“Can ye trust yer dog keepin’ back?” inquired Joe, with a dubious glance at Crusoe.

“Trust him!  Ay, I wish I was as sure o’ myself.”

“Look to yer primin’, then, an’ we’ll have tongues and marrow bones for supper to-night, I’se warrant.  Hist! down on yer knees and go softly.  We might ha’ run them down on horseback, but it’s bad to wind yer beasts on a trip like this, if ye can help it; an’ it’s about as easy to stalk them.  Leastways, we’ll try.  Lift yer head slowly, Dick, an’ don’t show more nor the half o’t above the ridge.”

Dick elevated his head as directed, and the scene that met his view was indeed well calculated to send an electric shock to the heart of an ardent sportsman.  The vast plain beyond was absolutely blackened with countless herds of buffaloes, which were browsing on the rich grass.  They were still so far distant that their bellowing, and the trampling of their myriad hoofs, only reached the hunters like a faint murmur on the breeze.  In the immediate foreground, however, there was a group of about half-a-dozen buffalo cows feeding quietly, and in the midst of them an enormous old bull was enjoying himself in his wallow.  The animals, towards which our hunters now crept with murderous intent, are the fiercest and the most ponderous of the ruminating inhabitants of the western wilderness.  The name of buffalo, however, is not correct.  The animal is the bison, and bears no resemblance whatever to the buffalo proper; but as the hunters of the far west, and, indeed, travellers generally, have adopted the misnomer, we bow to the authority of custom and adopt it too.

Buffaloes roam in countless thousands all over the North American prairies, from the Hudson Bay Territories, north of Canada, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The advance of white men to the west has driven them to the prairies between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, and has somewhat diminished their numbers; but even thus diminished, they are still innumerable in the more distant plains.  Their colour is dark brown, but it varies a good deal with the seasons.  The hair or fur, from its great length in winter and spring and exposure to the weather, turns quite light; but when the winter coat is shed off, the new growth is a beautiful dark brown, almost approaching to jet-black.  In form the buffalo somewhat resembles the ox, but its head and shoulders are much larger, and are covered with a profusion of long shaggy hair which adds greatly to the fierce aspect of the animal.  It has a large hump on the shoulder, and its fore-quarters are much larger, in proportion, than the hind-quarters.  The horns are short and thick, the hoofs are cloven, and the tail is short, with a tuft of hair at the extremity.