About a mile from the wood on the Leone I saw, to my great surprise, on my right hand a very large deer and a horse walking together across the plain to the wood. They tottered along slowly side by side, and seemed not to notice me at all. I rode up to them: I fancied they had been blinded by the fire, but it was not so; for they now stopped and gazed at me with their bright eyes, as if imploring me not to prevent them from reaching the wood. Both were slightly scorched, though the horse had lost mane and tail: they appeared to have suffered more from excessive exertion, and to be yearning for the water of the Leone. I could easily have killed the deer, but I pitied the creature, and besides did not care to eat its hunted flesh or put a further load on Czar. Hence I quitted the poor creatures, and reached the wood, which is not very broad here; and soon after the river, where Czar refreshed himself for a long time in the cool waters. Annually nearly all the western prairies are burnt by the Indians, towards spring: when they leave the south and go north to hunt they fire the old grass, so that when they return in autumn they may find on these extensive plains fresh food for their large troops of horses and mules. They have, however, I fancy, another motive. If these plains were not singed with fire, a perfectly different vegetation would arise on them within a few years. Trees and bushes would rapidly grow up and convert the prairies into an impenetrable chapparal or forest, which would be very troublesome to the horse Indians, in their hunts and journeyings. In this way, however, fire destroys every growth but that of grass. If a sapling springs up in spring from seed borne thither by the wind or by animals, it is burnt down in autumn. Prairie fires are generally dangerous neither to men nor beasts, as the fire, with an ordinary wind, advances very slowly, and over a limited region. If you arrive at very tall grass where the fire would kill, you have always time to get away from it; and when the grass is not unusually high, you can always find a spot to leap over the flames. If the storm is accompanied by rain the grass does not burn at all, hence, only a hurricane with a clear sky, as is not rare among us in autumn, produces in alliance with the fire such destruction among the occupants of the steppe.