[Footnote 25:  I have said, at a venture, that we descended more than a hundred feet into the chasm before we fairly landed on the bodies of the animals.  The chasm itself could not have been less than two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet deep at the part that we plunged down.  This will give the reader some idea of the vast quantity of bodies of animals, chiefly buffaloes, which were there piled up.  I consider that this pile must have been formed wholly from the foremost of the mass, and that when formed, it broke the fall of the others, who followed them, as it did our own:  indeed, the summit of the heap was pounded into a sort of jelly.]

CHAPTER XXIX.

Two days did we remain in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses.  Thus deeply buried in the bosom of the earth, we were safe from the devastating elements.  On the second day we heard tremendous claps of thunder; we knew that a storm was raging which would quench the fire, but we cared little about what was going on above.

We had plenty to eat and to drink, our steeds were recovering fast, and, in spite of the horrors we had just undergone, we were not a little amused by the lamentations of the parson, who, recollecting the destruction of his shirts, forgot his professional duty, and swore against Texas and the Texans, against the prairies, the buffaloes, and the fire:  the last event had produced so deep an impression upon his mind, that he preferred shivering all night by the banks of the torrent to sleeping near our comfortable fire; and as to eating of the delicate food before him, it was out of the question; he would suck it, but not masticate nor swallow it; his stomach and his teeth refused to accomplish their functions upon the abhorred meat; and he solemnly declared that never again would he taste beef—­cow or calf—–­ tame or wild—­even if he were starving.

One of the lawyers, too, was loud in his complaints, for although born in the States, he had in his veins no few drops of Irish blood, and could not forget the sacrifice Gabriel had made of the whisky.  “Such stuff!” he would exclaim, “the best that ever came into this land of abomination, to be thrown in the face of dirty buffaloes:  the devil take them!  Eh!  Monsheer Owato Wanisha,—­queer outlandish name, by-the-bye,—­please to pass me another slice of the varmint (meaning the buffalo-calf).  Bless my soul, if I did not think, at one time, it was after the liquor the brutes were running!”

Upon the morning of the third day, we resumed our journey, following the stream down for a few miles, over thousands of dead animals, which the now foaming torrent could not wash away.  We struck the winding path which the “estampedados” had taken; and as it had been worked by the millions of fugitives into a gentle ascent, we found ourselves long before noon, once more upon the level of the prairie.  What a spectacle of gloom and death!  As far as the eye could reach, the earth was naked and blackened.  Not a stem of grass, not a bush, had escaped the awful conflagration; and thousands of half-burnt bodies of deer, buffaloes, and mustangs covered the prairie in every direction.