For two days we followed our path and crossed various streams which flowed more to the south, till the low hills became more scattered and the glens between them wider. The vegetation was springing up here, and the good pasturage induced us to grant our cattle some days' rest, as they had been on short commons lately. We selected a very pretty camping-place, where a small stream ran under a precipice and was covered on one side with scrub and a few leafy trees, while on the north and east a rich prairie opened out, and to the west the forest became thicker. We had abundance of game of every description, and many a head bled to death around us, merely for the sake of the fascination which hunting exerts. All had left camp in turn to hunt except Clifton and myself, and the latter asked leave on the second morning to try his luck. It was a fine day and I proposed to accompany him, but stipulated that we should ride. Clifton was delighted, and quickly saddled his iron-grey, a horse of remarkable value, who up to the present had been the least fatigued of all our cattle by the journey. We rode away from camp and received from our laughing comrades a seasonable hint to take care and not lose ourselves. We rode up the stream, from which a thick wood soon separated us, on whose skirt we had followed the prairie. We had ridden for about an hour, when we noticed a little distance off some wild cattle proceeding toward the wood. Clifton was very eager to kill one of these animals, but I warned him to be most cautious, and reminded him that this was a most dangerous hunt. We rode slowly to the skirt of the wood and reached the spot where the herd had entered it, when Clifton pulled up under a young oak, wound his horse's bridle round a branch, and ran off with his rifle and knelt behind a large plane tree. He had done this almost before I knew what he was about. I rode a few paces farther and saw a large bull grazing with its head turned towards us, but at the same moment Clifton fired. The bullet was hardly out of the rifle ere the bull rushed at him with lowered head, and Clifton, throwing away his gun, took to flight. He reached a young tree and swarmed up it, while the savage brute dashed under his swinging legs and charged the iron-grey, which attempted in vain to tear away its bridle from the branch. In an instant the bull drove its head under the poor horse, and with its monstrous horns tore its entrails out. The horse fell to the ground with a fearful piercing cry, and at the same moment I sent a bullet through the bull's shoulder; it turned and followed me furiously into the prairie, where I fled before it in a wide circle. It became exhausted, stopped, and uttered a furious roar, while hurling up the turf with his horns and stamping on the ground with its feet. I turned Czar a little to the right, kept Trusty back, and sent my second bullet between the bull's shoulders, upon which it sank on one knee and soon rolled over.