After Four Hours' March Through A Level, Swampy Country, Forested
With Black And White Spruce, Black And White Poplar, Birch, Willow,
And Tamarack, We Came To Salt River, A Clear, Beautiful Stream,
But Of Weak, Salty Brine.
Not far away in the woods was a sweet spring, and here we camped
for the night.
Close by, on a place recently burnt over, I found
the nest of a Green-winged Teal. All cover was gone and the nest
much singed, but the down had protected the 10 eggs. The old one
fluttered off, played lame, and tried to lead me away. I covered
up the eggs and an hour later found she had returned and resumed
her post.
That night, as I sat by the fire musing, I went over my life when
I was a boy in Manitoba, just too late to see the Buffalo, recalling
how I used to lie in some old Buffalo wallow and peer out over the
prairie through the fringe of spring anemones and long to see the
big brown forms on the plains. Once in those days I got a sensation,
for I did see them. They turned out to be a herd of common cattle,
but still I got the thrill.
Now I was on a real Buffalo hunt, some twenty-five years too late.
Will it come? Am I really to see the Wild Buffalo on its native
plains? It is too good to be true; too much like tipping back the
sands of time.
CHAPTER VII
THE BUFFALO HUNT
We left camp on Salt River at 7.45 in the morning and travelled
till 11 o'clock, covering six miles. It was all through the same
level country, in which willow swamps alternated with poplar and
spruce ridges. At 11 it began to rain, so we camped on a slope under
some fine, big white spruces till it cleared, and then continued
westward. The country now undulated somewhat and was varied with
openings.
Sousi says that when first he saw this region, 30 years ago, it
was all open prairie, with timber only in hollows and about water.
This is borne out by the facts that all the large trees are in such
places, and that all the level open stretches are covered with
sapling growths of aspen and fir. This will make a glorious settlement
some day. In plants, trees, birds, soil, climate, and apparently
all conditions, it is like Manitoba.
We found the skeleton of a cow Buffalo, apparently devoured
by Wolves years ago, because all the big bones were there and the
skull unbroken.
About two in the afternoon we came up a 200-foot rise to a beautiful
upland country, in which the forests were diversified with open
glades, and which everywhere showed a most singular feature. The
ground is pitted all over with funnel-shaped holes, from 6 to 40
feet deep, and of equal width across the rim; none of them contained
water. I saw one 100 feet across and about 50 feet deep; some expose
limestone; in one place we saw granite.
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