"The life of the prairie," with all its seeming monotony, was very far from wearisome. The chase, which to some might have presented the same unvarying aspect, to those who passionately loved sport abounded in new and exciting incidents. If upon one day the object of pursuit was the powerful bison bull, with his shaggy mane and short straight horns, on another, it was the swift antelope or the prairie fox, whose sable skin is the rarest piece of dandyism a hunter's pelisse can exhibit; now and then the wide-spread paw of a brown bear would mark the earth, and give us days of exciting pursuit; or, again, some Indian "trail"--some red-man "sign"--would warn us that we were approaching the hunting-grounds of a tribe, and that all our circumspection was needed. Besides these, there were changes, inappreciable to the uninitiated, but thoroughly understood by us, in the landscape itself, highly interesting. It is a well-known fact that the shepherd becomes conversant with the face of every sheep in his flock, tracing differences of expression where others would recognize nothing but a blank uniformity; so did the prairie, which at first presented one unvarying expanse, become at last marked by a hundred peculiarities, with which close observation made us intimate. Indeed, I often wondered how a great stretching plain, without a house, a tree, a shrub, or a trickling brook, could supply the materials of scenic interest; and the explanation is almost as difficult as the fact. One must have lived the life of solitude and isolation which these wild wastes compel, to feel how every moss-clad stone can have its meaning,--how the presence of some little insignificant lichen indicates the vicinity of water,--how the blue foxbell shows where honey is to be found,--how the faint spiral motion of the pirn grass gives warning that rain is nigh at hand. Then with what interest at each sunset is the horizon invested, when the eye can pierce space to a vast extent, and mark the fog-banks which tower afar off, and distinguish the gathering clouds from the dark-backed herd of buffaloes or a group of Indians on a march. Every prairie "roll," every dip and undulation of that vast surface, had its own interest, till at length I learned to think that all other prospects must be tame, spiritless, and unexciting, in comparison with that glorious expanse, where sky and earth were one, and where the clouds alone threw shadows upon the vast plain.