church, or to hear a town-bell, but afore you had passed a year in
these prairies you would find yourself taking a turkey for a buffaloe,
or conceiting, fifty times, that the roar of a buffaloe bull was the
thunder of the Lord! There is a deception of natur' in these naked
plains, in which the air throws up the images like water, and then it
is hard to tell the prairies from a sea. But yonder is a sign that a
hunter never fails to know!"

The trapper pointed to a flight of vultures, that were sailing over
the plain at no great distance, and apparently in the direction in
which the Pawnee had riveted his eye. At first Middleton could not
distinguish the small dark objects, that were dotting the dusky
clouds, but as they came swiftly onward, first their forms, and then
their heavy waving wings, became distinctly visible.

"Listen," said the trapper, when he had succeeded in making Middleton
see the moving column of birds. "Now you hear the buffaloes, or
bisons, as your knowing Doctor sees fit to call them, though buffaloes
is their name among all the hunters of these regions. And, I conclude,
that a hunter is a better judge of a beast and of its name," he added,
winking to the young soldier, "than any man who has turned over the
leaves of a book, instead of travelling over the face of the 'arth, in
order to find out the natur's of its inhabitants."

"Of their habits, I will grant you," cried the naturalist, who rarely
missed an opportunity to agitate any disputed point in his favourite
studies. "That is, provided always, deference is had to the proper use
of definitions, and that they are contemplated with scientific eyes."

"Eyes of a mole! as if man's eyes were not as good for names as the