It is scarcely possible to conceive a wilder or more ferocious and terrible monster than a buffalo bull.  He often grows to the enormous weight of two thousand pounds.  His lion-like mane falls in shaggy confusion quite over his head and shoulders, down to the ground.  When he is wounded he becomes imbued with the spirit of a tiger:  he stamps, bellows, roars, and foams forth his rage with glaring eyes and steaming nostrils, and charges furiously at man and horse with utter recklessness.  Fortunately, however, he is not naturally pugnacious, and can be easily thrown into a sudden panic.  Moreover, the peculiar position of his eye renders this creature not so terrible as he would otherwise be to the hunter.  Owing to the stiff structure of the neck, and the sunken, downward-looking eyeball, the buffalo cannot, without an effort, see beyond the direct line of vision presented to the habitual carriage of his head.  When, therefore, he is wounded, and charges, he does so in a straight line, so that his pursuer can leap easily out of his way.  The pace of the buffalo is clumsy, and apparently slow, yet, when chased, he dashes away over the plains in blind blundering terror, at a rate that leaves all but good horses far behind.  He cannot keep the pace up, however, and is usually soon overtaken.  Were the buffalo capable of the same alert and agile motions of head and eye peculiar to the deer or wild horse, in addition to his “bovine rage,” he would be the most formidable brute on earth.  There is no object, perhaps, so terrible as the headlong advance of a herd of these animals when thoroughly aroused by terror.  They care not for their necks.  All danger in front is forgotten, or not seen, in the terror of that from which they fly.  No thundering cataract is more tremendously irresistible than the black bellowing torrent which sometimes pours through the narrow defiles of the Rocky Mountains, or sweeps like a roaring flood over the trembling plains.

The wallowing, to which we have referred, is a luxury usually indulged in during the hot months of summer, when the buffaloes are tormented by flies, and heat, and drought.  At this season they seek the low grounds in the prairies where there is a little stagnant water lying amongst the grass, and the ground underneath, being saturated, is soft.  The leader of the herd, a shaggy old bull, usually takes upon himself to prepare the wallow.

It was a rugged monster of the largest size that did so on the present occasion, to the intense delight of Dick Varley, who begged Joe to lie still and watch the operation before trying to shoot one of the buffalo cows.  Joe consented with a nod, and the four spectators—­for Crusoe was as much taken up with the proceedings as any of them—­crouched in the grass, and looked on.