specks.  Sometimes I surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone, or sleeping behind the ridges I ascended.  They would leap up at my approach, stare stupidly at me through their tangled manes, and then gallop heavily away.  The antelope were very numerous; and as they are always bold when in the neighborhood of buffalo, they would approach quite near to look at me, gazing intently with their great round eyes, then suddenly leap aside, and stretch lightly away over the prairie, as swiftly as a racehorse.  Squalid, ruffianlike wolves sneaked through the hollows and sandy ravines.  Several times I passed through villages of prairie dogs, who sat, each at the mouth of his burrow, holding his paws before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away most vehemently, energetically whisking his little tail with every squeaking cry he uttered.  Prairie dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions; various long, checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of the village, and demure little gray owls, with a large white ring around each eye, were perched side by side with the rightful inhabitants.  The prairie teemed with life.  Again and again I looked toward the crowded hillsides, and was sure I saw horsemen; and riding near, with a mixture of hope and dread, for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed into a group of buffalo.  There was nothing in human shape amid all this vast congregation of brute forms.

When I turned down the buffalo path, the prairie seemed changed; only a wolf or two glided past at intervals, like conscious felons, never looking to the right or left.  Being now free from anxiety, I was at leisure to observe minutely the objects around me; and here, for the first time, I noticed insects wholly different from any of the varieties found farther to the eastward.  Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my horse’s head; strangely formed beetles, glittering with metallic luster, were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before; multitudes of lizards, too, were darting like lightning over the sand.

I had run to a great distance from the river.  It cost me a long ride on the buffalo path before I saw from the ridge of a sand-hill the pale surface of the Platte glistening in the midst of its desert valleys, and the faint outline of the hills beyond waving along the sky.  From where I stood, not a tree nor a bush nor a living thing was visible throughout the whole extent of the sun-scorched landscape.  In half an hour I came upon the trail, not far from the river; and seeing that the party had not yet passed, I turned eastward to meet them, old Pontiac’s long swinging trot again assuring me that I was right in doing so.  Having been slightly ill on leaving camp in the morning six or seven hours of rough riding had fatigued me extremely.  I soon stopped, therefore; flung my saddle on the ground, and with my head resting on it, and my horse’s trail-rope tied loosely to my arm, lay waiting the arrival of the party, speculating