Through the top of the bluff, however, was a sort of fissure or ravine washed by the flow of water during the rainy season, and where it terminated the height of its mouth above the stream was not more than forty or fifty feet.

Down this gully Sam rode furiously, so that his horse might not be able to refuse the leap, which was a frightful one.
Coming to the edge of the precipice with headlong speed, the animal could not draw back but plunged over with Sam sitting bolt upright on his back.

Riding back to the top of the bank Weatherford met his warriors.
[Illustration: THE PERILOUS LEAP.] "Where is he ?" asked the foremost.
"His _body_ is down there in the creek.

I drove him over the precipice," said the chief with well-feigned delight.[2] [Footnote 2: This incident of the leap over the precipice is strictly historical, else I should never have ventured to print it here.
Weatherford himself, on the 23d of December, 1813, after the battle of Tohopeka, escaped a body of dragoons in a precisely similar manner.

A still more remarkable leap was that of Major Samuel McCullock, on the 2d of September 1777, over a precipice fully 300 feet high near Wheeling, West Virginia.