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[Illustration:

_BUREAU OF ILLUSTRATION BUFFALO NY_]

  BUFFALO LAND:

  AN

  AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT

  OF THE

  _Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific
  and Sporting Party_

  IN THE WILD WEST;

  WITH

  GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COUNTRY; THE RED MAN, SAVAGE
  AND CIVILIZED; HUNTING THE BUFFALO, ANTELOPE,
  ELK, AND WILD TURKEY; ETC., ETC.

  REPLETE WITH INFORMATION, WIT, AND HUMOR.

  The Appendix Comprising a Complete Guide for Sportsmen and Emigrants.

  BY

  W. E. WEBB,

  OF TOPEKA, KANSAS.

  Profusely Illustrated

  FROM ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY HENRY WORRALL.

  CINCINNATI AND CHICAGO:

  E HANNAFORD & COMPANY.

  SAN FRANCISCO: F. DEWING & CO.

  1872.

  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by

  E. HANNAFORD & CO.,

  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

  STEREOTYPED AT THE FRANKLIN TYPE FOUNDRY, CINCINNATI.

  TO

  The Primeval Man,

  _The Original Westerner, and First Buffalo Hunter,_

  This Work is Dedicated,

  WITH PROFOUND REGARD,

  _BY THE AUTHOR._




BUFFALO LAND.

BY OUR TAMMANY SACHEM.


  There's a wonderful land far out in the West,
    Well worthy a visit, my friend;
  There, Puritans thought, as the sun went to rest,
    Creation itself had an end.
  'T is a wild, weird spot on the continent's face,
    A wound which is ghastly and red,
  Where the savages write the deeds of their race
    In blood that they constantly shed.
  The graves of the dead the fair prairies deface,
    And stamp it the kingdom of dread.

  The emigrant trail is a skeleton path;
    You measure its miles by the bones;
  There savages struck, in their merciless wrath,
    And now, after sunset, the moans,
  When tempests are out, fill the shuddering air,
    And ghosts flit the wagons beside,
  And point to the skulls lying grinning and bare
    And beg of the teamsters a ride;
  Sometimes 't is a father with snow on his hair,
    Again, 't is a youth and his bride.

  What visions of horror each valley could tell,
    If Providence gave it a tongue!
  How often its Eden was changed to a hell,
    In which a whole train had been flung;
  How death cry and battle-shout frightened the birds,
    And prayers were as thick as the leaves,
  And no one to catch the poor dying one's words
    But Death, as he gathered his sheaves:
  You see the bones bleaching among the wild herds,
    In shrouds that the field spider weaves.

  That era is passing--another one comes,
    The era of steam and the plow,
  With clangor of commerce and factory hums,
    Where only the wigwam is now.
  Like mist of the morning before the bright sun,
    The cloud from the land disappears;
  The Spirit of Murder his circle has run
    And fled from the march of the years;
  The click of machine drowns the click of the gun,
    And day hides the night time of tears.




PREFACE.


The purpose of this work is to make the reader better acquainted with
that wild land which he has known from childhood, as the home of the
Indian and the buffalo. The Rocky Mountain chain, distorted and rugged,
has been aptly called the colossal vertebrae of our continent's broad
back, and from thence, as a line, the plains, weird and wonderful,
stretch eastward through Colorado, and embrace the entire western half
of Kansas.

Fortune, not long since, threw in my way an invitation, which I gladly
accepted, to join a semi-scientific party, since somewhat known to fame
through various articles in the newspaper press, in a sojourn of several
months on the great plains. At a meeting held with due solemnity on the
eve of starting, the Professor (to whom the reader will be introduced in
the proper connection) was chosen leader of the expedition, while to my
lot fell the office of editor of the future record, or rather Grand
Scribe of what