CHAPTER II.

Long before the vision of a confederation of the British Provinces entered into the brain of any man, Lord Selkirk, coming to the wilds of North America, found a tract of country fertile in soil, and fair to look upon.  He arrived in this unknown wilderness when it was summer, and all the prairie extending over illimitable stretches till it was lost in the tranquil horizon, was burning with the blooms of a hundred varieties of flowers.  Here the “tiger rose,” like some savage queen of beauty, rose to his knees and breathed her sultry balm in his face.  Aloof stood the shy wild rose, shedding its scent with delicate reserve; but the wild pea, and the convolvulus, and the augur flower, and the insipid daisy, ran riot through all the grass land, and surfeited his nostrils with their sweets.  Here and there upon the mellow level stood a clump of poplars or white oaks, prim, like virgins without suitors, with their robes drawn close about them; but when over the unmeasured plain the wind blew, they bowed their heads:  as if saluting the stranger who came to found a colony in the wilderness of which they were sentinels.  Here too, in the hush, for the first time, the planter’s ear heard a far-off, nigh indistinct, sound of galloping thunder.  He knew not what it meant, and his followers surmised that it might be the tumult of some distant waterfall, borne hither now because a storm was at hand, and the denser air was a better carrier of the sound.  And while they remained wondering what it could be, for the thunder was ever becoming louder, and,

   “Nearer clearer, deadlier than before”

Lo! out of the west came what seemed as a dim shadow moving across the plain.  With bated breath they watched the dark mass moving along like some destroying tempest with ten thousand devils at its core.  Chained to the ground with a terrible awe they stood fast for many minutes till at last in the dim light, for the gloaming had come upon the plains, they see eye-balls that blaze like fire, heads crested with rugged, uncouth horns and shaggy manes; and then snouts thrust down, flaring nostrils, and rearing tails.

My God, a buffalo herd, and we’ll be trampled to death,” almost shrieked one of the Earl’s followers.

“Peace! keep cool!  Up, up instantly into these trees!” and the word was obeyed as if each man was an instrument of the leader’s will.  Beyond, in the south-east, a full moon, luscious seeming as some ripened, mellow fruit, was rising, and the yellow light was all over the plain.  Then the tremendous mass, headed by maddened bulls, with blazing eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward the south, like an unchained hurricane.  Some of the terrified beasts ran against the trees, crushing horns and skull, and fell prone upon the plain, to be trampled into jelly by the hundreds of thousands in the rear.  The tree upon which the earl had taken refuge received