were made, the pipe of peace was smoked, and presents were distributed.

On the 8th of October the march began, the five Comanches and the chiefs of
several other tribes, including the Omahas, joining the cavalade. Gaillard
and another Frenchman named Quesnel were sent in advance to announce their
approach to the Comanches, while Bourgmont and his followers moved up the
north side of the river Kansas till the eleventh, when they forded it at a
point twenty leagues from its mouth, and took a westward and southwestward
course, sometimes threading the grassy valleys of little streams, sometimes
crossing the dry upland prairie, covered with the short, tufted dull-green
herbage since known as "buffalo grass." Wild turkeys clamored along every
watercourse; deer were seen on all sides, buffalo were without number,
sometimes in grazing droves, and sometimes dotting the endless plain as far
as the eye could reach. Ruffian wolves, white and gray, eyed the travellers
askance, keeping a safe distance by day, and howling about the camp all
night. Of the antelope and the elk the journal makes no mention. Bourgmont
chased a buffalo on horseback and shot him with a pistol,--which is
probably the first recorded example of that way of hunting.

The stretches of high, rolling, treeless prairie grew more vast as the
travellers advanced. On the 17th, they found an abandoned Comanche camp.
On the next day as they stopped to dine, and had just unsaddled their
horses, they saw a distant smoke towards the west, on which they set the
dry grass on fire as an answering signal. Half an hour later a body of wild
horsemen came towards them at full speed, and among them were their two
couriers, Gaillard and Quesnel, waving a French flag. The strangers were
eighty Comanche warriors, with the grand chief of the tribe at their head.
They dashed up to Bourgmont's bivouac and leaped from their horses, when a
general shaking of hands ensued, after which white men and red seated
themselves on the ground and smoked the pipe of peace. Then all rode