 | CHAPTER XXIX. The Crayon miscellany |  |
29. CHAPTER XXIX.
The Grand Prairie. A Buffalo Hunt.
After proceeding about two hours in a southerly
direction, we emerged towards mid-day
from the dreary belt of the Cross Timber, and
to our infinite delight beheld “the great Prairie,”
stretching to the right and left before us.
We could distinctly trace the meandering course
of the Main Canadian, and various smaller
streams, by the strips of green forest that bordered
them. The landscape was vast and beautiful.
There is always an expansion of feeling in
looking upon these boundless and fertile wastes;
but I was doubly conscious of it after emerging
from our “close dungeon of innumerous
boughs.”
From a rising ground Beatte pointed out to
the place where he and his comrades had killed
the buffaloes; and we beheld several black objects
moving in the distance, which he said were
part of the herd. The Captain determined to
shape his course to a woody bottom about a
mile distant and to encamp there, for a day or
two, by way of having a regular buffalo hunt, and
getting a supply of provisions. As the troop
camping ground, Beatte proposed to my messmates
and myself, that we should put ourselves
under his guidance, promising to take us where
we should have plenty of sport. Leaving the
line of march, therefore, we diverged towards
the prairie; traversing a small valley, and ascending
a gentle swell of land. As we reached
the summit, we beheld a gang of wild horses
about a mile off. Beatte was immediately on
the alert, and no longer thought of buffalo hunting.
He was mounted on his powerful half-wild
horse, with a lariat coiled at the saddle bow, and
set off in pursuit; while we remained on a rising
ground watching his manœuvres with great solicitude.
Taking advantage of a strip of woodland,
he stole quietly along, so as to get close to
them before he was perceived. The moment
they caught sight of him a grand scamper took
place. We watched him skirting along the horizon
like a privateer in full chase of a merchantman;
at length he passed over the brow of a
ridge, and down into a shallow valley; in a few
moments he was on the opposite hill, and close
upon one of the horses. He was soon head and
head, and appeared to be trying to noose his
prey; but they both disappeared again below
the hill, and we saw no more of them. It turned
out afterwards, that he had noosed a powerful
his lariat in the attempt.
While we were waiting for his return, we
perceived two buffalo bulls descending a slope,
towards a stream, which wound through a ravine
fringed with trees. The young Count and
myself endeavoured to get near them under covert
of the trees. They discovered us while we
were yet three or four hundred yards off, and
turning about, retreated up the rising ground.
We urged our horses across the ravine, and gave
chase. The immense weight of head and shoulders
causes the buffalo to labour heavily up hill;
but it accelerates his descent. We had the advantage,
therefore, and gained rapidly upon the
fugitives, though it was difficult to get our
horses to approach them, their very scent inspiring
them with terror. The Count, who had a
double barrelled gun loaded with ball, fired, but
missed. The bulls now altered their course, and
galloped down hill with headlong rapidity. As
they ran in different directions, we each singled
one and separated. I was provided with a
brace of veteran brass barrelled pistols, which
I had borrowed at Fort Gibson, and which had
evidently seen some service. Pistols are very
effective in buffalo hunting, as the hunter can
ride up close to the animal, and fire at it while
at full speed; whereas the long heavy rifles used
discharged with accurate aim from horseback.
My object, therefore, was to get within pistol
shot of the buffalo. This was no very easy matter.
I was well mounted on a horse of excellent
speed and bottom, that seemed eager for
the chase, and soon overtook the game; but the
moment he came nearly parallel, he would keep
sheering off with ears forked, and pricked forward,
and every symptom of aversion and alarm.
It was no wonder. Of all animals, a buffalo,
when close pressed by the hunter, has an aspect
the most diabolical. His two short black horns,
curve out of a huge frontlet of shaggy hair; his
eyes glow like coals; his mouth is open, his
tongue parched and drawn up into a half crescent;
his tail is erect, and tufted and whisking
about in the air, he is a perfect picture of
mingled rage and terror.
It was with difficulty I urged my horse sufficiently
near, when, taking aim, to my chagrin,
both pistols missed fire. Unfortunately the locks
of these veteran weapons were so much worn,
that in the gallop, the priming had been shaken out
of the pans. At the snapping of the last pistol I
was close upon the buffalo, when, in his despair,
he turned round with a sudden snort and rushed
upon me. My horse wheeled about as if on a pivot,
made a convulsive spring, and, as I had been
near being thrown at the feet of the buffalo.
Three or four bounds of the horse carried us
out of the reach of the enemy; who, having
merely turned in desperate self defence, quickly
resumed his flight. As soon as I could gather
in my panic-stricken horse, and prime the pistols
afresh, I again spurred in pursuit of the buffalo,
who had slackened his speed to take breath.
On my approach he again set off full tilt, heaving
himself forward with a heavy rolling gallop,
dashing with headlong precipitation through
brakes and ravines, while several deer and
wolves, startled from their coverts by his thundering
career, ran helter skelter to right and left
across the waste.
A gallop across the prairies in pursuit of
game, is by no means so smooth a career as
those may imagine, who have only the idea of
an open level plain. It is true, the prairies of
the hunting ground are not so much entangled
with flowering plants and long herbage as the
lower prairies, and are principally covered with
short buffalo grass; but they are diversified by
hill and dale, and where most level, are apt to be
cut up by deep rifts and ravines, made by torrents
after rains; and which, yawning from an
even surface, are almost like pitfalls in the way
of the hunter, checking him suddenly, when in
and life. The plains, too, are beset by burrowing
holes of small animals, in which the horse is
apt to sink to the fetlock, and throw both himself
and his rider. The late rain had covered
some parts of the prairie, where the ground was
hard, with a thin sheet of water, through which
the horse had to splash his way. In other parts
there were innumerable shallow hollows, eight or
ten feet in diameter, made by the buffaloes, who
wallow in sand and mud like swine. These being
filled with water, shone like mirrors, so that the
horse was continually leaping over them or
springing on one side. We had reached, too, a
rough part of the prairie, very much broken and
cut up; the buffalo, who was running for life,
took no heed to his course, plunging down break-neck
ravines, where it was necessary to skirt the
borders in search of a safer descent. At length
we came to where a winter stream had torn a
deep chasm across the whole prairie, leaving
open jagged rocks; and forming a long glen bordered
by steep crumbling cliffs of mingled stone
and clay. Down one of these the buffalo flung
himself, half tumbling, half leaping, and then
scuttled along the bottom; while I, seeing all
further pursuit useless, pulled up, and gazed quietly
after him from the border of the cliff, until he
disappeared amidst the windings of the ravine.
Nothing now remained but to turn my steed
and rejoin my companions. Here at first was
some little difficulty. The ardour of the chase
had betrayed me into a long, heedless gallop. I
now found myself in the midst of a lonely waste,
in which the prospect was bounded by undulating
swells of land, naked and uniform, where,
from the deficiency of landmarks and distinct
features, an inexperienced man may become bewildered,
and lose his way as readily as in the
wastes of the ocean. The day too, was overcast,
so that I could not guide myself by the
sun; my only mode was to retrace the track
my horse had made in coming, though this I
would often lose sight of, where the ground was
covered with parched herbage.
To one unaccustomed to it, there is something
inexpressibly lonely in the solitude of a prairie.
The loneliness of a forest seems nothing to it.
There the view is shut in by trees, and the imagination
is left free to picture some livelier scene
beyond. But here we have an immense extent
of landscape without a sign of human existence.
We have the consciousness of being far, far beyond
the bounds of human habitation; we feel
as if moving in the midst of a desert world. As
my horse lagged slowly back over the scenes of
our late scamper, and the delirium of the chase
had passed away, I was peculiarly sensible to
was now and then broken by the cry of a distant
flock of pelicans, stalking like spectres
about a shallow pool; sometimes by the sinister
croaking of a raven in the air, while occasionally
a scoundrel wolf would scour off from
before me; and, having attained a safe distance,
would sit down and howl and wine with tones
that gave a dreariness to the surrounding solitude.
After pursuing my way for some time, I descried
a horseman on the edge of a distant hill,
and soon recognised him to be the Count. He
had been equally unsuccessful with myself; we
were shortly afterwards rejoined by our worthy
comrade, the Virtuoso, who, with spectacles
on nose, had made two or three ineffectual shots
from horseback.
We determined not to seek the camp until we
had made one more effort. Casting our eyes
about the surrounding waste, we described a herd
of buffalo about two miles distant, scattered
apart, and quietly grazing near a small strip of
trees and bushes. It required but little stretch
of fancy to picture them so many cattle grazing
on the edge of a common, and that the
grove might shelter some lowly farm house.
We now formed our plan to circumvent the
herd, and by getting on the other side of them,
our camp to be situated: otherwise, the pursuit
might take us to such a distance as to render it
impossible for us to find our way back before
night-fall. Taking a wide circuit therefore, we
moved slowly and cautiously, pausing occasionally,
when we saw any of the herd desist from
grazing. The wind fortunately set from them,
otherwise they might have scented us and have
taken the alarm. In this way, we succeeded in
getting round the herd without disturbing it. It
consisted of about forty head, bulls, cows and
calves. Separating to some distance from each
other, we now approached slowly in a parallel
line, hoping by degrees to steal near without exciting
attention. They began, however, to
move off quietly, stopping at every step or two
to graze, when suddenly a bull that, unobserved
by us, had been taking his siesta under a clump
of trees to our left, roused himself from his lair,
and hastened to join his companions. We were
still at a considerable distance, but the game had
taken the alarm. We quickened our pace, they
broke into a gallop, and now commenced a full
chase.
As the ground was level, they shouldered
along with great speed, following each other in
a line; two or three bulls bringing up the rear,
the last of whom, from his enormous size and
looked like the patriarch of the herd; and as if
he might long have reigned the monarch of the
prairie.
There is a mixture of the awful and the comic
in the look of these huge animals, as they
bear their great bulk forwards, with an up and
down motion of the unwieldy head and shoulders;
their tail cocked up like the queue of pantaloon
in a pantomine, the end whisking about
in a fierce yet whimsical style, and their eyes
glaring venomously with an expression of fright
and fury.
For some time I kept parallel with the line,
without being able to force my horse within pistol
shot, so much had he been alarmed by the
assault of the buffalo, in the preceding chase.
At length I succeeded, but was again balked by
my pistols missing fire. My companions, whose
horses were less fleet, and more way-worn,
could not overtake the herd; at length Mr. L.
who was in the rear of the line, and losing ground,
levelled his double barrelled gun, and fired a
long raking shot. It struck a buffalo just above
the loins, broke its back bone, and brought it to
the ground. He stopped and alighted to despatch
his prey, when borrowing his gun which
had yet a charge remaining in it, I put my horse
to his speed, again overtook the herd which was
my present weapon there was no need of urging
my horse to such close quarters; galloping along
parallel, therefore, I singled out a buffalo, and
by a fortunate shot brought it down on the spot.
The ball had struck a vital part; it would not
move from the place where it fell, but lay there
struggling in mortal agony, while the rest of the
herd kept on their headlong career across the
prairie.
Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent
his straying, and advanced to contemplate
my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman: I had
been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the
magnitude of the game, and the excitement of
an adventurous chase. Now that the excitement
was over, I could not but look with commiseration
upon the poor animal that lay struggling
and bleeding at my feet. His very size
and importance, which had before inspired me
with eagerness, now increased my compunction.
It seemed as if I had inflicted pain in proportion
to the bulk of my victim, and as if there were
a hundred fold greater waste of life than there
would have been in the destruction of an animal
of inferior size.
To add to these after qualms of conscience,
the poor animal lingered in his agony. He had
evidently received a mortal wound, but death
leave him here to be torn piecemeal, while yet
alive, by the wolves that had already snuffed
his blood, and were skulking and howling at a
distance, and waiting for my departure, and by
the ravens that were flapping about, croaking dismally
in the air. It became now an act of mercy
to give him his quietus, and put him out of
his misery. I primed one of the pistols, therefore,
and advanced close up to the buffalo. To
inflict a wound thus in cool blood, I found a totally
different thing from firing in the heat of the
chase. Taking aim, however, just behind the
fore-shoulder, my pistol for once proved true;
the ball must have passed through the heart, for
the animal gave one convulsive throe and expired.
While I stood meditating and moralizing over
the wreck I had so wantonly produced, with
my horse grazing near me, I was rejoined by
my fellow sportsman, the Virtuoso; who, being
a man of universal adroitness, and withal, more
experienced and hardened in the gentle art of
“venerie,” soon managed to carve out the
tongue of the buffalo, and delivered it to me to
bear back to the camp as a trophy.
| CHAPTER XXIX. The Crayon miscellany | |