On the north fork of Big Creek we frightened a dozen antelopes out of the brakes, and had a fine opportunity of witnessing a chase by the hound which alone was worth a journey to the plains to see. I remember having been very much interested, when a boy, in reading accounts of gazelle hunting in the Orient, where hawks and dogs are both used. The former pounce down from the air on the fleet-footed victim's head, compelling it to stop every few moments to shake its unwelcome passenger off, and the dogs are thus enabled to overtake it. This always seemed to me a cowardly sort of sport. The harmless victim of the chase, who can not touch the earth without its turning tell-tale to the keen-scented pursuer, should not be robbed of his only refuge, speed, or the pursuit becomes butchery. The American antelope upon our plains is what the gazelle is upon those of Africa. Timid and fleet, it often detects and avoids danger to which its powerful neighbor, the buffalo, falls a victim. The group which we had frightened bounded away with an elasticity as if nature had furnished them hoofs and joints of rubber. There was no apparent effort in their motion, and we imagined larger powers in reserve than really existed. As the greyhound slowly gained upon them, we noticed this, and the Professor thereupon delivered what Sachem aptly styled a running discourse. "Gentlemen, poetry of motion, perhaps by poetical license, gives exaggerated ideas of force. A smooth-running engine, though taxed to its utmost capacity, seems capable of accomplishing more, while its wheezing neighbor, groaning and straining as if on the verge of dissolution, has abundant powers in reserve. Some Hercules may lift a weight on which a straw more would seem to him large enough to sustain the traditional drowning man. The feat marks itself by a life-long backache, but, if he has performed it gracefully, he bears with it a reputation for a fabulous reserve of power, the exhibition seeming but the safety valve to his supposed giant forces struggling for expression."