Читать книгу Buffalo Land - William Edward Webb - Страница 2

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 vertebræ 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 we were pleased to call our "Log Book." The latter now lies before me, in all its glory of shabby covers and dirty pages. Its soiled face is as honorable as that of the laborer who comes from his task in a well harvested field. Out of the sheaves gathered during our journey, I shall try and take such portions as may best supply the mental cravings of the countless thousands who hunger for the life and the lore of the far West.

I have given the mistakes as well as triumphs of our expedition, and the members of the party will readily recognize their familiar camp names. The disguise will probably be pleasant, as few like to see their failures on public parade, preferring rather to leave these in barracks, and let their successes only appear at review.

The plains have a face, a people, and a brute creation, peculiarly their own, and to these our party devoted earnest study. The expedition presented a rare opportunity of becoming acquainted with the game of the country; and, in writing the present volume, my aim has been to make it so far a text-book for amateur hunters that they may become at once conversant with the habits of the game, and the best manner of killing it. The time is not far distant, when the plains and the Rocky Mountains will be sought by thousands annually, as a favorite field for sport and recreation.

Another and still larger class, it is hoped, will find much of interest and value in the following pages. From every state in the Union, people are constantly passing westward. We found emigrant wagons on spots from which the Indians had just removed their wigwams. Multitudes more are now on the way, with the earnest purpose of founding homes and, if possible, of finding fortunes. In order to aid this class, as well as the sportsman, I have gathered in an appendix such additional information as may be useful to both.

The scientific details of our trip will probably be published in proper form and time, by the savans interested. In regard to these, my object has been simply to chronicle such matters as made an impression upon my own mind, being content with what cream might be gathered by an amateur's skimming, while the more bulky milk should be saved in capacious scientific buckets.

Professor Cope, the well known naturalist, of the Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, received for examination and classification the most valuable fossils we obtained, and to him I am indebted for a large amount of most interesting and valuable scientific matter, which will be found embodied in chapters twenty-third and twenty-fourth.

The illustrations of men and brutes in this work are studies from life. Whenever it was possible, we had photographs taken.

The plains, it must be said, are a tract with which Romance has had much more to do than History. Red men, brave and chivalrous, and unnatural buffalo, with the habits of lions, exist only in imagination. In these pages, my earnest endeavor, when dealing with actualities, has been to "hold the mirror up to Nature," and to describe men, manners, and things as they are in real life upon the frontiers, and beyond, to-day.

W. E. W.

Topeka, Kansas, May, 1872.