that a hunter is a better judge of a beast and of its name," he added, winking to the young soldier,, "than any man who has turned over the leaves of a book instead of traveling over the face of the 'arth, in order to find out the naturs of its inhabitants."

"Of their habits, I will grant you," cried the naturalist, who rarely missed an opportunity to agitate any disputed point in his favorite studies. "That is, provided always deference is had to the proper use of definitions, and that they are contemplated with scientific eyes."

66

'Eyes of a mole! As if any man's eyes were not as 15 good for names as the eyes of any other creatur'! Who named the works of His hand? Can you tell me that, with your books and college wisdom? Was it not the first man in the Garden,' and is it not a plain consequence that his children inherit his gifts?"

"That is certainly the Mosaic account of the event," said the doctor, "though your reading is by far too literal."

20

"My reading! Nay, if you suppose that I have wasted my time in schools, you do such a wrong to my 25 knowledge as one mortal should never lay to the door of another without sufficient reason. If I have ever craved the art of reading, it has been that I might better know the sayings of the book you name, for it is a book which speaks in every line according to humans feelings, and therein according to reason."

"And do you believe," said the doctor, a little provoked by the dogmatism of his adversary, and perhaps secretly too confident in his own more liberal, though

scarcely as profitable attainments-"do you then believe that all these beasts were literally collected in a garden to be enrolled in the nomenclature of the first man?"

"Why not? I understand your meaning; for it is not needful to live in towns to hear all the devilish devices that the conceit of man can invent to upset his own happiness. What does it prove except, indeed, it may be said to prove that the garden He made was not after the miserable fashions of our times, thereby directly giving the lie to what the world calls its civilizing? 10 No, no; the garden of the Lord was the forest then, and is the forest now, where the fruits do grow and the birds do sing, according to his own wise ordering. Now, lady, you may see the mystery of the vultures! There come the buffaloes themselves, and a noble herd 15 it is!"

...

Every eye was now drawn to the striking spectacle that succeeded. Even the timid Inez hastened to the side of Middleton to gaze at the sight, and Paul summoned Ellen from her culinary' labors to become a wit-20 ness of the lively scene.

A few enormous bison bulls were first observed, scouring along the most distant roll of the prairie, and then succeeded long files of single beasts, which, in their turns, were followed by a dark mass of bodies, until the 25 dun-colored herbage of the plain was entirely lost in the deeper hue of their shaggy coats. The herd, as the column spread and thickened, was like the endless flocks of the smaller birds, whose extended flanks are often seen to heave up out of the abyss of the heavens, until 30 they appear as countless as the leaves in those forests over which they wing their endless flight. Clouds of dust shot up in little columns from the center of the mass, as some animal, more furious than the rest,

5

plowed the plain with his horns, and from time to time a deep, hollow bellowing was borne along on the wind, as if a thousand throats vented their plaints in discordant murmuring.

A long and musing silence reigned in the party as they gazed on this spectacle of wild and peculiar grandeur. It was at length broken by the trapper, who, having been long accustomed to similar sights, felt less of its influence, or, rather, felt it in a less thrilling and absorbing manner, than those to whom the scene was 10 more novel.

"There go ten thousand oxen in one drove, without keeper or master, except Him who made them, and gave them these open plains for their pasture! Ay, it is here that man may see the proofs of his wantonness and fol-15 ly! Can the proudest governor in all the States go into his fields and slaughter a nobler bullock than is here offered to the meanest hand? And when he has gotten his sirloin or his steak, can he eat it with as good a relish as he who has sweetened his food with whole-20 some toil, and earned it according to the law of natur', by honestly mastering that which the Lord hath put

before him?"

"If the prairie platter is smoking with a buffalo's hump, I answer, no," interrupted the luxurious bee 25

hunter.

"Ay, boy, you have tasted, and you feel the genuine reasoning of the thing! But the herd is heading a little this way, and it behooves us to make ready for their visit. If we hide ourselves altogether, the horned brutes>< will break through the place, and trample us beneath their feet, like so many creeping worms; so we will just put the weak ones apart, and take post, as becomes men and hunters, in the van."

1

As there was but little time to make the necessary arrangements, the whole party set about them in good earnest. Inez and Ellen were placed in the edge of the thicket on the side farthest from the approaching herd. Asinus, the doctor's donkey, was posted in the center, in consideration of his nerves; and then the old man, with his three male companions, divided themselves in such a manner as they thought would enable them to turn the head of the rushing column, should it chance to approach too nigh their position. By the vacillating 10 movements of some fifty or a hundred bulls that led the advance, it remained questionable, for many moments, what course they intended to pursue. But a tremendous and painful roar, which came from behind a cloud of dust that rose in the center of the herd, and which 15 was horridly answered by the screams of the carrion birds that were greedily sailing directly above the flying drove, appeared to give a new impulse to their flight, and at once to remove every symptom of indecision. As if glad to seek the smallest signs of the 20 forest, the whole of the affrighted herd became steady in its direction, rushing in a straight line towards the little cover of bushes.

The appearance of danger was now, in reality, of a character to try the stoutest nerves. The flanks of the 25 dark moving mass were advanced in such a manner as to make a concave line of the front, and every fierce eye that was glaring from the shaggy wilderness of hair in which the entire heads of the males were enveloped was riveted with mad anxiety on the thicket. It seemed as 20 if each beast strove to outstrip his neighbor in gaining this desired cover, and as thousands in the rear pressed blindly on those in front, there was the appearance of an imminent risk that the leaders of the herd would be