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 eyes
of any other creatur'! Who named the works of His hand? can you tell me
that, with your books and college wisdom? Was it not the first man in
the Garden, and is it not a plain consequence that his children inherit
his gifts?"

"That is certainly the Mosaic account of the event," said the Doctor;
"though your reading is by far too literal!"

"My reading! nay, if you suppose, that I have wasted my time in schools,
you do such a wrong to my knowledge, as one mortal should never lay to
the door of another without sufficient reason. If I have ever craved the
art of reading, it has been that I might better know the sayings of the
book you name, for it is a book which speaks, in every line, according
to human feelings, and therein accordi