Their weapons for hunting are lances five or six feet long, and tipped with stone or the bone of some animal, and bows with arrows similarly pointed. The buffalo is sometimes hunted by men who have partially concealed their persons in the skin of the white wolf, and who creep to within shot of their game by favour of this disguise; for the buffalo, accustomed to the white wolf, and safe from his attack unless, when, separated from the herd, he becomes the prey of a pack, permits the approach of the Indian thus masked, the latter being careful to keep to leeward of his game, whose scent is very acute. Indians sometimes drive whole herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, into impassable ravines or to the brink of precipices, when they slaughter as many as they may need; but none were ever destroyed wantonly before the introduction of whisky; whereas at this time whole herds are killed merely for their skins, the flesh being left to decay on the prairies; and this, by depopulating the hunting-grounds, induces famine, and is another cause of Indian suffering and final extinction. Buffaloes are often destroyed by the panther; solitary individuals sometimes fall a prey to a pack of wolves; others perish in the burning prairies, that awfully peculiar feature of the American solitudes; a few are drowned every season in attempting to cross the ice of rivers not firmly frozen; but the principal element of their destruction is in the rapacity of the trader; and it has been calculated that the activity of this last-named agent will ensure the extermination of this most valuable creature within a very short period of time.