receives the fatal shot. The flesh is fine and delicate. Herds of buffalo are very numerous this year, especially in the neighborhood of the Bad Lands. It is the daily bread of the Indian tribes in the upper plains. The various tables of the Ontario are well supplied at present with the exquisite meat of this noble animal. Yesterday (June 2d) we were all spectators of a striking scene, in which buffalo alone were the actors. The theatre was the most wonderfully wild and
picturesque part of this region. Mountainous hills rise here
to a height Of 500 to i,ooo feet. They are wholly sterile, stony, adorned here and there with a few dark and solitary pines, while their smiling valleys are covered with flowers and herbage, and thousands of buffalo were cropping the tender grass as we approached.
As soon as they got wind of man's proximity and heard the noise of the steamer, they rushed precipitately to the nearest bluffs, whose slopes were fully 6o° with the horizontal, and by pushing on and climbing stoutly in zigzag lines, they gained the summit. The dark, living, winding lines, the columns of dust that followed them, from the bottom to the top, and the noise of their tread and their dull bellowing, furnished the spectators a most charming and imposing spectacle, and moreover a revelation concerning the agility, muscular strength and capacity for endurance of this mighty animal of the American desert.
But the buffalo had not yet showed all their accomplishments; as in all spectacles a farce is usually the closing piece, so here three old buffalo bulls gave us one after their kind. The spot chosen was an almost vertical hill (,something like 75° slope, and nearly a thousand feet in height). The bulls found themselves just about in the middle of the slope; it was hard to see how they could have got there. At the approach of the boat they made prodigious efforts to clamber up and gain the top. All eyes were fixed upon them; our cheers were a powerful encouragement to high speed. One reached the goal, and received the applause of the spectators; his two companions strained their