very verge of the horizon the brown masses of the buffalo bands showed
through the dust clouds, coming on with a thunderous roar like that of
surf. Camp was a mile away, and the stampede luckily passed to one side
of it. Watching his chance he finally dodged back to the tent, and all
that afternoon watched the immense masses of buffalo, as band after band
tore to the brink of the bluffs on one side, raced down them, rushed
through the water, up the bluffs on the other side, and again off over
the plain, churning the sandy, shallow stream into a ceaseless tumult.
When darkness fell there was no apparent decrease in the numbers that
were passing, and all through that night the continuous roar showed that
the herds were still threshing across the river. Towards dawn the sound
at last ceased, and General Walker arose somewhat irritated, as he had
reckoned on killing an ample supply of meat, and he supposed that there
would be now no bison left south of the river. To his astonishment, when
he strolled up on the bluffs and looked over the plain, it was still
covered far and wide with groups of buffalo, grazing quietly. Apparently
there were as many on that side as ever, in spite of the many scores of
thousands that must have crossed over the river during the stampede of
the afternoon and night. The barren-ground caribou is the only American
animal which is now ever seen in such enormous herds.

In 1862 Mr. Clarence King, while riding along the overland trail through
western Kansas, passed through a great buffalo herd, and was himself
injured in an encounter with a bull. The great herd was then passing
north, and Mr. King reckoned that it must have covered an area nearly
seventy miles by thirty in extent; the figures representing his rough
guess, made after travelling through the herd crosswise, and upon
knowing how long it took to pass a given point going northward. This
great herd of course was not a solid mass of buffaloes; it consisted of
innumerable bands of every size, dotting the prairie within the limits