Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/95

Rh the Gallas, and the Somal. Providing themselves with rattles and other implements for making startling noises, they ride stealthily up close to the cattle, and then rush by like the whirlwind with a volley of horrid whoops and screams. When the "cavallard" flies in panic fear, the plunderers divide their party; some drive on the plunder, while the others form a rear-guard to keep off pursuers. The prairie-men provide for the danger by keeping their fleetest horses saddled, bridled, and ready to be mounted at a moment's notice. When the animals have stampeded, the owners follow them, scatter the Indians, and drive, if possible, the madrina, or bell-mare, to the front of the herd, gradually turning her toward the camp, and slacking speed as the familiar objects come in sight. Horses and mules appear peculiarly timorous upon the prairies. A band of buffalo, a wolf, or even a deer, will sometimes stampede them; they run to great distances, and not unfrequently their owners fail to recover them.

"Scott's Bluffs," situated 285 miles from Fort Kearney and 51 from Fort Laramie, was the last of the great marl formations which we saw on this line, and was of all by far the most curious. In the dull uniformity of the prairies, it is a striking and attractive object, far excelling the castled crag of Drachenfels or any of the beauties of romantic Rhine. From a distance of a day's march it appears in the shape of a large blue mound, distinguished only by its dimensions from the detached fragments of hill around. As you approach within four or five miles, a massive medieval city gradually defines itself, clustering, with a wonderful fullness of detail, round a colossal fortress, and crowned with a royal castle. Buttress and barbican, bastion, demilune, and guard-house, tower, turret, and donjon-keep, all are there: in one place para-