252 



Life-histories of Northern Animals 



scend and kill them for food; and thus a great many skins 

 are scattered throughout the country." 



Coronado was the next explorer who penetrated the 

 region inhabited by the Buffalo, which he traversed from the 

 west, entering by way of Arizona and New Mexico, in 1540. 

 He crossed the southern part of the "Panhandle" of Texas, 

 reached the edge of what is now Indian Territory, and returned 

 through the same region. It was in the year 1542 that he 

 reached the Buffalo country, and traversed the plains that were 



"full of crooked- 

 " backed Oxen, as 

 the mountain Se- 

 rena in Spain is of 

 sheep." One of 

 his followers, Cas- 

 taneda, gives a 

 description of the 

 animal, and adds: 

 "We were much 

 surprised at some- 

 times meeting in- 

 numerable herds 

 of bulls without a single cow, and other herds of cows with- 

 out bulls.' 



The earliest discovery of the Bison in eastern North Amer- 

 ica, or indeed anywhere north of Coronado's route, was made 

 somewhere near Washington, District of Columbia, in 161 2, 

 by an Englishman, Sir Samuel Argoll, afterward Deputy- 

 Governor of Virginia, who says:^ 



"I set my men to the felling of Timber, for the building 

 of a Frigat, which I had left half finished at Point Comfort, 

 the 19th of March; and returned myself with the ship into 

 Pembrook [Potomac] River and so discovered to the head of it, 

 which is about 65 leagues into the Land, and navigable for 

 any ship. And then marching into the Countrie, I found 

 great stores of Cattle as big as Kine, of which the Indians 



'' hoc. cit., pp. 206-7. ^Purchas Pilgr., 1625, Vol. IV, p. 1765. 



Fig. 100 — Earliest known picture of American Buffalo. 



From Gomara's Historia de las Indias Saragossa, 1552-1553. Folio. 



In New York Public Library (Lenox Building). 



