moon, luscious seeming as some ripened, mellow fruit,
was rising, and the yellow light was all over the plain.
Then the tremendous mass, headed by maddened bulls, with
blazing eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward
the south, like an unchained hurricane. Some of the
terrified beasts ran against the trees, crushing horns
and skull, and fell prone upon the plain, to be trampled
into jelly by the hundreds of thousands in the rear. The
tree upon which the earl had taken refuge received many
a shock from a crazed bull; and it seemed to the party
from the tree-branches as if all the face of the plains
was being hurled toward the south in a condition of the
wildest turmoil. Hell itself let loose could present no
such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping
over the lonely plain under the wan, elfin light of the
new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing itself into
spectral shapes of sullen aspect, rose from the dusky,
writhing mass, and the flaming of more than ten thousand
eyeballs in the gloom presented a picture more terrible
than ever came into the imagination of the writer of the
Inferno. The spectacle, as observed by those some twenty
feet from the ground, might be likened somewhat to a
turbulent sea when a sturdy tide sets against the storm,
and the mad waves tumble hither and thither, foiled, and
impelled, yet for all the confusion and obstruction moving
in one direction with a sweep and a force that no power
could chain. Circling among and around the strange, dusk
clouds of steam that went up from the herd were scores
of turkey buzzards, their obscene heads bent downward,
their sodden eyes gleaming with expectancy. Well they
knew that many a gorgeous feast awaited them wherever
boulder, tree, or swamp lay in the path of the mighty
herd. At last the face of the prairie had ceased its
surging; no lurid eyeball-light gleamed out of the dusk;
and the tempest of cattle had passed the _voyageurs_ and
went rolling out into the unbounded stretches of the dim,
yellow plain.

The morrow's sun revealed a strange spectacle. The great
amplitude of rich, green grasses, warmed and beautified
by the petals of flowers was as a ploughed field. The
herbage had been literally crushed into mire, and this
the innumerable hoofs had churned up with the soft, rich,
dark soil of the prairie. The leguminous odours from
decaying clover, and rank, matted masses of wild pease,
the feverish exhalations of the tiger-l