The shock of such charges as we witnessed, if made by a domestic ox, would have broken his neck. Even our bison friend finally overdid the matter. Either because his foot tripped or the blow glanced, upon one of his charges, he fell down on his fore legs, and then rolled completely over. We thought this a good time to push forward, and accordingly did so at a gallop. Whether thinking himself knocked down by a foe, or because he heard the rattling of hoofs, we could not determine, but he suddenly sprang to his feet, whirled his shaggy head into bearing upon us, then turned and set away at full speed up the canyon, toward the plains above. The order was given to ply spur and close in upon him, if possible, or he would set the herds above in motion. It was a mad ride that we had for the next ten minutes--across beds of gravel, among huge bowlders, and once or twice over great fissures in the earth which chilled my blood as I took a sort of bird's-eye view of their depths. In a lumbering run on ahead of us went the frightened bull, his feet occasionally sending back dashes of pebbles, while behind him rattled such a clattering of hoofs that the poor brute, if he could think at all, must have imagined he had butted open the door of Hades, and was now being pursued by its inmates. There were mishaps in this our first buffalo hunt, of course, and among them, Muggs dropped a stirrup, and was obliged to support himself afterward on one foot--an awkward matter, resulting from his inconvenient English saddle, one of the kind which compels one, half the time, to sustain the whole body by the stirrups alone. We gained upon the game steadily, though no particular member of our party excelled as leader, first one being ahead and then the other. Cynocephalus developed wonderfully, and kept well up with his better conditioned neighbors. What a magnificent prize for the hunter rushed on before us, swinging his ponderous head from side to side, for the purpose of getting better rear views--such an ungainly and shaggy animal, a perfect marvel of magnificent disproportions! It is well enough to go to Africa and hunt lions, and describe their majestic, flowing manes; but this bison, in mad flight ahead of us, could have furnished hair and mane enough to fit out half a dozen lions. At close quarters, too, he was fully as dangerous as the king of beasts.