when lo! out of the west come what seemed a dim shadow moving across
the plain. With hushed breath she watched the dark mass move along
like some destroying tempest and, as it seemed to her, with ten
thousand devils at its core. Chained to the ground with a terrible
awe, she stood fast for many minutes, till at last in the dim light
she saw eye-balls that blazed like fire, heads crested with rugged,
uncouth horns and shaggy manes; and then snouts thrust down, flaring
nostrils, and rearing tails.

"My God, a buffalo herd!" she exclaimed. Close at hand was a tall
boulder in the shelter of which she instantly secured her horse; then
running a few paces to where stood a tall, sturdy poplar, she
clambered into its branches.

Then the tremendous mass, headed by maddened bulls, with blazing
eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward the south, like an
unchained hurricane. Some of the terrified beasts ran against the
trees, crushing horns and skull, and fell prone upon the plain to be
trampled to jelly by the hundreds of thousands in rear. The tree upon
which the girl had taken refuge received many a shock from a crazed
bull; and it seemed to Annette from her perch in the branches, as if
all the face of the plains was being hurled toward the south in the
wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no such
spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely
plain under the elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam,
wreathing themselves into spectral shapes rose from the dusky,
writhing mass, and the flaming of myriad eyeballs in the gloom
presented a picture more terrible than ever came into the imagination
of the writer of the Inferno.