Page:Rocky Mountain life.djvu/183

 empty craft over the shoals, and again load it, perhaps, to re-act the same scene in a brief interval.

Sometimes we were obliged to travel (for such navigation as this was tenfold worse than travelling) four of five miles to make one mile headway. By crossing and re-crossing a river varying in width from one to two miles — first advancing, then retreating; now taking to the right, then to the left; now transverse, and then oblique, we wasted our time, strength, and patience, in labor to little or no purpose. No one, unless practically experienced, can have a correct idea of the beauties of such a voyage.

Towards night, attracted by the appearance of a couple of bulls among the sand-hills, we brought to upon the left shore, and succeeded in killing one of them.

A high wind the day following kept us encamped and afforded another opportunity for hunting.

Improving the occasion to explore the country northward, and obtain, if possible, some correct conception of its general character, a jaunt of four or five miles, over the bottom of rich alluvial soil skirting the river, ushered me into a high rolling prairie, partaking of the mixed nature of the garden and desert.

The hills, in many places, were piles of sand or sun-baked clay, with scarcely a shrub or spire of grass to hide their nude deformity, while the space between them sported a rich soil and luxuriant vegetation, and was clothed in the verdure and loveliness of spring, and adorned with blushing wild-flowers in full bloom.

Further on were yet higher summits, surmounted by pines and cedars, raising their heads in stately grandeur far above the sweet valleys at their feet.

Taken together, the scenery was not only romantic and picturesque, but bewitching in its beauty and repulsive in its deformity.

The prevailing rock was a dark, ferruginous sandstone, and argillaceous limestone, interspersed with conglomerates of various kinds.

Proceeding to a distance of about fifteen miles from the river, in hopes of finding game, I encountered nothing save a solitary band of wild horses, that fled across the sand-hills with the fleetness of the wind on my appearance, after which I returned to the boat much fatigued from the excursion.

Our other hunters had also returned; but neither of them with better success than myself.

The subsequent morning we again renewed our voyage. Soon after, an old bull presenting himself upon the river bank, we landed, and one of the crew approached him from the water-edge.

The old fellow, unconscious of the danger which threatened, permitted the hunter to advance till within three or four yards of him. The sharp crack of a rifle-shot first awoke him to a sense of his situation, when, reeling, he plunged headlong from the steep bank into the river. Our marksman, in an effort to dodge the falling beast, tumbled backwards into swimming water —lost his gun, and came very near being drowned.

The bull made halt at a sand-bar, near by, and received nineteen shots in his carcase before he could be dispatched.