The calf, Catlin asserts,[17] could be made to follow a horseman simply by holding the hand over its eyes and breathing into its nostrils a few strong breaths. In this way he collected about a dozen, which were fed at the fort on milk and finally sent down the river to St. Louis as a present to Choteau. All but one died on the journey. The breathing operation was not unattended with danger for the calves were vigorous butters and not lightly to be trifled with. The trapper Pattie, when crossing the prairies, shot a cow and concluded to take the little calf alive to camp. So he laid aside his equipment in order the more easily to catch it, expecting a hot chase. But when he approached the prospective captive it also approached him, and with the speed and vigour of a battering ram. Mr. Pattie found himself stretched on the ground, with the further misfortune of being knocked back again every time he attempted to rise. He began to suspect that his final hour had come, when he succeeded in catching the calf by one of its legs, and killed it with his sheath knife, which was still in his belt. The pursuit of the buffalo was full of excitement and within reason was a legitimate sport. Catlin exclaims: "I have always counted myself a prudent man, yet I have waked (as it were) out of the delirium of the chase, into which I had fallen as into an agitated sleep, and through which I had passed as through a delightful dream, where to have died would have been but to have remained riding on without a struggle or a pang." The herds of buffalo were always followed by large numbers of wolves, both the small coyote variety and the huge grey wolf. There were also on the prairies in great numbers what the early frontiersmen called "white bears." These were grizzlies. They were very bold and many a man was sent to the Happy Hunting Grounds by their ferocious power. No animal in the world perhaps, taken all in all, was so dangerous. Besides these there were numerous antelope, elk, deer, sheep, prairie hens, turkeys, quail, rabbits, and other small game, more or less familiar to the reader, and, therefore, not requiring an extended description here. The beaver and the buffalo were the animals of the greatest importance; and the buffalo deserves a place in our national emblem along with the beaver, for the bones of the bison may be said to form one of the corner-stones of the Union. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [4] Gatschet says there is a word in the dialect of Isleta, N. M., _Sibúlodd_, meaning buffalo, and it is possible that a native name for the animal has been mixed up with the name of the first group of towns, written often _Cevola_. For a description of these towns, etc., see _Coronado_, by George Parker Winship, A. S. Barnes & Co. edition. [5] _Voyages through North America_, Alexander Mackenzie, vol. ii., p. 27, Barnes edition.