was left.

After breakfast they held a council as to their future route. Should
they go north, south, east, or west, from the butte? They were of
different minds. At length, however, they all agreed that before coming
to any determination, it would be best to climb the butte, and from its
top get a view of the surrounding country, which might enable them to
resolve upon the best route to be taken. Perhaps they might see the
buffaloes from its summit--as it, no doubt, commanded an extensive view
of the prairie on all sides.

Shouldering their guns, and leaving their blankets and utensils by the
spring, they started on foot to find a place where they might ascend the
eminence. They went round by the western end, for their camp was near
its north-east side. As they proceeded, they began to fear that there
was no place where the hill could be climbed. On all sides it appeared
to be a precipice rising perpendicularly from the plain! Here and there
loose rocks lay at its base, as if they had fallen from above; and trees
grew out of its face, clinging by their roots in the seams of the cliff.
Scattered pines standing upon its topmost edge, stretched their
branches out over the plain; and the aloe plants, the yuccas, and cacti,
added to the wild picturesqueness of its appearance.

On reaching the westernmost point of the butte, a new object presented
itself to the eyes of our adventurers. It resembled a range of cliffs,
or low mountains, at a great distance off to the west, and running from
north to south as far as they could see. It _was_, in fact, a range of
cliffs--similar to those of the butte. It was the eastern escarpment of
the famous "Llano Estacado," or "Staked Plain." The boys had often
heard hunters speak of this tableland, and they recognised its features
at a glance. The butte around which they were travelling was nothing
more than an outlying "mesa" of this singular formation of the prairies.

After gazing, for a moment, on the far-off bluffs, our young hunters
continued on their course, keeping around the southern side of the
eminence. Still the cliffs rose perpendicularly, and offered no slope
by which they might be scaled. They appeared even higher on this side;
and in some places hung over, with dark jutting rocks, and large trees
growing horizontally outward.

At one place the boys had halted, and were gazing upward, when several
strange-looking creatures suddenly appeared upon the edge of