his patients to these fairy bowers, he might, I think, have succeeded in sending them home quite cured, but I believe the cave had not been discovered then. With a brilliant light the spot was perfectly lovely and the atmosphere was that of constant, unchanged temperature, which puts the human lungs in a state of beatitude. I should not in the least object to live in that paradise of crystal flowers and adamantine forms, the most beautiful that the imagination of man has ever conceived to be curtained in living amber, and pillowed-well, I must admit that-in dust; but it was such clean dust. The texture of these stalactites, when examined by daylight, resembles alabaster, thus the leaves, flowers, sprigs, are perfectly beautiful. Nor are these caves without their incidents of life's drama. The grave and the gay have been enacted here as elsewhere. The episode of the physician and his patients was sad enough, but a more terrible tragedy resulted from a wager.

The guides are particular on entering the caves with a large party to beg them to keep together, as it would be impossible for a person to find his own way out of the labyrinth of passages, chambers, etc. Two gentlemen of a party made a bet that they would accomplish the feat, and, taking their opportunity, slipped away from their party without the guides being aware of their absence, and it was not until late in the evening that the other party to the wager remarked that those two foolhardy fellows had not found their way out of the cavern. This coming to the ears of the guide he exclaimed, "Then they are dead men!" Nevertheless they went in full force to do everything that was possible to find them, but spent the night in vain searches. Sometimes they came upon their track in the soft dust, then lost it again.

On the following day the search was renewed by the guide who had escorted the party, and his description of the finding of one of the gentlemen was truly horrible: "It was the most tarnation cutting up job I ever had in my life," said the guide. "We are not much of cowards, we guides— we get accustomed to awfulness down in the bowels of the

earth; but when that critter's shrieks first came to my ear I just shivered all over and my feet rooted to the groundnot that I did not wish to save him, the poor devil, but I got an idea that that shriek came right straight from hell, and no mistake, and I had no fancy to go there before I was sent for! Well, when I had wiped my brow and taken a drink I went on in the direction of the sound, for it came every now and again, the echoes making like fifty devils instead of one. I found him sooner than I expected; he was a sight to behold; he flew at me like a tiger; he clutched me, and pulled me, and wrestled with me, yelling and howling like a wild beast. I thought he would have torn me to pieces. I should not have known him again for the same gentleman. His eyes glared, his mouth was foaming, and his hair on end, his clothes all torn and covered with dust. He was a real, raving maniac, and so he remained, as far as I know. The work I had to get him out of that cave! He would stand stock still and shake all over, then suddenly clutch at me again. I was the stronger man of the two, and he was weak from long fasting, or I never should have got him out. The doctor said he was fright-stricken."

And this was the case, as they thought, with the other poor fellow, who was not found for weeks, it having been conjectured that he had fallen down a hole. One of the guides making some new exploration, discovered him sitting down, no sign of decomposition having taken place, and no sign of his having died of starvation, for a piece of biscuit was found in his pocket. He was supposed to have died of terror, the terrible darkness working upon the nervous system, and the hopelessness of penetrating it making the minutes appear hours. A guide who had once been lost there himself for some twenty hours, said he never could believe he had not been there for several days.

AMERICA

The Buffalo on the Plains

By F. PARKMAN

THE were already on horseback, but Henry Chatillon still

wagons one morning had left the camp; Shaw and

sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy Wyandotte pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened “Five Hundred Dollar ''), and then mounted with a melancholy air.

"What is it, Henry?"

"Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black-all black with buffalo!"

In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope, until at the distance of a mile or two on the right the tall, white wagons and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so slowly advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left rose the broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast plain waved with tall, rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far and near antelope and wolves were moving through it, the hairy backs of the latter alternately appearing and disappearing as they bounded awkwardly along; while the antelope, with the simple curiosity peculiar to them, would often approach

us closely, their little horns and white throats just visible above the grass tops, as they gazed eagerly at us with their round, black eyes.

I dismounted and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave a shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction of the sand-hills. A mile and a half from us two minute black specks slowly traversed the face of one of the bare, glaring declivities, and disappeared behind the summit. "Let us go!" cried Henry, belaboring the sides of Five Hundred Dollar; and I, following in his wake, we galloped rapidly through the rank grass toward the base of the hills.

From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it issued on the prairie. We entered it, and galloping up, in a moment were surrounded by the bleak sand-hills. Half of their steep sides were bare; the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass, and various uncouth plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly-pear. They were gashed with numberless ravines; and as the sky had suddenly darkened, and a cold, gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs and the dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry's face was all eagerness. He tore off a little hair from the piece of buffalo robe under his saddle and threw it up, to show the course of the wind. It blew directly before us. The game were therefore to windward, and it was necessary to make our best speed to get round them.

We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows, soon found another, winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep that it completely concealed us. We rode up the bottom of it, glancing through the shrubbery at its edge, till Henry abruptly jerked his rein and slid out of his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant, on the outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking, in Indian file, with the utmost gravity and deliberation; then more appeared, clambering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one behind the other,

He

the grassy slope of another hill; then a shaggy head and a pair of short, broken horns appeared issuing out of a ravine close at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the enormous brutes came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly unconscious of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying flat on the ground, through grass and prickly-pears, toward his unsuspecting victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. was soon out of sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long time he was silent; I sat holding his horse, and wondering what he was about, when suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the two rifles, and the whole line of buffalo, quickening their pace into a clumsy trot, gradually disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry rose to his feet and stood looking after them.

He descended into

"You have missed them," said I. "Yes," said Henry; "let us go." the ravine, loaded the rifles and mounted his horse.

We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd was out of sight when we reached the top, but lying on the grass, not far off, was one quite lifeless, and another violently struggling in the death agony.

"You see, I miss him!" remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through the lungs-the true mark in shooting buffalo.

The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses to the horns of the victims Henry began the bloody work of dissection, slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of rawhide, always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples, and heavily burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo we set out on our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and ravines, and issued upon