In the present instance, we made many endeavours to shoot them, but finding our efforts to be entirely in vain. As we were approaching them at a distance, each one seemed to be perched up, on his hind feet, on his appropriate domicil, with a significant jerk of his tail at every bark, positively disputing our right of approach. I made several attempts to get near enough to “draw a bead” upon one of them; and just before I was ready to fire (and as if they knew the utmost limits of their safety), they sprang down into their holes, and instantly turning their bodies, shewed their ears and the ends of their noses, as they were peeping out at me; which position they would hold, until the shortness of the distance subjected their scalps to danger again, from the aim of a rifle; when they instantly disappeared from our sight, and all was silence thereafter, about their premises, as I passed them over; until I had so far advanced by them, that their ears were again discovered, and at length themselves, at full length, perched on the tops of their little hillocks and threatening as before; thus gradually sinking and rising like a wave before and behind me. The holes leading down to their burrows, are four or five inches in diameter, and run down nearly perpendicular; where they undoubtedly communicate into something like a subterraneous city (as I have formerly learned from fruitless endeavours to dig them out), undermined and vaulted; by which means, they can travel for a great distance under the ground, without danger from pursuit. Their food is simply the grass in the immediate vicinity of their burrows, which is cut close to the ground by their flat, shovel teeth; and, as they sometimes live twenty miles from any water, it is to be supposed that they get moisture enough from the dew on the grass, on which they feed chiefly at night; or that (as is generally supposed) they sink wells from their under-ground habitations, by which they descend low enough to get their supply. In the winter, they are for several months invisible; existing, undoubtedly, in a torpid state, as they certainly lay by no food for that season—nor can they procure any. These curious little animals belong to almost every latitude in the vast plains of prairie in North America; and their villages, which I have sometimes encountered in my travels, have compelled my party to ride several miles out of our way to get by them; for their burrows are generally within a few feet of each other, and dangerous to the feet and the limbs of our horses. The sketch of the bluffs denominated “the Grand Dome,” of which I spoke but a few moments since, is a faithful delineation of the lines and character of that wonderful scene; and the reader has here a just and striking illustration of the ruin-like appearances, as I have formerly described, that are so often met with on the banks of this mighty river.